The end of Soviet communism
- Date:
- August 18, 1991 - December 31, 1991
- Location:
- Russia
- Soviet Union
- Participants:
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Estonia
- Georgia
- Kazakhstan
- Lithuania
- Moldova
- Russia
- Ukraine
- Context:
- Cold War
- 1991 Soviet coup attempt
- On the Web:
- Ohio State University - Origins - The Soviet Collapse (June 16, 2025)
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. The CPSU now reaped a harvest of bitterness and hatred for its failure to produce a modern dynamic state and society. The remarkable economic decline of the Soviet Union during the 1980s had exacerbated ethnic tensions and promoted regionalism and nationalism. The coup, directed first and foremost at crushing attempts to expand Russian sovereignty, accelerated the breakup of the Soviet empire. Gorbachev, who had weakened the CPSU with his glasnost and perestroika reforms, now found his own influence fatally compromised by the last gasp backlash against his efforts.
The period leading up to the coup was characterized by two trends: attempts by the republics to gain more autonomy vis-à-vis the centre and attempts by Gorbachev to hold the union together. Blood was spilled in many parts of the country. In January 1991 attacks by Soviet forces on the television station in Vilnius, Lithuania, resulted in the deaths of at least 14 civilians and 1 KGB officer. Among the troops used were Special Purpose Police Units, known by the Russian acronym OMON, the feared “black berets” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These troops were under the command of Pugo, one of the coup plotters, and his deputy, Gromov, one of the signatories of the Sovetskaya Rossiya letter. Gorbachev blamed local commanders for “overreacting,” but failed to condemn their behaviour. In the months leading up to the coup, OMON was also active in Latvia as well as dozens of cities throughout the Soviet Union, and it quickly acquired a reputation for brutality. A bloody clash in the south, where the autonomous oblast (province) of Nagorno-Karabakh was attempting to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, threatened to escalate into full-scale war.
Against the background of violence in the republics, the Soviet Union’s first referendum was called on March 17, 1991, to provide a public mandate for Gorbachev’s increasingly desperate efforts to preserve the union. About 76 percent of those who voted were in favour of preserving the union, but the percentage was much lower in regions where Yeltsin was popular. In Ukraine voters gave Communist leader Leonid Kravchuk their support to negotiate a new union treaty, whereas the Baltic States, Georgia, Moldavia, and Armenia refused to hold the referendum at all. Instead, the Baltic republics and Georgia conducted independence referenda. The three Baltic polls all produced clear majorities in favour of independence. On May 26, 1991, Georgians voiced their overwhelming support for former dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia to serve as president of an independent Georgia. By the time Armenia voted in September, just weeks after the failed coup, the result was a foregone conclusion. The all-union referendum had dramatically backfired, and the main victors were republics that either wished to weaken central power or to break with it entirely.
Even as events appeared to be spiraling out of control in the republics, a serious attempt was made within Russia to establish a credible pro-democracy movement. In July 1991 Shevardnadze and Yakovlev joined Moscow mayor Gavriil Popov and Leningrad mayor Anatoly Sobchak to declare the creation of the Movement for Democratic Reforms. While these veteran politicians still believed in the ideals of perestroika, it had become clear that it would be impossible to achieve any real change within the structure of the CPSU.
The rise of Yeltsin and the foundation of post-Soviet Russia
Yeltsin first rose to prominence in 1985 as an ally of Gorbachev, but he bristled at the slow pace of reform and soon found himself cast into the political wilderness. During his short time as the mayor of Moscow, however, Yeltsin won great popular acclaim as a champion of political and economic freedom. With Gorbachev’s introduction of democratic elections for the Soviet parliament, Yeltsin was returned to power with the overwhelming support of a Moscow constituency in 1989. The following year he was elected president of Russia over Gorbachev’s objections, and he immediately began advocating greater autonomy for the Russian republic. In anticipation of the passage of Gorbachev’s union treaty, Yeltsin set out to create an executive presidential system that would allow him to govern independently of parliament and the Communist Party hierarchies in republican and local government. He thus intended to correct the fatal error of Gorbachev, who had failed to forge an executive structure to implement the decisions of the U.S.S.R. Presidential Council and Security Council. Yeltsin’s executive powers rested on four pillars: the State Council, the Council of Ministers, the Council of the Federation and Territories, and the Security Council. The State Council bore the same name as the highest consultative body in Russia before 1917, a deliberate attempt to establish continuity with pre-Communist Russia.
Yeltsin’s team consisted of three groups: one made up of former party officials from Sverdlovsk, where Yeltsin had been party secretary; a second including Russian Premier Silayev, Yury Sokhov, state councillor and secretary of the Council of the Federation and Territories, Russian KGB head Viktor Ivanenko, and others, many of whom were from the military-industrial complex and skilled in running the system; and finally representatives of the democratic movement. After the coup a vigorous debate ensued as to whether Russia should spearhead reform in the union or go it alone and invite other republics to follow. By November the conflict had been resolved in favour of those who wanted Russia to lead the exit from the union.
The announcement of Yeltsin’s new team on November 7 (the 74th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution) revealed the new thinking. Following the U.S. example of vesting chief of state and chief of government powers in a single individual, Yeltsin was to act as his own prime minister. It was also stated that, mindful of Gorbachev’s fate, he would personally supervise the Defense and Interior ministries and the KGB. In addition, the bureaucracy was to be streamlined. Only 20 ministries, 3 state committees, and a state security committee were listed. There had been over 100 ministries in the U.S.S.R.
Independence movements and the dissolution of the Soviet Union
After the coup the republics moved rapidly to claim their independence. In a vain attempt to preserve its power, the Communist Party of Belarus led the rush by declaring independence on August 25, just 72 hours after Gorbachev’s return to Moscow. On August 27 the parliament and Grand National Assembly of Moldavia, renamed Moldova, proclaimed the republic’s independence and initiated the process of leaving the union. In September all three Baltic states formally left the Soviet Union and were admitted to the United Nations as the independent countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Georgia and Armenia each went their own way, and Kazakhstan and Kirgizia (renamed Kyrgyzstan) took control of their republics’ resources and began economic reform and privatization. The other Central Asian republics tended to support continued union, but they lacked the economic and political influence of their neighbours.
In November seven republics, including Russia, agreed to form a new “Union of Sovereign States,” but it remained a shell. On December 1 Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence, and, a week later, on December 8, representatives from the three Slavic republics—Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine—met in Brest, Belarus, and declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. They proclaimed the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an international association of sovereign countries whose administrative centre would be located in Minsk, Belarus.
On December 19 Yeltsin ordered the Russian government to assume all functions of the Soviet government except for defense and nuclear energy production. Two days later, the presidents of 11 of the 12 remaining republics met in Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan, to sign the foundation documents of the CIS. Georgia was not an initial signatory member, as the country was gripped by unrest that would eventually topple the Gamsakhurdia government in January 1992. All that remained was for Gorbachev to retire as gracefully as possible.
On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation of the presidency of the Soviet Union in a televised address. At 7:32 pm, less than a half hour after the conclusion of Gorbachev’s speech, the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered from outside the Kremlin for the final time. It was replaced by the prerevolutionary red, white, and blue tricolor of Russia. Russia succeeded to the U.S.S.R.’s permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and all Soviet embassies became Russian embassies. For six days, the Soviet Union continued to exist in name only, and at midnight on December 31, 1991, it was formally dissolved.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica