Modern Russia History, Year Five, Class 2, 2012 – 2013,

Today: Russia From Gorbachev to Putin: The end of the Cold War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union:

Gulf Coast State CollegeAdjunct Professor Joe

Boisvert

Glasnost and PerestroikaGlasnost (Russian: гла́� сность, IPA: [ˈɡlasnəsʲtʲ] (  listen, literally: Openness)

was a policy that called for increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union. Introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s, Glasnost is often paired with Perestroika (literally: Restructuring), another reform instituted by Gorbachev at the same time. The word "glasnost" has been used in Russian at least since the end of the 18th century.

The word was frequently used by Gorbachev to specify the policies he believed might help reduce the corruption at the top of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, and moderate the abuse of administrative power in the Central Committee. Russian human rights activist and dissident Lyudmila Alexeyev explained glasnost as a word that "had been in the Russian language for centuries. It was in the dictionaries and lawbooks as long as there had been dictionaries and lawbooks. It was an ordinary, hardworking, nondescript word that was used to refer to a process, any process of justice of governance, being conducted in the open."

Gorbachev Irrevocably Changed the Soviet Union

• Mikhail Gorbachev in less than seven years transformed the world turning the Soviet Union upside down. Mikhail Gorbachev, March 29th, 2011 (introduced by Kevin Spacey and Sharon Stone at celebrations for his eightieth birthday, and for the Mikhail Gorbachev Award and gala concert

80th Birthday

Gorbachev Woke the Sleeping Giant• He woke the Sleeping Giant and he gave the

people freedoms they had never dreamed of having. He also told them the Brutal Truths about their horrific Past especially about Stalin.

• Whole periods of recorded Soviet history were changed by glasnost. Stalin, Brezhnev and Cherenkov previously great leaders were unmasked as the brutal oppressive murders they really were. Only Lenin remained sacrosanct.

The Truth Revealed

Quotes by Mikhail Gorbachev• Surely, God on high has not refused to give

us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.

• It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

• Mikhail Gorbachev

Soviet Eastern Block• He tosses away and cut all ties and

immediately pulled out all Soviet Troops from the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe.

Ended the Communist Party• His final and most dangerous

step was to diminishes the power of the entire Soviet Communist Party.

• He Changed the Power Structure of the Soviet Union in the Government, Military and in the Spy Community.

• He tried to end the KGB and he succeeded in changing Russian forever. The old Soviet Union Collapsed.

Gorbachev ended the Cold War that had dominated World Politics for over fifty years. It had consumed the wealth of many of the World’s Nations especially the Soviet Union.

Soviet Missiles

CIA PROJECTION

OF MINUTE ONE

OF WW3

KGB and Old Guard Start Coup

• Gorbachev finally lost control of the Revolution. A coup started by the remnants of the KGB and the Old Guard of the Army forced him from Office in 1991 and they tried to stop the rapid changes taking place across the Country.

Many Books About the Rivalry Between CIA and KGB

The documents suggest that Gorbachev knew more about violent crackdowns in the last days of the Soviet Union than he has admitted. Here, Azerbaijanis look at

the bodies of people killed by Soviet troops in the streets of Baku (1990 photo).

Pro-independence protests in Lithuania in September 1989. Fourteen people were killed in a Soviet crackdown in January 1991. "I am now under tremendous pressure to introduce presidential control in Lithuania," Gorbachev said in a telephone conversation with US President George Bush a few days before the military action.

In the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Russian soldiers used sharpened spades and poison gas to break

up a protest march in the city on the night of April 8-9, 1989.

20 August 1991, The Attempted Coup to Overthrow Gorbachev Collapsed

• On August 18, 1991 the Chairman of the KGB Vladimir Kryuchkov and 7 other Soviet leaders, the State Committee on the State of Emergency, attempted to overthrow the government of the Soviet Union.

• The purpose of the attempted coup d'état was to preserve the integrity of the Soviet Union and the constitutional order.

• President Mikhail Gorbachev was arrested and ineffective attempts made to seize power.

• Within two days, by 20 August 1991, the attempted coup collapsed. Gorbachev left Power Yelsin took Over

In the Last Days of Gorbachev’s Rule USSR Run out of Everything, Food, Gas….

Old Tactics New Problems

• The old guard tried to bring back the old solution that had worked so well for the Tsars and for the Soviet Leaders. They attempted to enforce their Power to stomp out dissident behavior and censor nonconformist behavior and ideas.

• Gorbachev often quoted the other Great Reformer Peter the Great, “Russia is a country in which things that don’t happen, happen.”

The End of Gorbachev Time in Control

Conclusions About Gorbachev

In the late 1980s, the Soviet government came under increased criticism, as did Leninist ideology (which Gorbachev had attempted to preserve as the foundation for reform). Members of the Soviet population were more outspoken in their view that the Soviet government had become a failure. Glasnost did indeed provide freedom of expression, far beyond what Gorbachev had intended, and changed citizens' views towards the government, which played a key role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev has strong claims to be regarded as one of the greatest reformers in Russian history and as the individual who made the most profound impact on world history in the second half of the 20th century.

Mikhail Gorbachev 'ashamed' of Vladimir Putin Mikhail Gorbachev has launched a withering personal attack on Vladimir Putin on the eve of a giant anti-Kremlin protest in Moscow, saying he is ashamed of the Russian prime minister.

The End Class Two