II.

Early Years

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born to peasant parents in the village of Privol’noye, in the agrarian Stavropol’ Territory in southwestern Russia. As a child he lived through many of the horrors of Soviet life under dictator Joseph Stalin: One-third of the residents of Privol’noye perished during the famine of the early 1930s, caused by the rapid collectivization of Soviet agriculture; both of Gorbachev’s grandfathers were arrested arbitrarily and later released by Stalin’s secret police; and Gorbachev’s home region was occupied by the German army from 1942 to 1943, during World War II, then reoccupied by Soviet forces. Despite this, the young Gorbachev kept faith in the Soviet system. A model schoolboy, Gorbachev joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1946, and two years later he won a state medal for his work bringing in the grain harvest.

Gorbachev was admitted to law school at Moscow State University in 1950, partly because of his ability and hard work and partly because of his humble origins and his status as a probationary member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), a rarity for one so young. He became a full member of the party in 1952. In 1951 Gorbachev met Raisa Titarenko, a philosophy student from Siberia; the two were married in 1953. Upon graduating in 1955, the couple moved to Stavropol’, the main city of Gorbachev’s native region, with all their possessions in a pair of suitcases. Their daughter Irina was born several years later.