It was on this date, March 2, 1931, that former Soviet Union President, and Nobel Peace Laureate, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Михаил Сергеевич Горбачëв) was born. Baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, Gorbachev was reared an atheist under the Soviet system. He became the first General Secretary of the Soviet Union to be born after the Revolution, in March 1985. Gorbachev introduced economic reforms he called perestroika, social freedoms he called glasnost, and took the first tentative steps toward “democratization” of the Soviet state. On his watch, the USSR collapsed and its client states in Eastern Europe broke away. Gorbachev remains an Atheist, but in leading the establishment of religious freedom laws in the former Soviet Union, he demonstrated respect for all religions…

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Originally published March 2003 by Ronald Bruce Meyer.