Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, was the last leader of the Soviet Union and its first and last state president. Although he ruled in Moscow for less than seven years, the consequences of his tenure rewrote the global order at the end of the 20th century.

During his years in the Kremlin, from 1985 to 1991, he ended one-party communist rule in the Soviet Union, halted the global arms race and allowed the peaceful liberation of the states of central and eastern Europe. His policies terminated the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and ended the cold war but led to the collapse of the Soviet empire in the process.

Lauded in the west as a hero and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he was and still is condemned by many in Russia for wrecking its economy and putting paid to its superpower status. In reality, he attempted to reform a system that was in terminal decline, and thereby triggered a revolution that he could not control.