Mikhail Gorbachev

Date

1991

Description

Creator of the image: Unknown camera operator
Date of the image creation: 1991
Medium of the image: Television
Person depicted: Mikhail Gorbachev

This image of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931– ) was taken during a nationally televised speech on Christmas Day, 1991, in which he announced his retirement. He said: ‘I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’. Pixels distort this television representation of Gorbachev. Partway through delivering his resignation speech, Gorbachev pauses, glances down and draws his left hand to his chin. A complex array of emotions radiate from him, matching the complexity of the historic situation that he found himself in.

Gorbachev declared his office finished and handed over all controls, including the nuclear codes, to Boris Yeltsin. The Soviet Union was formally dissolved the next day, and the day after Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev’s old office, paving the way to Russian nationalism and economic ‘shock therapy’ at the advice of the IMF, World Bank and US Treasury.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, serving as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991. He is known for his policies of glasnost, ‘openness’, and perestroika, ‘restructuring’. He worked to end the Cold War, as well as deciding not to interfere with the reunification process of East and West Germany, which he declared an internal German issue.

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