dissolution of the soviet union - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tanks at Red Square during the 1991 Soviet coupd'tat attempt

Date March 11, 1985 December 25, 1991

Location Soviet Union

Participants People of the Soviet Union

Federal government

Republican governments

Autonomous SSRs

Outcome Dissolution of the Soviet Union intoindependent republics

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Post-Soviet states (alphabetical order)

1. Armenia

2. Azerbaijan

3. Belarus

4. Estonia

5. Georgia

6. Kazakhstan

7. Kyrgyzstan

8. Latvia

9. Lithuania

10. Moldova

11. Russia

12. Tajikistan

Dissolution of the Soviet UnionFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was formally enacted on December 26, 1991, as a result of the declaration no. 142- of the

Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union,[1] acknowledging the independence of the erstwhile Soviet republics and creating theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS) although five of the signatories ratified it much later or not at all. On the previous day,Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handedover its powers including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening at7:32 p.m., the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian Flag.

Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week beforethe union's formal dissolution, 11 republics all except the Baltic states and Georgia signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally

establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.[2][3] The dissolution of the Soviet Union(Russian: ) also signaled the end of the Cold War. The Revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union led to the end of decades-longhostility between North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, the defining feature of the Cold War.

Several of the former Soviet republics have retained close links with Russia and formed multilateral organizations such as the EurasianEconomic Community, the Union State, the Eurasian Customs Union, and the Eurasian Economic Union to enhance economic andsecurity cooperation. Several of the those former Soviet republics have joined NATO and the European Union or aspire to do so, toenhance their security and economic cooperation.

Contents

1 19851.1 Moscow: Mikhail Gorbachev, New General Secretary

2 19862.1 Sakharov2.2 Baltic republics

2.2.1 Latvia's Helsinki-862.3 Central Asia

2.3.1 Kazakhstan: Jeltoqsan riots3 1987

3.1 Moscow: One-party democracy3.2 Baltic republics: MolotovRibbentrop protests

3.2.1 Latvia leads3.2.2 Estonias first protests

3.3 The Caucasus3.3.1 Armenia: Environmental concerns and Nagorno-Karabakh

4 19884.1 Moscow loses control4.2 Baltic Republics

4.2.1 Estonian Popular Front

(6 years, 9 months, 2 weeks and 1 day)[1]

Dissolution of the Soviet Union - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union

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4.2.2 Latvian Popular Front4.2.3 Lithuanias Sjdis

4.3 Rebellion in the Caucasus4.3.1 Azerbaijan: Violence

4.3.2 Armenia: Uprising4.3.3 Georgia: First demonstrations

4.4 The Western republics4.4.1 Democratic Movement of Moldova4.4.2 Demonstrations in Lviv, Ukraine

4.4.3 Kurapaty, Byelorussia5 1989

5.1 Moscow: Limited democratization5.1.1 Congress of Peoples Deputies of the Soviet Union

5.1.2 Loss of satellite states5.2 Baltic "Chain of Freedom"

5.2.1 Lithuanias Communist Party splits5.3 Caucasus

5.3.1 Azerbaijans blockade

5.3.2 Armenias Karabakh Committee released5.3.3 Massacre in Tbilisi, Georgia

5.4 The Western republics5.4.1 Popular Front of Moldova5.4.2 Ukraines Rukh

5.4.3 Belarus: Kurapaty5.5 Central Asian republics

5.5.1 Fergana, Uzbekistan

5.5.2 Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan6 1990

6.1 Moscow loses six republics6.2 Rivalry between USSR and RSFSR6.3 Baltic Republics

6.3.1 Lithuania6.3.2 Estonia

6.3.3 Latvia6.4 Caucasus

6.4.1 Azerbaijans Black January6.5 The Western republics

6.5.1 Ukraine7 1991

7.1 Moscows Crisis7.2 Russias President Boris Yeltsin7.3 Baltic Republics

7.3.1 Lithuania7.3.2 Latvia


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Mikhail Gorbachev (1987 photo)

7.4 August Coup7.5 The fall: AugustDecember 1991

8 Chronology of Declarations of Restored States8.1 Before the coup

8.2 During the coup9 Chronology of Declarations of Newly Independent States

9.1 Before the coup9.2 After the coup

10 Legacy

10.1 United Nations membership11 See also12 References13 Further reading

14 External links

1985

Moscow: Mikhail Gorbachev, New General Secretary

Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11, 1985, three hours after predecessor Konstantin Chernenko's deathat age 74. Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy,

and he realized that doing so would require reforming underlying political and social structures.[4] The reforms began with personnel changes of

senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change.[5] On April 23, 1985, Gorbachev brought two proteges, YegorLigachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the "power" ministries happy by promoting KGB Head ViktorChebrikov from candidate to full member and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov as a Politburo candidate.

This liberalization, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union.[6] It also led indirectly to the revolutions

of 1989, in which Soviet-imposed communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were peacefully toppled (Romania excepted),[7] which in turn increasedpressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Under Gorbachev's leadership,the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's

Deputies[8] (although the ban on other political parties was not lifted until 1990).[9]

In May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. The

prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised, and sales restricted.[10] It was a serious blow to the state budget, a loss of approximately 100 billion rubles according to Alexander Yakovlev,

and much alcohol production migrated to the black market.[10] The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the existing centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms, whichtended toward market socialism.

On July 1, 1985, Gorbachev promoted Eduard Shevardnadze, First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, to full member of the Politburo, and the following day appointed himminister of foreign affairs, replacing longtime Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. The latter, disparaged as "Mr Nyet" in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs.Gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (officially Soviet Head of State), as he was considered an "old thinker."Also on July 1, Gorbachev took the opportunity to dispose of his main rival by removing Grigory Romanov from the Politburo, and brought Boris Yeltsin and Lev Zaikov into the CPSUCentral Committee Secretariat.


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Figure of Liberty on the

Freedom Monument in Riga,

focus of 1986 Latvian

demonstrations.

In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger and more energetic men into government. On September 27, Nikolai Ryzhkov replaced 79-year-old Nikolai Tikhonov asChairman of the Council of Ministers, effectively the Soviet prime minister, and on October 14, Nikolai Talyzin replaced Nikolai Baibakov as chairman of the State Planning Committee(GOSPLAN). At the next Central Committee meeting on October 15 Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23, 1985, Gorbachevappointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin.

1986

Sakharov

Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. On December 23, 1986, the most prominent Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, returned to Moscow shortly after receiving a

personal telephone call from Gorbachev telling him that after almost seven years his internal exile for defying the authorities was over.[11]

Baltic republics

The Baltic republics, forcibly reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944,[12] pressed for independence, beginning with Estonia in November 1988 when the Estonian legislature passed

laws resisting the control of the central government.[13]

Latvia's Helsinki-86

The CTAG (Latvian: Cilvktiesbu aizstvbas grupa, Human Rights Defense Group) Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town ofLiepja by three workers: Linards Granti, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mrti Bariss. Its name refers to the human-rights statements of the HelsinkiAccords. Helsinki-86 was the first openly anti-Communist organization in the U.S.S.R., and the first openly organized opposition to the Soviet regime,setting an example for other ethnic minorities' pro-independence movements.

On December 26, 1986, in the early morning hours after a rock concert, 300 working-class Latvian youths gathered in Riga's Cathedral Square andmarched down Lenin Avenue toward the Freedom Monument, shouting, "Soviet Russia out! Free Latvia!" Security forces confronted the marchers, and

several police vehicles were overturned.[14]

Central Asia

Kazakhstan: Jeltoqsan riots

The "Jeltoqsan" (Kazakh for "December") of 1986 were riots in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, sparked by Gorbachev's dismissal of Dinmukhamed Konayev, theFirst Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and an ethnic Kazakh, who was replaced with Gennady Kolbin, an outsider from the Russian

SFSR.[15] Demonstrations started in the morning of December 17, 1986, with 200 to 300 students in front of the Central Committee building on BrezhnevSquare protesting Konayev's dismissal and replacement by a Russian. Protesters swelled to 1,000 to 5,000 as other students joined the crowd. The CPKCentral Committee ordered troops from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, druzhiniki (volunteers), cadets, policemen, and the KGB to cordon the square andvideotape the participants. The situation escalated around 5 p.m., as troops were ordered to disperse the protesters. Clashes between the security forces and

the demonstrators continued throughout the night in Almaty.

