shooting down demonstrators ended in his execution by a firing squad (December ) under the command of his own generals. The televised images of the shooting and the fall of the Berlin Wall galvanized the process of the breaking up of the communist world. In six months the political map of half of Europe had been redrawn. Gorbachev made a last attempt to take a hard line against the disruptionist only to be challenged by a second great miners’ strike in 1991and huge demonstrations in Moscow.
In response, conservative forces in his government attempted to take a hard line without Gorbachev. They used troops in Moscow to stage a coup, and held Gorbachev under house arrest. But other military units refused to back them and as a result power fell into the hands of Boris Yeltsin, a reformer backed by the West. In the meantime, three Baltic States had formally left the Soviet Union, they were Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
They were admitted to the U.N. as independent countries. In November , eleven republics (Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) announced secession from the Soviet Union. Instead, they declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States.
On December, Gorbachev announced his resignation. For six days the Soviet Union continued to exist only in name and at midnight on December , it was formally dissolved. The USSR was no more. Yeltsin was first an ally of Gorbachev.
However, as Mayor of Moscow, Yeltsin won great popularity as a champion of political and economic freedom. With Gorbachev’s introduction of democratic elections for the Soviet parliament, Yeltsin was returned to power with overwhelming support of a Moscow constituency in . The following year he was elected as the President of Russia over Gorbachev’s objections. President Yeltsin advocated greater autonomy of the Russian Republic, with executive presidential system that would allow him to govern independently of parliament.
Yeltsin Gorbachev SUMMARY The history of China becoming a Communist country in the aftermath of Second War is narrated with the portrayal of developments there after the