Mikhail Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 in Privolnoye, Russia. In 1961 he became a delegate to the Communist Party Congress. He was elected general secretary in 1985. He became the first president of the Soviet Union in 1990 and won the Nobel Peace Prize the same year. He resigned in 1991 and has since founded the Gorbachev Foundation and remains active in social and political causes. EARLY LIVESMikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 to a Russian-Ukrainian family in the village of Privolnoye, Krasnogvardeisky District near the Stavropol Territory, in southern Russia. Gorbachev's parents were peasants. His father, Sergei, operated a combine harvester for a living. Sergei was drafted into the Russian Army when the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941. Three years later he was wounded in action and returned home to resume operating agricultural machinery. Sergei passed on his experience with the combine to his young son Mikhail. Mikhail Gorbachev was a quick learner and showed an aptitude for mechanics. As a teenager, Gorbachev contributed to the family's income by driving tractors at a local mechanical station. He was such a tireless worker that, at the age of 17, Gorbachev was the youngest to win the Order of the Red Banner of Labor for his active role in bringing in that year's bumper harvest. Gorbachev's mother, Maria, exemplifies this tireless work ethic with her lifelong hard work on a collective farm. The political climate during Mikhail Gorbachev's upbringing was turbulent. In the 1930s, when Gorbachev was still very young, he suffered the trauma of seeing his maternal grandfather, Pantelei Gopkalo, arrested during the Great Purge. Gopkalo was accused of being a Trotskyist counter-revolutionary and wondered how to balance power-sharing between himself and the opposing leader. In August 1991, while Gorbachev was on vacation in Crimea, communist conservatives captured him in a coup to seize power. Ironically, among the Communist Party conservatives who organized the coup was Prime Minister Pavlov, whom Gorbachev had hired to help him balance power with Yeltsin. Despite his opposing leadership, Yeltsin mounted resistance against the coup, which ultimately failed. Upon Gorbachev's return home, rumors circulated that he may have been in cahoots with the coup plotters. The public began to distrust Gorbachev and increasingly supported Yeltsin, whom they now considered a hero. By Christmas 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed. Gorbachev inevitably resigned as president of the Soviet Union, handing complete power to Yeltsin.