R1120th-21st

The Soviet Union fell in a period between 1989 and 1991. After Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts at reform in an old, repressive, communist regime, a sentiment of anti-communism was sweeping the nation and the Soviet Union eventually fell altogether. This meant that the Soviet Union, Western Europe and the United States’ enemy for over four decades, had finally been overthrown, making Russia a new nation that elected its leader democratically and had a capitalist economic system. The reason that Gorbachev’s communist Soviet Union fell was that even though he had introduced perestroika, economic reform, and glasnost, social liberation, it made the inhabitants of the communist state even more ready to get rid of communism.

McKay, John P. __A History of Western Society__. 7th ed. New York City: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.