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Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev ({{lang-ru|Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв}}, {{IPA-ru|mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈɡʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡərbɐˈtɕof|pron|ru-Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.ogg}}; born 2 March 1931) was the second-to-last
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionThe General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the title synonymous with leader of the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s.- Background :In 1919 - 1922, the position of a Responsible Secretary was...
, serving from 1985 until 1991, and the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991. He was the only Soviet leader to have been born after the
October RevolutionTheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...
of 1917.
Gorbachev was born in
Stavropol KraiStavropol Krai is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Stavropol.-Geography:Stavropol Krai encompasses the central part of the Fore-Caucasus and most of the Northern slopes of Caucasus Major...
into a peasant family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from
Moscow State UniversityM. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University , for a time the Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be the oldest university in Russia and the tallest educational building in the world...
in 1955 with a degree in law. While in college, he joined the
Communist Party of the Soviet UnionThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
, and soon became very active within it. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of
PolitburoPolitburo, from German Politbüro, short for Political Bureau, , is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.- Marxist-Leninist states :...
in 1979. After the deaths, within three years, of Soviet Leaders
Leonid BrezhnevLeonid Ilyich Brezhnev was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, serving in that position longer than anyone except Joseph Stalin...
,
Yuri AndropovYuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
, and
Konstantin ChernenkoKonstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984, until his death just thirteen months later on 10 March 1985...
, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by Politburo in 1985. Already before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level.
Gorbachev's attempts at reform as well as summit conferences with United States President
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
, ended the political supremacy of the
Communist Party of the Soviet UnionThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
(CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the
Nobel Peace PrizeThe Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:...
in 1990.
In September 2008 Gorbachev and billionaire
Alexander LebedevAlexander Yevgenievich Lebedev is a Russian billionaire, referred to as one of the Russian oligarchs. In May 2008, he was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the richest Russians and as the 358th richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $3.1 billion...
announced they would form the
Independent Democratic Party of RussiaThe Independent Democratic Party of Russia is the proposed name of a new liberal party that in late September 2008 was announced to be founded by the former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and the billionaire and State Duma deputy of Fair Russia Alexander Lebedev...
together, and in May 2009 Gorbachev announced that the launch was imminent. This is Gorbachev's third attempt to establish a political party of significance in Russian politics after having started the
Social Democratic Party of RussiaThe Social Democratic Party of Russia was a political party founded in Russia by Mikhail Gorbachev on November 26, 2001. First name of party is: Social Democratic Party of Russia . It was a coalition of several social democratic parties, had approximately 12,000 members, but had no seats in the...
in 2001 and the
Union of Social-DemocratsUnion of Social Democrats is an all-Russian non-governmental organization founded on October 20, 2007 by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev....
in 2007.
Early life
{{expand-section|date=September 2009}}
Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in
StavropolStavropol is a city located in south-western Russia and is the administrative center of Stavropol Krai. Population: 355,900 ; -History:...
,
Russian SFSRThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , also called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Russian SFSR and the RSFSR for short, was the largest and most populous of the fifteen Soviet republics of the Soviet Union and became the Russian...
,
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
into a peasant family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from
Moscow State UniversityM. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University , for a time the Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be the oldest university in Russia and the tallest educational building in the world...
in 1955 with a degree in law. While in college, he joined the
Communist Party of the Soviet UnionThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
, and soon became very active within it.
Marriage and family
Gorbachev met his future wife
Raisa TitarenkoRaisa Maksimovna Gorbachyova , born Titarenko was a major fundraiser for preservation of the Russian heritage, for new talents' education and for children's blood cancer treatment programs in Russia...
at Moscow State University. They married in September 1953 and moved to Stavropol upon graduation. She gave birth to their only child, daughter Irina Mihailovna Virganskaya (Ири́на Миха́йловна Вирга́нская), in 1957. Raisa Gorbachev died of
leukemiaLeukemia is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow and is characterized by an abnormal proliferation of blood cells, usually white blood cells . Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
in 1999.
Rise in the Communist Party
Gorbachev attended the important twenty-second Party Congress in October 1961, where
Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
announced a plan to surpass the U.S. in per capita production within twenty years. At this point in his life, Gorbachev would rise in the Communist League hierarchy and worked his way up through territorial leagues of the party. He was promoted to Head of the Department of Party Organs in the Stavropol Agricultural Kraikom in 1963. In 1970, he was appointed First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, a body of the CPSU, becoming one of the youngest provincial party chiefs in the nation. In this position he helped reorganise the collective farms, improve workers' living conditions, expand the size of their private plots, and give them a greater voice in planning. He was soon made a member of the
Communist Party Central CommitteeThe Central Committee, abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", was the highest body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Its full name was Центральный комитет Коммунистической партии Советского Союза = ЦК КПСС; Tsentralnyy Komitet Kommunistitcheskoy Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza = TsK KPSS, or...
in 1971. Three years later, in 1974, he was made a Representative to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and Chairman of the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs. He was subsequently appointed to the Central Committee's Secretariat for Agriculture in 1978, replacing Fyodor Kulakov, who had supported Gorbachev's appointment, after Kulakov died of a heart attack. In 1979, Gorbachev was promoted to the
PolitburoPolitburo, from German Politbüro, short for Political Bureau, , is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.- Marxist-Leninist states :...
, the highest authority in the country, and received full membership in 1980. Gorbachev owed his steady rise to power to the patronage of
Mikhail SuslovMikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman, Marxist-Leninist political theorist and ideologist, and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
, the powerful chief ideologist of the CPSU.
During
Yuri AndropovYuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
's tenure as General Secretary (1982–1984), Gorbachev became one of the Poliburo's most visible and active members. With responsibility over personnel, working together with Andropov, 20 percent of the top echelon of government ministers and regional governors were replaced, often with younger men. During this time
Grigory RomanovGrigory Vasilyevich Romanov , was a Soviet politician and member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the CPSU...
,
Nikolai RyzhkovNikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was a Soviet official and, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, a Russian politician...
and
Yegor LigachevYegor Kuzmich Ligachev is a Russian politician, who was a high-ranking official in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Originally a protege of Mikhail Gorbachev, Ligachev became a challenger to his leadership....
were elevated, the latter two working closely with Gorbachev, Ryzhkov on economics, Ligachev on personnel.{{pn}} Gorbachev's positions within the CPSU created more opportunities to travel abroad and this would profoundly affect his political and social views in the future as leader of the country. In 1972, he headed a Soviet delegation to Belgium, and three years later he led a delegation to West Germany; in 1983 he headed a delegation to Canada to meet with
Prime MinisterThe Prime Minister of Canada is the primary Minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government of Canada. The office is not outlined in any of the documents that constitute the written portion of the constitution of Canada; executive authority is formally vested in the...
