Mikhail Gorbachev - Last president of the Soviet Union | DW Documentary

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the driving forces behind the end of the Cold War in 1989/90. Without his policies of openness, measures then taken to curb nuclear weapons would have proved beyond reach and the Berlin Wall would not have fallen.

This documentary deals with one of the most gripping chapters in recent history - from the election of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. It features exclusive interviews with the late former Soviet leader and prominent politicians and statesmen active at the time. Mikhail Gorbachev, elected Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, changed the course of world history with his twin policies of "glasnost” - "openness” - and "perestroika” - "restructuring”. But in the end, his legacy is an ambiguous one.

The film includes interviews with former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine and German politician Horst Teltschik, both of whom played important roles in German reunification. Gorbachev's former national security adviser Alexander Likhotal and others also chart the way nuclear weapons have since spread throughout an increasingly multipolar world. Gorbachev’s aim of bringing Europe and Russia together seems more remote than ever.


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