Attempted assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev

On 7 November 1990, Aleksandr Shmonov attempted to assassinate Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during the 1990 October Revolution Parade in Moscow. Shmonov, a dissident who was angry at Gorbachev's handling of democratic reforms, attempted to fire two bullets at Gorbachev but was spotted and overpowered by the police. Shmonov was declared insane and sent to a psikhushka until his release in 1995.

It was the first direct assassination attempt of a Soviet leader since the attempted assassination of Leonid Brezhnev in 1969, and the last before the dissolution of the Soviet Union a year later.

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