Mikhael Gorbachev, and his Glasnost and Perestroika.
By the early 1980s, the Soviet Union was a superpower in name but ailing in reality. Its economy was stagnant, its leadership geriatric, and its people weary of shortages and repression. Then came a man who promised change: Mikhail Gorbachev.
Glasnost and Perestroika
Gorbachev, taking power in 1985, sought to reform the system with perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Censorship was eased; criticism of the government became possible. State enterprises gained more autonomy, and limited private business was allowed. But these reforms also exposed decades of corruption and inefficiency.
Nationalism Resurges
With glasnost came a flood of suppressed history: the Stalinist purges, the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and the scale of wartime losses. In the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere, nationalist movements gained momentum. The USSR’s empire in Eastern Europe collapsed almost overnight in 1989, as one communist regime after another fell — first in Poland, then Hungary, East Germany, and beyond.
The Coup and the Collapse
In August 1991, hardline communists staged a coup against Gorbachev. Crowds in Moscow, led by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, resisted, and the coup failed. But the attempt fatally weakened the central government. By December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus declared the USSR dissolved. On December 25, 1991, the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin for the last time.
The Legacy
The USSR’s collapse ended the Cold War but left behind 15 independent states, a shattered economy, and unresolved questions about identity and power — questions that still reverberate today.
Further Reading:
Serhii Plokhy – The Last Empire (2014)
Vladislav Zubok – Collapse (2021)
Archie Brown – The Gorbachev Factor (1996)
Stephen Kotkin – Armageddon Averted (2001)