The wind is swirling in the clouds, and it is customary to watch the mulberry fields become vicissitudes; from ancient times to the present, how many stories are laughing!
Gorbachev was not the Soviet Union's "gravedigger"; on the contrary, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was the soviet Union's ultimate "gravedigger".
The collapse of the Soviet Union was not inevitable; on the contrary, after Yeltsin's reforms, the rigid Soviet Union took its breath again.
Gorbachev's rise to power was highly anticipated, and at the time of the election, all the bigwigs of the CPSU strongly approved of Gorbachev taking over the position of the helmsman of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was young, shallow in seniority, and of insufficient prestige, not a popular figure in his election. Why did everyone choose him?
In fact, the Soviet Union at that time was already exhausted, and everyone understood the decay of the Soviet Union. Since Brezhnev came to power, the Soviet top brass has almost fully entered the "club of the elderly", and all the decisions of the Empire have been decided by these elderly people, and this was even more so in the Gorbachev era.
Those in power are dying of old age, getting by, coveting comfort, and even if someone wants to change the status quo of the Soviet Union, they are powerless. This gave the young Gorbachev the opportunity to show his fists on stage. Everyone believes that even if Gorbachev cannot lead the Soviet Union to new heights, then he can at least change the status quo of the Soviet Union and continue the life of the Soviet Union. After all, Gorbachev was young and vigorous, had a strong will to reform, and most importantly, Gorbachev vigorously insisted on the complete unification of the Soviet Union from beginning to end.
Yeltsin, as Gorbachev's powerful assistant, was also strongly trusted by Gorbachev at this time. In order to reform, Gorbachev reorganized the ruling team, and he ignored the opposition of the people and forcibly promoted Yeltsin, who worked locally, to the position of secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
To Gorbachev's surprise, however, Yeltsin became his most powerful opponent.
Gorbachev took into account the interests of the conservatives in his reforms, so his policies were often repeated and his convictions were not firm enough; the reforms had been carried out for two years with little success; Yeltsin's reforms in Moscow were rebuked by Ligachev, which aroused Yeltsin's dissatisfaction; in short, the resistance to reform was enormous, and Yeltsin was very dissatisfied with this status quo, and he once said:
The party organization is always behind all major events, and the external reforms are vigorous on the surface, but they have not achieved the desired results. Within the party, many positions are still determined according to seniority, while at the grassroots level, reform has almost come to a standstill. I have always been in favor of strict requirements, strict responsibility, rather than relying on intimidation to ask everyone to work, and everyone does things without principle, trust, and dedication.
Yeltsin saw that reform was only superficial, and Gorbachev had great courage and desire to reform, but he lacked an iron-blooded wrist and was soft on resistance.
In this way, Yeltsin, disappointed by this, gradually went to the opposite side of Gorbachev and became an opposition.
Yeltsin was Russian, so he desperately wanted to create a monolithic Russian Federation, hoping that Russia itself would be able to get rid of the control of the CPSU and develop itself independently. In fact, not only Russia, but also the other republics have their own small calculations, but their energy is too small, and they need to see Russia's attitude.
In this way, in the Kremlin, there were two regimes at the same time, the "Supreme Soviet Power of the USSR" and the "Ruling power of the Russian Federation", competing with each other for power and secretly competing. The Soviet Union still had absolute superiority because it controlled the Soviet army, the KGB, the police, and even nuclear weapons.
Although Yeltsin did not have the support of a powerful armed force, he had the support of the people, and in the face of this situation, Gorbachev did not dare to act rashly. The Central Committee of the CPSU has opened up the party ban, abolished the special status of the CPSU, treated everyone equally, and freely competed. But in the face of the people's reaction, the CPSU said "cold" in its heart.
In the end, the two sides compromised and agreed that the member states would restore their autonomy and re-form a new alliance state, but the army of the new alliance would be under the unified command of the central government. The central government, on the other hand, is headed by the president and parliament, and everyone must re-conclude new treaties and form a new country.
However, those who feared that the CPSU would lose power staged a coup d'état on August 19, the democratically elected president Gorbachev was deposed for "ill health", and the vice president took the reins of power, declaring a state of emergency and establishing a state of emergency committee.
They sent troops into the three Baltic states, which had broken away from the CPSU, and had their troops surround the building of the Ruling Center of the Russian Federation in the Kremlin, put Gorbachev under house arrest, control radio, and make televised speeches. In short, they were bent on restoring the status quo ante before the Reforms in the Soviet Union.
Not to be outdone, Yeltsin boarded tanks and gave speeches to gain popular support. In addition, he issued a request to the top brass of the military so that they could be objective and calm. Eventually, the army withdrew, the emergency committee lost support, and the coup failed.
After the defeat, Yeltsin completely grasped the actual power of the Soviet Union, accepted the armed forces of the CPSU, the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the ruling regime of the CPSU became a puppet. Yeltsin, a vested interest, no longer wanted to be a younger brother, so he refused to sign the agreement that had been made to form a new alliance. In the end, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus signed the Declaration of the Commonwealth of Independent States, leaving President Gorbachev alone, which was the prototype of the "Cisom", by which time the Soviet Union had become the "former Soviet Union". This also meant the complete disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Reluctantly, on December 25, Gorbachev handed over the "lockbox" of nuclear weapons to Yeltsin's defense minister, who had also been his own defense minister. At 7 p.m., Gorbachev signed the last presidential decree to resign as president of the Soviet Union, and by this time the Soviet Union had completed all formal disintegration.
With the other republics having agreed to regroup a new alliance, Yeltsin's temporary change of heart eventually led to a sharp deterioration in the situation, and the Soviet Union was actually killed by Yeltsin.