Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union broke up into fifteen republics, ending the Cold War.

From the 1970s the Soviet economy stagnated under bureaucratic central planning and heavy military spending, and the war in Afghanistan (1979–1989) added to the burden. Gorbachev, who became party general secretary in 1985, launched perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), introducing market elements and widening freedom of the press and politics. In 1990 he ended the Communist Party’s monopoly on power and became the first president of the Soviet Union.

Amid the reforms the Baltic states and other republics demanded independence. In August 1991 communist hardliners staged a coup to reverse the reforms, but it collapsed within three days in the face of resistance by Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic, and the people of Moscow. The party’s activities were then suspended and republic after republic declared independence. In December the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus agreed to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); Gorbachev resigned as president on 25 December, and the next day the Supreme Soviet declared the union dissolved.

The Soviet Union broke into fifteen republics, and the Russian Federation inherited its permanent seat on the UN Security Council and its nuclear arsenal. With the world’s first socialist state gone after sixty-nine years, the Cold War order came to an end. South Korea had established relations with the Soviet Union in 1990 (Nordpolitik), and in September 1991 the two Koreas joined the United Nations together.