Historical Events
The Revolutions of 1989
In 1989 one-party communist systems fell in quick succession across Eastern Europe. Hungary opened its border, Poland reached free elections through round-table talks, the Berlin Wall came down, and in Romania Ceaușescu was executed. The decisive difference was that Gorbachev, unlike in 1956 and 1968, renounced armed intervention.
The Tiananmen protests and the crackdown of 4 June 1989
In April 1989 student gatherings mourning Hu Yaobang grew into protests against corruption and for press freedom; the 26 April editorial branding them “turmoil” and the May hunger strike brought a million people to the square. During Gorbachev’s visit the leadership decided on martial law and Zhao Ziyang, who opposed it, fell. On the night of 3–4 June the army fought its way into the city and hundreds to thousands died.
The Economic Reform Debate and the 500 Days Programme
The reforms begun with the 1987 Law on State Enterprises and the 1988 Law on Cooperatives produced an economy neither planned nor market. Enterprises gained the freedom to raise wages while prices stayed fixed; money multiplied as goods dwindled, and the budget deficit grew together with empty shelves. In the summer of 1989 hundreds of thousands of miners in the Kuzbass and Donbass struck, with even bars of soap on their list of demands. In 1990 Shatalin and Yavlinsky produced the 500 Days programme for a transition to a market economy, backed by Yeltsin's Russian republic, but Gorbachev chose a compromise with the Ryzhkov government's moderate plan.
The Novo-Ogaryovo Process and the New Union Treaty
When the March 1991 referendum returned 76 percent for preserving the union, Gorbachev made it his last political capital. On 23 April, at the Novo-Ogaryovo estate outside Moscow, he issued the 9+1 statement with the leaders of nine republics, Yeltsin's Russia included, opening negotiations on a new union treaty that would recast the USSR as a voluntary federation of sovereign republics; six republics, among them the Baltic states and Georgia, stayed away from the start. Through a summer of tugging over taxation and the division of powers a draft was completed, with signing set for 20 August. In a late-night meeting at the end of July, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev agreed that after the signing the hardliners, Kryuchkov and Pavlov among them, would be replaced; the KGB's microphones carried the conversation straight to its subjects.
The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSR
In August 1991, hardliners seeking to stop the signing of a new union treaty confined Gorbachev and set up a State Committee for the State of Emergency to stage a coup. Led by Kryuchkov, Yazov, Pavlov and others, the coup collapsed within three days as Yeltsin resisted atop a tank and citizens rallied. The coup’s failure only accelerated the dissolution of the union.