Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Vyacheslav Molotov (seated) signs the Soviet–German non-aggression treaty, the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, in August 1939, in the company of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin (right), and the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Two years later, Germany invaded the USSR.

The communist leader Joseph Stalin, who forged the Soviet Union into a major 20th century power. His ruthless political purges removed all internal opposition and by the mid-1930s his leadership was undisputed.

Former country in northern Asia and Eastern Europe that reverted to independent states in 1991; see Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

History For the earlier history of Russia, see Russia: history to 1922. Following the Bolshevik (communist) October Revolution of 1917, and the victory of the Bolsheviks in the subsequent civil war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed in 1922, and a constitution adopted in 1923.

The New Economic Policy Following the civil war the country was impoverished. Both industry and agriculture ruined, and the people tired of the economic policy of war communism, which had involved the seizure of private businesses, the nationalization of industry, and the appropriation of food supplies. Disaffection among those who had supported the communists during the civil war found expression in strikes and rebellions, such as the Kronstadt uprising. Lenin, the communist leader, wisely decided to retreat, and proclaimed the New Economic Policy (NEP), which made concessions to peasants, private enterprise, and consumers. The period of the NEP (1921–27) witnessed improvements in the economy, and also the consolidation of the political monopoly of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), enforced by the OGPU (secret police).

Stalin comes to power Following Lenin's death in 1924 an internal party controversy broke out between the communist leaders Stalin and Trotsky over the future of socialism and the necessity of world revolution. Gradually Stalin emerged as the dominant figure, and Trotsky was expelled in 1927.

Having ousted his opponents, Stalin adopted the policy of ‘socialism in one country’, turning his back on Trotsky's ideals of exporting the revolution abroad. The period of Stalin's first two five-year plans (1928–39) involved the development of heavy and light industries, and the forced collectivization of agriculture. The country was transformed as industry grew at an annual (official) rate of 16% with, as a consequence, the size of the manual workforce quadrupling and the urban population doubling. However, the social cost was enormous, with millions dying in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan famine of 1932–34.

Stalin's purges Stalin also launched the so-called cultural revolution, which involved the elimination of the old professional and technical elite and its replacement by a new, ideologically indoctrinated elite, indebted to the regime. The political purges and liquidations which had begun in the 1920s grew in scale after 1934, from which time Stalin ruled as unlimited dictator. Opposition among his own followers precipitated the universal terror of the Great Purge of 1937–38, which marked the culmination of the communist totalitarian dictatorship.

In all, between 1934 and 1938, some 10 million political opponents, Communist Party members, government officials, army officers, and members of minority nationalities were executed or deported to labour camps. Leading party figures, including Nikolai Bulkharin, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinovyev were among the victims of these show-trial purges. In the process, the Soviet political system was deformed, as inner-party democracy gave way to autocracy based around a Stalinist personality cult.

Stalin's pact with Hitler From 1933 Stalin had put forward a policy of collective resistance to aggression, and had let the Soviet Union appear as champion of peace and antifascism. However, in 1939 Stalin suddenly concluded a non-aggression pact with Hitler (the Ribbentrop–Molotov pact). This enabled the latter to attack Poland, which led to the outbreak of general hostilities between Germany and the Western European countries.

For two years there was significant mutual trade between the USSR and Germany, though neither Hitler nor Stalin was able to exact from the other maximum economic advantage. The two divided between themselves the independent countries of central and Eastern Europe, and Stalin annexed most of the territory that Russia had lost after World War I and the revolution (including the Baltic states), as well as northern Bukovina and East Galicia, which had not belonged to Russia.

The Soviet Union attacked Finland in December 1939 (for which it was branded as an aggressor and expelled from the League of Nations), but the Red Army's poor showing against the determined resistance of the Finns compelled Stalin to give up his intention of annexing the whole of Finland. For further details of the Russo-Finnish War see Finland.

The USSR in World War II Despite the non-aggression pact, Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941. Britain and the USA immediately offered assistance to the USSR, which joined the anti-Hitler Allies. For details of the course of the war in military terms see World War II.