Pierre TrudeauJoseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, PC, CC, CH, QC, MSRC , was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968, to June 4, 1979, and from March 3, 1980, to June 30, 1984.Pierre Trudeau was a charismatic figure who, from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s,...
and members of the
CommonsThe House of Commons is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate.
The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament .
Members are elected by simple...
and
SenateThe Senate of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the sovereign and the House of Commons. The Senate consists of 105 members appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the prime minister...
. In 1984, he travelled to the United Kingdom, where he met British Prime Minister
Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She is the only woman to have held either post....
.
Upon Andropov's death in 1984, the aged
Konstantin ChernenkoKonstantin Ustinovich Chernenko was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984, until his death just thirteen months later on 10 March 1985...
took power; after his death the following year, it became clear to the party hierarchy that younger leadership was needed. Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by Politburo on 11 March 1985, only three hours after Chernenko's death. Upon his accession at age 54, he was the youngest member of Politburo.
General Secretary of the CPSU
Mikhail Gorbachev became the Party's first leader to have been born after the
RevolutionThe Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
. As de facto ruler of the USSR, he tried to reform the stagnating Party and the state economy by introducing
glasnostwas the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of 1980s....
("openness"),
perestroikais the Russian term for the political and economic reforms introduced in June 1987 by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
("restructuring"),
demokratizatsiyaDemokratizatsiya was a slogan introduced by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government. For Gorbachev, demokratizatsiya meant the introduction of multi-candidate-not multiparty-elections for...
("democratization"), and
uskoreniyeUskoreniye was a slogan and a policy announced by Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on April 20, 1985 at a Soviet Party Plenum, aimed at the acceleration of social and economical development of the Soviet Union...
("acceleration" of economic development), which were launched at the 27th Congress of the CPSU in February 1985.
Domestic reforms
Gorbachev's primary goal as General Secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years. In 1985, he announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganization was needed. Gorbachev proposed a "vague programme of reform", which was adopted at the April Plenum of the Central Committee. He called for increased industrial and agricultural productivity, fast-paced technological modernization, and attempted to reform the Soviet bureaucracy to be more efficient and prosperous. Gorbachev soon realised that fixing the Soviet economy would be near-impossible without reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation. Gorbachev also initiated the concept of
gospriyomka ("approval") during his time as leader, which represented state approval of goods in an effort to maintain quality control and combat inferior manufacturing.
He made a speech in May 1985 in
LeningradLeningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:Places:* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
(now St. Petersburg) advocating widespread reforms. The reforms began in personnel changes; the most notable change was the replacement of
Andrei GromykoAndrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet politician and diplomat. He served as Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet .-Biography:Andrei Gromyko was born to a Belarussian peasant family in the Belarusian village of Staryja Hramyki/...
as Minister of Foreign Affairs with
Eduard ShevardnadzeEduard Shevardnadze served as the President of Georgia from 1995 until he resigned on 23 November 2003 as a consequence of the bloodless Rose Revolution...
. Gromyko, disparaged as "Mr Nyet" in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs and was considered an 'old thinker'. Robert D. English notes that, despite Shevardnadze's diplomatic inexperience, Gorbachev "shared with him an outlook" and experience in managing an agricultural region of the Soviet Union (
GeorgiaThe Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Georgian SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union.- History :- Preceding Events :On November 28 1917, after October Revolution in Russia, there was established...
), which meant that both had weak links to the powerful
military-industrial complexMilitary-industrial complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationships between governments, national armed forces, and industrial support they obtain from the commercial sector in political approval for research, development, production, use, and support for military training,...
.
A number of reformist ideas were discussed by Politburo members. One of the first reforms Gorbachev introduced was the anti-alcohol campaign, begun in May 1985, which was designed to fight widespread
alcoholismAlcoholism is a term with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. In common and historic usage, alcoholism is any condition that results in the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, despite health problems and negative social consequences...
in the Soviet Union. Prices of
vodkaVodka is a clear distilled liquor composed of water and ethyl alcohol, made from a fermented substance of either grain, rye, wheat, potatoes, or sugar beet molasses; it also might contain trace amounts of other substances, either a flavour or unintended impurities...
,
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
and
beerBeer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely...
were raised, and their sales were restricted. It was pursued vigorously and cut both alcohol sales and government revenue. It was a serious blow to the state budget–a loss of approximately 100 billion rubles according to
Alexander YakovlevAlexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, Александр Николаевич Яковлев was a Russian economist who was a Soviet governmental official in the 1980s and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
–after alcohol production migrated to the black market economy. The program proved to be a useful symbol for change in the country, however. The reduction in sales greatly expanded the purchasing power of the Soviet citizens, as alcohol was very expensive.
Perestroika
Gorbachev initiated his new policy of
perestroikais the Russian term for the political and economic reforms introduced in June 1987 by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
and its attendant radical reforms in 1986; they were sketched, but not fully spelled out, at the XXVIIth Party Congress in February-March 1986. The new policy of "reconstruction" was introduced in an attempt to overcome the economic stagnation by creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating economic and social progress. According to Gorbachev,
perestroika was the "conference of development of democracy, socialist self-government, encouragement of initiative and creative endeavor, improved order and disciple, more glasnost, criticism and self-criticism in all spheres of our society. It is utmost respect for the individual and consideration for personal dignity."
Domestic changes continued apace. In a bombshell speech during
Armenian SSR's Central Committee Plenum of the Communist Party the young First Secretary of Armenia's Hrazdan Regional Communist Party, Hayk Kotanjian, criticised rampant corruption in the Armenian Communist Party's highest echelons, implicating Armenian SSR Communist Party First Secretary
Karen DemirchyanKaren Demirchyan was a Soviet Armenian communist, First Secretary of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1974 to 1988 and later independent politician...
and calling for his resignation. Symbolically, intellectual
Andrei SakharovAndrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.-Life and career:Sakharov was born in Moscow on May 21, 1921...
was invited to return to Moscow by Gorbachev in December 1986 after six years of internal exile in
GorkyNizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened as Nizhny, is the fourth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk...
. During the same month, however, signs of the nationalities problem that would haunt the later years of the Soviet Union surfaced as riots, named
JeltoqsanThe Jeltoqsan or "December" riot of 1986 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt that took place in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan in response to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's dismissal of Dinmukhamed Konayev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and an ethnic Kazakh, and the...
