Mikhail Gorbachev Kiev, Ukraine. In 2006, he expressed his continued belief in Lenin's ideas: "I trusted him then and I still do". He claimed that "the essence of Lenin" was a desire to develop "the living creative activity of the masses". Taubman believed that Gorbachev identified with Lenin on a psychological level. Taubman described Gorbachev as "a true believer—not in the Soviet system as it functioned (or didn't) in 1985 but in its potential to live up to what he deemed its original ideals." As Soviet leader, Gorbachev believed in incremental reform rather than a radical transformation; he later referred to this
Mikhail Gorbachev and following the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 pursued this agenda. Gorbachev's policies of "glasnost" ("openness") and "perestroika" ("restructuring") and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War. Under this program, the role of the Communist Party in governing the state was removed from the constitution, which inadvertently led to crisis-level political instability with a surge of regional nationalist and anti-communist activism culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev later expressed regret for his failure to save the Soviet state, though he has insisted that his policies were not failures but rather were