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In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's gross domestic product shrunk 35%, imports and exports both fell over 80%, and many domestic industries shrank considerably. In a speculated attempt to re-join the IMF and the World Bank , executive director Jacques de Groote and another IMF official were invited to Havana in late ...
- Overview
- The coup against Gorbachev
collapse of the Soviet Union, sequence of events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991. The former superpower was replaced by 15 independent countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
That the Soviet Union was disintegrating had been subtly apparent for some time, but the final act began at 4:50 pm on Sunday, August 18, 1991. Soviet Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev was at his dacha in the Crimean resort of Foros when he was contacted by four men requesting an audience. They were his chief of staff, Valery Boldin; Oleg Baklanov, first deputy chairman of the U.S.S.R. defense council; Oleg Shenin, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); and Gen. Valentin Varennikov, chief of the Soviet Army’s ground forces. They were accompanied by KGB Gen. Yury Plekhanov, chief of security for party and state personnel. Their unexpected arrival aroused Gorbachev’s suspicions, and, when he tried to use the phone, it was dead. They had come to demand, in the name of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R., that Gorbachev sign a document declaring a state of emergency and transferring power to his vice president, Gennady Yanayev. They were taken aback when Gorbachev refused and rebuked them as treasonous blackmailers.
Gorbachev and his family were placed under house arrest by Gen. Igor Maltsev, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Defense Troops. Both Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, later stated that they had fully expected to be killed. Although outside communication had been cut off, Gorbachev was able to get word to Moscow and confirm that he was fit and well. Members of Gorbachev’s personal bodyguard remained loyal throughout the episode, and they were able to fashion a simple receiver so that the imperiled president could learn what was happening beyond the walls of the dacha. BBC and Voice of America broadcasts kept Gorbechev abreast of the coup’s progress and international reaction to it.
Just after 6:00 am Moscow time on August 19, TASS and Radio Moscow proclaimed that “ill health” had prevented Gorbachev from executing his duties and that, in accordance with Article 127-7 of the Soviet constitution, Yanayev had assumed the powers of the presidency. Yanayev headed an eight-member Emergency Committee. Its other members were Baklanov; Vladimir Kryuchkov, chairman of the U.S.S.R. KGB; Premier Valentin Pavlov; Minister of Internal Affairs Boris Pugo; Vasily Starodubtsev, chairman of the Farmers’ Union; Aleksandr Tizyakov, president of the U.S.S.R. Association of State Enterprises; and Minister of Defense Marshal Dmitry Yazov. They soon issued Resolution No. 1, which banned strikes and demonstrations and imposed press censorship. There was also an address to the Soviet people claiming that “mortal danger hangs over our great fatherland.”
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The planned signing on August 20 of a new union treaty that would have weakened central control over the republics appeared to explain the timing of the coup. A sharp attack on the union treaty by Anatoly Lukyanov, chairman of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, was distributed by TASS early on August 19. The U.S.S.R. Cabinet of Ministers met later that morning, and most of the ministers supported the coup. All but nine newspapers were banned.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
What few had considered, however, was that the Soviet Union would be brought down by an incident involving a civilian nuclear plant. Gorbachev had been in power for just over a year when, on April 26, 1986, the Unit 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power station in Pryp’yat (now in Ukraine) exploded.
Sep 1, 2017 · The Soviet Union, or U.S.S.R., was made up of 15 countries in Eastern Europe and Asia and lasted from 1922 until its fall in 1991. The Soviet Union was the world’s first Marxist-Communist state ...
The collapse of the coup led to the demise of Soviet communism, but the CPSU’s influence had been dwindling since at least the beginning of Gorbachev’s reform regime in 1985. The coup’s failure simply punctuated this decline by showcasing the hollow threat that the once-dominant Soviet apparat had become.
Oct 1, 2021 · How It Happened. By Kristyna Foltynova October 1, 2021. On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a sovereign state. Its collapse was gradual and, some would say, even inevitable.
Dec 22, 2016 · The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) was forged by a band of left-wing radicals, the Bolsheviks, who led an armed attack on the Russian government in February 1917, storming the Tsar ...
