Hi There,
What happened to the Soviet Union in 1985?
The last few years of the Soviet Union were characterized by the efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev to revive the flagging Soviet economy and turn around years of political and social stagnation, but ultimately to no avail. With the passing of Yuri Andropov (1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (1985), Gorbachev attempted a variety of reforms aimed at allowing socialism to succeed. Glasnost, the best known of these, enhanced freedom of expression, including religious expression and led to a more open press, the emergence of alternative media, access to the Western press and eventually the creation of political unions in opposition to communism and in support of certain republics' independence from the Soviet Union. Glasnost underscored the failings of the Soviet system and did little to bring about the needed economic improvements that were sought. In the end, Gorbachev's attempts to make socialism work were unsuccessful. They led to an unsuccessful hard-line coup d'etat in August 1991, which was followed by Boris Yeltsin's declaring that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991.
