Who was Mikhail Gorbachev and what was his role in Russia? These are some of his pivotal moments

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Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev has died at 91 years of age after a long illness, Russian hospital officials say.

Ending the Cold War without bloodshed and the collapse of the Soviet Union are some of the key historical moments attributed to Mr Gorbachev. 

Let's look at other pivotal moments that shaped Mr Gorbachev's role in Russia. 

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in the village of Privolnoye in southern Russia.

Both of his grandfathers were collective farmers and members of the Communist Party, as was his father.

Despite stellar party credentials, Mr Gorbachev’s family did not emerge unscathed from the terror unleashed by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Both of his grandfathers were arrested and imprisoned for allegedly anti-Soviet activities. Both were eventually freed in a rare occurrence. 

By age 15, Mr Gorbachev was helping his father drive a combine harvester after school.

His performance earned him the order of the Red Banner of Labor, an unusual distinction for a 17-year-old.

That prize and the party background of his parents helped him land admission to the country's top university, Moscow State in 1950.

There, he met his wife, Raisa Maximovna Titorenko.

Five years later, Mr Gorbachev and Raisa moved back to Stavropol, where he began a rapid rise through the ranks of the Communist Party, becoming the youngest member of the Politburo, at age 49, in 1979.

At 54, Mr Gorbachev served as the last general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985. 

He was also the last president of the Soviet Union, from 1990-1991. 

Mr Gorbachev had a clear vision: to remake the Soviet Union into a more humane and flexible country.

He was best known for his policies of glasnost and perestroika.

Glasnost, or "openness", allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and press.

Perestroika, or "restructuring", sought to decentralise economic decision-making to improve efficiency. 

Mr Gorbachev hit the ground running.

He freed political prisoners, allowed open debate and multi-candidate elections, gave his fellow Russians freedom to travel, halted religious oppression, reduced nuclear arsenals, established closer ties with the West and did not resist the fall of Communist regimes in Eastern European satellite states.

His policy of glasnost allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state.

But it also emboldened nationalists who began to press for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and elsewhere.

Mr Gorbachev never set out to dismantle the Soviet system. He wanted to improve it.

In his memoirs, he said he had long been frustrated that in a country with immense natural resources, tens of millions were living in poverty.

“Our society was stifled in the grip of a bureaucratic command system,” Mr Gorbachev wrote.

By 1990, he had won the Nobel Prize for his “leading role” in ending the Cold War and reducing nuclear tensions.

He spent his later years collecting accolades and awards from all corners of the world. 

"I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together." — Then-UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher in a 1984 TV interview with the BBC

He was lionised in the West for championing freedom and change at a time when many feared the Cold War would never end.

Contrasting this praise, Mr Gorbachev became a figure of hate for those Russians who held him responsible for the destruction of the Soviet empire.

He was blamed for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, considering the subsequent plunge in their living standards too high a price to pay for democracy.

His former allies either sidelined or deserted him, including Boris Yeltsin, a fast-rising Communist official at the time. 

Mr Gorbachev became a scapegoat for the country's troubles.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in a part of Ukraine now occupied by pro-Moscow forces, said Mr Gorbachev had "deliberately led the (Soviet) Union to its demise" and called him a traitor.

His power was sapped by an attempted coup against him in August 1991.

He spent his last months in office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on December 25, 1991.

The Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.

Mr Gorbachev veered between criticism and mild praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been assailed for backtracking on the democratic achievements of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras.

He said Mr Putin had done much to restore stability and prestige to Russia after the tumultuous decade following the Soviet collapse.

However, he spoke out against Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A day after the February 24 attack, he issued a statement calling for “an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations".

"There is nothing more precious in the world than human lives," he said.

A quarter-century after the collapse, Mr Gorbachev told The Associated Press that he had not considered using widespread force to try to keep the USSR together because he feared chaos in the nuclear superpower.

"The country was loaded to the brim with weapons. And it would have immediately pushed the country into a civil war," he said.

Many of the changes, including the Soviet break-up, bore no resemblance to the transformation that Mr Gorbachev had envisioned when he became Soviet leader.

"I see myself as a man who started the reforms that were necessary for the country and for Europe and the world," Mr Gorbachev told AP in a 1992 interview shortly after he left office.

"I am often asked, would I have started it all again if I had to repeat it? Yes, indeed. And with more persistence and determination," he said.

Mr Gorbachev is survived by a daughter, Irina, and two granddaughters.

Official Russian news agency Tass reported that Mr Gorbachev would be buried at Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife.

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