He was probably its only truly humane one and has died at a time when political repression in his native Russia has become stifling once more
Although leaders of the reconciliation era accept South Africa’s last white president, younger politicians are not as forgiving
The president will be judged on how he navigates the turbulent political and economic headwinds
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/ 25 December 2011
Russia came to terms with its second mass opposition rally within a month which was even bigger and more sharply critical of strongman Vladimir Putin.
The cataclysmic collapse 20 years ago of the Soviet Union unleashed conflict, instability and poverty that are still felt today.
The former president of the Soviet Union looks back at his role in the Communist Party.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev marked his 80th birthday on Wednesday by advising Vladimir Putin against running for president.
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/ 3 November 2009
Mikhail Gorbachev said on Tuesday that he was proud of his role in the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
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/ 19 October 2009
Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday launched a bitter attack on the state of democracy in Russia, saying elections had turned into a mockery.
Grigory Romanov, a Politburo member who had been seen as the chief rival of Mikhail Gorbachev to become Soviet leader in the mid-1980s, has died.
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/ 19 December 2007
Time magazine named Russian President Vladimir Putin its person of the year for 2007 on Wednesday, saying he had returned his country from chaos to ”the table of world power” though at a cost to democratic principles. ”He’s not a good guy, but he’s done extraordinary things,” said Time managing editor Richard Stengel.
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/ 29 November 2007
Former chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov was freed from jail on Thursday and warned that Russia is sliding toward dictatorship under President Vladimir Putin. Kasparov complained that he had been denied access to a lawyer during the five days that he spent in a Moscow prison.
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/ 15 November 2007
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told Google employees on Wednesday his meteoric rise in politics mirrored the company’s emergence as the lifeblood of the internet and he surprised his hosts by answering a geeky engineering question.