On the next day, December 18, protests turned into civil unrest as clashes between troops, volunteers, militia units, and Kazakh students turned into a wide-scale confrontation. Theclashes could only be controlled on the third day. The Almaty events were followed by smaller protests and demonstrations in Shymkent, Pavlodar, Karaganda, and Taldykorgan. Reports

from Kazakh SSR authorities estimated that the riots drew 3,000 people.[16] Other estimates are of at least 30,000 to 40,000 protestors with 5,000 arrested and jailed, and an unknown


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The Dawn of Liberty

monument in Almaty

(Alma-Ata).

number of casualties.[17] Jeltoqsan leaders say over 60,000 Kazakhs participated in the protests.[17][18] According to the Kazakh SSR government, therewere two deaths during the riots, including a volunteer police worker and a student. Both of them had died due to blows to the head. About 100 others were

detained and several others were sentenced to terms in labor camps.[19] Sources cited by the Library of Congress claimed that at least 200 people died orwere summarily executed soon thereafter; some accounts estimate casualties at more than 1,000. The writer Mukhtar Shakhanov claimed that a KGBofficer testified that 168 protesters were killed, but that figure remains unconfirmed.

1987

Moscow: One-party democracy

At the January 2830, 1987, Central Committee plenum, Gorbachev suggested a new policy of "Demokratizatsiya" throughout Soviet society. He proposedthat future Communist Party elections should offer a choice between multiple candidates, elected by secret ballot. However, the CPSU delegates at thePlenum watered down Gorbachev's proposal, and democratic choice within the Communist Party was never significantly implemented.

Gorbachev also radically expanded the scope of Glasnost, stating that no subject was off-limits for open discussion in the media. Even so, the cautiousSoviet intelligentsia took almost a year to begin pushing the boundaries to see if he meant what he said. For the first time, the Communist Party leader hadappealed over the heads of Central Committee members for the people's support in exchange for expansion of liberties. The tactic proved successful:Within two years political reform could no longer be sidetracked by Party "conservatives." An unintended consequence was that having saved reform,

Gorbachev's move ultimately killed the very system it was designed to save.[20]

On February 7, 1987, dozens of political prisoners were freed in the first group release since Khrushchev's "thaw" in the mid-1950s.[21] On May 6, 1987, Pamyat, a Russian nationalistgroup, held an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow. The authorities did not break up the demonstration and even kept traffic out of the demonstrators' way while they marched to an

impromptu meeting with Boris Yeltsin, head of the Moscow Communist Party and at the time one of Gorbachev's closest allies.[22] On July 25, 1987, 300 Crimean Tatars staged a noisy

demonstration near the Kremlin Wall for several hours, calling for the right to return to their homeland, from which they were deported in 1944; police and soldiers merely looked on.[23]

On September 10, 1987, after a lecture from hardliner Yegor Ligachev at the Politburo for allowing these two unsanctioned demonstrations in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin wrote a letter of

resignation to Gorbachev, who had been holidaying on the Black Sea.[24] Gorbachev was stunned no one had ever voluntarily resigned from the Politburo. At the October 27, 1987,plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Yeltsin, frustrated that Gorbachev had not addressed any of the issues outlined in his resignation letter, criticized the slow pace of reform,

servility to the general secretary, and opposition from Ligachev that had led to his (Yeltsin's) resignation.[25] No one had ever addressed the Party leader so brazenly in front of the Central

Committee since Leon Trotsky in the 1920s.[25] In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of "political immaturity" and "absolute irresponsibility." No one backed Yeltsin.

Nevertheless, news of Yeltsin's insubordination and "secret speech" spread, and soon samizdat versions began to circulate. This marked the beginning of Yeltsin's rebranding as a rebel and

rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure. The following four years of political struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev played a large role in the dissolution of the USSR.[26] OnNovember 11, 1987, Yeltsin was fired from the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party.

Baltic republics: MolotovRibbentrop protests

On August 23, 1987, on the 48th anniversary of the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov Pact between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin that ultimately turned the then-independent Balticstates over to the Soviet Union, thousands of demonstrators marked the occasion in the three Baltic capitals to sing independence songs and listen to speeches commemorating Stalins

victims. The gatherings were sharply denounced in the official press and closely watched by the police, but were not interrupted.[27]

Latvia leads


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Environmental concerns over the

Metsamor nuclear power plant drove

initial demonstrations in Yerevan.

On June 14, 1987, about 5,000 people gathered again at Freedom Monument in Riga, and laid flowers to commemorate the anniversary of Stalin's mass deportation of Latvians in 1941.This was the first large demonstration in the Baltic republics to commemorate the anniversary of an event contrary to official Soviet history. The authorities did not crack down ondemonstrators, which encouraged more and larger demonstrations throughout the Baltic States. The next major anniversary after the August 23 Molotov Pact demonstration was onNovember 18, the date of Latvias independence in 1918. On November 18, 1987, hundreds of police and civilian militiamen cordoned off the central square to prevent any demonstration

at Freedom Monument, but thousands lined the streets of Riga in silent protest regardless.[28]

Estonias first protests

In spring 1987, a protest movement arose against new phosphate mines in Estonia. Signatures were collected in Tartu, and students assembled in the university's main hall to express lackof confidence in the government. At a demonstration on May 1, 1987, young people showed up with banners and slogans despite an official ban. On August 15, 1987, former politicalprisoners formed the MRP-AEG group (Estonians for the Public Disclosure of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), which was headed by Tiit Madisson. In September 1987, the Edasinewspaper published a proposal by Edgar Savisaar, Siim Kallas, Tiit Made, and Mikk Titma calling for Estonia's transition to autonomy. Initially geared toward economic independence,then toward a certain amount of political autonomy, the project, Isemajandav Eesti ("A Self-Managing Estonia") became known according to its Estonian acronym, IME, which means"miracle". On October 21, a demonstration dedicated to those who gave their lives in the 19181920 Estonian War of Independence took place in Vru, which culminated in a conflict

with the militia. For the first time in years, the blue, black, and white national tricolor was publicly displayed.[29]

The Caucasus

Armenia: Environmental concerns and Nagorno-Karabakh

On October 17, 1987, about 3,000 Armenians demonstrated in Yerevan complaining about the condition of Lake Sevan, the Nairit chemicals plant,and the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, and air pollution in Yerevan. Police tried to prevent the protest but took no action to stop it once the marchwas underway. The demonstration was led by Armenian writers such as Silva Kaputikian, Zori Balayan, and Maro Margarian and leaders from theNational Survival organization. The march originated at the Opera Plaza after speakers, mainly intellectuals, addressed the crowd.

The following day 1,000 Armenians participated in another demonstration calling for Armenian national rights in Karabagh. The demonstratorsdemanded the annexation of Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, and carried placards to that effect. The police tried to physically

prevent the march and after a few incidents, dispersed the demonstrators. Nagorno-Karabakh would break out in violence the following year.[30]

1988

Moscow loses control

In 1988 Gorbachev started to lose control of two small but troublesome regions of the Soviet Union, as the Baltic republics were captured by their popular fronts, and the Caucasusdescended into violence and civil war.

On July 1, 1988, the fourth and last day of a bruising 19th Party Conference, Gorbachev won the backing of the tired delegates for his last-minute proposal to create a new supremelegislative body called the Congress of People's Deputies. Frustrated by the old guard's resistance, Gorbachev embarked on a set of constitutional changes to try to separate party and state,

and thereby isolate his conservative Party opponents. Detailed proposals for the new Congress of People's Deputies were published on October 2, 1988,[31] and to enable the creation ofthe new legislature the Supreme Soviet, during its November 29December 1, 1988, session, implemented amendments to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, enacted a law on electoral reform,

and set the date of the election for March 26, 1989.[32]

On November 29, 1988, the Soviet Union ceased to jam all foreign radio stations, allowing Soviet Citizens for the first time to have access to unrestricted news sources beyond

Communist control.[33]


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Baltic Republics

In 1986 and 1987 Latvia had been in the vanguard of the Baltic states in pressing for reform. In 1988 Estonia took over the lead role with the foundation of the Soviet Union's first popularfront and starting to influence state policy.

