MIKHAIL GORBACHEV , WHO HELPED END THE COLD WAR AS PRESIDENT OF USSR DIES AT 91!

Respected in the West, Gorbachev was seen as a reckless chatterbox in Russia In 1992, Interviewd Mikhail Gorbachev, little more than a year after he had presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union and lost power.

His aide said to submit questions beforehand. submitted six. The aide laughed. You'll never get to ask all these, he said. He likes to talk too much.

Gorbachev answered three in 40 minutes.

The man, who died on Tuesday at age 91, indeed liked to talk, and after he took power in the Soviet Union in 1985, he wanted his country to talk, and talk openly, about its problems.

• Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, dead at 91

To that end, in 1989 he created a new parliament, the Congress of Peoples' Deputies. The debates of the newly elected MPs were broadcast on national television. Gorbachev and his ministers wandered the corridors, taking questions from reporters.

In the process, a once-hermetically censored country burst open in a flood of speeches, revelations, debates. For reporters — who had arrived in Moscow as a CBC correspondent in 1988, for a six-year stint — it was a bonanza of news.

The problem was that, as the country talked of its problems, they only became worse and worse. Food, and goods of all kinds, became scarce. Supermarket shelves were empty. The ruble bought almost nothing.

Yet Gorbachev kept on talking.