Perestroika

     From modest beginnings at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress
in 1986, perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic,
political, and social restructuring, became the unintended
catalyst for dismantling what had taken nearly three-quarters of
a century to erect: the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian
state.
     The world watched in disbelief but with growing admiration
as Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, democratic
governments overturned Communist regimes in Eastern Europe,
Germany was reunited, the Warsaw Pact withered away, and the Cold
War came to an abrupt end.
     In the Soviet Union itself, however, reactions to the new
policies were mixed.  Reform policies rocked the foundation of
entrenched traditional power bases in the party, economy, and
society but did not replace them entirely.  Newfound freedoms of
assembly, speech, and religion, the right to strike, and
multicandidate elections undermined not only the Soviet Union's
authoritarian structures, but also the familiar sense of order
and predictability.  Long-suppressed, bitter inter-ethnic,
economic, and social grievances led to clashes, strikes, and
growing crime rates.
     Gorbachev introduced policies designed to begin establishing
a market economy by encouraging limited private ownership and
profitability in Soviet industry and agriculture.  But the
Communist control system and over-centralization of power and
privilege were maintained and new policies produced no economic
miracles.  Instead, lines got longer for scarce goods in the
stores, civic unrest mounted, and bloody crackdowns claimed
lives, particularly in the restive nationalist populations of the
outlying Caucasus and Baltic states. 
     On August 19, 1991, conservative elements in Gorbachev's own
administration launched an abortive coup d'‚tat to prevent the
signing of a new union treaty the following day and to restore
the party's power and authority.  Boris Yeltsin, who had become
Russia's first popularly elected president in June 1991, made the
seat of government of his Russian republic, known as the White
House, the rallying point for resistance to the organizers of the
coup.  Under his leadership, Russia embarked on even more far-
reaching reforms as the Soviet Union broke up into its
constituent republics and formed the Commonwealth of Independent
States.