In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolve their communist government.
Communism ends in Russia after 74 years.
Communism began in Russia with the ‘Red October’ revolution in 1917 which followed the February Revolution that removed the Tsars from power.
During World War II Russia expanded and took over several countries which became part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Massive spending on its military to compete with the US during the cold war, and poverty in the USSR began to really show in the beginning of the 1980’s when they started relying on financial help from the West.
On the 11th of March 1985 the Communist Party gained a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the first leader not to be alive during the original revolution. Gorbachev realised that in order to improve the economy he would have to introduce some new drastic changes. One of these changes was known as glasnost (which literally means publicity but was used to mean justice of governance) which was a drastic change in policy, giving Soviets much more freedom of speech and transparency of the government. Gorbachev hoped to eliminate corruption in the communist party. Gorbachev allowed privatising of companies for the first time to promote growth in the economy. He introduced a Presidential system on the 1st of July 1988 and allowed for multiparty free elections for the first time in Russia since the revolution of 1917.
These first elections projected the anger of the Soviet people to the corruption and restrictions they had previously faced. In the polls held on the 27th of March 1989 which left many communist officials defeated.
Gorbachev also made huge changes in foreign policy through open talks with America and Britain. He made the first steps to reducing Soviet Nuclear weapons and urged the US to do the same which allowed for the end of the bitter “Cold War”.
Gorbachev’s was seen by many as a hero to democracy, especially in the west, but many of the hardline communist party leaders saw Gorbachev as a menace to all that the USSR stood for.
On March the 11th 1990 Lithuania (one of the republics of the USSR taken in World War II) took the unprecedented step as declaring their independence from the USSR. President Mikhail Gorbachev had changed a policy which stated that the USSR had the right to stop communist countries from changing their constitution and Lithuania took this as a chance to escape. Gorbachev had not meant for the policy change to extend to the republics of the USSR and he ordered them to retract their declaration of independence or face the consequences. They were given until the 17th of March but instead of obeying Russia they defiantly re-enforced their declaration by asking other nations to officially recognise their independence. Gorbachev sent in troops but this didn’t deter many more of the republics also declaring their own independence by the start of 1991.
On the 15th of March 1990 Gorbachev became the first elected President of the Soviet Union but he would not keep the title for long. On the 19th of August 1991 those communist party leaders that opposed his views for change initiated a coup against him. But Gorbachev had significant support in the form of Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was a very popular figure and would have been the number one choice to take over from Gorbachev. Yeltsin used his influence to quash the coup and called on the Russian people not to except regime change. By the 23rd of August the coup was over. Gorbachev resigned as the General Secretary of the Communist party the following day and on the 29th of August Yeltsin had the party dissolved.