The German armies rapidly scored great successes in the USSR, whose army had been weakened by the purging of the officer corps 1937–38. The country was at first deeply divided in its attitude to the war: many saw in the USSR's defeat a means of liberation from communism, and were even prepared to fight on the side of the invaders. One movement that did so was the so-called National Labour Alliance (NTS), a political organization aimed at the overthrow of the communist regime by popular revolution and the establishment of a more constitutional type of government. Some of the features of the NTS, like advocacy of a semi-socialist welfare state, were features of the Italian fascist movement. Many NTS members were imprisoned by the Nazis, however, since the brutality of German policy in the occupied areas produced a swing in popular opinion against the Germans.

The war was now fought by the USSR as a second ‘patriotic war’ (the first had been against Napoleon in 1812; see also Great Patriotic War). Directing the war was the State Defence Committee, the supreme authority in the Soviet Union consisting of prominent party and state functionaries. At first Stalin was chairman, and Vyacheslav Molotov vice chairman; Marshal Voroshilov, secret-police chief Lavrenti Beriya, and Georgi Malenkov were also members. Malenkov played a prominent part in reconstruction of the western areas of the USSR as Soviet forces took over territories that had been occupied by the then retreating Germans. Among the military leaders who distinguished themselves the most outstanding was Marshal Zhukov, who acquired great popularity. After the Allied victory in Europe the Soviet Union took part in the last stage of the war against Japan.

The beginnings of the Cold War As a result of World War II the USSR not only retained all the territory annexed during the period of the Stalin–Hitler pact, but also acquired new territories, including much of East Prussia from Germany, and the Kuril Islands and the whole of Sakhalin from Japan. The pressure of the occupying Red Army facilitated the establishment of communist regimes in the countries of central, eastern, and southeast Europe, Manchuria, and North Korea.

This was a clear violation of the rights of self-determination that had been agreed to by the Allies at the Yalta Conference and the Potsdam Conference, and under the Atlantic Charter and the post-war peace treaties. However, from the Soviet point of view, having suffered 20 million casualties in World War II, the establishment of buffer states between itself and its potential enemies appeared to be a strategic necessity.

The creation of Soviet-sponsored satellite states – together with Stalin's intransigence towards the Western Allies and apparently aggressive designs on Turkey and Iran – split the wartime Allies and led to the formation of two great ideological power blocs, the communist bloc led by the USSR and the capitalist bloc led by the USA. The USSR was also at this time providing indirect support to anticolonial movements in southeast Asia. All this marked the beginning of the Cold War, which was to continue until 1989.

Internally the post-war period was characterized by the suppression of the comparative freedom of the war years and the restoration of conformity, particularly in the cultural field. This period was marked by mass deportations, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism.

The post-Stalin power struggle When Stalin died in 1953 he was succeeded by the collective leadership of his closest collaborators, among whom Malenkov (prime minister 1953–55), Beriya (secret-police chief), and Molotov (foreign minister 1953–56) at first occupied the leading positions. Other figures included Nikita Khrushchev (CPSU first or general secretary 1953–64), Nikolai Bulganin (minister of defence 1953–55), and Lazar Kaganovich.

Despite innumerable protestations of unity, a fierce struggle for power at once set in. Beriya was defeated and executed in December 1953, and a new legal code was introduced that regularized the political system. Malenkov was ousted from the premiership in 1955, being replaced by Bulganin. In June 1957 Malenkov, Kaganovich and Molotov, as an ‘antiparty group’, were expelled from the Central Committee of the party, as was, later in the year, the war hero Marshal Zhukov. In June 1958 Khrushchev ousted Bulganin to add the premiership to his first secretaryship of the party's Central Committee. Having packed the latter's Praesidium (as the Politburo was then known) with his nominees Khrushchev was now supreme.

De-Stalinization and increasing opposition The main policy issue between the warring cliques had been, and in fact continued to be, the scope and pace of de-Stalinization. This process started immediately after Stalin's death out of the necessity for his successors to appear different from the late despot. It proceeded intermittently under the pressure of reviving public opinion. Concessions were granted to the army, consumers, peasants, industrial managers, scientists, writers, artists, and others. The political police (now known as the KGB) lost its preponderance in the state and much of its power. Many propaganda fictions of the Stalin era were exposed and dropped, including that of Stalin himself as the wise and benevolent leader.

