Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Epic card · No. 6611

On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved and ceased to exist as a sovereign state. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political and economic stagnation. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted from several factors: chronic economic stagnation, the unsustainable financial burden of the arms race with the United States and foreign conflicts, intense ethnic nationalism and separatism within its union republics, and the destabilizing effects of Gorbachev's reforms (particularly glasnost and perestroika). The process began with growing unrest in the country's union republics developing into an incessant political and legislative conflict between them and the central government. Until its final years, the Soviet Union was made up of 15 union republics that served as the homelands of different ethnic groups...

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