Mikhail Gorbachev erode Gromyko's dominance of Soviet foreign policy while at the same time sending a signal to the U.S. government that he wanted to improve Soviet-U.S. relations. On 11 March 1985, Chernenko died. Gromyko proposed Gorbachev as the next General-Secretary; as a longstanding party member, Gromyko's recommendation carried great weight among the Central Committee. Gorbachev expected much opposition to his nomination as Chernenko's successor, but ultimately the rest of the Politburo supported him. Shortly after Chernenko's death, the Politburo unanimously elected Gorbachev as his successor; they wanted him over another elderly leader. Although not a well-known figure to the Soviet public,
Mikhail Gorbachev and the communist government had already been deposed. Moscow's abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine allowed the rise of popular upheavals in Eastern Europe throughout 1989, in which Communism was overthrown. By the end of 1989, revolts had spread from one Eastern European capital to another, ousting the regimes built in Eastern Europe after World War II. Except in Romania, the popular upheavals against the pro-Soviet regimes were all peaceful ("see Revolutions of 1989"). The loosening of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe effectively ended the Cold War, and for this, Gorbachev was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold in