“On Sunday, August 18, 1991, a little before 5:00pm, two black limousines rolled quietly up to the gate of Gorbachev's vacation home in the Crimea. Inside the cars were some of the conspirators who had come to inform him that they had staged a coup d'etat, or sudden revolt, and that he had been ousted.” Gorbachev was placed under a heavily guarded house arrest as eight of his closest associates returned to Moscow for what is now referred to as the August Coup. The plan was to return to absolute rule by the Communist Party and force the 14 neighboring republics back into line. Yeltsin used this revolt to his advantage by immediately forming a resistance at the Russian parliament. Thousands showed up to support him and protect the building from being stoned as Yeltsin stood on top of a tank and publicly defied plotters of the coup.
They had underestimated how intensely opposed people were to the old Soviet system and the coup collapsed on the 21st of August from the extreme weight of public opposition. At this point, the organizers returned Gorbachev to Moscow from his “detention” in the Crimea. Yeltsin then ordered the Soviet Communist Party to “end its activities on Russian soil.” The collapse of the coup shattered not just the Communist Party but the Soviet Union itself and on the 25th of December, 1991, Gorbachev publicly stepped down as president of the Soviet Union. “The whole of the central government has completely outlived itself. It is dead. It has committed suicide.” With the death of a nation came the birth of 15 newly recognized, and newly independent countries: Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.
To many, the collapse of the USSR could not have been a more relieving change. It meant that emigrating was now significantly easier and things such as being Jewish, for example, were no longer something to be ashamed of. However, for many that chose to stay in Russia or its 14 neighboring countries, the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the death of a dream”. When the USSR first collapsed, wages were higher than they had been before Gorbachev's reforms and perestroika but 3,000 rubles (approximately $9.00 US) did not cover the rapidly rising costs of rent, fuel, and especially food. Currently, about 25% of Russia's population still lives below the poverty line, and the birth rates as well as life expectancy are still down. It's been almost 15 years and many of the older citizens believe life was better and more secure under the old Soviet system. So was Mikhail Gorbachev a good guy or a bad guy? The world may never know.
