Reagan
Ronald Reagan was the 40th US president. He started his career in entertainment, appearing in more than 50 films, before he ran for U.S. presidency as a conservative Republican and won in 1981. During World war II, Reagan spent his time in the military making Army films after being disqualified from combat duty due to poor eyesight and left ranked as a captain. His first wife was Jane Wyman, whom he had a daughter and an adopted son with, but divorced after 4 years of marriage. He then met Nancy Davis and they got married and had two kids, Patricia and Ronald. After only 69 days of running the office, he got shot down, but recovered immediately, which cause people to like him due to his grace. Reagan is best known for ending the cold war and being the reason Germany's Berlin Wall got torn down.
Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev was the last Soviet Union Leader. He rose to the ranks o Kremlin hierarchy in 1982, when premier Yuri Andropov adopted him as his protégé. On the 11th of March, 1985, he was elected General Secretary of the communist party. In 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Cold War. Time Magazine named him Man of the Year and Man of the Decade. Former President Richard Nixon believed the Soviet leader should have been named Man of the Century for "risk[ing] his power…to save his reforms." In reality, Gorbachev was eventually driven out of power; he couldn't control the reforms he had implemented and the economy worsened. He also led to the downfall of communism in Europe.
Relationship
Reagan never trusted the Soviet Union and labeled them as "The Evil Empire". But two years later Reagan met Gorbachev and said: "There was warmth in his face and his style, not the coldness bordering on hatred I'd seen in most senior Soviet officials I'd met until then." Gorbachev called Reagan a great American and great leader. Reagan forged a diplomatic relationship with Gorbachev. They signed a historic agreement to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles in 1987. In the same year, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, as it symbolises communism. 29 months later, Gorbachev allowed the people of Berlin to dismantle the wall, ending Soviet domination of East Germany.
Bibliography
"American Experience: TV's Most-watched History Series." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/reagan-gorbachev/>.
BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/mikhail_gorbachev>.
Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2015. <http://www.biography.com/people/ronald-reagan-9453198#foreign-affairs&gid=ci01a8bfd616fc860b&pid=ronald-reagan-9453198-2-402>.
<http://a2.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_limit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,h_2500,q_75,w_2500/MTE5NDg0MDU1MTA5ODYyOTI3.jpg >.
"Ronald Reagan." The White House. The White House, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/ronaldreagan>.