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Mikhail Gorbachev, who was lauded in the West as the man who helped bring down the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War without bloodshed, but was widely despised at home,
曾被西方赞誉为“帮助推倒柏林墙、在没有流血牺牲的情况下结束冷战”，但却在国内广受鄙视的米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫，
has died, Russian news agencies reported. He was 91.
据俄罗斯新闻机构报道已于日前去世，享年91岁。
After decades of Cold War tension and confrontation, Gorbachev -- the last soviet president with a distinctive port-wine birthmark on his head -- broke with the past.
在经历了几十年的冷战紧张格局和对抗之后，戈尔巴乔夫，这位头上有波特酒色胎记的苏联最后一任总统--决定与从前的局面彻底告别。
He helped to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe and bring about the reunification of Germany.
他帮助拆除了分裂欧洲的“铁幕”，促成了德国的统一。
He struck nuclear arms deals with the United States and brought the Soviet Union closer to the West than at any point since World War Two.
他与美国达成了有关核武器的协议，使苏联与西方国家的关系比二战以来任何时候都更亲近。
Gorbachev struck up a rapport with the West and with Ronald Reagan, the hawkish U.S. president who had called the Soviet Union "the evil empire".
此外，戈尔巴乔夫还与西方国家以及曾将苏联称为“邪恶帝国”的鹰派美国总统罗纳德·里根建立了友好关系。
Together they negotiated a landmark deal in 1987 to scrap intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
他们在1987年的谈判，最终达成了一项具有里程碑意义的协议：销毁两国的中程核导弹。
Gorbachev, though, was not able to prevent the Soviet Union's collapse.
但是戈尔巴乔夫没能阻止苏联的解体。
When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force.
属于苏联集团的东欧共产主义国家掀起大规模抗议活动，戈尔巴乔夫没有使用武力镇压。
But those protests fueled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion.
但这些抗议活动还是激发了苏联15个加盟共和国对自治的渴望，在接下来的两年里，在混乱中，苏联最终还是解体了。
Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985 at age 54.
1985年，54岁的戈尔巴乔夫成为了苏联共产党总书记。
He was a reformer -- setting out to revitalize the system by introducing limited political and economic freedoms.
他是一名改革者--通过引入有限的政治和经济自由来重振体制。
While he was celebrated in the west, many Russians never forgave Gorbachev for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, believing it was too high a price to pay for democracy.
尽管戈尔巴乔夫在西方享有盛名，但许多俄罗斯人永远不会原谅他的改革所引发的动荡，他们认为，为民主付出的代价太高了。
