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Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov, commonly anglicized as Gorbachev (March 2, 1931 - August 30, 2022) was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its demise in 1991. The first Soviet leader to be born after the revolution, he tried to reform the Soviet Union with his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Gorbachev was wildly popular in the West, largely because of the way he managed the dismantling of the Soviet empire, allowing the Berlin Wall and Iron curtain to fall without Soviet military interference.

Morris Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American professional baseball catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. He played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, though he was never more than an average player. Berg was a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, and he spoke several languages and regularly read ten newspapers a day. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the Central Intelligence Agency the successor to the OSS.