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The Supreme Soviet then elected Gorbachev chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, giving Gorbachev the attributes of power that previously Leonid Brezhnev had. These changes meant that the Secretariat, until that time solely responsible for the development and implementation of state policies, had lost much of its power. [1]
By the mid-1980s, when Gorbachev took power, many analysts were arguing that the Soviet Union was declining to the status of a Third World country. [516] In this context, Gorbachev argued that the Communist Party had to adapt and engage in creative thinking much as Lenin had creatively interpreted and adapted the writings of Karl Marx and ...
Perestroika (/ ˌ p ɛr ə ˈ s t r ɔɪ k ə / PERR-ə-STROY-kə; Russian: перестройка, IPA: [pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə] ⓘ) [1] was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associated with CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "transparency") policy reform.
“The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of those occasions in history that are believed to be unthinkable until they become inevitable.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union and a reformer who helped end the Cold War and lead his country from communism to capitalism, died Tuesday.
Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two ...
The following year, the Communist Party lost power altogether in multiparty parliamentary elections, which had caused Vytautas Landsbergis to become the first noncommunist leader (Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania) of Lithuania since its forced incorporation into the Soviet Union.
The coup collapsed in two days, and Gorbachev returned to office while the plotters all lost their posts. Yeltsin subsequently became the dominant leader and Gorbachev lost much of his influence. The failed coup led to both the immediate collapse of the CPSU and the dissolution of the USSR four months later.