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a noble background that made her an exception
in the artistic circles she frequented. She enrolled
in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture in 1898, hoping to study sculpture.
Here she met her lifelong companion and collab-
orator, Mikhail Larionov. Goncharova's early
work attempted to combine the Russian tradi-
tions of the icon and cheap popular print known
as lubok with post impressionist ideas. In 1906,
she sent her work to an exhibit organized by the
promoters of the journal MIR ISKUSSTVA . Impressed
by her and Larionov's work, DIAGHILEV invited
them to contribute to an upcoming exhibition in
Paris at the Salon d'Automne. The next years
saw the production of some of her better-known
works— The Wreath (1907), Golden Fleece (1908),
Jack of Diamonds (1910-11), and Union of Youth
(1910). She helped organize and took part in the
Donkey's Tail Exhibition, held in Moscow
(1912), which displayed her work along with
that of Larionov, Vladimir TATLIN , Kazimir MALE -
VICH , and others. The exhibition featured works
that revealed Russian folk art influences using
bright colors. She also designed the sets for
Diaghilev's production of Le Coq d'or (1914). In
1915, she left Moscow with Larionov and settled
permanently in Paris in 1919.
his youth. After the war, Gorbachev worked sev-
eral summers at his village's machine-tractor sta-
tion driving farm machinery, earning in 1949
with his fellow villagers an Order of the Red Ban-
ner of Labor for overfulfilling the harvest quota.
In 1950 Gorbachev was admitted to the Law
Faculty of Moscow State University, the country's
most prestigious university, a difficult achieve-
ment for a rural youth. He joined the KOMSOMOL ,
the COMMUNIST PARTY youth organization, later
that year and by 1952 had become a full member
of the Communist Party. In 1953, he married a
fellow university student, Raisa Titorenko, and
their daughter Irina was born four years later.
After graduation in 1955, Gorbachev returned
with this family to Stavropol, where he was
appointed first secretary of the city's Komsomol.
Under the patronage of Feodor Kulakov, his
career advanced smoothly in Stavropol in the
1960s, especially after Kulakov was named secre-
tary of the Agriculture Department of the Central
Committee in Moscow. In 1970 Gorbachev was
appointed first secretary of the Stavropol region,
and the following year he was appointed full
member of the Central Committee, becoming a
member of the Soviet elite at the young age of 40.
With the continued mentorship of Kulakov and
two other influential party leaders with Stavropol
connections, Yuri ANDROPOV and Mikhail SUSLOV ,
Gorbachev continued his rise through the party
apparatus, taking over Kulakov's post in the Cen-
tral Committee after his death in 1978; two years
later he gained full membership in the Politburo.
Despite several poor harvests, his reputation for
energy and competence contrasted sharply and
positively with other members of the aging
BREZHNEV leadership, and in the final years of
Brezhnev's rule, he was seen as the rising young
star of Soviet politics. With an ill Andropov in
power after Brezhnev's death in 1982, Gorbachev
was given increasingly important responsibilities,
leading observers to believe he was next in line to
succeed Andropov. The election of Konstantin
CHERNENKO as party general secretary in February
1984 was a temporary setback. But in March
1985, after Chernenko's death, Gorbachev was
chosen general secretary.
Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich
(1931- )
Soviet leader
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev
came to power in 1985 and tried unsuccessfully
to preserve the country as a unified and Com-
munist political entity. Gorbachev was born into
a peasant family in the village of Privolnoe,
located in the fertile southern agricultural
province of Stavropol, at the edge of the north-
ern Caucasus region. Both his grandfathers suf-
fered from the repression—exile in one case,
arrest and torture in the other—unleashed by
STALIN 's government on the peasantry in the
1930s, a fact that could have derailed his career
had it been publicized in the 1950s or 1960s. The
German occupation of the Stavropol region from
August 1942 to January 1943 further disrupted
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