Estonian Popular Front

The Estonian Popular Front was founded in April 1988. On June 16, 1988 Gorbachev replaced Karl Vaino, the "old guard" leader of the Communist Party of Estonia, with the

comparatively liberal Vaino Vljas, the Soviet ambassador to Nicaragua.[34] In late June 1988, Vljas bowed to pressure from the Estonian Popular Front and legalized the flying of the

old blue-white-black flag of Estonia, and agreed to a new state language law that made Estonian the official language of the Republic.[14]

On October 2, the Popular Front formally launched its political platform at a two-day congress. Vljas attended, gambling that the front could help Estonia become a model of economic

and political revival, while moderating separatist and other radical tendencies.[35] On November 16, 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a declaration of national

sovereignty under which Estonian laws would take precedence over those of the Soviet Union.[36] Estonia's parliament also laid claim to the republic's natural resources including land,inland waters, forests, mineral deposits, and to the means of industrial production, agriculture, construction, state banks, transportation, and municipal services within the territory of

Estonia's borders.[37]

Latvian Popular Front

The Latvian Popular Front was founded in June 1988. On October 4, Gorbachev replaced Boris Pugo, the "old guard" leader of the Communist Party of Latvia, with the more liberal JnisVagris. In October 1988 Vagris bowed to pressure from the Latvian Popular Front and legalized flying the former carmine red-and-white flag of independent Latvia, and on October 6 he

passed a law making Latvian the country's official language.[14]

Lithuanias Sjdis

The Popular Front of Lithuania, called Sjdis ("Movement"), was founded in May 1988. On October 19, 1988, Gorbachev replaced Ringaudas Songaila, the "old guard" leader of theCommunist Party of Lithuania, with the relatively liberal Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas. In October 1988 Brazauskas bowed to pressure from Sjdis and legalized the flying of the

historic red-yellow-green flag of independent Lithuania, and in November 1988 passed a law making Lithuanian the country's official language.[14]

Rebellion in the Caucasus

Azerbaijan: Violence

In February 20, 1988, after a week of growing demonstrations in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (the Armenian majority area within Azerbaijan Soviet

Socialist Republic), the Regional Soviet voted to secede and join with the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia.[38] This local vote in a small, remote part of the Soviet Union madeheadlines around the world; it was an unprecedented defiance of republic and national authorities. On February 22, 1988, in what became known as the "Askeran clash", two Azerbaijaniswere killed by Karabakh police. These deaths, announced on state radio, led to the Sumgait Pogrom. Between February 26 and March 1, the city of Sumgait (Azerbaijan) saw violentanti-Armenian rioting during which 32 people were killed. The authorities totally lost control and occupied the city with paratroopers and tanks; nearly all of the 14,000 Armenian

residents of Sumgait fled.[39]

Gorbachev refused to make any changes to the status of Nagorno Karabakh, which remained part of Azerbaijan. He instead sacked the Communist Party Leaders in both Republics onMay 21, 1988, Kamran Baghirov was replaced by Abdulrahman Vezirov as First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party. From July 23 to September 1988, a group of Azerbaijani

intellectuals began working for a new organization called the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, loosely based on the Estonian Popular Front.[40] On September 17, when gun battles broke out


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between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis near Stepanakert, two soldiers were killed and more than two dozen injured.[41] This led to almost tit-for-tat ethnic polarization in Nagorno-

Karabakh's two main towns: The Azerbaijani minority was expelled from Stepanakert, and the Armenian minority was expelled from Shusha.[42] On November 17, 1988, in response tothe exodus of tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, a series of mass demonstrations began in Baku's Lenin Square, lasting 18 days and attracting half a million demonstrators.

On December 5, 1988, the Soviet militia finally moved in, cleared the square by force, and imposed a curfew that lasted ten months.[43]

Armenia: Uprising

The rebellion of fellow Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh had an immediate effect in Armenia itself. Daily demonstrations, which began in the Armenian capital Yerevan on February 18,initially attracted few people, but each day the Nagorno-Karabakh issue became increasingly prominent and numbers swelled. On February 20, a 30,000-strong crowd demonstrated inTheater Square, by February 22, there were 100,000, the next day 300,000, and a transport strike was declared, by February 25, there were close to 1 million demonstrators about a

quarter of Armenia's population.[44] This was the first of the large, peaceful public demonstrations that would become a feature of communism's overthrow in Prague, Berlin, and,ultimately, Moscow. Leading Armenian intellectuals and nationalists, including future first President of independent Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian, formed the eleven-member KarabakhCommittee to lead and organize the new movement.

Gorbachev again refused to make any changes to the status of Nagorno Karabakh, which remained part of Azerbaijan. Instead he sacked both Republics' Communist Party Leaders: OnMay 21, 1988, Karen Demirchian was replaced by Suren Harutyunyan as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia. However, Harutyunyan quickly decided to run before the

nationalist wind and on May 28, allowed Armenians to unfurl the red-blue-gold First Armenian Republic flag for the first time in almost 70 years.[45] On June 15, 1988, the Armenian

Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution formally approving the idea of Nagorno Karabakh joining Armenia.[46] Armenia, formerly one of the most loyal Republics, had suddenly turned intothe leading rebel republic. On July 5, 1988, when a contingent of troops was sent in to remove demonstrators by force from Yerevan's Zvartnots International Airport, shots were fired and

one student protester was killed.[47] In September, further large demonstrations in Yerevan led to the deployment of armored vehicles.[48] In the autumn of 1988 almost all the 200,000

Azerbaijani minority in Armenia was expelled by Armenian Nationalists, with over 100 killed in the process[49] this, after the Sumgait pogrom earlier that year carried out byAzerbaijanis against ethnic Armenians and subsequent expulsion of all Armenians from Azerbaijan. On November 25, 1988, a military commandant took control of Yerevan as the Soviet

government moved to prevent further ethnic violence.[50]

On December 7, 1988, the Spitak earthquake struck, killing an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people. When Gorbachev rushed back from a visit to the United States, he was so angered to beconfronted by protesters calling for Nagorno-Karabakh to be made part of the Armenian Republic during a natural disaster that on December 11, 1988, he ordered the entire Karabakh

Committee to be arrested.[51]

Georgia: First demonstrations

In November 1988 in Tbilisi, capital of Soviet Georgia, many demonstrators camped out in front of the republic's legislature calling for Georgia's independence[52] and in support of

Estonia's declaration of sovereignty.[53]

The Western republics

Democratic Movement of Moldova

Beginning in February 1988, the Democratic Movement of Moldova (formerly Moldavia) organized public meetings, demonstrations, and song festivals, which gradually grew in size andintensity. In the streets, the center of public manifestations was the Stephen the Great Monument in Chiinu, and the adjacent park harboring Aleea Clasicilor (The "Alee of the Classics[of the Literature]"). On January 15, 1988, in a tribute to Mihai Eminescu at his bust on the Aleea Clasicilor, Anatol alaru submitted a proposal to continue the meetings. In the publicdiscourse, the movement called for national awakening, freedom of speech, revival of Moldavian traditions, and for attainment of official status for the Romanian language and return tothe Latin alphabet. The transition from "movement" (an informal association) to "front" (a formal association) was seen as a natural "upgrade" once a movement gained momentum withthe public, and the Soviet authorities no longer dared to crack down on it.


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Demonstrations in Lviv, Ukraine

On April 26, 1988, about 500 people participated in a march organized by the Ukrainian Cultural Club on Kiev's Khreschatyk Street to mark the second anniversary of the Chernobylnuclear disaster, carrying placards with slogans like "Openness and Democracy to the End." Between May and June 1988, Ukrainian Catholics in western Ukraine celebrated theMillennium of Christianity in Kievan Rus' in secret by holding services in the forests of Buniv, Kalush, Hoshiv, and Zarvantysia. On June 5, 1988, as the official celebrations of theMillennium were held in Moscow, the Ukrainian Cultural Club hosted its own observances in Kiev at the monument to St. Volodymyr the Great, the grand prince of Kievan Rus'.

On June 16, 1988, 6,000 to 8,000 people gathered in Lviv to hear speakers declare no confidence in the local list of delegates to the 19th Communist Party conference, to begin on June29. On June 21, a rally in Lviv attracted 50,000 people who had heard about a revised delegate list. Authorities attempted to disperse the rally in front of Druzhba Stadium. On July 7,10,000 to 20,000 people witnessed the launch of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. On July 17, a group of 10,000 gathered in the village Zarvanytsia for Millennium servicescelebrated by Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. The militia tried to disperse attendees, but it turned out to be the largest gathering of Ukrainian Catholics since Stalinoutlawed the Church in 1946. On August 4, which came to be known as "Bloody Thursday," local authorities violently suppressed a demonstration organized by the Democratic Front toPromote Perestroika. Forty-one people were detained, fined, or sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. On September 1, local authorities violently displaced 5,000 students at apublic meeting lacking official permission at Ivan Franko State University.