But the concessions, small and half-hearted as most of them were, tended only to whet the appetite, while the lessening of terror emboldened the opposition. Khrushchev's denunciation of the errors and crimes of the Stalin era at the February 1956 Party Congress had serious repercussions among the USSR's satellites, and revolts in these countries culminated in the Hungarian revolution of 1956, which was suppressed by Soviet forces (see Hungary). In the USSR itself there had been strikes and uprisings in the main labour camp areas 1953–55, and a radical reformist opposition arose among the intelligentsia (led by the Moscow writers), as did a revolutionary trend among students. There was also a growing responsiveness among certain elements of the public to the revolutionary propaganda of Russian émigrés. All these developments were alarming to the Soviet leadership.

Khrushchev and his successors were torn between tightening the screws and slowing down the process of de-Stalinization on the one hand, and, on the other, the necessity of initiating more reforms and making more concessions in response to pressure from below. These conflicting pressures led to the ‘freeze’ of 1957–58, the ‘thaw’ of 1959–62, the new freeze of 1963, the slight thaw of 1964, and the renewed freeze of 1965–66. The aim was to avoid the dangers of a sharp turn towards Stalinist terror by substituting periodic campaigns of mainly verbal intimidation and only a few arrests.

Economic and technical advances under Khrushchev Many changes were made in economic matters, chiefly involving industrial and administrative organization and attempts to increase farm outputs.

At the 1961 Party Congress, Khrushchev introduced a new party programme for rapid agricultural, industrial, and technological development to enable the USSR to move ahead of the USA in economic terms by 1980 and to attain full communism. He launched a ‘virgin lands’ cultivation campaign in Kazakhstan, increased rural incentives, and decentralized industrial management through the creation of new regional economic councils (sovnarkhozy) with the intention of increasing local efficiency and output.

These reforms enjoyed initial success, and, having exploded its first hydrogen bomb in 1953 and launched the world's first artificial space satellite (Sputnik I) in 1957, the USSR emerged as a serious technological rival to the USA.

External affairs under Khrushchev Externally, the tentative Soviet policy was to relax tension with the USA and the West, in the interests of a stable peace, a halt to the dangerous inflation of the military budget, and economic cooperation in the interests of a peaceful coexistence, if not also of ideological coexistence. This foreign policy was, however, conditional on both the internal and the external political situations. Thus the stabilized internal position of 1959 enabled Khrushchev to ease the pressure on West Berlin that had been exerted in the previous year. It was the renewal of détente policy, coupled with the halting of nuclear aid to China in 1958, which led to the eruption of the Sino-Soviet split, which became public and increasingly bitter from 1961.

Pressure on West Berlin was renewed 1960–61 after the shooting down of a US U-2 reconnaissance plane over Soviet territory. The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further increased East–West tension.

When the reckless Soviet attempt of 1962 to install missiles in Cuba failed, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war (seeCuban missile crisis), Khrushchev renewed his policy of détente with the West and in 1963 signed a partial nuclear test-ban treaty with the USA and Britain. At the same time, exasperated by trying to compromise with the Chinese, he virtually courted a final split with them.

Brezhnev and Kosygin come to power Khrushchev's handling of foreign affairs, together with a series of poor harvests in overcropped Kazakhstan, were among the reasons for the bloodless coup mounted by his colleagues against Khrushchev in October 1964. The two key figures were Leonid Brezhnev, who became the first secretary of the party (1964–82), and Alexei Kosygin, who became prime minister (1964–80). Two other important figures in the new ‘collective leadership’ were Nikolai Podgorny (state president 1965–77) and Mikhail Suslov (ideology secretary 1964–82).

The new collective leadership had a strongly conservative bent, and immediately abandoned Khrushchev's sovnarkhozy and party reforms and reimposed strict censorship in the cultural sphere. Internal economic reform was balanced by increased ideological activity from the party and by tighter control against dissidents by the KGB.

Priority was now given to the expansion and modernization of the Soviet armed forces, including the creation of a naval force with global reach. This, coupled with the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (see Prague Spring), resulted in a renewal of the Cold War 1964–70. In defence of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Brezhnev Doctrine was enunciated, which proclaimed the right of the USSR to intervene to ‘preserve socialism’ in Eastern Europe.

