Quick questions on Collapse of the USSR 1991: HSC Modern History Cold War

By 1990 the Soviet economy was contracting. Official GDP fell 2.4 per cent in 1990 and 17 per cent in 1991. The state budget deficit reached 11 per cent of GDP. The Soviet government had effectively lost monetary control: republics issued their own coupons, hoarded goods, and refused to deliver tax to Moscow.

The Baltic states had never accepted Soviet annexation as legitimate. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols (acknowledged by the Soviet Congress in December 1989) underpinned the moral case. Popular fronts emerged: Sajudis in Lithuania (June 1988), Rahvarinne in Estonia (October 1988), Tautas Fronte in Latvia (October 1988). The Baltic Way on 23 August 1989 was a 600-kilometre human chain from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius commemorating the Pact.

Boris Yeltsin had been ousted from the Politburo by Gorbachev in 1987 after publicly criticising the pace of reform. He returned through the Russian Congress of People's Deputies elections (March 1990). On 29 May 1990 he was elected Chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet by 535 votes to 467. On 12 June 1990 the Russian Federation declared the supremacy of its laws over Soviet laws (the sovereignty declaration).

Gorbachev tried to save the Union through a new treaty negotiated at the Novo-Ogaryovo presidential dacha from April 1991. The proposed Union of Sovereign States would have replaced the centralised USSR with a confederal entity, retaining nine of the fifteen republics (the three Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova were out).

The State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) declared on the morning of 19 August 1991 that Gorbachev was incapacitated and that Vice President Gennady Yanayev was assuming the presidency. The committee included KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov, Interior Minister Boris Pugo, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, and others. Gorbachev was held under house arrest at his Foros dacha in Crimea.

The Ukrainian independence referendum on 1 December 1991 (90 per cent yes) ended the Union politically. Without Ukraine, no Union was viable.

Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted (2001) argues the collapse was an uncoerced internal Soviet event. Serhii Plokhy's The Last Empire (2014) emphasises Ukraine's role. Vladislav Zubok's Collapse (2021) is the major recent treatment using Russian archives. Mark Galeotti's We Need to Talk About Putin (2019) follows the legacies.

The coup catalysed the dissolution but the dissolution was driven by Ukrainian independence and Yeltsin's Russian state.

He wanted reform within the Soviet system. The 1991 outcome was unintended.

25 December 1991 (Gorbachev's resignation) is conventional; the USSR formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991 when the Supreme Soviet voted itself out.