Video: '3/11/85: Gorbachev Becomes Soviet Leader'

(Monday, March 11, 1985, publicly announced at 6:15 p.m. MSK; during the Cold War) — Mikhail Gorbachev, 54, was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by the Politburo today, only three hours after the death of Konstantin Chernenko.

Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims would contribute to the end of the Cold War.