Brezhnev and détente During the later 1960s Leonid Brezhnev emerged as the dominant figure. He governed in a cautious and consensual manner and brought into the Politburo leaders from all the significant centres of power, including the KGB (Yuri Andropov), the army (Marshal Andrei Grechko), and the diplomatic service (Andrei Gromyko).Working with Prime Minister Kosygin, Brezhnev introduced a series of minor economic reforms and gave new priority to agricultural and consumer-goods production. He oversaw the framing of a new constitution in 1977 where the limits for internal dissent were clearly set out. Brezhnev himself became state president in May 1977.

Brezhnev emerged as an international figure during the 1970s, frequently meeting Western leaders. Détente was sought with the USA (in spite of the latter's involvement in Vietnam), and attempts were made to forge new links with China, with whom a number of trade agreements were signed.

The landmarks of this period were the SALT I and SALT II Soviet–US arms-limitation agreements of 1972 and 1979 (see Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) and the Helsinki Accord of 1975, which brought Western recognition of the post-war division of Eastern Europe. Success in a proposed Soviet–US trade agreement to last for the rest of the century eluded the two parties to it, but US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 removed a major source of friction. A treaty controlling underground nuclear explosions for non-military purposes between the USSR and the USA was signed in May 1976, and an agreement was signed in May 1977 for cooperation between the USA and the USSR on the exploitation and use of outer space for peaceful purposes, replacing an earlier (1972) agreement.

Another cultural thaw within the USSR resulted in the emergence of a vocal dissident movement. The political and military influence of the USSR was extended into Africa with the establishment of new left-wing governments in Mozambique (1974), Angola and Ethiopia (1975), and South Yemen (1978). The détente era was brought to an end by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and the Polish crisis of 1980–81. The final years of the Brezhnev administration were ones of hardening policy, mounting corruption, and economic stagnation.

Andropov and Chernenko Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief, was elected CPSU leader on Brezhnev's death in November 1982 and began energetically to introduce a series of radical economic reforms aimed at streamlining and decentralizing the planning system and inculcating greater labour discipline. Andropov also launched a campaign against corrupt and complacent party and state bureaucrats. These measures had a perceptible impact on the Soviet economy during 1983, but when Andropov died in February 1984 he was succeeded by the cautious and elderly Brezhnev supporter Konstantin Chernenko. Chernenko held power as a stop-gap leader for 13 months, his sole initiative being a renewed search for détente with the USA that was rejected by the hard-line Reagan administration.

Gorbachev's ‘market socialism’ On Chernenko's death in March 1985, power was transferred to a new generation led by Mikhail Gorbachev, at 54 the CPSU's youngest leader since Stalin, although Andrei Gromyko was actually president of the USSR in the period 1985–88. Gorbachev introduced a number of reforms. He began to free farmers and factory managers from bureaucratic interference and to increase material incentives in a ‘market socialist’ manner. Working with the ideology secretary, Yegor Ligachev, and premier Nikolai Ryzhkov, he restructured party and state bureaucracies and replaced cautious Brezhnevites with ambitious technocrats. Ligachev soon became the leading voice for the conservative wing of the Politburo and was increasingly considered an obstacle to Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (‘openness’). Ligachev was demoted to the agriculture portfolio, and he was openly ridiculed and accused of corruption. Gorbachev made explicit his renunciation of the ‘Brezhnev doctrine’ in 1989.

These changes were not lost on the opposition leaders in the Baltic republics or on communist deputies in the newly assertive Soviet Parliament. Lithuania declared it would permit free elections, then the Lithuanian Communist Party declared its independence from Moscow. By January 1990 Gorbachev was faced with growing calls for secession from the Soviet Union, and he had been forced to reconsider his earlier opposition to a multiparty system in the USSR itself. He was also provoked to declare a state of emergency and despatch troops to quell warfare between Armenians and Azeris in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

Détente renewed Working with Edvard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, Gorbachev made skilful use of the foreign media to put the case against the US Strategic Defense Initiative and nuclear testing. He met US president Reagan in Geneva and Reykjavik in November 1985 and October 1986, and, at the Washington summit of December 1987, he concluded a treaty designed to eliminate medium-range intermediate nuclear forces (INF) from European soil. This treaty was ratified at the Moscow summit of May–June 1988. As part of the new détente initiative, the USSR also withdrew all its troops from Afghanistan in February 1989 and made broad cutbacks in the size of its conventional forces 1989–90.