, occurred in
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country situated in Eurasia that is ranked as the ninth largest country in the world. It is also the world's largest landlocked country. Its territory of 2,727,300 km² is greater than Western Europe...
after
Dinmukhamed KunayevDinmukhamed Akhmetuly Konayev , born in Verny, now Almaty, died 22 August 1993, was a Kazakh Soviet Communist politician.-Early life:...
was replaced as First Secretary of the
Communist Party of KazakhstanThe Communist Party of Kazakhstan is a political party in Kazakhstan. -Origin:The Communist Party of Kazakhstan was founded 1936 when Kazakhstan was granted a Union Republic status...
.
The
Central CommitteeThe Central Committee, abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", was the highest body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Its full name was Центральный комитет Коммунистической партии Советского Союза = ЦК КПСС; Tsentralnyy Komitet Kommunistitcheskoy Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza = TsK KPSS, or...
Plenum in January 1987 would see the crystallisation of Gorbachev's political reforms, including proposals for multi-candidate elections and the appointment of non-Party members to government positions. He also first raised the idea of expanding co-operatives at the plenum. Economic reforms took up much of the rest of 1987, as a new law giving enterprises more independence was passed in June and Gorbachev released a book,
Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, in November, elucidating his main ideas for reform. In 1987 he rehabilitated many opponents of Stalin, another part of the De-Stalinization, which began in 1956, when
Lenin's TestamentLenin's Testament is the name given to a document written by Vladimir Lenin in the last weeks of 1922 and the first week of 1923. In the testament, Lenin proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies...
was published.
Glasnost
1988 would see Gorbachev's introduction of
glasnostwas the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of 1980s....
, which gave new freedoms to the people, including greater freedom of speech. This was a radical change, as control of speech and suppression of government criticism had previously been a central part of the Soviet system. The press became far less controlled, and thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were released. Gorbachev's goal in undertaking
glasnost was to pressure conservatives within the CPSU who opposed his policies of economic restructuring, and he also hoped that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people would support his reform initiatives. At the same time, he opened himself and his reforms up for more public criticism, evident in
Nina AndreyevaNina Aleksandrovna Andreyeva , was a chemistry lecturer at the Leningrad Technological Institute. She joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1966...
's critical letter in a March edition of
Sovetskaya Rossiya. Gorbachev acknowledged that his liberalising policies of
glasnost and
perestroika owed a great deal to
Alexander DubčekAlexander Dubček was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia , famous for his attempt to reform the Communist regime...
's "Socialism with a human face".
The
Law on CooperativesThe Soviet Law on Cooperatives, enacted in May 1988, was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and...
enacted in May 1988 was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since
Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
's
New Economic PolicyThe New Economic Policy was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin to prevent the Russian economy from collapsing...
, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the service, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. The law initially imposed high taxes and employment restrictions, although these were ignored by some SSRs. Later the restrictions were revised to avoid discouraging private-sector activity. Under the provision for private ownership, cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene. Under the new law, the restructuring of large 'All-Union' industrial organisations also began.
AeroflotOJSC "AeroflotRussian Airlines" , commonly known as Aeroflot , is the largest airline in Russia, based on passengers carried per year. Aeroflot, headquartered in Moscow, is one of the oldest airlines in the world, tracing its history back to 1923...
, was split up eventually becoming several independent airlines. These newly autonomous business organisations were encouraged to seek foreign investment.
In June 1988, at the CPSU's Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus. He proposed a new executive in the form of a presidential system, as well as a new legislative element, to be called the Congress of People's Deputies. Elections to the Congress of People's Deputies were held throughout the Soviet Union in March and April 1989. This was the first free election in the Soviet Union since 1917. Gorbachev became
Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (or
head of state) on 25 May 1989. On 15 March 1990, Gorbachev was elected as the first executive
President of the Soviet UnionThe President of the Soviet Union was the Head of State of the USSR from 15 March 1990 to 25 December 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev was the only person to occupy the office. Gorbachev was also General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between March 1990 and August 1991...
with 59% of the Deputies' votes being an unopposed candidate. The Congress met for the first time on 25 May in order to elect representatives from Congress to sit on the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Congress posed problems for Gorbachev; its sessions were televised, airing more criticism and encouraging people to expect ever more rapid reform. In the elections, many Party candidates were defeated. Furthermore,
Boris YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
was elected in Moscow and returned to political prominence to become an increasingly vocal critic of Gorbachev.
Foreign engagements
In contrast to his controversial domestic reforms, Gorbachev was largely hailed in the West for his 'New Thinking' in foreign affairs. During his tenure, he sought to improve relations and trade with the West by reducing Cold War tensions. He established close relationships with several Western leaders, such as West German Chancellor
Helmut KohlHelmut Josef Michael Kohl is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union from 1973 to 1998...
, U.S. President
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
, and
BritishUnited Kingdoms is an experimental album released in 1993 by the British electronic band Ultramarine on Blanco y Negro records.The album fuses ambient music and electronica with elements of English folk music, and features guest vocals from Robert Wyatt....
Prime Minister
Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She is the only woman to have held either post....
- who famously remarked: "I like Mr Gorbachev, we can do business together".
Gorbachev understood the link between achieving international détente and domestic reform and thus began extending 'New Thinking' abroad immediately. On 8 April 1985, he announced the suspension of the deployment of
SS-20sThe RSD-10 Pioneer was a intermediate-range ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead deployed by the Soviet Union from 1976 to 1988. It carried GRAU designation 15Zh45. Its NATO reporting name was SS-20 Saber...
in Europe as a move towards resolving intermediate-range nuclear weapons (INF) issues. Later that year, in September, Gorbachev proposed that the Soviets and Americans both cut their nuclear arsenals in half. He went to France on his first trip abroad as Soviet leader in October. November saw the
Geneva SummitThe Geneva Summit was first held on July 18th, 1955 in Geneva, Switzerland. This was a meeting of "The Big Four": President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States, Prime Minister Anthony Eden of the United Kingdom, Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin of the Soviet Union, and Prime Minister Edgar Faure...
between Gorbachev and
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
. Though no concrete agreement was made, Gorbachev and Reagan struck a personal relationship and decided to hold further meetings.
January 1986 would see Gorbachev make his boldest international move so far, when he announced his proposal for the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe and his strategy for eliminating all nuclear weapons by the year 2000 (often referred to as the 'January Proposal'). He also began the process of withdrawing troops from
AfghanistanThe Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south central Asia. It is variously described as being located within Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East...
and
MongoliaMongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It borders Russia to the north and the People's Republic of China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only 24 miles from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator,...
on 28 July. Nonetheless, many observers, such as
Jack F. Matlock Jr.Jack Foust Matlock, Jr. is a former American ambassador, career Foreign Service Officer, a teacher, a historian, and a linguist. He was a specialist in Soviet affairs during some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War, and served as U.S...
