For more news and videos visit ☛ http://english.ntdtv.com<br />or<br />Follow us on Twitter ☛ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision<br /><br />He was the first and the last president of the Soviet Union. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his 80th anniversary on Tuesday. He is known by many as a politician who has changed not only the history of his own country, but a large part of the world as well.<br /><br />Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, celebrated his 80th birthday on Tuesday.<br /><br />He is widely credited for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the bloc of socialist countries in Eastern Europe. <br /><br />During his presidency the west coined the term "perestroika", which stands for "reconstruction."<br /><br />For the Soviet people, perestroika meant a taste of the their first civil liberties in decades.<br /><br />Gorbachev helped to end the Cold War and triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union -- ironically, he became the nation's last president.<br /><br />In a taped interview aired on Wednesday, Gorbachev looked back on his eight decades and expressed amazement.<br /><br />[Mikhail Gorbachev, Former President of the USSR]:<br />"I can't believe I've lived this long - eighty years - I used to think that was such an old age. Raisa and I had a plan, a human plan - to live to the year 2000, and that would be it. Because we'd already had so much - we'd lived so much life. It's not just one, two or three, but five or seven wonderful lives. For just one person it's too much."<br /><br />Despite his years, the former president is still active socially.<br /><br />He is the head of the International foundation for social, economic and political studies -- the "Gorbachev-Foundation" - and he also serves as a co-founder of the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta."<br /><br />Gorbachev gave Soviet citizens their first civil liberties in decades, such as the right to one's independent opinion and the right to set up private enterprises.<br /><br />But he thinks that modern-day Russia still has a long way to go in building a democracy.