On November 13, 1988, approximately 10,000 people attended an officially sanctioned meeting organized by the cultural heritage organization Spadschyna, the Kyiv University studentclub Hromada, and the environmental groups Zelenyi Svit ("Green World") and Noosfera, to focus on ecological issues. From November 1418, 15 Ukrainian activists were among the100 human-, national- and religious-rights advocates invited to discuss human rights with Soviet officials and a visiting delegation of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation inEurope (also known as the Helsinki Commission). On December 10, hundreds gathered in Kiev to observe International Human Rights Day at a rally organized by the Democratic Union.

The unauthorized gathering resulted in the detention of local activists.[54]

Kurapaty, Byelorussia

The Partyja BPF (Belarusian Popular Front) was established in 1988 as a political party and cultural movement for democracy and independence, la the Baltic republics popular fronts.The discovery of mass graves in Kurapaty outside Minsk by historian Zianon Pazniak, the Belarusian Popular Fronts first leader, gave additional momentum to the pro-democracy and

pro-independence movement in Belarus.[55] It claimed that the NKVD performed secret killings in Kurapaty.[56] Initially the Front had significant visibility because its numerous publicactions almost always ended in clashes with the police and the KGB.

1989

Moscow: Limited democratization

Spring 1989 saw the people of the Soviet Union exercising a democratic choice, albeit limited, for the first time since 1917, when they elected the new Congress of People's Deputies. Justas important was the uncensored live TV coverage of the legislature's deliberations, where people witnessed the previously feared Communist leadership being questioned and heldaccountable. This example fueled a limited experiment with democracy in Poland, which quickly led to the toppling of the Communist government in Warsaw that summer which in turnsparked uprisings that overthrew communism in the other five Warsaw Pact countries before the end of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. These events showed that the people of EasternEurope and the Soviet Union did not support Gorbachev's drive to modernize Communism; rather, they preferred to abandon it altogether.

This was also the year that CNN became the first non-Soviet broadcaster allowed to beam its TV news programs to Moscow. Officially, CNN was available only to foreign guests in theSavoy Hotel, but Muscovites quickly learned how to pick up signals on their home televisions. That had a major impact on how Russians saw events in their country, and made censorship

almost impossible.[57]

Congress of Peoples Deputies of the Soviet Union

The month-long nomination period for candidates for the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR lasted until January 24, 1989. For the next month, selection among the 7,531 district


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Andrei Sakharov, formerly exiled to

Gorky, was elected to the Congress of

People's Deputies in March 1989.

nominees took place at meetings organized by constituency-level electoral commissions. On March 7, a final list of 5,074 candidates waspublished; about 85% were Party members.

In the two weeks prior to the 1,500 district polls, elections to fill 750 reserved seats of public organizations, contested by 880 candidates, were held.Of these seats, 100 were allocated to the CPSU, 100 to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, 75 to the Communist Youth Union(Komsomol), 75 to the Committee of Soviet Women, 75 to the War and Labour Veterans' Organization, and 325 to other organizations such as theAcademy of Sciences. The selection process was done in April.

In the March 26 general elections, voter participation was an impressive 89.8%, and 1,958 (including 1,225 district seats) of the 2,250 CPD seatswere filled. In district races, run-off elections were held in 76 constituencies on April 2 and 9 and fresh elections were organized on April 20 and 14

to May 23,[58] in the 199 remaining constituencies where the required absolute majority was not attained.[32] While most CPSU-endorsedcandidates were elected, more than 300 lost to independent candidates such as Yeltsin, physicist Andrei Sakharov and lawyer Anatoly Sobchak.

In the first session of the new Congress of People's Deputies, from May 25 to June 9, hardliners retained control but reformers used the legislatureas a platform for debate and criticism which was broadcast live and uncensored. This transfixed the population; nothing like this freewheeling

debate had ever been witnessed in the U.S.S.R. On May 29, Yeltsin managed to secure a seat on the Supreme Soviet,[59] and in the summer heformed the first opposition, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, composed of Russian nationalists and liberals. Composing the final legislativegroup in the Soviet Union, those elected in 1989 played a vital part in reforms and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union during the next twoyears.

On May 30, 1989, Gorbachev proposed that nationwide local elections, scheduled for November 1989, be postponed until early 1990 because there were still no laws governing the

conduct of such elections. This was seen by some as a concession to local Party officials, who feared they would be swept from power in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment.[60]

On October 25, 1989, the Supreme Soviet voted to eliminate special seats for the Communist Party and other official organizations in national and local elections, responding to sharppopular criticism that such reserved slots were undemocratic. After vigorous debate, the 542-member Supreme Soviet passed the measure 254-85 (with 36 abstentions). The decisionrequired a constitutional amendment, ratified by the full congress, which met December 1225. It also passed measures that would allow direct elections for presidents of each of the 15constituent republics. Gorbachev strongly opposed such a move during debate but was defeated.

The vote expanded the power of republics in local elections, enabling them to decide for themselves how to organize voting. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia had already proposed laws for

direct presidential elections. Local elections in all the republics had already been scheduled to take place between December and March 1990.[61]

Loss of satellite states

The six Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, while nominally independent, were widely recognized in the international community as the Soviet satellite states. All had beenoccupied by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, had Soviet-style socialist states imposed upon them, and had very restricted freedom of action in either domestic or international affairs. Anymoves towards real independence were suppressed by military force in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968. Gorbachev abandoned the oppressive andexpensive Brezhnev Doctrine, which mandated intervention in the Warsaw Pact states, in favor of non-intervention in the internal affairs of allies jokingly termed the Sinatra Doctrine ina reference to the Frank Sinatra song "My Way".

Baltic "Chain of Freedom"

The Baltic Way or Baltic Chain (also Chain of Freedom Estonian: Balti kett, Latvian: Baltijas ce, Lithuanian: Baltijos kelias, Russian: ) was a peaceful political

demonstration on August 23, 1989.[62] An estimated 2 million people joined hands to form a human chain extending 600 kilometres (370 mi) across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whichhad been forcibly reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944. The colossal demonstratiion marked the 50th anniversary of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact that divided Eastern Europeinto spheres of influence and led to the occupation of the Baltic states in 1940.


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The Eastern Bloc

"Baltic Way" 1989 demonstration in iauliai,

Lithuania. The coffins are decorated with

national flags of the three Baltic Republics and

are placed symbolically beneath Soviet and Nazi

flags.

In December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies acceptedand Gorbachev signedthereport by the Yakovlev Commission condemning the secret protocols of the Molotov

Ribbentrop pact.[63]

Lithuanias Communist Party splits

In the March 1989 elections to the Congress of Peoples Deputies, 36 of the 42 deputies fromLithuania were candidates from the independent national movement Sjdis. This was thegreatest victory for any national organization within the USSR and was a devastating

revelation to the Lithuanian Communist Party of its growing unpopularity.[64]

On December 7, 1989, the Communist Party of Lithuania under the leadership of AlgirdasBrazauskas, split from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and abandoned its claim tohave a constitutional "leading role" in politics. A smaller loyalist faction of the CommunistParty, headed by hardliner Mykolas Burokeviius, was established and remained affiliatedwith the CPSU. However, Lithuanias governing Communist Party was formally independentfrom Moscow's control a first for Soviet Republics and a political earthquake that prompted

Gorbachev to arrange a visit to Lithuania the following month in a futile attempt to bring the local party back under control.[65]

Caucasus

Azerbaijans blockade

On July 16, 1989, the Popular Front of Azerbaijan held its first congress and elected Abulfaz Elchibey, who would become President, as its Chairman.[66] On August 19, 600,000

protesters jammed Bakus Lenin Square (now Azadliq Square) to demand the release of political prisoners.[67] In the second half of 1989, weapons were handed out in Nagorno-Karabakh.

When Karabakhis got hold of small arms to replace hunting rifles and crossbows, casualties began to mount; bridges were blown up, roads were blockaded, and hostages were taken.[68]

In a new and effective tactic, the Popular Front launched a rail blockade of Armenia,[69] which caused petrol and food shortages because 85 percent of Armenia's freight came from

Azerbaijan.[70] Under pressure from the Popular Front the Communist authorities in Azerbaijan started making concessions. On September 25, they passed a sovereignty law that gaveprecedence to Azerbaijani law, and on October 4, the Popular Front was permitted to register as a legal organization as long as it lifted the blockade. Transport communications between

Azerbaijan and Armenia never fully recovered.[70] Tensions continued to escalate and on December 29, Popular Front activists seized local party offices in Jalilabad, wounding dozens.

