The dissolution of the Soviet Union
A superpower ends without a war, in December 1991.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika loosen controls that turn out to have been holding the system together; nationalist movements in the republics, a failed hardline coup in August 1991, and Yeltsin's Russian government finish it. The USSR formally dissolves on 26 December 1991 into fifteen states. It is one of very few instances of a great power dissolving without external defeat, and the 1990s bring severe economic collapse across the region.