1. Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva was a Soviet and Russian activist and philanthropist who was the wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
14 Facts About Raisa Gorbacheva
1. 2.
Raisa Gorbacheva raised funds for the preservation of Russian cultural heritage, fostering of new talent, and treatment programs for children's blood cancer.
3.
Raisa Gorbacheva was the eldest of three children of Maxim Andreyevich Titarenko, a railway engineer from Chernihiv in Ukraine, and his Siberian wife, Alexandra Petrovna Porada, from Veseloyarsk.
4.
Raisa Gorbacheva spent her childhood in the Ural Mountains, and met her future husband while studying philosophy in Moscow.
5.
Raisa Gorbacheva earned an advanced degree at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute and taught briefly at Moscow State University.
6.
Raisa Gorbacheva married Mikhail Gorbachev in September 1953 and moved to her husband's home region of Stavropol in southern Russia upon graduation.
7.
Raisa Gorbacheva gave birth to a daughter, Irina Mikhailovna, on 6 January 1957.
8.
When her husband returned to Moscow as a rising Soviet Communist Party official, Raisa Gorbacheva took the post of a lecturer at her alma mater, Moscow State University.
9.
Raisa Gorbacheva left the post when her husband became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985.
10.
Raisa Gorbacheva was one of the few communist party leaders' wives to have a high public profile of her own.
11.
On 1 June 1990, Raisa Gorbacheva accompanied US first lady Barbara Bush to Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
12.
The events of the Soviet Coup of 1991, which attempted to depose her husband from power, left a lasting scar on Raisa Gorbacheva, who suffered a minor stroke on the final day.
13.
In 1989, following a personal address from Professor Rumyantsev and others, Raisa Gorbacheva contributed US$100,000 to the charity "International Association of Hematologists of the World for Children".
14.
Raisa Gorbacheva worked to raise awareness of children's issues.