Mikhail Gorbachev major campaign to limit alcohol consumption, which Gorbachev—who believed it would improve health and work efficiency—oversaw. His wife keenly supported the measure. As a result, crime rates fell and life expectancy grew slightly between 1986 and 1987. The reform had significant costs to the Soviet economy, resulting in losses of up to $100 billion between 1985 and 1990. Gorbachev later considered the campaign to have been an error. In April 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred; in the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, 336,000 people were evacuated
Mikhail Gorbachev leaders of democratic countries, which works to strengthen democratic governance and leadership. Gorbachev was co-chair of Earth Charter International Commission. Gorbachev was a socialist. His friend Mlynář, with whom he studied at university, related that in the early 1950s "Gorbachev, like everyone else at the time, was a Stalinist." Mlynář added that "Unlike most Soviet students, [Gorbachev] did not see Marxist theory as a collection of axioms to be committed to memory." Biographers Doder and Branson related that after Stalin's death, Gorbachev's "ideology would never be doctrinal again", but noted that he remained "a true believer" in the Soviet system.