Gorbachev begins an anti-alcohol campaign and promulgates the policies of openness, or glasnost, and restructuring, or perestroika. In East Germany, an unprecedented series of mass public rallies leads to the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November.
Gone but not forgotten: Many Russians still fondly remember the Soviet Union and its symbols. Civil war. Vladimir Lenin was the main player in Bolshevik revolution. Collectivisation and purges. The final option consisted of lending conditional support to Gorbachev, leveraging aid and assistance in return for more rapid and radical political and economic reforms. Unsure about how much political capital Gorbachev retained, Bush combined elements of the second and third options.
The Soviet nuclear arsenal was vast, as were Soviet conventional forces, and further weakening of Gorbachev could derail further arms control negotiations. To balance U. Bush administration officials also, however, increased contact with Yeltsin.
The unsuccessful August coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. He resigned his leadership as head of the Communist party shortly thereafter—separating the power of the party from that of the presidency of the Soviet Union. The Central Committee was dissolved and Yeltsin banned party activities. A few days after the coup, Ukraine and Belarus declared their independence from the Soviet Union.
The Baltic States, which had earlier declared their independence, sought international recognition. Amidst quick, dramatic changes across the landscape of the Soviet Union, Bush administration officials prioritized the prevention of nuclear catastrophe, the curbing of ethnic violence, and the stable transition to new political orders.
The basic message was clear—if the new republics could follow these principles, they could expect cooperation and assistance from the United States. Baker met with Gorbachev and Yeltsin in an attempt to shore up the economic situation and develop some formula for economic cooperation between the republics and Russia, as well as to determine ways to allow political reforms to occur in a regulated and peaceful manner.
On December 25, , the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Millions more were deported, or imprisoned in forced labor camps known as Gulags.
The Americans and British feared the spread of communism into Western Europe and worldwide. In , the U. The alliance between countries of the Western bloc was a political show of force against the USSR and its allies. The Cold War power struggle—waged on political, economic and propaganda fronts between the Eastern and Western blocs—would persist in various forms until the fall of the Soviet Union in He became Communist Party secretary in and premier in At home, however, Khrushchev initiated a series of political reforms that made Soviet society less repressive.
During this period, later known as de-Stalinization, Khrushchev criticized Stalin for arresting and deporting opponents, took steps to raise living conditions, freed many political prisoners, loosened artistic censorship, and closed the Gulag labor camps.
Members of his own political party removed Khrushchev from office in Many early projects were tied to the Soviet military and kept secret, but by the s, space would become another dramatic arena for competition between dueling world superpowers.
The success of Sputnik made Americans fear that the U. President John F. The U. A longtime Communist Party politician, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in He inherited a stagnant economy and a crumbling political system. He introduced two sets of policies he hoped would reform the political system and help the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. These policies were called glasnost and perestroika.
It addressed personal restrictions of the Soviet people. Newspapers could criticize the government, and parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections. Under perestroika, the Soviet Union began to move toward a hybrid communist-capitalist system, much like modern China. The policy-making committee of the Communist Party, called the Politburo, would still control the direction of the economy. Yet the government would allow market forces to dictate some production and development decisions.
During the s and s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation.
Bread lines were common throughout the s and s. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes. The divide between the extreme wealth of the Politburo and the poverty of Soviet citizens created a backlash from younger people who refused to adopt Communist Party ideology as their parents had. In the s, the United States under President Ronald Reagan isolated the Soviet economy from the rest of the world and helped drive oil prices to their lowest levels in decades.
A loosening of controls over the Soviet people emboldened independence movements in the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe. Political revolution in Poland in sparked other, mostly peaceful revolutions across Eastern European states and led to the toppling of the Berlin Wall.
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