Glasnost and perestroika Gorbachev pressed for an acceleration (uskoreniye) of his domestic, economic, and political programme of restructuring (perestroika) from 1987, but faced growing opposition both from conservatives grouped around Ligachev and radicals led by Boris Yeltsin. Gorbachev's glasnost policy helped fan growing nationalist demands for secession among the republics of the Baltic and Transcaucasia. To add momentum to the reform process, in June 1988 Gorbachev convened a special 4,991-member All-Union Party Conference, the first since 1941. At this meeting a radical constitutional overhaul was approved. A new ‘super-legislature’, the Congress of the USSR People's Deputies (CUPD), was created, from which a full-time working parliament was subsequently to be elected, headed by a state president with increased powers.

The members of this CUPD were to be chosen in competition with one another. The authority of the local soviets was enhanced and their structures made more democratic, while, in the economic sphere, it was agreed to reintroduce private leasehold farming, reform the price system, and allow part-time private enterprise in the service and small-scale industry sectors.

‘Socialist pluralism’ The June 1988 reforms constituted the most fundamental reordering of the Soviet policy since the ‘Stalinist departure’ of 1928, entailing the creation of a new type of ‘socialist democracy’, as well as a new mixed economic system. The CUPD elections of March–April 1989 showed clear opposition to conservative apparatchiks. In May 1989, the CUPD elected Gorbachev as its chair, and thus as state president. During 1989 this movement towards ‘socialist pluralism’ was furthered by Gorbachev's abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine and his sanctioning of the establishment of non-communist and ‘reform communist’ governments elsewhere in Eastern Europe. This led to the ruling regimes of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania being overthrown in a wave of ‘people's power’. Responding to these developments in February 1990, the CPSU Central Committee agreed to create a new directly elected state executive presidency on US and French models. In March 1990, the Soviet Parliament authorized private ownership of the means of production, forbidden since the 1920s. Further constitutional amendments made in 1990 supported the right of self-determination, including secession of republics, and ended the CPSU's monopoly of power.

Popular discontent The Gorbachev reform programme showed signs of running out of control 1989–90 as a result both of growing nationalist tensions (which in April 1989 and January 1990 had prompted the despatch of troops to the Caucasus region, first to break up demonstrations in Tbilisi, Georgia, and then to attempt to quell a civil war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh) and mounting popular discontent over the failure of perestroika to improve living standards.

The end of Cold War In their December 1989 summit meeting in Malta, Gorbachev and US president Bush declared an end to the Cold War, opening the possibility of most-favoured-nation trading status with the USA, membership of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and an influx of Western investment. A Gorbachev trip to Canada and the USA followed May–June 1990 and a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, from 1994 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE) in Paris in November 1990.

Moves towards independence in the republics Throughout 1990 the political and economic situation deteriorated. In pluralist elections held at local and republic levels, anticommunist, nationalist, and radical deputies polled strongly, particularly in the Baltic republics and cities. Their new governments issued declarations of republican sovereignty and, in the case of the Baltics, independence. These Moscow refused to recognize, and imposed a temporary economic blockade on Lithuania. As the year progressed, a ‘war of laws’ developed between the centre and the republics, who kept back funds (leading to a worsening federal budget deficit), and the system of central economic planning and resource distribution began to break down. As a consequence, with crime and labour unrest also increasing, the USSR's national income fell by at least 4% during 1990 and was to decline by a further 15% during 1991. Indeed, despite a bumper, but ill-collected, harvest, mounting food shortages led to rationing and an emergency international airlift of food aid during the winter of 1990–91.

The break-up of the CPSU The CPSU also began to fracture during 1990 as a result of nationalist challenges within the republics and divisions among conservatives (grouped in the Soyuz and Communists for Russia bodies), liberals (Communists for Democracy), and radicals (Democratic Platform) over the direction and pace of economic and political reform. A split was formalized at the 28th CPSU Congress in July 1990, when Boris Yeltsin, the new indirectly elected president of the RSFSR, and Gavriil Popov and Anatoly Sobchak, radical mayors of Moscow and Leningrad (St Petersburg), resigned their party memberships. Earlier, in the RSFSR, a new Russian Communist Party had been formed.

