Mikhail Gorbachev

When will Ronald Reagan get the recognition he deserves?

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Max Boot’s contention that Reagan was a lightweight pragmatist who played little part in reviving America or winning the Cold War is absurdly revisionist

The ultimate gamble

24 September 2022 9:00 am

This is an important and topical book. Mary Sarotte traces the difficult course of Russia’s relations with Europe and the…

Portrait of the week

3 September 2022 9:00 am

Home Liz Truss, the contender for the Conservative party leadership who is expected to become prime minister next Tuesday, resisted…

The humanity of Mikhail Gorbachev

1 September 2022 5:51 am

Mikhail Gorbachev, the final President of the Soviet Union who died last night, was remarkable both as an international politician…

Gorbachev was no saint. But he was a kind of hero

31 August 2022 8:08 am

Mikhail Gorbachev is dead at the age of 91, and in a way I feel orphaned. I became fascinated by…

Gorbachev’s failed experiment

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…

Rich man, bankrupt, thief

6 February 2021 9:00 am

‘Everyone’s heard of Ghislaine Maxwell,’ says the blurb for Power: The Maxwells, a podcast series launched last month. ‘But there’s…

Clean-up workers, known as ‘roof cats’, prepare to remove radioactive debris with shovels and handbarrows from the damaged reactor, October 1968

The Chernobyl catastrophe was a foregone conclusion

12 May 2018 9:00 am

In the early days of the atomic age, Soviet students debated whether it was nobler to become a physicist or…

The meeting of Thatcher and Gorbachev in 1984 initiated the process that brought freedom to millions in Eastern Europe

Margaret Thatcher’s most surprising virtue: imagination

17 October 2015 8:00 am

Margaret Thatcher’s second administration saw bitter divisions at home, but abroad the breakthrough in Anglo-Soviet relations really did change history, says Philip Hensher