🚨 Archive Drop 🚨 As the last Soviet leader - Mikhail Gorbachev - dies aged 91, we look back at his 1999 Newsnight interview Speaking to former presenter Jeremy Paxman, he talks about the fall of the USSR, NATO expansion, and Tony Blair 🎥👇
Mr Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and de facto leader of the country, in 1985.
The Soviet economy had been struggling for years to keep up with the US and his policy of perestroika sought to introduce some market-like reforms to the state run system. But it also unleashed nationalist sentiments in many regions of the country which eventually undermined the stability of the country and hastened its collapse.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 "for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations". Henry Kissinger, who served as US Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, told the BBC's Newsnight programme that Mr Gorbachev would be "remembered in history as a man who started historic transformations that were to the benefit of mankind and to the Russian people".
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