History of Socialism - Final Years For The Soviet Union 1985-91

Final Years For The Soviet Union 1985-91

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-), who took control in 1985, was the first Soviet leader to have been born after the October revolution. He is remembered for three initiatives: glasnost, perestroika, and the "Frank Sinatra doctrine".

Glasnost, or "openness", was Gorbachev's term for allowing public debate in the Soviet Union to an unprecedented degree.

Perestroika was his term for market-oriented economic reforms, in recognition of the stagnating effects of central planning.

The "Frank Sinatra" doctrine was his reversal of the Brezhnev doctrine. Sinatra sang "My Way", and the doctrine named for him was that each Warsaw Pact country could find its own "way" of doing things.

Gorbachev also, in 1989, withdrew Soviet troops from their engagement in Afghanistan, ten years after Brezhnev had sent them there. They had been fighting the anti-government Mujahideen forces which since 1979 as part of its cold war strategy had been covertly funded and trained by the United States government through the Pakistani secret service known as Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

By August 1991, anti-reform Communists in both the Party and the military were sufficiently desperate to attempt a military coup. Coup leaders called themselves the Committee on the State of Emergency. They announced that Gorbachev had been removed from his position as president due to illness.

Although the coup rapidly collapsed and Gorbachev returned to Moscow, it was Boris Yeltsin who had played a leading role in the street resistance to that Committee, and the incident marked a shift of power away from Gorbachev toward Yeltsin. By the end of that year, Yeltsin was the leader of Russia, and the Soviet Union was no more.