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Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ (USSR) final head of state, changed the course of modern history. Among other things, he ended the Cold War and a nuclear arms race with the United States and implemented the policies of ‘glasnost’ (openness) and ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) in the USSR through the 1980s, leading to a dramatic increase in social and political freedom, an end to the state’s centralized economy and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