Gorbachev's swing to the right In December 1990, concerned at the gathering pace of economic and political disintegration and ethnic strife, Gorbachev persuaded the Soviet parliament to vote him increased emergency presidential powers and approve a new federalized political structure. Subsequently, under pressure from the Soyuz group, the military, and the KGB, a clear rightward shift in policy became apparent.

The rightward shift was manifested by the appointment of the conservative Valentin Pavlov as prime minister, Gennady Yanayev as vice-president, and Boris Pugo as interior minister. Paratroopers were dispatched to Vilnius and Riga (the respective capitals of Lithuania and Latvia) to seize political and communications buildings, and there was a retightening of press and television censorship. The foreign minister, Edvard Shevardnadze, resigned, warning of an impending dictatorship. In protest against these moves, striking miners called for Gorbachev's resignation.

The proposed new Union Treaty From the spring of 1991, after his proposal to preserve the Soviet Union as a ‘renewed federation of equal sovereign republics’ secured public approval in a unionwide referendum (though boycotted by six republics), Gorbachev again attempted to reconstruct a centre-left reform alliance with liberals and radicals. In April 1991, a pact aimed at achieving stable relations between the federal and republic governments and concerned with economic reform (price liberalization, progressive privatization, and the control of political strikes) was signed by the presidents of nine republics; the Baltic states, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova refused to sign. Two months later, the draft of a new Union Treaty, entailing a much greater devolution of authority and the establishment of a new two-chamber federal legislature and a directly elected executive president, was also approved by nine republics.

In July 1991, Gorbachev's standing was further enhanced by his attendance, as an invited guest, at the Group of Seven (G7) summit of the leaders of the chief industrialized Western countries, held in London, and the signing, in Moscow, of a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), to reduce the number of US and Soviet long-range nuclear missiles. At home, however, Boris Yeltsin, who was popularly elected as the RSFR's president in June 1991, pressed for even greater reform and in July 1991 Communist Party cells were banned from operating in factories, farms, and government offices in the Russian Republic. In the same month a Democratic Reform Movement was formed by Edvard Shevardnadze, Alexander Yakovlev, and the mayors of Moscow and Leningrad, Anatoly Sobchak and Gavriil Popov.

The abortive anti-Gorbachev coup These liberal–radical initiatives raised disquiet among CPSU conservatives and in June 1991 Prime Minister Pavlov unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the Soviet parliament to vote him extra powers. Two months later, on Monday 19 August 1991, a day before the new Union Treaty was to be signed, an attempted coup was launched by a reactionary alliance of leaders of the Communist Party apparatchiki, the military–industrial complex, the KGB, and the armed forces. It was declared in the early hours of the morning that President Gorbachev was ill and that Vice-President Gennady Yanayev would take over as president, as part of an eight-person emergency committee, which also included Pavlov, the defence minister Dmitri Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, and interior minister Boris Pugo.

The committee assumed control over radio and television, banned demonstrations and all but eight newspapers, imposed a curfew, and sent tanks into Moscow. They failed, however, to arrest the Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who defiantly stood out as head of a democratic ‘opposition state’ based at the Russian Parliament, the so-called ‘White House’, where external telephone links remained in operation. Yeltsin called for a general strike and the reinstatement of President Gorbachev. On Wednesday morning, having failed to wrest control of the ‘White House’ and win either international or unionwide acknowledgement of the change of regime, and having endured large demonstrations in Moscow, St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Chişinǎu (Moldova), and Lviv (Ukraine) on Tuesday, the coup disintegrated. The junta's leaders were arrested and in the early hours of Thursday 22 August President Gorbachev, fully reinstated, arrived back in Moscow. There were 15 fatalities during the crisis.

The aftermath of the coup In the wake of the failed coup, established communist structures, as well as the Soviet Union itself, rapidly disintegrated, faced by a popular backlash that resulted in such icons of communism as the Felix Dzerzhinsky statue outside the KGB headquarters in Moscow being toppled and the Red Flag burned, being replaced by traditional, in some cases tsarist, symbols. President Gorbachev initially misjudged the changed mood, intimating his continued faith in the popularly discredited Communist Party, and seeking to keep to a minimum of changes in personnel and institutions. However, forced by pressure exerted by the public and by Boris Yeltsin – whose stature both at home and abroad had been hugely enhanced – Gorbachev instituted a succession of far-reaching reforms, which effectively sounded the death knell of Soviet communism and resulted in the fracturing of the union and its subsequent refounding on a much changed and truncated basis.

