Concise Russian history for a traveler

Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

Yury V. Andropov and then Konstantin Chernenko led the country from 1982 until 1985, but their administrations failed to address critical problems. When Gorbachev took over as general secretary of the party in March 1985 he was unaware of the depth of the crisis and launched perestroika, a program of economic and political restructuring. His goal was to bring the Soviet Union up to economic par with such capitalist countries as Japan, Germany, and the United States.       He     traveled     much     abroad   and     was

brilliantly successful in convincing foreigners that the U.S.S.R in convincing foreigners that the U.S.S.R. was no longer a threat to anyone. Gorbachev also instituted a policy of glasnost ("openness"), which allowed the media more freedom of expression, and editorials complaining of depressed conditions and the government’s inability to correct them began to appear. In the spring of 1989 a new Soviet parliament, the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, was convened and M. Gorbachev became the Soviet president with broad powers. But he was beset by ethnic problems, which were exacerbated by economic decline. He allowed the use of force in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the Baltic states to suppress local strivings for sovereignty and independence. Gorbachev’s difficulties opened up opportunities for other politicians in the various republics. In March 1991 when Gorbachev launched an all-union referendum about the future Soviet federation, Russia and several other republics added some supplementary questions, one of the Russian questions was whether the voters were in favor of a directly elected president. They were, and they chose Boris Yeltsin. He used his newfound legitimacy to promote Russian sovereignty, to demand Gorbachev’s resignation,  to   advocate  and   adopt  radical  economic