Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev was the last head of state of the Soviet Union, rising to lead the country’s ruling party before overseeing sweeping political and economic reforms that preceded the state’s collapse. On 1985-03-11, he became the new secretary general of the Russian Communist Party.¹ In 1987, he announced the economic liberalisation reform of perestroika, heralding a warming in relations with the West known in Russia as Glasnost, or openness.²

Gorbachev’s tenure also brought a marked shift in Soviet policy towards religion. Catholic activist Josip Terelya, who had spent twenty years in Russian prison camps, was released on Gorbachev’s orders shortly before the Hrushiv Marian apparitions of 1987.³ On 1988-04-29, he met the Russian Orthodox patriarch of Moscow and five metropolitan bishops at the Catherine Hall of the Kremlin, in a meeting with Russian Orthodox bishops.⁴ According to The Fatima Secret, such a meeting would have been unthinkable only five years before 1988.⁵ The same source records that Gorbachev announced a new law on freedom of religion around this time.⁶ Gorbachev said that believers were Soviet citizens, workers, and patriots who had the right to express their convictions with dignity.⁷ Gennadii Gerasimov, who had served as spokesman for the Soviet foreign ministry under Gorbachev, was later appointed ambassador to Portugal.⁸

During the early hours of 1991-08-19, an anniversary of a Fatima apparition, Communist hardliners staged the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt against Gorbachev.⁹ He was held prisoner at his country villa in Crimea for the duration of the coup.¹⁰ He was subsequently driven from his office as president, and the Soviet Union had ceased to exist by the beginning of 1992, in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.¹¹ When Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on 1991-12-25, he said that fate had determined he should find himself at the top of the state, and that it soon became clear something was going wrong in the country.¹² He said the Soviet Union had much, yet still lived in poorer conditions than people in other industrialised countries, and that previous halfhearted reforms had fallen through.¹³ He said he was well aware that reforming Soviet society would be extremely difficult and dangerous, but was convinced that the democratic revolution he had begun in the spring of 1985 was historically the correct step.¹⁴

Author Michael Hesemann considers that the decisive turning points of World War II, and Gorbachev’s perestroika, followed immediately after the consecration of Russia and the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary demanded in the Fatima visions.¹⁵

Gorbachev also features in accounts connected to UAP research. Ronald Reagan once suggested to his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev that the United States and the Soviet Union should work together in the event of an alien invasion.¹⁶ Gorbachev took to wearing makeup on Soviet television to obscure a birthmark on his forehead, after people described it as the mark of the beast.¹⁷