(despite generally praising Gorbachev as well as Reagan), have criticised Gorbachev for taking too long to achieve withdrawal from the
Afghanistan WarThe Soviet War in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet–Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan at their own request, against the Islamist Mujahideen Resistance...
, citing it as an example of lingering elements of 'old thinking' in Gorbachev.
On 11 October 1986, Gorbachev and Reagan met in
ReykjavíkReykjavík is the capital and largest city of Iceland. Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's most northern capital of a sovereign state. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay...
,
IcelandThe Republic of Iceland is a European island country located in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km². Its capital and largest city is Reykjavík, whose surrounding area is home to approximately two thirds of the national population...
to discuss reducing intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. To the immense surprise of both men's advisers, the two agreed in principle to removing INF systems from Europe and to equal global limits of 100 INF missile warheads. They also essentially agreed in principle to eliminate all nuclear weapons in 10 years (by 1996), instead of by the year 2000 as in Gorbachev's original outline. Continuing trust issues, particularly over reciprocity and Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)The Strategic Defense Initiative was a proposal by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
, meant that the summit is often regarded as a failure for not producing a concrete agreement immediately, or for leading to a staged elimination of nuclear weapons. In the long term, nevertheless, this would culminate in the signing of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) TreatyThe Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1987, it was ratified by the United States Senate on May 27, 1988 and...
in 1987, after Gorbachev had proposed this elimination on 22 July 1987 (and it was subsequently agreed on in Geneva on 24 November).
In February, 1988, Gorbachev announced the full withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The withdrawal was completed the following year, although the civil war continued as the Mujahedin pushed to overthrow the pro-Soviet
NajibullahNajibullah , originally just Najib, was the fourth and last President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.-Early years:...
regime. An estimated 28,000 Soviets were killed between 1979 and 1989 as a result of the
Afghanistan WarThe Soviet War in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet–Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan at their own request, against the Islamist Mujahideen Resistance...
.
Also during 1988, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would abandon the
Brezhnev DoctrineThe Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet Union foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the...
, and allow the
Eastern blocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
nations to freely determine their own internal affairs. Jokingly dubbed the "
Sinatra Doctrine"Sinatra Doctrine" was the name that the Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev used jokingly to describe its policy of allowing neighboring Warsaw Pact nations to determine their own internal affairs...
" by Gorbachev's Foreign Ministry spokesman
Gennadi GerasimovGennadi Ivanovich Gerasimov was the Soviet ambassador to Portugal and then-occupied Afghanistan, afterwards foreign spokesman for Mikhail Gorbachev and later press secretary to Eduard Shevardnadze...
, this policy of non-intervention in the affairs of the other
Warsaw PactThe Warsaw Pact is the informal name for the mutual defense Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance subscribed by eight Communist states in Eastern Europe, that was established at the USSR’s initiative and realised on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw, Poland...
states proved to be the most momentous of Gorbachev's foreign policy reforms. In his 6 July 1989 speech arguing for a "
common European homeThe "Common European Home" was a concept created and espoused by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.Gorbachev first presented his concept of "our common European home" or the "all-European house" when visiting Czechoslovakia in April 1987...
" before the
Council of EuropeThe Council of Europe is the oldest international organisation working towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
in
StrasbourgStrasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in north-eastern France. With 702,412 inhabitants in 2007, its metropolitan area is the ninth largest in France...
, France, Gorbachev declared: "The social and political order in some countries changed in the past, and it can change in the future too, but this is entirely a matter for each people to decide. Any interference in the internal affairs, or any attempt to limit the sovereignty of another state, friend, ally, or another, would be inadmissible."
Moscow's abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine led to a string of counter-revolutions in
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
throughout 1989, in which Communism was overthrown. By the end of 1989, revolts had spread from one Eastern European capital to another, ousting the regimes built on Eastern Europe after
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. With the exception of
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
, the popular upheavals against the pro-Soviet Communist regimes were all peaceful ones. (
See Revolutions of 1989The Revolutions of 1989, sometimes called the Autumn of Nations, were a revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe in late 1989, ending in the overthrow of Soviet-style communist states within the space of a few months....
) The loosening of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe effectively ended the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
, and for this, Gorbachev was awarded the
Otto Hahn Peace Medal in GoldThe Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold is named after the German nuclear chemist and 1944 Nobel Laureate Otto Hahn, an honorary citizen of Berlin....
in 1989 and the
Nobel Peace PrizeThe Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:...
on 15 October 1990.
The rest of 1989 was taken up by the increasingly problematic nationalities question and the dramatic collapse of the
Eastern BlocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
. Despite international détente reaching unprecedented levels, with the Soviet withdrawal from
AfghanistanThe Soviet War in Afghanistan, also known as the Soviet–Afghan War, was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan at their own request, against the Islamist Mujahideen Resistance...
completed in January and U.S.-Soviet talks continuing between Gorbachev and
George H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush was the 41st President of the United States . He was also Ronald Reagan's Vice President , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence....
, domestic reforms were suffering from increasing divergence between reformists, who criticised the pace of change, and conservatives, who criticised the extent of change. Gorbachev states that he tried to find the middle ground between both groups, but this would draw more criticism towards him. The story from this point on moves away from reforms and becomes one of the nationalities question and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
On 9 November, people in the
German Democratic RepublicThe German Democratic Republic was a Communist state that originated from the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin...
(East Germany, GDR) broke down the
Berlin Wall|-||-||-||-||}The Berlin Wall was a physical barrier erected by the German Democratic Republic completely encircling West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The longer inner German border demarcated the border between East and West Germany...
after a peaceful protest against the country's dictatorial administration, including a demonstration by some one million people in
East BerlinEast Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a de facto part of West Germany. Despite its status as part of an occupied city,...
on 4 November. Unlike earlier riots which were ended by military force with the help of USSR, Gorbachev, who came to be lovingly called "Gorby" in West Germany, now decided not to interfere with the process in Germany. He stated that German reunification was an internal German matter.
