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President Leonid Brezhnev
Characterised by political repression, KGB spying in most government organizations, declining agricultural production, arms race, interventions in satellite countries (Afghanistan and the Czech Republic) and Soviets buying grain from the United States. -
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Presidence of Yury Andropov
Reforms on the Soviet administration and took a dim view of corruption. He introduced a new type of vodka with a lower alcohol content to fight alcoholism. He freed certain industrial or regionally based plant managers from restrictive central planners. -
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Presidence of Konstantin Chernenko
He supported a greater role for the labor unions, reform in education, and trimming of bureaucracy. In foreign policy, he negotiated a trade pact with China. Chernenko did little to prevent the escalation of the Cold War with the United States. -
Glasnost
( Russian: “openness”) Soviet policy of open discussion of political and social issues. Began w/it the democratization of the Soviet Union. It permitted criticism of government officials and allowed the media freer dissemination of news and information. -
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Presidence of Mikhail Gorbachev
As de facto ruler of the Soviet Union, he tried to reform the stagnating Communist Party and the state economy by introducing glasnost ("openness"), perestroika ("restructuring"), and uskoreniye ("acceleration" of economic development). -
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Gorbachev Foreign Policies
In 1987, the USA and the USSR reached an agreement on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces.In addition the two nations also embarked on the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in 1991. Moreover, Gorbachev oversaw the Soviet withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Angola, and withdrew Soviet support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the communist governments in Cuba and Vietnam. He also negated the Brezhnev Doctrine that pledged Soviet intervention where communism was under threat. -
Perestroika
( Russian: “restructuring” ) program instituted in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev to restructure Soviet economic and political policy. Seeking to bring the Soviet Union up to economic par with capitalist countries such as Germany, Japan, and the United States, Gorbachev decentralized economic controls and encouraged enterprises to become self-financing. -
Chernobyl Disaster
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster began early in the early hours of Saturday 26 April 1986 within the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011). -
Demokratizatsiya
(Russian: Демократизация, "democratization") was a slogan introduced by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government. -
The end of the Soviet Union
After the failed coup Yeltsin struck two blows that effectively ended the Soviet Union – and in the process the career of Gorbachev. First, as President of Russia, he banned all Communist Party activity on Russian soil. Secondly he, along with the presidents of Ukraine and Belorussia, signed a treaty to create a new commonwealth of republics. Without these key nations the Soviet Union was defunct. Gorbachev recognised the inevitable and resigned.