Armenias Karabakh Committee released

On May 31, 1989, the 11 members of the Karabakh Committee, who had been imprisoned without trial in Moscows Matrosskaya Tishina prison, were released, and returned home to a

hero's welcome.[71] Soon after his release, Levon Ter-Petrossian, an academic, was elected chairman of the anti-communist opposition Pan-Armenian National Movement, and later stated

that it was in 1989 that he first began considering full independence.[72]

Massacre in Tbilisi, Georgia

On April 7, 1989, Soviet troops and armored personnel carriers were sent to Tbilisi after more than 100,000 people protested in front of Communist Party headquarters with banners

calling for Georgia to secede from the Soviet Union and for Abkhazia to be fully integrated into Georgia.[73] On April 9, 1989, troops attacked the demonstrators; some 20 people were


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Photos of victims (mostly young

women) of an April 1989 massacre in

Tbilisi, Georgia.

killed and more than 200 wounded.[74] This event radicalized Georgian politics, prompting many to conclude that independence was preferable tocontinued Soviet rule. On April 14, Gorbachev removed Jumber Patiashvili as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party and replaced himwith former Georgian KGB chief Givi Gumbaridze.

On July 16, 1989, in Abkhazia's capital Sukhumi, a protest against the opening of a Georgian university branch in the town led to violence that

quickly degenerated into a large-scale inter-ethnic confrontation in which 18 died and hundreds were injured before Soviet troops restored order.[75]

This riot marked the start of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.


Popular Front of Moldova

In the March 26, 1989, elections to the Congress of People's Deputies, 15 of the 46 Moldavian deputies sent to Moscow were supporters of the Nationalist/Democratic movement.[76] ThePopular Front of Moldova founding congress took place two months later, on May 20, 1989. During its second congress (June 30July 1, 1989), Ion Hadrc was elected its president.

A series of demonstrations that became known as the Grand National Assembly (Romanian: Marea Adunare Naional) was the Fronts first major achievement. Such mass

demonstrations, including one attended by 300,000 people on August 27,[77] convinced the Moldavian Supreme Soviet on August 31 to adopt the language law making Moldovan the

official language, and replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with Latin characters.[78]

Ukraines Rukh

In Ukraine, Lviv and Kiev celebrated Ukrainian Independence Day on January 22, 1989. Thousands gathered in Lviv for an unauthorized moleben (religious service) in front of St.George's Cathedral. In Kiev, 60 activists met in a Kiev apartment to commemorate the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918. On February 1112, 1989, the UkrainianLanguage Society held its founding congress. On February 15, 1989, the formation of the Initiative Committee for the Renewal of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church wasannounced. The program and statutes of the movement were proposed by the Writers Association of Ukraine and were published in the journal Literaturna Ukraina on February 16, 1989.The organization heralded Ukrainian dissidents such as Vyacheslav Chornovil.

In late February, large public rallies took place in Kiev to protest the election laws, on the eve of the March 26 elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, and to call for theresignation of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Scherbytsky, lampooned as "the mastodon of stagnation." The demonstrations coincided with a visit toUkraine by Soviet President Gorbachev. On February 26, 1989, between 20,000 and 30,000 people participated in an unsanctioned ecumenical memorial service in Lviv, marking theanniversary of the death of 19th Century Ukrainian artist and nationalist Taras Shevchenko.

On March 4, 1989, the Memorial Society, committed to honoring the victims of Stalinism and cleansing society of Soviet practices, was founded in Kiev. A public rally was held the nextday. On March 12, A pre-election meeting organized in Lviv by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and the Marian Society Myloserdia (Compassion) was violently dispersed, and nearly 300people were detained. On March 26, elections were held to the union Congress of People's Deputies; by-elections were held on April 9, May 14, and May 21. Among the 225 Ukrainiandeputies, most were conservatives, though a handful of progressives made the cut.

From April 20-23, 1989, pre-election meetings were held in Lviv for four consecutive days, drawing crowds of up to 25,000. The action included an one-hour warning strike at eight localfactories and institutions. It was the first labor strike in Lviv since 1944. On May 3, a pre-election rally attracted 30,000 in Lviv. On May 7, The Memorial Society organized a massmeeting at Bykivnia, site of a mass grave of Ukrainian and Polish victims of Stalinist terror. After a march from Kiev to the site, a memorial service was staged.


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Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of newly

founded Crimean Tatar National

Movement

From mid-May to September 1989, Ukrainian Greek-Catholic hunger strikers staged protests on Moscow's Arbat to call attention to the plight of their Church. They were especially activeduring the July session of the World Council of Churches held in Moscow. The protest ended with the arrests of the group on September 18. On May 27, 1989, the founding conference ofthe Lviv regional Memorial Society was held. On June 18, 1989, an estimated 100,000 faithful participated in public religious services in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, respondingto Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky's call for an international day of prayer.

On August 19, 1989, the Russian Orthodox Parish of Saints Peter and Paul announced it would be switching to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. On September 2, 1989,tens of thousands across Ukraine protested a draft election law that reserved special seats for the Communist Party and for other official organizations: 50,000 in Lviv, 40,000 in Kiev,10,000 in Zhytomyr, 5,000 each in Dniprodzerzhynsk and Chervonohrad, and 2,000 in Kharkiv. From September 810, 1989, writer Ivan Drach was elected to head Rukh, the People'sMovement of Ukraine, at its founding congress in Kiev. On September 17, between 150,000 and 200,000 people marched in Lviv, demanding the legalization of the Ukrainian GreekCatholic Church. On September 21, 1989, exhumation of a mass grave begins in Demianiv Laz, a nature preserve south of Ivano-Frankivsk. On September 28, First Secretary of theCommunist Party of the Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a holdover from the Brezhnev era, was replaced by Vladimir Ivashko.

On October 1, 1989, a peaceful demonstration of 10,000 to 15,000 people was violently dispersed by the militia in front of Lviv's Druzhba Stadium, where a concert celebrating the Soviet"reunification" of Ukrainian lands was being held. On October 10, Ivano-Frankivsk was the site of a pre-election protest attended by 30,000 people. On October 15, several thousandpeople gathered in Chervonohrad, Chernivtsi, Rivne, and Zhytomyr; 500 in Dnipropetrovsk; and 30,000 in Lviv to protest the election law. On October 20, faithful and clergy of theUkrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church participated in a synod in Lviv, the first since its forced liquidation in the 1930s.

On October 24, the union Supreme Soviet passed a law eliminating special seats for Communist Party and other official organizations' representatives. On October 26, twenty factories inLviv held strikes and meetings to protest the police brutality of October 1 and the authorities' unwillingness to prosecute those responsible. From October 26-28, the Zelenyi Svit (Friendsof the Earth Ukraine) environmental association held its founding congress, and on October 27 the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet passed a law eliminating the special status of party andother official organizations.

On October 28, 1989, the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet decreed that effective January 1, 1990, Ukrainian would be the official language of Ukraine, while Russian would be used forcommunication between ethnic groups. On the same day The Congregation of the Church of the Transfiguration in Lviv left the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed itself theUkrainian Greek Catholic Church. The following day, thousands attended a memorial service at Demianiv Laz, and a temporary marker was placed to indicate that a monument to the"victims of the repressions of 19391941" soon would be erected.

In mid-November The Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society was officially registered. On November 19, 1989, a public gathering in Kievattracted thousands of mourners, friends and family to the reburial in Ukraine of three inmates of the infamous Gulag Camp No. 36 in Perm inthe Ural Mountains: human-rights activists Vasyl Stus, Oleksiy Tykhy, and Yuriy Lytvyn. Their remains were reinterred in Baikove Cemetery.On November 26, 1989, a day of prayer and fasting was proclaimed by Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, thousands of faithful in westernUkraine participated in religious services on the eve of a meeting between Pope John Paul II and Soviet President Gorbachev. On November28, 1989, the Ukrainian SSR's Council for Religious Affairs issued a decree allowing Ukrainian Catholic congregations to register as legalorganizations. The decree was proclaimed on December 1, coinciding with a meeting at the Vatican between the pope and the Soviet president.

On December 10, 1989, the first officially sanctioned observance of International Human Rights Day was held in Lviv. On December 17, anestimated 30,000 attended a public meeting organized in Kiev by Rukh in memory of Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, who died on December14. On December 26, the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR adopted a law designating Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of the Holy Trinity

official holidays.[54]

In May 1989, a Soviet dissident, Mustafa Dzhemilev, was elected to lead the newly founded Crimean Tatar National Movement. He also led the campaign for return of Crimean Tatars totheir homeland in Crimea after 45 years of exile.