Coit D. BlackerDr. Coit Dennis Blacker served as Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council under National Security Advisor Anthony Lake during the Clinton administration...
wrote in 1990 that the Soviet leadership "appeared to have believed that whatever loss of authority the Soviet Union might suffer in Eastern Europe would be more than offset by a net increase in its influence in Western Europe." Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Gorbachev ever intended for the complete dismantling of Communism in the Warsaw Pact countries. Rather, Gorbachev assumed that the Communist parties of Eastern Europe could be reformed in a similar way to the reforms he hoped to achieve in the CPSU. Just as
perestroika was aimed at making the USSR more efficient economically and politically, Gorbachev believed that the
ComeconThe Council for Mutual Economic Assistance , 1949–1991, was an economic organization of communist states and a kind of Eastern Bloc equivalent to—but less geographically inclusive than—the European Economic Community...
and Warsaw Pact could be reformed into more effective entities.
Alexander YakovlevAlexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, Александр Николаевич Яковлев was a Russian economist who was a Soviet governmental official in the 1980s and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...
, a close advisor to Gorbachev, would later state that it would have been "absurd to keep the system" in Eastern Europe. In contrast to Gorbachev, Yakovlev had come to the conclusion that the Soviet-dominated Comecon was inherently unworkable and that the Warsaw Pact had "no relevance to real life."
Collapse of the Soviet Union
{{main|Collapse of the Soviet Union}}
While Gorbachev's political initiatives were positive for
freedomPolitical freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression.The opposite of a free society is a totalitarian state, which highly restricts political freedom in order to regulate almost every aspect of behavior...
and
democracyDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
in the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
and its
Eastern blocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
allies, the economic policy of his government gradually brought the country close to disaster. By the end of the 1980s, severe shortages of basic food supplies (
meatMeat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs, livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, or lungs...
,
sugarSugar is a class of edible crystalline substances, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose. Human taste buds interpret its flavor as sweet. Sugar as a basic food carbohydrate primarily comes from sugar cane and from sugar beet, but also appears in fruit, honey, sorghum, sugar maple , and in many...
) led to the reintroduction of the war-time system of distribution using food cards that limited each citizen to a certain amount of product per month. Compared to 1985, the state deficit grew from 0 to 109 billion rubles; gold funds decreased from 2,000 to 200 tons; and external debt grew from 0 to 120 billion dollars.
Furthermore, the
democratisationDemokratizatsiya was a slogan introduced by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government. For Gorbachev, demokratizatsiya meant the introduction of multi-candidate-not multiparty-elections for...
of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had irreparably undermined the power of the
CPSUThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
and Gorbachev himself. The relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more political openness had the unintended effect of re-awakening long-suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the
Soviet republicsThe Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union...
. Calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder, especially in the Baltic republics of
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
, and
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold in
GeorgiaGeorgia Georgia Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Situated at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the east by Azerbaijan...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
,
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
and
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
.
In December 1986, the first signs of the nationalities problem that would haunt the later years of the Soviet Union's existence surfaced as riots, named
JeltoqsanThe Jeltoqsan or "December" riot of 1986 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt that took place in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan in response to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's dismissal of Dinmukhamed Konayev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and an ethnic Kazakh, and the...
, occurred in Alma Ata and other areas of
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country situated in Eurasia that is ranked as the ninth largest country in the world. It is also the world's largest landlocked country. Its territory of 2,727,300 km² is greater than Western Europe...
after
Dinmukhamed KunayevDinmukhamed Akhmetuly Konayev , born in Verny, now Almaty, died 22 August 1993, was a Kazakh Soviet Communist politician.-Early life:...
was replaced as First Secretary of the
Communist Party of KazakhstanThe Communist Party of Kazakhstan is a political party in Kazakhstan. -Origin:The Communist Party of Kazakhstan was founded 1936 when Kazakhstan was granted a Union Republic status...
. Nationalism would then surface in Russia in May 1987, as 600 members of
PamyatPamyat is a Russian ultra-nationalist organization identifying itself as the "People's National-patriotic Orthodox Christian movement." It has been accused of racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism.- History :...
, a nascent Russian nationalist group, demonstrated in Moscow and were becoming increasingly linked to
Boris YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
, who received their representatives at a meeting.
Glasnostwas the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of 1980s....
hastened awareness of the national sovereignty problem. The free flow of information had been so completely suppressed for so long in the Soviet Union that many of the ruling class had all but forgotten that the Soviet Union was an empire conquered through military force and consolidated by the persecution of millions of people, and not a union voluntarily entered into by local populations. Thus, the extremity of local desire for independent control of their own affairs took these leaders by surprise, and the leaders were unprepared for the depth of the long pent-up feelings that were released.
Violence erupted in
Nagorno-KarabakhNagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus, lying between Lower Karabakh and Zangezur and covering the southeastern range of the Lesser Caucasus mountains...
- an Armenian-populated enclave within
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
- between February and April, when Armenians living in the area began a new wave of protests over the arbitrary transfer of the historically Armenian region from
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
to Azerbaijan in 1920 upon Joseph Stalin's decision. Gorbachev imposed a temporary solution, but it did not last, as fresh trouble arose in Nagorno-Karabakh between June and July. Turmoil would once again return in late 1988, this time in Armenia itself, when the
Leninakan EarthquakeThe Spitak Earthquake was a tremor with a magnitude of 6.9, that took place on December 7, 1988 at 11:41 local time in the Spitak region of Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union...
hit the region on 7 December. Poor local infrastructure magnified the hazard and some 25,000 people died. Gorbachev was forced to break off his trip to the U.S. and cancel planned travels to
CubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. Cuba is home to over 11 million people and is...
and
BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
.
In March and April 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies took place throughout the Soviet Union. This returned many pro-independence republicans, as many
CPSUThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
candidates were rejected. The televised Congress debates allowed the dissemination of pro-independence propositions. Indeed, 1989 would see numerous nationalistic expressions protests. Initiated by the Baltic republics in January, laws were passed in most non-Russian republics giving precedence for the republican language over Russian. 9 April would see the crackdown of nationalist demonstrations by Soviet troops in
TbilisiTbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form Tp'ilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
. There would be further bloody protests in
UzbekistanUzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union...
in June, where Uzbeks and Meskhetian Turks clashed in Fergana. Apart from this violence, three major events that altered the face of the nationalities issue occurred in 1989. Estonia had declared its sovereignty in November, 1988, to be followed by Lithuania in May 1989 and by Latvia in July (the
Communist Party of LithuaniaThe Communist Party of Lithuania was a communist party in Lithuania, established in early October 1918. The party was banned in December 1926.-History:...
would also declare its independence from the
CPSUThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
in December). This brought the Union and the republics into clear confrontation and would form a precedent for other republics.
Following this, in July, on the eve of the anniversary of the signing of the
Nazi-Soviet PactThe Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in...
