The Soviet Union dissolved on what specific date — the day Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president and the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time?
Gorbachev resigned on the evening of 25 December 1991 (Christmas Day in the Western calendar; an unremarkable day in the Soviet one). The Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin that evening; the Russian tricolour replaced it. The Supreme Soviet formally voted itself out of existence on 26 December 1991. The Berlin Wall fall (1989) and German reunification (1990) had been earlier substantive steps in the broader Eastern European political reorganisation. The successor states (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) had already formed the Commonwealth of Independent States on 8 December 1991.
Read the full facts →The Cold War was the geopolitical, ideological, economic, and military rivalry between the United States and its Western allies and the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies, from approximately 1947 to 1991. Conducted primarily through proxy wars, nuclear arms competition, ideological-cultural conflict, and substantial economic-political competition, it shaped global politics for nearly half a century and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Related questions
- Roughly what fraction of Napoleon's Grande Armée recrossed the frontier as an organised force after the 1812 Russian campaign?
- How many days were the 52 American hostages held in Iran before their release in January 1981?
- On what date did the Argentine commander Major General Mario Menéndez surrender Port Stanley to British forces?
- On what date did the Khmer Rouge capture Phnom Penh and order the city's evacuation?