Few surviving 20th-century political figures are so fraught with symbolism as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Aestheticized in late and post-Soviet culture and the Western Cold War imaginary, ...

Mikhail Gorbachev was a contradictory figure with a complex legacy. Hailed in the West as a democrat and liberator of his people—which he genuinely was—he increasingly became despised by many within ...