, it was formally revealed that the treaty did indeed include a plan for the annexation of the Baltic countries into the USSR (as happened in 1940) and the division of Poland between the two countries. The unsavory past was exposed and gave impetus to the peoples of the Baltic countries who could now even more legitimately claim that they were subject to oppression. Finally, the
Eastern blocThe terms Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960...
collapsed in the autumn of 1989, raising hopes that Gorbachev would extend his non-interventionist doctrine to the internal workings of the USSR.
Crisis of the Union, 1990-91
1990 began with nationalist turmoil in January.
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
is rioted and troops were sent in to restore order; many
MoldaviaMoldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
ns demonstrated in favour of unification with the post-Communist
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
; and
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
n demonstrations continued. The same month, in a hugely significant move,
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
asserted its right to veto laws coming from the All-Union level, thus intensifying the 'war of laws' between republics and Moscow.
Soon after, the
CPSUThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
, which had already lost much of its control, began to lose even more power as Gorbachev deepened political reform. The February Central Committee Plenum advocated multi-party elections; local elections held between February and March returned a large number of pro-independence candidates. The Congress of People's Deputies then amended the Soviet Constitution in March, removing Article 6, which guaranteed the monopoly of the CPSU. The process of political reform was therefore coming from above and below, and was gaining a momentum that would augment republican nationalism. Soon after the constitutional amendment,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
declared independence and elected
Vytautas LandsbergisProfessor Vytautas Landsbergis is a Lithuanian conservative politician and Member of the European Parliament. He was the first head of state of Lithuania after its independence declaration from the Soviet Union, and served as the Head of the Lithuanian Parliament Seimas...
as President.
On 15 March, Gorbachev himself was elected as the only
President of the Soviet UnionThe President of the Soviet Union was the Head of State of the USSR from 15 March 1990 to 25 December 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev was the only person to occupy the office. Gorbachev was also General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between March 1990 and August 1991...
by the Congress of People's Deputies and chose a
Presidential CouncilA Presidential Council was created in March 1990 to replace the Politburo as the major policymaking body in the USSR. According to article 127 in the Soviet constitution the job of the presidential council was "to implement the basic thrust of USSR's domestic and foreign policy and ensure the...
of 15 politicians. Gorbachev was essentially creating his own political support base independent of CPSU conservatives and radical reformers. The new Executive was designed to be a powerful position to guide the spiraling reform process, and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and Congress of People's Deputies had already given Gorbachev increasingly presidential powers in February. This would be again a source of criticism from reformers. Despite the apparent increase in Gorbachev's power, he was unable to stop the process of nationalistic assertion. Further embarrassing facts about Soviet history were revealed in April, when the government admitted that the
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
had carried out the infamous
Katyn MassacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps...
of Polish army officers during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; previously, the USSR had blamed
Nazi GermanyThe National Socialist German Workers' Party , commonly known in English as the Nazi Party , was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945...
. More significantly for Gorbachev's position, Boris Yeltsin was reaching a new level of prominence, as he was elected
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSRThe Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the de jure leader of the Russian SFSR between 1938 and 1991...
in May, effectively making him the de jure leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Problems for Gorbachev would once more come from the Russian parliament in June, when it declared the precedence of Russian laws over All-Union level legislation.
Gorbachev's personal position continued changing. At XXVIIIth CPSU Congress in July, Gorbachev was re-elected General Secretary but this position was now completely independent of Soviet government, and the Politburo had no say in the ruling of the country. Gorbachev further reduced Party power in the same month, when he issued a decree abolishing Party control of all areas of the media and broadcasting. At the same time, Gorbachev was working to consolidate his Presidential position, culminating in the Supreme Soviet granting him special powers to rule by decree in September in order to pass a much-needed plan for transition to a market economy. However, the Supreme Soviet could not agree on which programme to adopt. Gorbachev pressed on with political reform, his proposal for setting up a new Soviet government, with a Soviet of the Federation consisting of representatives from all 15 republics, was passed through the Supreme Soviet in November. In December, Gorbachev was once more granted increased executive power by the Supreme Soviet, arguing that such moves were necessary to counter "the dark forces of nationalism". Such moves led to
Eduard Shevardnadze'sEduard Shevardnadze served as the President of Georgia from 1995 until he resigned on 23 November 2003 as a consequence of the bloodless Rose Revolution...
resignation; Gorbachev's former ally warned of an impending dictatorship. This move was a serious blow to Gorbachev personally and to his efforts for reform.
Meanwhile, Gorbachev was losing further ground to nationalists. October 1990 saw the founding of DemoRossiya, the Russian nationalist party; a few days later, both
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
and Russia declared their laws completely sovereign over Soviet level laws. The 'war of laws' had become an open battle, with the Supreme Soviet refusing to recognise the actions of the two republics. Gorbachev would publish the draft of a new union treaty in November, which envisioned a continued union called the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics, but, going into 1991, the actions of Gorbachev were steadily being overtaken by the centrifugal secessionist forces.
January and February would see a new level of turmoil in the Baltic republics. On 10 January 1991 Gorbachev issued an ultimatum-like request addressing the Lithuanian Supreme Council demanding the restoration of the validity of the constitution of the Soviet Union in Lithuania and the revoking of all anti-constitutional laws. In his
Memoirs, Gorbachev asserts that, on 12 January, he convened the Council of the Federation and political measures to prevent bloodshed were agreed, including sending representatives of the Council of the Federation on a "fact-finding mission" to
VilniusVilnius Vilnius Vilnius as of 2008. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the...
. However, before the delegation arrived, the local branches of the
KGBThe KGB was the national security agency of the USSR. From 1954 until 1991, the Committee for State Security was the Communist state's premier secret police, internal security, and espionage organization, whose coat of arms—the Shield and the Sword—illustrate a national military hierarchy...
and armed forces had worked together to seize the TV tower in Vilnius; Gorbachev asked the heads of the KGB and military if they had approved such action, and there is no evidence that they, or Gorbachev, ever approved this move. Gorbachev cites documents found in the RSFSR Prokuratura after the August coup, which only mentioned that "some 'authorities'" had sanctioned the actions. A book called
Alpha – the KGB's Top Secret Unit also suggests that a "KGB operation co-ordinated with the military" was undertaken by the
KGBThe KGB was the national security agency of the USSR. From 1954 until 1991, the Committee for State Security was the Communist state's premier secret police, internal security, and espionage organization, whose coat of arms—the Shield and the Sword—illustrate a national military hierarchy...
Alpha GroupThe Alpha Group is an elite dedicated counter-terrorism unit that belongs to OSNAZ of the FSB , or more specifically the "A" Directorate of the FSB Special Operations Center .- Function :Alfa Group's primary function is believed to be to carry out urban counter-terrorist missions under the direct...
