Mikhail Gorbachev Nikita Khrushchev. He was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in 1970, in which position he oversaw construction of the Great Stavropol Canal. In 1974 he moved to Moscow to become First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet and in 1979 became a candidate member of the Politburo. Within three years of the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, following the brief "interregna" of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected general secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and to its socialist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary
Mikhail Gorbachev fiction. He enjoyed walking as a hobby, and had a love of natural environments. He favoured small gatherings where the assembled discussed topics like art and philosophy rather than the large, alcohol-fuelled parties common among Soviet officials. Taubman called him "a remarkably decent man"; he thought Gorbachev to have "high moral standards". He also noted that the former Soviet leader has a "sense of self-importance and self-righteousness" as well as a "need for attention and admiration" which grated on some of his colleagues. A number of his colleagues thought that he was easily offended, and were often frustrated that he