Mikhail Gorbachev has died. Who was he?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : Thinking that communism was still an evil plot directed out of Moscow, they saw Gorbachev as the latest trick to sucker western governments into thinking he was a newer kind of communist - then he would strike.
63% : Gorbachev was reelected party leader in 1990 and then made a deal with Yeltsin to privatize parts of the economy in order to save socialism but then abandoned it when the hardliners criticized it.
59% : He was very wrong about that and there was a widespread rejection of socialism immediately after 1989, one that has morphed into an increasing embrace of hard-right fascism in much of the region 30 years later.
50% : He believed that if he allowed democratic elections in eastern Europe that voters would choose to continue with communism.
47% : One thing Gorbachev did want to do was reduce the nuclear arms race so he could also cut the military spending that was now far too great a part of the Soviet economy.
45% : Corruption had become as great a problem in Soviet society as it ever claimed existed in capitalism.

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