.
Archie BrownArchibald Haworth Brown, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St. Antony's...
, in
The Gorbachev Factor, uses the memoirs of many people around Gorbachev and in the upper echelons of the Soviet political landscape, to implicate General
Valentin VarennikovValentin Ivanovich Varennikov was a Soviet/Russian general and politician, best known for being one of the planners and leaders of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, as well as one of the instigators of the Soviet coup attempt of 1991.-Early life:Valentin Varennikov was born to a poor Cossack family...
, a member of the August coup plotters, and General Viktor Achalov, another August coup conspirator. These persons were characterised as individuals "who were prepared to remove Gorbachev from his presidential office unconstitutionally" and "were more than capable of using unauthorised violence against nationalist separatists some months earlier".
BrownArchibald Haworth Brown, commonly known as Archie Brown , is a British political scientist and historian. In 2005, he became Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Professor of Politics and Director of St. Antony's...
criticises Gorbachev for "a conscious tilt in the direction of the conservative forces he was trying to keep within an increasingly fragile coalition" who would later betray him; he also criticises Gorbachev "for his tougher line and heightened rhetoric against the Lithuanians in the days preceding the attack and for his slowness in condemning the killings" but notes that Gorbachev did not approve any action and was seeking political solutions.
As a result of continued violence, at least 14 civilians were killed and more than 600 injured from 11-13 January 1991 in
VilniusVilnius Vilnius Vilnius as of 2008. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the...
, Lithuania. The strong Western reaction and the actions of Russian democratic forces put the president and government of the Soviet Union into an awkward situation, as news of support for Lithuanians from Western democracies started to appear. Further problems surfaced in
RigaRiga is the capital and largest city of Latvia, a major industrial, commercial, cultural and financial centre of the Baltics, and an important seaport, situated on the mouth of the Daugava...
, Latvia, on 20 January and 21, where OMON (special Ministry of the Interior) troops killed 4 people. Archie Brown suggests that Gorbachev's response this time was better, condemning the rogue action, sending his condolences and suggesting that secession could take place if it went through the procedures outlined in the Soviet constitution. According to Gorbachev's aide, Shakhnazarov (quoted by Archie Brown), Gorbachev was finally beginning to accept the inevitability of "losing" the Baltic republics, although he would try all political means to preserve the Union. Brown believes that this put him in "imminent danger" of being overthrown by hard-liners against the secession.
Gorbachev thus continued to draw up a new treaty of union which would have created a truly voluntary federation in an increasingly democratised Soviet Union. The new treaty was strongly supported by the
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
n republics, who needed the economic power and markets of the Soviet Union to prosper. However, the more radical reformists, such as
Russian SFSRThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , also called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Russian SFSR and the RSFSR for short, was the largest and most populous of the fifteen Soviet republics of the Soviet Union and became the Russian...
President
Boris YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
, were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required and were more than happy to contemplate the disintegration of the Soviet Union if that was required to achieve their aims. Nevertheless, a referendum on the future of the Soviet Union was held in March (with a referendum in Russia on the creation of a presidency), which returned an average of 76.4% in the 9 republics where it was taken, with a turn-out of 80% of the adult population.
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
,
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
,
GeorgiaThe Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Georgian SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union.- History :- Preceding Events :On November 28 1917, after October Revolution in Russia, there was established...
and
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east and south....
did not participate. Following this, an April meeting at Novo-Ogarevo between Gorbachev and the heads of the 9 republics issued a statement on speeding up the creation of a new Union treaty. Meanwhile, on 12 June 1991 Boris Yeltsin was elected
President of the Russian FederationThe President of the Russian Federation is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Government of Russia. Executive power is split between the President and the Prime Minister, who is the head of government...
by 57.3% of the vote (with a turnout of 74%).
The August 1991 coup
{{main|Soviet coup attempt of 1991}}
In contrast to the reformers' moderate approach to the new treaty, the hard-line
apparatchikApparatchik is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party "apparat" that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management...
s, still strong within the CPSU and military establishment, were completely opposed to anything which might lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union. On the eve of the treaty's signing, the hardliners struck.
Hardliners in the Soviet leadership, calling themselves the 'State Emergency Committee', launched the
August coupThe 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt , also known as the August Putsch or August Coup, was an attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev...
in 1991 in an attempt to remove Gorbachev from power and prevent the signing of the new union treaty. During this time, Gorbachev spent three days (19, 20 and 21 August) under house arrest at a
dachaDacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and Russian cities. In some cases, they are occupied for part of the year by their owners and rented out to urban residents as summer retreats...
in the
CrimeaCrimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the only autonomous republic of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name.The territory of Crimea was conquered and controlled many times throughout its history...
before being freed and restored to power. However, upon his return, Gorbachev found that neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands as support had swung over to Yeltsin, whose defiance had led to the coup's collapse. Furthermore, Gorbachev was forced to fire large numbers of his Politburo and, in several cases, arrest them. Those arrested for high treason included the "
Gang of EightThe Gang of Eight was a group of eight high level officials within the Soviet government, the Communist party and KGB. Under the guise of a State Committee of the State of Emergency , they attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev on 18 August, 1991...
" that had led the coup, including
KryuchkovVladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov was a former Soviet politician and Communist Party member, having been in the organization from 1944 until he was dismissed in 1991 for his role in the failed coup against Gorbachev...
, Yazov,
PavlovFor other uses, see Pavlov .Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov was the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union from January to August 1991...
and
YanayevGennady Ivanovich Yanayev , is a Russian politician and statesman. He was also the only Vice President of the Soviet Union ....
. Pugo was found shot; and
AkhromeyevSergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev was a Russian military figure, Hero of the Soviet Union , Marshal of the Soviet Union ....
, who had offered his assistance but was never implicated, was found hanging in his Kremlin office. Most of these men had been former allies of Gorbachev's or promoted by him, which drew fresh criticism.
Aftermath of the coup and the final collapse
Between 21 August and 22 September,
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
,
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
,
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east and south....
,
GeorgiaGeorgia Georgia Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Situated at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the east by Azerbaijan...
,
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
,
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
,
KazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a country situated in Eurasia that is ranked as the ninth largest country in the world. It is also the world's largest landlocked country. Its territory of 2,727,300 km² is greater than Western Europe...
,
KyrgyzstanKyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, it is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east....
,
UzbekistanUzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan , is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia, formerly part of the Soviet Union...
