Gorbachev’s decision to loosen the Soviet yoke on the countries of Eastern Europe created an independent, democratic momentum that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and then the overthrow of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe. The Commonwealth of Independent States was formed. In December 1917, Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin created a secret police agency called the Cheka. This signaled the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United … The coup failed for several reasons. Through interviews and archival footage, Polsky takes us from the oppressive postwar years to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, to the present day government of Vladimir Putin. It was a clear call for a coup and emergency rule, and it was signed by two of the plotters, Varennikov, Gen. Boris Gromov (the former commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan), and eight others. All rights reserved. This article on the fall of the Soviet Union is an excerpt from Lee Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards Spalding’s book A Brief History of the Cold War. Barely three weeks after the Bush-Gorbachev summit in Moscow, the head of the KGB, the Soviet defense and interior ministers, and other hard-liners—the so-called “Gang of Eight”—launched a coup. The pictures convinced President Bush (on vacation in Maine) and other Western leaders to condemn the coup and praise Yeltsin and other resistance leaders. She probably thought I was from Mars. You couldn’t just decide to go back to school, start a business, or switch careers to a thriving new industry. The Soviet Union’s collapse not only threw economic systems and trade relations throughout Eastern Europe into a tailspin, it also produced the upheaval in many Eastern European countries and led to increased crime rates and corruption within the Russian government. Gorbachev appealed to American businessmen to start new enterprises in the USSR, but what could Soviet citizens afford to buy? Most of the organs of power of the Soviet Union had effectively ceased to exist or had been transferred to the Russian government. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. . Former Soviet republics declared their independence. Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of the principal architects of Gorbachev’s reform program, quit the CPSU on August 16, 1991, declaring that a “Stalinist group within the party leadership was preparing a party and state coup.” In fact, rumours of an imminent coup had been rife throughout the summer. Massive emigration of the smartest and richest people from Russia. The fall of the Soviet Union was a decades-in-the-making outcome of Cold War politics, but it happened quite suddenly in the late 80s and early 90s, primarily at the level of U.S.-USSR politics. As the historian William H. Chafe writes, the Soviet Union itself had fallen “victim to the same forces of nationalism, democracy, and anti-authoritarianism that had engulfed the rest of the Soviet empire.”. Collapse of the Soviet Union - Collapse of the Soviet Union - Aftermath of the coup: The coup failed for several reasons. Things have gone much worse since the fall of the Soviet Union. © HistoryOnTheNet 2000-2019. What is the correct order of events that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union? The first of the three Bush-Gorbachev summit meetings did not take place until December 1989 in Malta, where Bush emphasized the need for “superpower cooperation,” choosing to overlook that the Soviet Union was no longer a superpower by any reasonable criterion and that Marxism-Leninism in Eastern Europe was headed for Reagan’s “ash-heap of history.”. We must take advantage of this new Russian Revolution.” While Baker praised Gorbachev for helping to make the transformation possible, he made it clear that the United States believed his time had passed. At the top of all the turmoil and bloodshed were two superpowers that were considered to be the pinnacle of strength and superiority: the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or the Soviet Union for short. Down with Lenin’s party.”, A supremely confident Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and transferred all Soviet agencies to the control of the Russian republic. Collapse of the Soviet Union, sequence of events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991. On December 12, Secretary of State James Baker, borrowing liberally from the rhetoric of President Reagan, delivered an address titled “America and the Collapse of the Soviet Empire.” “The state that Lenin founded and Stalin built,” Baker said, “held within itself the seeds of its demise. ... What happened after the attempted Soviet coup in … This article is part of our larger collection of resources on the Cold War. The plotters appeared to have no contingency plan to cope with Gorbachev’s refusal to cooperate. My Experience With The Collapse Of The Soviet Union. The fall of the Soviet Union was a decades-in-the-making outcome of Cold War politics, but it happened quite suddenly in the late 80s and early 90s, primarily at the level of U.S.-USSR politics. After all, the ruble didn’t enjoy the status of being the world’s reserve currency in the early 90s. Gorbachev tried to act as if nothing had changed, announcing, for example, that there was a need to “renew” the Communist Party. 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