Mikhail Gorbachev

In The Invention of Russia, Gorbachev is the central figure of the perestroika/glasnost arc — the leader who opened the flow of information that ultimately dissolved the Soviet system. The book quotes his own admission that reforms stalled not for lack of decrees (“more than sixty decrees on agriculture since April 1985”) but for a shortage of people who could respond to them: “The roots of the plants suppressed by the tombstone of the socialist economy had atrophied.” It also captures his ambivalence about the press he had freed — after the turnaround of Moskovskie novosti and its readers, he proposed suspending the media law and putting print and television under the direct control of the Supreme Soviet to “ensure its objectivity.” His circle of reformers is contrasted with the younger generation Boris Yeltsin surrounded himself with as control of the media and the national narrative shifted.

In Nuclear War — a Scenario, Gorbachev appears in his Cold War role: the book opens with the 1985 joint statement he issued with Ronald Reagan — “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” — as a baseline against which it measures the renewed nuclear danger of the present.

Context: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022) was the last leader of the Soviet Union (1985–1991), whose reforms of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) are widely credited with — and blamed for — the USSR’s dissolution.

Where this appears

• The Invention of Russia — central reform-era figure; glasnost opens the information flow, but he later moves to recentralize media control.
• Nuclear War — a Scenario — the 1985 Reagan–Gorbachev “a nuclear war cannot be won” statement frames the book’s opening.