Belarus: Kurapaty

On January 24, 1989, the Soviet authorities in Belarus agreed to the demand of the democratic opposition to build a monument to thousands of people shot by Stalin-era police in the

Kuropaty Forest near Minsk in the 1930s.[79]


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Meeting in Kurapaty, Belarus, 1989

Islam Karimov became

leader of the Uzbek SSR in

1989 and later led

Uzbekistan to independence.

Nursultan Nazarbayev

became leader of the Kazakh

SSR in 1989 and later led

Kazakhstan to independence.

On September 30, 1989, thousands of Belorussians, denouncing local leaders, marched through Minsk to demand additional cleanup of the 1986Chernobyl disaster site in Ukraine. Up to 15,000 protesters wearing armbands bearing radioactivity symbols and carrying the banned red-and-whiteBelorussian national flag filed through torrential rain in defiance of a ban by local authorities. Later, they gathered in the city center near thegovernment's headquarters, where speakers demanded resignation of Yefrem Sokolov, the republic's Communist Party leader, and called for the

evacuation of half a million people from the contaminated zones.[80]

Central Asian republics

Fergana, Uzbekistan

Thousands of Soviet troops were sent to the Fergana Valley, southeast of the Uzbek capital Tashkent, to re-establish order after clashes in which local

Uzbeks hunted down members of the Meskhetian minority in several days of rioting between June 4-11, 1989; about 100 people were killed.[81] On June23, 1989, Gorbachev removed Rafiq Nishonov as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR and replaced him with Karimov, who went onto lead Uzbekistan as a Soviet Republic and subsequently as an independent state.

Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan

In Kazakhstan on June 19, 1989, young men carrying guns, firebombs, iron bars and stones rioted in Zhanaozen, causing anumber of deaths. The youths tried to seize a police station and a water-supply station. They brought public transportation

to a halt and shut down various shops and industries.[82] By June 25, the rioting had spread to five other towns near theCaspian Sea. A mob of about 150 people armed with sticks, stones and metal rods attacked the police station in Mangishlak,about 90 miles from Zhanaozen, before they were dispersed by government troops flown in by helicopters. Mobs of youngpeople also rampaged through Yeraliev, Shepke, Fort-Shevchenko and Kulsary, where they poured flammable liquid on

trains housing temporary workers and set them on fire.[83]

On June 22, 1989, Gorbachev removed Gennady Kolbin (the ethnic Russian whose appointment caused riots in December1986) as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan for his poor handling of the June events, and replaced himwith Nazarbayev, an ethnic Kazakh who went on to lead Kazakhstan as a Soviet Republic and subsequently as anindependent state for decades.

1990

Moscow loses six republics

On February 7, 1990, the Central Committee of the CPSU accepted Gorbachevs recommendation that the party give up its monopoly on political power.[84] In 1990, all fifteen constituentrepublics of the USSR held their first competitive elections, with reformers and ethnic nationalists winning many seats. The CPSU lost the elections in six republics:

In Lithuania, to Sjdis, on February 24 (run-off elections on March 4, 7, 8, and 10).In Moldova, to the Popular Front of Moldova, on February 25.In Estonia, to the Estonian Popular Front, on March 18.

In Latvia, to the Latvian Popular Front, on March 18 (run-off elections on March 25, April 1, and April 29).In Armenia, to the Pan-Armenian National Movement, on May 20 (run-off elections on June 3 and July 15).In Georgia, to Round Table-Free Georgia, on October 28 (run-off election on November 11).


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Lithuanias

Vytautas

Landsbergis

Estonias Edgar

Savisaar

The constituent republics began to declare their national sovereignty and began a "war of laws" with the Moscow central government; they rejected union-wide legislation that conflictedwith local laws, asserted control over their local economy and refusing to pay taxes. This conflict caused economic dislocation as supply lines were disrupted, and caused the Soviet

economy to decline further.[85]

Rivalry between USSR and RSFSR

On March 4, 1990, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic held relatively free elections for the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia. Boris Yeltsin was elected, representing

Sverdlovsk, garnering 72 percent of the vote.[86] On May 29, 1990, Yeltsin was elected chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, despite the fact that Gorbachev askedRussian deputies not to vote for him.

Yeltsin was supported by democratic and conservative members of the Supreme Soviet, who sought power in the developing political situation. A new power struggle emerged betweenthe RSFSR and the Soviet Union. On June 12, 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty. On July 12, 1990, Yeltsin resigned from the

Communist Party in a dramatic speech at the 28th Congress.[87]

Baltic Republics

Lithuania

Gorbachevs visit to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on January 1113, 1990, provoked a pro-independence rally attended by an estimated 250,000 people. On March11, the newly elected parliament of the Lithuanian SSR elected Vytautas Landsbergis, leader of Sjdis, to chair the Supreme Council of Lithuania, becoming the firstnon-communist leader of any Soviet Republic.

Landsbergis promptly restored Lithuanian independence, becoming the first Soviet Republic to break away from the USSR entirely. The Soviet Army, however,

attempted to suppress the movement. It also initiated an economic blockade and stationed troops there ostensibly "to secure the rights of ethnic Russians".[88]

Estonia

On March 25, 1990, the Estonian Communist Party voted to split from the CPSU after a six-month transition.[89]

On March 30, 1990, the Estonian Supreme Council declared the Soviet occupation of Estonia since World War II to be illegal and began reestablishing Estonia as anindependent state.

On April 3, 1990, Edgar Savisaar of the Popular Front of Estonia was elected Chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Estonia's Prime Minister).

Latvia

Latvia declared the restoration of independence on May 4, 1990, with the declaration stipulating a transitional period to complete independence. The Declaration stated that althoughLatvia had de facto lost its independence in World War II, the country had de jure remained a sovereign country because the annexation had been unconstitutional and against the will ofthe Latvian people.

The declaration also stated that Latvia would base its relationship with the Soviet Union on the basis of the LatvianSoviet Peace Treaty of 1920, in which the Soviet Union recognizedLatvia's independence as inviolable "for all future time". May 4 is a national holiday in Latvia.

On May 7, 1990, Ivars Godmanis of the Latvian Popular Front was elected Chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Latvia's Prime Minister).


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Latvias Ivars

Godmanis

Azerbaijani stamp with photos

of Black January

Caucasus

Azerbaijans Black January

During the first week of January 1990, in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, the Popular Front led crowds in the storming and destruction of the frontier fences

and watchtowers along the border with Iran, and thousands of Soviet Azerbaijanis crossed the border to meet their ethnic cousins in Iranian Azerbaijan.[90] It was thefirst instance the Soviet Union had lost control of an external border.

Ethnic tensions had escalated between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis in spring and summer 1988.[91]On January 9, 1990, after theArmenian parliament voted to include Nagorno-Karabakh within its budget, renewed fighting broke out, hostages were taken, and

four Soviet soldiers were killed.[92] On January 11, Popular Front radicals stormed party buildings and effectively overthrew the

communist powers in the southern town of Lenkoran.[92] Gorbachev resolved to regain control of Azerbaijan; the events that ensued are known as "BlackJanuary." Late on January 19, 1990, after blowing up the central television station and cutting the phone and radio lines, 26,000 Soviet troops entered theAzerbaijani capital Baku, smashing barricades, attacking protesters, and firing into crowds. On that night and during subsequent confrontations (whichlasted until February), more than 130 people died the majority of whom were civilians. More than 700 civilians were wounded, hundreds were detained,but only a few were actually tried for alleged criminal offenses.

Civil liberties suffered. Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov stated that the use of force in Baku was intended to prevent the de facto takeover of theAzerbaijani government by the non-communist opposition, to prevent their victory in upcoming free elections (scheduled for March 1990), to destroy

them as a political force, and to ensure that the Communist government remained in power. This marked the first time the Soviet Army took one of its own cities by force.[93]

The army had gained control of Baku, but by January 20 it essentially lost Azerbaijan. Nearly the entire population of Baku turned out for the mass funerals of "martyrs" buried in the

Alley of Martyrs.[93] Thousands of Communist Party members publicly burned their party cards. First Secretary Vezirov decamped to Moscow and Ayaz Mutalibov was appointed his

successor in a free vote of party officials. The ethnic Russian Viktor Polyanichko remained second secretary and the power behind the throne.[94]

Following the hardliners' takeover, the September 30, 1990 elections (runoffs on October 14) were characterized by intimidation; several Popular Front candidates were jailed, two were

murdered, and unabashed ballot stuffing took place even in the presence of Western observers.[95] The election results reflected the threatening environment; out of the 350 members, 280

were Communists, with only 45 opposition candidates from the Popular Front and other non-communist groups, who together formed a Democratic Bloc ("Dembloc").[96] In May 1990

Mutalibov was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet unopposed.[97]


Ukraine

On January 21, 1990, 1990 Rukh organized a 300-mile (480 km) human chain between Kiev, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Hundreds of thousands joined hands to commemorate theproclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1918 and the reunification of Ukrainian lands one year later (1919 Unification Act). On January 23, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church heldits first synod since its liquidation by the Soviets in 1946, an act the gathering declared invalid. On February 9, 1990, Rukh was officially registered by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice.However, the registration came too late for Rukh to put forth its own candidates for the parliamentary and local elections on March 4. At the 1990 elections of people's deputies to theSupreme Council, candidates from the Democratic Bloc won landslide victories in western Ukrainian oblasts. A majority of the seats were forced into run-off elections. On March 18,Democratic candidates scored further victories in the run-offs. The Democratic Bloc gained about 90 out of 450 seats in the new parliament.

