For much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union, also known as the USSR, was one of the world’s two major superpowers. It was a vast country made up of fifteen different republics, stretching across a large part of Europe and Asia. However, a period of rapid change in the late 1980s led to a dramatic event in 1991: the Fall of the Soviet Union. This meant the country ceased to exist.
In the years leading up to 1991, the Soviet Union faced significant problems. Its economy was struggling; the system of central planning led to inefficiencies, shortages of basic goods, and a lower standard of living compared to many Western countries. Politically, the country was ruled by a single Communist Party with strict control over information and people’s lives.
Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. He recognized that the country needed major changes to survive. He introduced two key reform policies: Glasnost, meaning “openness,” and Perestroika, meaning “restructuring.” Glasnost allowed for more freedom of speech and the press, permitting people to openly discuss problems in Soviet society and history, which had been previously forbidden. Perestroika aimed to reform the economy by allowing some limited private business and changing the political system to be slightly more democratic.
These reforms, while intended to strengthen the Soviet system, had unintended consequences. Glasnost allowed long-held frustrations and national aspirations within the various republics to be voiced openly. People in republics like those in the Baltic region (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), as well as Ukraine, Georgia, and others, began to express stronger desires for more autonomy or even full independence from the central Soviet government in Moscow.
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Starting in the late 1980s and accelerating into 1990 and 1991, these desires for independence turned into concrete actions. Republics began issuing declarations of sovereignty, claiming that their laws were superior to Soviet laws. Then, many went further and declared full independence from the Soviet Union. The Baltic states were among the most vocal and persistent in their push for independence, having been forcibly annexed by the USSR decades earlier.
The situation reached a critical point in August 1991. Hardline officials within the Communist Party and government, who were opposed to Gorbachev’s reforms and feared the complete breakup of the Soviet Union, launched an attempted coup. They placed Gorbachev under house arrest while he was on vacation and announced that they were taking control of the country to restore order and preserve the Union.
However, the coup leaders did not have complete support, and they faced significant resistance. In Moscow and other major cities, thousands of people protested against the coup attempt. Boris Yeltsin, the recently elected leader of the Russian Republic (the largest republic within the USSR), played a highly visible role in opposing the hardliners. He famously stood on a tank outside the Russian parliament building, rallying support for the resistance. The coup attempt failed after just a few days due to a lack of widespread support and the courage of those who resisted it.
The failed August coup proved to be a major turning point that rapidly sped up the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the central government shown to be weak and the hardliners defeated, more republics quickly moved to declare their full independence. There was no longer a strong central authority capable of forcing them to remain part of the Union. Gorbachev returned to power, but his authority had been severely weakened by the events. The power was clearly shifting to the leaders of the individual republics.
The final act of the Soviet Union’s collapse unfolded in December 1991. The leaders of the three Slavic republics – Russia (Boris Yeltsin), Ukraine, and Belarus – met and signed an agreement declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. They announced the formation of a new, looser association called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Other republics soon joined this new group or asserted their independence independently.
The formal end came swiftly after these developments. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his position as President of the Soviet Union, stating that the office was no longer needed. On the same day, the Soviet flag, which had flown over the Kremlin in Moscow for decades, was lowered for the final time and replaced with the Russian flag. The Soviet Union officially dissolved on December 26, 1991.
As a result of the dissolution, the fifteen republics that had constituted the Soviet Union became independent, sovereign countries. Russia became the largest successor state, taking on much of the former Soviet Union’s international role. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a dramatic and relatively swift conclusion to a state that had defined much of the 20th century world order.