, Tajikstan, and
TurkmenistanRepublic of Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic...
declared their independence. Simultaneously,
Boris YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
ordered the
CPSUThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
to suspend its activities on the territory of Russia and closed the
Central CommitteeA central Committee is commonly the central executive unit of a Leninist or Communist party, whether ruling or non-ruling. In a Communist party, the Central Committee is made up of delegates elected at a Party Congress...
building at Staraya Ploschad. The Russian flag now flew beside the Soviet flag at the
KremlinKremlin is the Russian word for "fortress", "citadel" or "castle" and refers to any major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
. In light of these circumstances, Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the CPSU on 24 August and advised the Central Committee to dissolve. Gorbachev's hopes of a new Union were further hit when the Congress of People's Deputies dissolved itself on 5 September. Though Gorbachev and the representatives of 8 republics (excluding
AzerbaijanAzerbaijan , formally the Republic of Azerbaijan , is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south...
,
GeorgiaThe Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Georgian SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union.- History :- Preceding Events :On November 28 1917, after October Revolution in Russia, there was established...
,
MoldovaMoldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east and south....
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
and
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
) signed an agreement on forming a new economic community on 18 October, events were overtaking Gorbachev.
With the country in a rapid state of deterioration, the final blow to Gorbachev's vision was effectively dealt by a Ukrainian referendum on 1 December, where the Ukrainian people voted for independence. The presidents of Russia,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
and
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
met in Belovezh Forest, near
Brest, BelarusBrest , formerly also Brest-on-the-Bug and Brest-Litovsk , is a city in Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the city of Terespol, where the Western Bug and Mukhavets rivers meet...
, on 8 December, founding the
Commonwealth of Independent States{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Redirect|CIS}}{{Infobox Geopolitical organisation|native_name = Commonwealth of Independent States...
and declaring the end of the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
in the
Belavezha AccordsThe Belavezha Accords is the agreement which declared the Soviet Union effectively dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place...
. Gorbachev was presented with a
fait accompli and reluctantly agreed with
YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
, on 17 December, to dissolve the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December and the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
was formally dissolved the next day. Two days later, on 27 December,
YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
moved into Gorbachev's old office.
Gorbachev had aimed to maintain the
CPSUThe Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the ruling and only legal political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the...
as a united party but move it in the direction of
social democracySocial democracy is a political ideology of the political left and centre-left on the classic political spectrum. Social democracy emerged in the late 19th century from the socialist movement and continues to exert influence worldwide....
. But when the CPSU was proscribed after the
August coupThe 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt , also known as the August Putsch or August Coup, was an attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev...
, Gorbachev was left with no effective power base beyond the armed forces.
Activities after resignation
Following his resignation and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev remained active in Russian politics. Especially during the early years of the post-Soviet era, he expressed criticism at the reforms carried out by Russian president
Boris YeltsinBoris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999....
. When president Yeltsin called a referendum for 25 April 1993 in an attempt to achieve even greater powers as president, Gorbachev did not vote, and instead called for new presidential elections to happen soon.
Following a failed run for the presidency in 1996, Gorbachev established the
Social Democratic Party of RussiaThe Social Democratic Party of Russia was a political party founded in Russia by Mikhail Gorbachev on November 26, 2001. First name of party is: Social Democratic Party of Russia . It was a coalition of several social democratic parties, had approximately 12,000 members, but had no seats in the...
, a union between several Russian social democratic parties. He resigned as party leader in May 2004 over a disagreement with the party's chairman over the direction taken in the December 2003 election campaign. The party was later banned in 2007 by the
Supreme Court of the Russian FederationThe Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is the court of last resort in Russian administrative law, civil law and criminal law cases. It also supervises the work of lower courts.-Composition:...
due to its failure to establish local offices with at least 500 members in the majority of Russian regions, which is required by Russian law for a political organisation to be listed as party. Later that year, Gorbachev founded a new political party, called the
Union of Social-DemocratsUnion of Social Democrats is an all-Russian non-governmental organization founded on October 20, 2007 by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev....
. In June 2004, Gorbachev represented Russia at the funeral of Ronald Reagan.
Gorbachev has also appeared in numerous media events since his resignation from office. In 1993, Gorbachev appeared as himself in the
Wim WendersErnst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
film,
Faraway, So Close!Faraway, So Close! is a 1993 film by German director Wim Wenders. The screenplay is by Wenders, Richard Reitinger and Ulrich Zieger. The film is a sequel to Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire...
, the sequel to
Wings of DesireWings of Desire is a 1987 film by the German director Wim Wenders. Its original German title is Der Himmel über Berlin, which can be translated as The Sky over Berlin. Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry partially inspired the movie; Wenders claimed angels seemed to dwell in Rilke's poetry...
. In 1997, Gorbachev appeared with his granddaughter Anastasia in an internationally-screened television commercial for
Pizza HutPizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise based in Addison, Texas , offering different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread...
. The US corporation's fee for the 60-second ad went to his not-for-profit
Gorbachev FoundationThe Gorbachev Foundation is a non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, founded in 1992 by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The foundation is active in researching the Perestroika era, current issues of Russian history and politics. It is financed by Mikhail...
. In 2007, French luxury brand
Louis VuittonLouis Vuitton Malletier, commonly referred to as Louis Vuitton, or shortened to LV, is an international French fashion house specializing in trunks, leather goods, ready-to-wear, shoes, watches, jewelry, accessories, sunglasses, and books. Known the world over for its iconic LV monogram and logo,...
announced that Gorbachev would be shown in an ad campaign for their signature luggage.
On June 16, 2009, Gorbachev announced that he had recorded an album of old Russian romantic ballads entitled
Songs for Raisa to raise money for a charity dedicated to his late wife. On the album, he sings the songs himself accompanied by Russian musician
Andrei MakarevichAndrey Vadimovich Makarevich is a Soviet and Russian bard, musician, composer, poet, writer, graphics artist and producer of Belarusian and Jewish origin...
.
Since his resignation, Gorbachev has remained involved in world affairs. He founded the
Gorbachev FoundationThe Gorbachev Foundation is a non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, founded in 1992 by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The foundation is active in researching the Perestroika era, current issues of Russian history and politics. It is financed by Mikhail...
in 1992, headquartered in
San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
. He later founded
Green Cross InternationalGreen Cross International is an environmental organization founded by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993, building upon the work started by the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil...
, with which he was one of three major sponsors of the
Earth CharterThe Earth Charter is an international declaration of fundamental values and principles considered useful by its supporters for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century...
. He also became a member of the
Club of RomeThe Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. It was founded in April 1968 and raised considerable public attention in 1972 with its report The Limit