On April 6, 1990, the Lviv City Council voted to return St. George Cathedral to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Russian Orthodox Church refused to yield. On April 2930,1990, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union was disbanded to form the Ukrainian Republican Party. On May 15, the new parliament convened. The bloc of conservative communists held 239seats; the Democratic Bloc, which was now evolved into the National Council, had 125 deputies. On June 4, 1990, two candidates remained in the protracted race for parliament chair. The


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Viacheslav Chornovil, a

prominent Ukrainian dissident and

a lead figure of Rukh.

Leonid Kravchuk became

Ukraine's leader in 1990.

leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Ivashko, was elected with 60 percent of the vote as more than 100 opposition deputiesboycotted the election. On June 56, 1990, Metropolitan Mstyslav of the U.S.-based Ukrainian Orthodox Church was elected patriarch of theUkrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) during that Church's first synod. The UAOC declared its full independence from the MoscowPatriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in March had granted autonomy to the Ukrainian church headed by Metropolitan Filaret.

On June 22, 1990, Volodymyr Ivashko withdrew his candidacy for leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine in viewof his new position in parliament. Stanislav Hurenko was elected first secretary of the CPU. On July 11, Ivashkoresigned from his post as chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament after he was elected deputy general secretary of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union. The Parliament accepted the resignation a week later, on July 18. On July 16,the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine was overwhelmingly approved by Parliament. The vote was 355 forand four against. The people's deputies voted 3395 to proclaim July 16, a Ukrainian national holiday.

On July 23, 1990, Leonid Kravchuk was elected to replace Ivashko as parliament chairman. On July 30, Parliamentadopted a resolution on military service demanding Ukrainian soldiers "in regions of national conflict such asArmenia and Azerbaijan" to regain Ukrainian territory. On August 1, Parliament voteed overwhelmingly to shutdown the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On August 3, it adopted a law on economic sovereignty of the Ukrainianrepublic. On August 19, the first Ukrainian Catholic liturgy in 44 years was celebrated at St. George Cathedral. OnSeptember 57, the International Symposium on the Great Famine of 19321933 was held in Kiev. On September 8,The first "Youth for Christ" rally since 1933 is held in Lviv, with 40,000 participants. In September 28-30, the GreenParty of Ukraine holds its founding congress. On September 30, nearly 100,000 march in Kiev to protest the newunion treaty proposed by Gorbachev.

On October 1, 1990, parliament reconvened amid mass protests calling for the resignation of Kravchuk and Prime Minister Vitaliy Masol, a leftover from the previous regime. Studentserected a tent city on October Revolution Square, where they continue the protest.

On October 17, Masol resigned, and on October 20, Patriarch Mstyslav I of Kiev and all Ukraine arrived at Saint Sophias Cathedral, ending a 46-year banishment from his homeland. OnOctober 23, 1990, Parliament voted to delete Article 6 of the Ukrainian Constitution, which referred to the "leading role" of the Communist Party.

On October 2528, 1990, Rukh held its second congress and declared that its principal goal was the "renewal of independent statehood for Ukraine." On October 28, UAOC faithful,supported by Ukrainian Catholics, demonstrated near St. Sophias Cathedral as newly elected Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Aleksei and Metropolitan Filaret celebrated liturgy at theshrine. On November 1, leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, respectively, Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk and PatriarchMstyslav, met in Lviv during anniversary commemorations of the 1918 proclamation of the Western Ukrainian National Republic.

On November 18, 1990, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church enthroned Mstyslav as Patriarch of Kiev and all Ukraine during ceremonies at Saint Sophias Cathedral. Also onNovember 18, Canada announced that its consul general to Kiev would be Ukrainian-Canadian Nestor Gayowsky. On November 19, the United States announced that its consul to Kievwould be Ukrainian-American John Stepanchuk. On November 19, the chairmen of the Ukrainian and Russian parliaments, respectively, Kravchuk and Yeltsin, signed a 10-year bilateral

pact. In early December 1990 the Party of Democratic Rebirth of Ukraine was founded; on December 15, the Democratic Party of Ukraine was founded.[98]

1991

Moscows Crisis

On January 14, 1991, Nikolai Ryzhkov resigned from his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or premier of the Soviet Union, and was succeeded by Valentin Pavlov in thenewly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.

On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 76.4 percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union.[99] The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, Checheno-Ingushetia


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Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first

democratically elected President

Barricade erected in Riga to prevent

the Soviet Army from reaching the

Latvian Parliament, July 1991.

Tanks in Red Square during the 1991

coup attempt.

(an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria)[100] and Moldova boycotted the referendum. In each of theother nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union.

Russias President Boris Yeltsin

On June 12, 1991, Boris Yeltsin won 57 percent of the popular vote in the democratic elections for the newly created post of President of theRussian SFSR, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov, who won 16 percent of the vote. In his election campaign, Yeltsincriticized the "dictatorship of the center," but did not yet suggest that he would introduce a market economy.

Baltic Republics

Lithuania

On January 13, 1991, Soviet troops, along with the KGB Spetsnaz Alpha Group, stormed the Vilnius TV Tower in Lithuania to suppress theindependence movement. Fourteen unarmed civilians were killed and hundreds more injured. On the night of July 31, 1991, Russian OMON fromRiga, the Soviet military headquarters in the Baltics, assaulted the Lithuanian border post in Medininkai and killed seven Lithuanian servicemen.This event further weakened the Soviet Union's position internationally and domestically, and stiffened Lithuanian resistance.

Latvia

The bloody attacks in Lithuania prompted Latvians to organize defensive barricades blocking access to strategically important buildings andbridges in Riga. Soviet attacks in the ensuing days resulted in six deaths and several injuries; one person died later.

August Coup

Faced with growing separatism, Gorbachev sought to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralizedstate. On August 20, 1991, the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a New Union Treaty that would haveconverted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreignpolicy and military. It was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, which needed the economicadvantages of a common market to prosper. However, it would have meant some degree of continuedCommunist Party control over economic and social life.

More radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy wasrequired, even if the eventual outcome meant the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several independent states. Independence also accordedwith Yeltsin's desires as president of the Russian Federation, as well as those of regional and local authorities to get rid of Moscows pervasivecontrol. In contrast to the reformers' lukewarm response to the treaty, the conservatives, "patriots," and Russian nationalists of the USSR stillstrong within the CPSU and the military were opposed to weakening the Soviet state and its centralized power structure.

On August 19, 1991, Gorbachev's vice president, Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and other seniorofficials acted to prevent the union treaty from being signed by forming the "General Committee on the State Emergency," which put Gorbachev on holiday in Foros, Crimea underhouse arrest and cut off his communications. The coup leaders issued an emergency decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers.

Coup organizers expected some popular support but found that public sympathy in large cities and in the republics was largely against them, manifested by public demonstrations,especially in Moscow. Russian SFSR President Yeltsin condemned the coup and garnered popular support.

Thousands of Muscovites came out to defend the White House (the Russian Federation's parliament and Yeltsin's office), the symbolic seat of Russian sovereignty at the time. The


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Russian President Boris Yeltsin

speaks atop a tank outside the White

House in defiance of the August 1991

coup.

Signing of the agreement to establish

the Commonwealth of Independent

States (CIS), December 8, 1991.

organizers tried but ultimately failed to arrest Yeltsin, who rallied opposition to the coup with speech-making atop a tank. The special forcesdispatched by the coup leaders took up positions near the White House, but members refused to storm the barricaded building. The coup leadersalso neglected to jam foreign news broadcasts, so many Muscovites watched it unfold live on CNN. Even the isolated Gorbachev was able to stay

abreast of developments by tuning into BBC World Service on a small transistor radio.[101]

After three days, on August 21, 1991, the coup collapsed. The organizers were detained and Gorbachev returned as president, albeit with his powermuch depleted.

