Gorbachev ended Cold War but presided over Soviet collapse

FILE PHOTO: Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev speaks at a meeting with former U.S. President George Bush (not pictured) in Moscow State Institute of International Relations, in Moscow Russia May 23, 2005. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

LONDON (Reuters) - Lauded in the West as the man who helped bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War without bloodshed, Mikhail Gorbachev was widely despised at home as the gravedigger of the communist Soviet Union.

The former Soviet president, who died on Tuesday aged 91, set out to revitalise the sclerotic Communist system through democratic and economic reform; it was never his intention to abolish it.