Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The decade following the death of Brezhnev can be divided into three
remarkably different periods. Between 1982 and 1985, the Soviet Union
remained under ineffective leaders incapable of pursuing a policy of change even
as the nation's problems worsened. Economic decline and continuing tension
with the United States were the two most obvious difficulties. Beginning in
1985, the Soviet Union acquired a new kind of leader who brought extraordi-
nary change. Mikhail Gorbachev overturned what had seemed permanent fea-
tures in the Soviet system in both domestic and foreign affairs. Finally, from 1989
to 1991, the changes that Gorbachev had encouraged among the Soviet citizenry
Nikita Khrushchev
(right) and Leonid
Brezhnev attending
a session of the
Supreme Soviet,
Moscow, 1961
(Library of Congress)
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