The fall: AugustDecember 1991

On August 24, 1991, Gorbachev dissolved the Central Committee of the CPSU, resigned as the party'sgeneral secretary, and dissolved all party units in the government. Five days later, the Supreme Sovietindefinitely suspended all CPSU activity on Soviet territory, effectively ending communist rule in the SovietUnion.

As the last unifying force dissolved, the Soviet Union collapsed rapidly in late 1991. Between August and December, 10 republics declared theirindependence, largely out of fear of another coup. By the end of summer, Gorbachev no longer had the authority to influence events outside ofMoscow, and even there he was challenged by Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what remained of the Soviet government.

The final round of the Soviet Union's collapse began with a Ukrainian popular referendum on December 1, 1991, in which 90 percent of votersopted for independence. The secession of Ukraine, the second-most powerful republic, ended any realistic chance of even a diminished SovietUnion remaining united. The leaders of the three principal Slavic republics, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), agreed to discusspossible alternatives to the union.

On December 8, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus secretly met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, in western Belarus, and signed the Belavezha Accords, which proclaimed theformation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. They also invited other republics to join the CIS. Gorbachev called itan unconstitutional coup but by that point there was no more doubt that "the USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, is ceasing its existence", as the preamble ofthe Accords put it.

On December 12, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR formally ratified the Belavezha Accords and renounced the 1922 Union Treaty. The Russian deputies were also recalled from

the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The legality of this action was questionable, since Soviet law did not allow a republic to unilaterally recall its deputies.[102] However, no one in Russiaobjected, nor were there objections from the Kremlin, though they would have likely had no effect since what remained of the Soviet government already had been rendered dysfunctional.

In effect, the largest and most powerful republic had seceded from the Union. Later that day, Gorbachev hinted for the first time that he was considering stepping down.[103]

On December 17, 1991, along with 28 European countries, the European Community, and four non-European countries, the three Baltic Republics and nine of the twelve former Soviet

republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague as sovereign states.[104]

Doubts remained over the authority of the Belavezha Accords to disband the Soviet Union, since they were signed by only three republics. However, on December 21, 1991,representatives of 11 of the 12 former republics all except Georgia signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dissolution of the Union and formally established theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS). They also "accepted" Gorbachev's resignation, even though it hadn't been tendered yet. Gorbachev then told CBS News that he would resign

as soon as he saw that the CIS was indeed a reality.[105]

In a nationally televised speech early in the morning of December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR or, as he put it, "I hereby discontinue my activities at the postof President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." The office was declared extinct, and all of its powers (such as control of the nuclear arsenal) were ceded to Russia's president. Aweek earlier, Gorbachev had met with Yeltsin and accepted the Soviet Union's dissolution as fait accompli. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR adopted a statute tochange Russia's legal name from "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" to "Russian Federation," showing that it was now a sovereign state.


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Five double-headed Russian

coat-of-arms eagles (below)

substituting the former state emblem

of the Soviet Union and the ""

letters (above) in the facade of the

Grand Kremlin Palace after the

dissolution of the USSR.

On the night of December 25, 1991, at 7:32 p.m. Moscow time, after Gorbachev left the Kremlin, the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time, andthe Russian tricolor was raised in its place, symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union. The next day, December 26, 1991, the Council ofRepublics, the upper chamber of the Union's Supreme Soviet, issued a formal Declaration recognizing that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as astate and subject of international law, and voted both itself and the Soviet Union out of existence. (The other chamber of the Supreme Soviet, theCouncil of the Union, had been unable to work since December 12, 1991, when the recall of the Russian deputies left it without a quorum). Thefollowing day Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev's former office, though the Russian authorities had taken over the suite two days earlier. By December31, 1991, the few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased operation, and individual republics assumed thecentral government's role.

The Alma-Ata Protocol also addressed other issues, including UN membership. Notably, Russia was authorized to assume the Soviet Union's UN membership, including its permanentseat on the Security Council. The Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered a letter signed by Russian President Yeltsin to the UN Secretary-General dated December 24, 1991, informinghim that by virtue of the Alma-Ata Protocol, Russia was the successor state to the USSR. After being circulated among the other UN member states, with no objection raised, thestatement was declared accepted on the last day of the year, December 31, 1991.

Chronology of Declarations of Restored States

Before the coup

Lithuania March 11, 1990Estonia (transitional) March 30, 1990Latvia (transitional) May 4, 1990

During the coup

Estonia (effective) August 20, 1991Latvia (effective) August 21, 1991


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Zviazda, a state newspaper of the

Belarusian SSR, issue from August

25, 1991. Headline says, Belarus is

independent!

Chronology of Declarations of Newly Independent States

States with limited recognition are shown in italics.

Before the coup

Armenia August 23, 1990 Abkhazia August 25, 1990 Transnistria September 2, 1990 Georgia April 9, 1991

After the coup

Gagauzia August 19, 1991

Ukraine August 24, 1991 Belarus August 25, 1991 Moldova August 27, 1991

Kyrgyzstan August 31, 1991 Uzbekistan September 1, 1991

Nagorno-Karabakh September 2, 1991 Tajikistan September 9, 1991 Azerbaijan October 18, 1991

Turkmenistan October 27, 1991 Chechen Republic of Ichkeria November 1, 1991

South Ossetia November 28, 1991 Russia December 12, 1991 (the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR formally ratified the Belavezha Accords, renounced the 1922 Union Treaty, and recalled Russian

deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR). Kazakhstan December 16, 1991

Legacy

According to a 2014 poll, 57 percent of citizens of Russia regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union, while 30 percent said they did not. Elderly people tended to be more nostalgic than

younger Russians.[106] 50% of respondents in Ukraine in a similar poll held in February 2005 stated they regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.[107]

The breakdown of economic ties that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a severe economic crisis and catastrophic fall in living standards in post-Soviet states and the former

Eastern Bloc,[108] which was even worse than the Great Depression.[109][110] Even before Russia's financial crisis in 1998, Russia's GDP was half of what it had been in the early

1990s.[110]

United Nations membership

In a letter dated December 24, 1991, Boris Yeltsin, the President of the Russian Federation, informed the United Nations Secretary-General that the membership of the USSR in theSecurity Council and all other UN organs was being continued by the Russian Federation with the support of the 11 member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The other fourteen independent states established from the former Soviet Republics were all admitted to the UN:


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The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had already joined the UN as original members on October 24, 1945, together with theUSSR. After declaring independence, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic changed its name to Ukraine on August 24, 1991, and on September 19, 1991, the Byelorussian SovietSocialist Republic informed the UN that it had changed its name to the Republic of Belarus.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were admitted to the UN on September 17, 1991.Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were admitted to the UN on March 2, 1992.Georgia was admitted to the UN on July 31, 1992.

See also

Breakup of Yugoslavia

Dissolution of Czechoslovakia

German reunification

History of Russia (1992present)

History of the Soviet Union (198291)

Predictions of Soviet collapse

References

(Russian) Declaration 142- of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of theSoviet Union, formally establishing the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a state and subject ofinternational law.

1.

"The End of the Soviet Union; Text of Declaration: 'Mutual Recognition' and 'an Equal Basis' "(http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/22/world/end-soviet-union-text-declaration-mutual-recognition-equal-basis.html). New York Times. December 22, 1991. Retrieved March 30, 2013.

2.

"Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics' Independence"(http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1225.html#article). New York Times.Retrieved March 30, 2013.

3.

" (Mikhail Sergeyevih Gorbahv)"(http://www.archontology.org/nations/ussr/ussr_state/gorbachev.php). Archontology. March 27,2009. Retrieved April 3, 2009.

4.

Carrere D'Encausse, Helene (1993). The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations(English translated by Franklin Philip ed.). New York, NY: New Republic (Basic Books)division of HarperCollins. p. 16. ISBN 0-465-09812-6.

5.

"Origins Of Kazakhstan Rioting Are Described" (http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/world/origins-of-kazakhstan-rioting-are-described.html). New York Times. January 11, 1987.Retrieved March 30, 2013.

6.

"Gorbachev's role in 1989 turmoil" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7972755.stm).BBC News. April 1, 2009. Retrieved March 30, 2013.

7.

"The Gorbachev Plan: Restructuring Soviet Power" (http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/30/world/the-gorbachev-plan-restructuring-soviet-power.html). New York Times. June 30,1988. Retrieved March 30, 2013.

8.

"The Third Russian Revolution; Transforming the Communist

dissolution of the soviet union - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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