[1985 - 1991] Perestroika and the Dissolution of the USSR

In the spring of 1985, the Soviet Union was a giant holding its breath. For nearly two decades, under the long, stagnant rule of Leonid Brezhnev and his short-lived, elderly successors, the country seemed frozen in time. Life for its 280 million people was a paradox of immense pride and grinding frustration. On the one hand, they were citizens of a nuclear superpower that had put the first man in space. On the other, their daily reality was one of endless queues. A queue for shoddy shoes, a queue for fatty sausage, a queue for the new issue of *Pravda* newspaper, its ink still smudging the fingers. The air in the cities hung thick with the exhaust of sputtering Lada cars and the smell of cheap Papirosy cigarettes. Society was a pyramid, rigid and unmoving, with the Communist Party elite at the top, enjoying access to special stores and foreign goods, while everyone else made do. Into this grey, exhausted world stepped a man who was shockingly different. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party. At 54, he was a full generation younger than the men who came before him. He was energetic, articulate, and he smiled—a small detail, but one that felt revolutionary. He saw the rot from within: a black-market economy that rivaled the official one, rampant alcoholism draining productivity, and a technological gap with the West that was becoming a chasm. The Soviet Union was spending up to 25% of its GDP on its military, bankrupting the state to maintain the illusion of parity. Gorbachev knew this path led to collapse. He didn't want to destroy the system; he wanted to be its savior. His plan rested on two pillars, two Russian words that would soon echo around the globe: *Perestroika* and *Glasnost*. *Perestroika*, or "restructuring," was a desperate attempt to jolt the comatose Soviet economy to life. For the first time since the 1920s, a sliver of private enterprise was permitted. The Law on Cooperatives of 1988 allowed small, privately-owned businesses to form. Suddenly, tiny cafes appeared in apartment ground floors, offering better coffee than the state-run canteens. Cobblers opened private stalls, actually fixing shoes properly instead of putting customers on a six-month waiting list. It was a dizzying taste of capitalism, but it was chaotic. The old supply chains were breaking down before new ones could form. This meant that for the average citizen, the shortages got *worse*. The lines for bread, sugar, and soap grew longer and more desperate. Hope was now mixed with a gnawing anxiety. The second pillar, *Glasnost*, or "openness," proved to be far more explosive. Gorbachev believed that to reform the economy, he needed to break the stranglehold of the corrupt party bureaucracy. His weapon was truth. Censorship was relaxed. Suddenly, newspapers like *Ogoniok* began publishing searing investigations into official corruption and, most shockingly, into the dark chapters of Soviet history. The ghosts of Stalin's purges, the truth of the secret protocols that carved up Poland with Nazi Germany, the horrors of the Gulag as described in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's long-banned masterpiece—all came flooding into the public consciousness. For people raised on a diet of flawless heroes and inevitable Communist triumph, it was a profound psychological shock. The very foundations of the state were being questioned, not by foreign enemies, but by the state itself. Then, on April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. The initial response was classic Soviet secrecy. But as radioactive clouds drifted across Europe, the new policy of *Glasnost* forced a horrifying admission. Chernobyl became a terrifying symbol of the system’s decay and deceit. It exposed the rot not as a historical crime, but as a present and lethal danger. The disaster contaminated over 150,000 square kilometers of land and showcased a level of incompetence the state could no longer hide. *Glasnost* had uncorked a bottle, and a hundred genies flew out. For decades, the USSR had suppressed the identities of its 15 constituent republics, from Estonia on the Baltic Sea to Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Now, these national feelings erupted. In the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, massive, peaceful demonstrations broke out. On August 23, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the pact that had sealed their fate, an estimated two million people formed a human chain, the "Baltic Way," stretching 675 kilometers across the three republics in a stunning call for independence. By 1990, the atmosphere on the streets of Moscow was electric. The drab, ill-fitting coats of the Brezhnev era were still common, but now they mingled with the vibrant colors of Western fashion—stone-washed jeans and leather jackets, brought in by the first tourists and traders. The ultimate symbol of this change arrived in January 1990, when the first McDonald's opened in Pushkin Square. An estimated 30,000 Soviets stood in a line that snaked for hours, not just for a burger, but for a taste of the forbidden, glamorous West. The old guard watched this all with horror. To them, Gorbachev was a traitor dismantling the empire. In August 1991, they made their move. While Gorbachev was on vacation in Crimea, a group of hardline Communist officials, calling themselves the State Committee on the State of Emergency, announced they had taken control. Tanks rumbled through the streets of Moscow, their engines a terrifying sound from the past. For three days, the world held its breath. Was the iron fist about to slam down again? But the people had changed. They were no longer silent. They poured into the streets to protest. The defining moment came when Boris Yeltsin, the charismatic and populist president of the Russian Republic, climbed atop a tank outside the Russian parliament building. In a scene broadcast around the world, he defiantly called for resistance to the coup. The soldiers in the tanks, young men who had grown up under *Glasnost*, lost their nerve. The coup collapsed in failure. It was a fatal blow, not for the plotters, but for the Soviet Union itself. The coup's failure shattered the authority of the central government and propelled the leaders of the individual republics, especially Yeltsin, into positions of supreme power. One by one, the republics declared their independence. The final, decisive moment came on December 1, 1991, when over 92% of Ukrainians voted for independence. Without Ukraine, the second most powerful republic, the Union was untenable. Later that month, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus met in a hunting lodge and signed an accord declaring the Soviet Union "ceased to exist." On Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, a man who had more power than any Tsar and had tried to reform an empire, gave a televised resignation speech to a country that no longer existed. That evening, the red and gold of the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time, replaced by the white, blue, and red tricolor of Russia. The superpower that had dominated the 20th century, a behemoth of ideology, military might, and fear, didn't fall in a cataclysmic war. It simply, quietly, and breathtakingly, dissolved.