Mikhail Gorbachev Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (center, with red tie) walks with a crowd of delegates to the twenty-eighth and last congress of the Soviet Communist Party in July 1990. Gorbachev took office in 1985 with the goal of reforming communism from within. His plans spiraled out of control. By 1991 the Soviet Union and the East Bloc had disintegrated into independent, noncommunist states.