Mistakes and Demise: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union

This chapter focuses on the final stage of the history of the Soviet Union, from 1985 to 1991, when the last Communist Party and Soviet state leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform his country by making economic life more effective, widen the scope of political participation, open up history and culture for debate, and introduce a new, peaceful thinking in international affairs. Gorbachev wanted to save the Soviet system but ended up destroying it. His initially successful strategy of taking a middle-of-the-road position to gain support worked well during the first years of reform, but the mid-position became successively narrower until it finally dissolved. Gorbachev’s increasingly desperate attempts to negotiate a new and revised union treaty led in 1991 to the failed August Coup which, in turn, dealt the final death blow to the Soviet Union. By way of conclusion, political mistakes are often difficult to distinguish from failures caused by structural problems. As is illustrated by the case of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union, this is particularly salient in societies in which statist power and cultural patterns have traditionally played decisive roles in historical developments.