City of Belmont - Ruth Faulkner Public Library

Moscow, December 25th, 1991, Conor O'Clery

Moscow, December 25th, 1991

Conor O'Clery

EUROPEAN HISTORY. The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking bulldozer, wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev s authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin. But it took four months of intrigue and double-dealing before the Soviet Union collapsed and the day arrived when Yeltsin could hustle Gorbachev out of the Kremlin, and move in as ruler of Russia."

Moscow, December 25th, 1991, the last day of the Soviet Union