Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet Union's last leader. He was the only Soviet leader to have been born after the October revolution and was thus a product of the Soviet Union having grown up in it. He and US president Ronald Reagan signed a treaty to get rid of some nuclear weapons. Gorbachev started social and economic reforms that gave people freedom of speech; which allowed them to criticize the government and its policies. The ruling communist party lost its grip on the media and the people. Newspapers began printing the many failures that the Soviet Union had covered up and denied in its past. The Soviet Union's economy was lagging and the government was spending a lot of money on competing with the west.