Perestroika
Perestroika was a reform made to develop a new economic structure in the Soviet Union, its objective was to take out the country from an economic crisis and to impulse the development. This reform started in June 1987 by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union principal by Mijail Gorbachov. The Perestroika permitted industries to make decisions without consulting the state. Glasnost complemented Perestroika and the relation between those two and the fall of the USSR is that they permitted the people to criticize the system and it was all they did, they called it to be replaced and the republics were tired of Soviets telling them what to do, they wanted to rule themselves.
Glasnost
What the Glasnost did to the Soviet Union was that the Soviets could criticize the system without being punished. It happened when the state became transparent and was open about the state crimes that had occurred in the past, this overwhelmed the soviets. It was developed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Glasnost it means openness. The word Glasnost actually appeared in Article 9 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution although without any practical application. Both terms, Glasnost and Perestroika, can be found in Gorbachev’s speeches and writings as early as the mid-1970s. But it was in a speech of December 1984 where Gorbachev first identified them and gave them a meaning. Leaders like Stalin, Brezhnev and Cherenko were unmasked as brutal oppressive murderers, Lenin was kept sacrosanct after the implementation of the Glasnost.
Berlin Wall
Fall of Berlin Wall/End of Cold War
The brutal execution on live television of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife; after this Yugoslavia threw off the yoke of communism only to dissolve quickly into a violent civil war, later followed by the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania declaring their independence; all these happened on a Christmas Day of 1989 and helped to spread demands for freedom and reveal against communism all along the Soviet Union.
On November 10, 1989, the Berlin Wall, one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War came down. By the end of the year, leaders of every Eastern European nation except Bulgaria had been ousted by popular uprisings.
In May 1989, when the removal of Hungary's border fence opened a hole in the Iron Curtain, causing an exodus of thousands of East Germans fleeing to West Germany and Austria via Hungary.
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, commonly referred to as the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty, which was signed in December 8, 1987, by President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at a summit meeting in Washington.
On December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.). After 45 years, the Cold War was over.
The brutal execution on live television of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife; after this Yugoslavia threw off the yoke of communism only to dissolve quickly into a violent civil war, later followed by the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania declaring their independence; all these happened on a Christmas Day of 1989 and helped to spread demands for freedom and reveal against communism all along the Soviet Union.
On November 10, 1989, the Berlin Wall, one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War came down. By the end of the year, leaders of every Eastern European nation except Bulgaria had been ousted by popular uprisings.
In May 1989, when the removal of Hungary's border fence opened a hole in the Iron Curtain, causing an exodus of thousands of East Germans fleeing to West Germany and Austria via Hungary.
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, commonly referred to as the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty, which was signed in December 8, 1987, by President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at a summit meeting in Washington.
On December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.). After 45 years, the Cold War was over.