Perestroika, glasnost... Dictionary to understand the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev

• Obituary Gorbachev, the leader who opened Russia to the world

• Analysis Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect who destroyed the USSR while trying to save it

has died

.

The last president of the USSR died in a Moscow hospital at the age of 91 after a "serious and prolonged" illness.

Loved in the West and reviled in

, he played an essential role in ending the Cold War that confronted two antagonistic blocs.

But what is his legacy and the keywords that define him?

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Europe.

The Ukrainians, on Gorbachev: "He is not the Russian leader who should have died"

• Drafting: ALBERTO ROJAS (Special envoy) kyiv

The Ukrainians, on Gorbachev: "He is not the Russian leader who should have died"

Perestroika and glasnost

( '

restructuring', in Russian) and

('opening') were the cornerstones of his mandate.

In January 1987, Gorbachev championed the need for profound reform before the Central Committee of the Party: "Clearly, the need for change was pending in the economy and other fields, but it was not realized in the political and practical work of the party and the state".

Thus, with perestroika, he advocated the

of the USSR, with the Communist Party at the head, and for the

.

Glasnost sought to "open" the regime by enabling freedom of expression and information.

The ultimate goal was to reformulate Soviet totalitarianism and transform it into

in the words of Francisco Herranz, a journalist for many years at EL MUNDO.

He did not intend to end the system, but rather to make it more efficient in order to make it last.

However, the measures did not arrive in time to save the USSR and, furthermore, they were boycotted both by reformists, considering them unambitious, and by radical communists who feared losing their privileges.

INF and START Treaties

Among his great achievements are the agreements with the United States for the

.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), signed in December 1987, eliminated conventional ballistic and cruise missiles carrying nuclear warheads and whose range was between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.

Although it only affected shells that were on land, and not those in submarines, for example, by May 1991, Washington and Moscow had already disposed of 2,700 rockets.

Its contribution to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed in July 1991, and which established limitations on the number of missiles and nuclear warheads that both powers could possess, is also vital.

The implementation of START I led to the

that have ever existed.

However, 90% of the atomic bombs that still remain today are in the possession of Russia and the US.

Berlin Wall, Reagan and Honecker

Gorbachev's foreign policy led, in little more than five years, to the end of the bipolar world.

The leader of the USSR did not act as the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, which grouped the communist countries of Eastern Europe, abandoned the Marxist theses to embrace democracy and the free market.

But, above all, he will be remembered for his role in

.

After World War II, Germany was divided in two.

The western part was a capitalist democracy, and the eastern part a communist dictatorship.

The separation increased when it materialized physically with the construction of the

in the 1960s. The wall ended up becoming the manifest symbol of the clash between ideologies that the Cold War represented.

The end of all this came with his fall in November 1989 and after the famous proclamation of the US president at the time, Ronald Reagan,

, delivered by the Brandenburg Gate during a visit to West Berlin.

Subsequently, the Russian did not oppose the union of both Germanys or the incorporation of the new resulting country into NATO.

That's despite a

years earlier.

The understanding between the US and the USSR, and their predisposition to dialogue, led to Gorbachev being awarded a Nobel Prize in 1990.

Boris Yeltsin

His main rival,

, was unhappy that perestroika and glasnost did not go far enough.

He proposed, as leader of the reformists in Parliament, to go further and faster.

His

him to voters in the inner cities.

In 1990, polls already placed Yeltsin as the most popular Soviet politician among citizens.

Gorbachev did not pay enough attention to inter-ethnic tensions and the growing centrifugal nationalism of the Baltic republics.

When he wanted to realize the danger that this posed for the existence of the Soviet Union, the secession of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were already a fait accompli and ended up burying both the Union and Gorbachev's career.

After his resignation as leader of the USSR,

as president of the Russian Federation until 1999.

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