The end of the USSR

In order to preserve the socialist order, the new Secretary General of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev, initiated a series of changes economically finally would end at the end of the Soviet Union. This set of reforms known as perestroika. Also it is made a cultural and political openness, glasnost. It democratize the party and a constitutional amendment allowing a multiparty system was performed. It also held an improvement in its international relations with countries like the US and China.

The immediate consequences were negative and did not give the expected result: economic instability, rising inflation, the struggle between political forces, increasing social conflict between ethnic groups and eventually led to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.