Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, marking the end of one of the greatest empires of the 20th century and ending the Cold War. The collapse of the communist bloc followed years of economic crises, political instability, and pressure for internal reforms led by Mikhail Gorbachev, with the policies of Glasnost (transparency) and Perestroika (economic restructuring).
The process of disintegration began with the weakening of Soviet control over Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In 1991, several Soviet republics, such as Ukraine, Lithuania, and Georgia, declared independence, making the maintenance of the USSR unsustainable. In August of that year, an attempted coup against Gorbachev failed, hastening the dissolution of the regime.
With the end of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the sole global superpower, and the Cold War came to an end. The Soviet collapse led to the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and paved the way for a new geopolitical landscape, with profound impacts on world politics to this day.
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