Mikhail Gorbachev. Photo: AFP

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is recovering after undergoing surgery in Germany on a key artery in the neck that supplies blood to the brain, the Gorbachev Foundation said Wednesday.

Gorbachev, 75, had surgery on his carotid artery at a clinic in Munich on Tuesday after being hospitalized there Sunday.

Gorbachev has not had any major health problems in the past.

Gorbachev went to a Moscow hospital 10 days ago feeling tired and somewhat unwell after a busy year, and canceled a trip to Italy planned for last week, according to his aide, Vladimir Polyakov.

Gorbachev had been scheduled to travel to Rome today for an annual meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Polyakov said over the weekend that Gorbachev had spent about half his time this year traveling and had three books published since March, with a fourth coming out soon.

“He probably worked too hard and got tired out,” Polyakov said.

Gorbachev radically changed the Soviet Union with his liberal glasnost and perestroika reforms in the late 1980s, helping unleash forces that pulled the country apart and led to his resignation in December 1991 as president of a nation that had essentially ceased to exist.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he runs the Gorbachev Foundation - an organization devoted to studying international issues including globalization, security, weapons of mass destruction, environmental and natural resources, and poverty.

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