Finishing out TakePart's week of Nobel Peace Prize winners is Mikhail Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on this day, 20 years ago, for dismantling the Soviet Communist Party machine.
Some called it a consolation prize for losing the Cold War. Under Gorbachev, the communist infrastructure that had taken 70 years to build began to unravel. Instead of enforcing the Communist Party agenda with an iron fist—which some colleagues recommended—Gorbachev made concession after concession in hopes of returning to true democratic socialism.
Despite being celebrated internationally, there was little support for Gorbachev's measures at home. Although he ended many Soviet conflicts in Asia and Eastern Europe and instituted the first independent media, Soviet citizens were consumed by their flagging economy and growing distaste for socialism. The media, now free to say what it wanted, skewered him.
On New Years Eve, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. As for Gorbachev, he announced a comeback in late 2008 by starting a new political party for the Russian Federation called the Independent Democratic Party of Russia.
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