The new union cabinet was effectively selected by Yeltsin and staffed largely with radical democrats from the Russian Republic – the Russian prime minister Ivan Silaev became the Soviet prime minister. Yeltsin also declared himself to have assumed charge of the armed forces within the Russian Republic and, at a heated session of the Russian Parliament, pressurized President Gorbachev into signing a decree suspending the activities of the Russian Communist Party. In addition, a new Russian national guard was established and control assumed over all economic assets in the republic. Recognizing the changed realities, Gorbachev announced on 24 August 1991 that he was immediately resigning as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and ordered its Central Committee to dissolve itself.

The republics declare independence The attempted coup also speeded up the movement towards dissolution of the Soviet Union. During the coup, when Red Army tanks were sent into their capitals with orders to seize radio and television stations, the Estonian and Latvian parliaments followed the earlier example of Lithuania and declared independence. After the coup the largely conservative-communist controlled republics of Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Uzbekistan, as well as the key republic of Ukraine, also joined the Baltic states, Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia in declaring their independence. Their governments acted partly in the hope of shoring up their authority and privileges and partly because they feared Russian domination of the existing USSR and possible future territorial disputes.

New Union Treaty signed At an emergency session of the Congress of People's Deputies, the Soviet Union was partially salvaged through the negotiation of a new Union Treaty in which each republic was to be allowed to decide its own terms of association, with much greater power being devolved from the centre in what represented a new loose confederation, or ‘Union of Sovereign States’, though with the armed forces retained under a single military command. Ten republics – the three Baltic states, Georgia, and Moldova being the exceptions – declared a willingness to sign this agreement.

The Congress also voted on 5 September 1991 to establish a new system of government in which it would be abolished and its powers would be assumed by a revamped, two-chamber supreme soviet, with its upper chamber chosen by the republics and its decisions ratified by the latter; a state council (government), comprising President Gorbachev and the heads of the ten republics; and an interrepublican economic committee with equal representation from all 15 republics and chaired by Ivan Silaev. It also acknowledged the rights of republics to secede, opening the way for President Gorbachev to formally recognize the independence of the Baltic states by decree (6 September 1991).

Decentralization and new realities The possibility of forging a new, decentralized union receded as 1991 progressed.

Concerned at the accumulation of political and economic authority by Russia, several of the republics began to seek full independence so as to escape Russian domination, refusing to sign new economic and political agreements. Participation in the new supreme soviet and state council was patchy, their gatherings attracting members from, at most, ten republics. Although a declaration of intent to maintain a ‘common economic zone’ of interrepublican free trade and to uphold existing factory ties was initialled in October 1991, along with a civic and interethnic accord, the republics proved unable to agree on specific details of a proposed new economic and political union.

As a consequence, President Gorbachev occupied the position of a figurehead leader, possessing little real authority, although his position was slightly strengthened by the return of Shevardnadze to head the foreign relations ministry in November 1991. Instead, the pre-eminent leader in the new USSR, governing significantly from the former office of the CPSU Politburo, was Russia's president, Boris Yeltsin. In November 1991, the Russian Republic took over control of the Soviet money supply and exchange rate, and began implementing a market-centred economic reform programme. On 14 November preliminary agreement was reached on the formation of a new ‘Union of Sovereign States’, but in a subsequent meeting on 25 November the republican delegations that attended refused to initial the treaty.

The CIS replaces the USSR The growing power of the individual republics became apparent in late November when the Group of Seven (G7) industrial countries reached a Soviet debt-deferral agreement with the USSR and included eight of the republics as signatories. On 8 December 1991 the most powerful of the republics – Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine – agreed to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a development denounced by Gorbachev. By mid-December, the five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) had announced that they would join the CIS, and Gorbachev had agreed on a transfer of power from the centralized government to the CIS. The remaining republics (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) except Georgia, torn by civil war, joined the others in signing agreements on 21 December to establish the commonwealth, formally designated an alliance of independent states. The formal dissolution of the USSR came on 25 December 1991 when Gorbachev resigned as president.