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Personal life

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The official Soviet portrait of Gorbachev. Many official photographs and visual depictions of Gorbachev removed the port-wine birthmark from his head.[1]

By 1955, his hair was thinning,[2] and by the late 1960s he was bald,[3] revealing a distinctive port-wine stain on the top of his head.[4] Gorbachev reached an adult height of 5 foot 9 inches (1.75 m).[5] Throughout the 1960s, he struggled against obesity and dieted to control the problem;[6] Doder and Branson characterized him as "stocky but not fat".[5] He spoke in a southern Russian accent,[7] and was known to sing both folk and pop songs.[8]

Throughout his life, he tried to dress fashionably.[9] Having an aversion to hard liquor,[10] he drank sparingly and did not smoke.[11] He was protective of his private life and avoided inviting people to his home.[12] Gorbachev cherished his wife,[13] who in turn was protective of him.[14] He was an involved parent and grandparent.[15] He sent his daughter, his only child, to a local school in Stavropol rather than to a school set aside for the children of party elites.[16] Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Soviet administration, he was not a womanizer and was known for treating women respectfully.[17]

Gorbachev was baptized Russian Orthodox and when he was growing up, his grandparents had been practising Christians.[18] In 2008, there was some press speculation that he was a practising Christian after he visited the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, to which he publicly clarified that he was an atheist.[19] Since studying at university, Gorbachev considered himself an intellectual;[20] Doder and Branson thought that "his intellectualism was slightly self-conscious",[21] noting that unlike most Russian intelligentsia, Gorbachev was not closely connected "to the world of science, culture, the arts, or education".[22] When living in Stavropol, he and his wife collected hundreds of books.[23] Among his favorite authors were Arthur Miller, Dostoevsky, and Chinghiz Aitmatov, while he also enjoyed reading detective fiction.[24] He enjoyed going for walks,[25] having a love of natural environments,[26] and was also a fan of association football.[27] He favored small gatherings where the assembled discussed topics like art and philosophy rather than the large, alcohol-fueled parties common among Soviet officials.[28]

  1. ^ Medvedev 1986, p. 160.
  2. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 77.
  3. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 32; Taubman 2017, p. 121.
  4. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 50; Taubman 2017, p. 7.
  5. ^ a b Doder & Branson 1990, p. 50.
  6. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 116.
  7. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 50; Taubman 2017, p. 44.
  8. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 94.
  9. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 179.
  10. ^ McCauley 1998, p. 18.
  11. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 142.
  12. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 153.
  13. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 4.
  14. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 157.
  15. ^ Taubman 2017, pp. 4–5.
  16. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 155.
  17. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 102.
  18. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 290.
  19. ^ Rodriguez, Alex (23 March 2008). "Gorbachev a closet Christian?". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 11 May 2008. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  20. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 44.
  21. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 16.
  22. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 150.
  23. ^ Taubman 2017, pp. 114–115.
  24. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 17.
  25. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 137.
  26. ^ Taubman 2017, p. 163.
  27. ^ Doder & Branson 1990, p. 347.
  28. ^ Taubman 2017, pp. 136–137.
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