[7] It also led indirectly to the revolutions of 1989 in which Soviet-imposed socialist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were toppled peacefully (with the notable exception of Romania),[8] which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics.

On 23 December 1986 Andrei Sakharov, the most prominent Soviet dissident, returned to Moscow shortly after receiving a personal telephone call from Gorbachev telling him that after almost seven years his internal exile for defying the authorities was over.

[13] At the 27 October plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Yeltsin, frustrated that Gorbachev had not addressed any of the issues outlined in his resignation letter, criticized the slow pace of reform, and servility to the general secretary.

[20] On 23 August 1987, the 48th anniversary of the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov Pact, thousands of demonstrators marked the occasion in the three Baltic capitals to sing independence songs and attend speeches commemorating Stalin's victims.

On 1 July 1988, the fourth and last day of a bruising 19th Party Conference, Gorbachev won the backing of the tired delegates for his last-minute proposal to create a new supreme legislative body called the Congress of People's Deputies.

In October 1988, Brazauskas bowed to pressure from Sąjūdis members, and legalized the flying of the historic yellow-green-red flag of independent Lithuania, and in November 1988 he passed a law making Lithuanian the country's official language; also, the former national anthem, "Tautiška giesmė", was later reinstated.

When Gorbachev rushed back from a visit to the United States, he was so angered with being confronted by protesters calling for Nagorno-Karabakh to be made part of the Armenian Republic during a natural disaster that on 11 December 1988, he ordered that the entire Karabakh Committee be arrested.

In the public discourse, the movement called for national awakening, freedom of speech, the revival of Moldovan traditions, and for the attainment of official status for the Romanian language and return to the Latin alphabet.

On 26 April 1988, about 500 people participated in a march organized by the Ukrainian Cultural Club on Kyiv's Khreschatyk Street to mark the second anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, carrying placards with slogans like "Openness and Democracy to the End".

The discovery of mass graves in Kurapaty outside Minsk by historian Zianon Pazniak, the Belarusian Popular Front's first leader, gave additional momentum to the pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus.

[55] On 25 October 1989, the Supreme Soviet voted to eliminate special seats for the Communist Party and other official organizations in union-level and republic-level elections, responding to sharp popular criticism that such reserved slots were undemocratic.

On 16 July 1989, in Abkhazia's capital Sukhumi, a protest against the opening of a Georgian university branch in the town led to violence that quickly degenerated into a large-scale inter-ethnic confrontation in which 18 died and hundreds were injured before Soviet troops restored order.

On 1 October 1989, a peaceful demonstration of 10,000 to 15,000 people was violently dispersed by police constables in front of Lviv's Druzhba Stadium, where a concert celebrating the Soviet "reunification" of Ukrainian lands was being held.

On 26 November 1989, a day of prayer and fasting was proclaimed by Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, thousands of faithful in western Ukraine participated in religious services on the eve of a meeting between Pope John Paul II and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Gorbachev.

On 24 January 1989, the Soviet authorities in Byelorussia agreed to the demand of the democratic opposition (the Belarusian Popular Front) to build a monument to thousands of people shot by Stalin-era police in the Kuropaty Forest near Minsk in the 1930s.

Later, they gathered in the city center near the government's headquarters, where speakers demanded the resignation of Yefrem Sokolov, the republic's Communist Party leader, and called for the evacuation of half a million people from the contaminated zones.

[76] Strike actions by coal miners in the Kuznetsk Basin, or Kuzbass, began on 10[77] or 11[78] July 1989, in reaction to increased prices, unsafe working conditions and popular frenzy against corruption as a result of perestroika.

On 23 June 1989, Gorbachev removed Rafiq Nishonov as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR for being unable to stop the race riots in the region and replaced him with Islam Karimov, who went on to lead Uzbekistan as a Soviet Republic and subsequently as an independent state until his death in 2016.

A mob of about 150 people armed with sticks, stones and metal rods attacked the police station in Mangishlak, about 140 kilometres (90 miles) from Zhanaozen before they were dispersed by government troops flown in by helicopters.

Late on 19 January 1990, after blowing up the central television station and cutting the phone and radio lines, 26,000 Soviet troops entered the Azerbaijani capital Baku, smashing barricades, attacking protesters, and firing into crowds.

[100][101][102] Following the hardliners' takeover, the 30 September 1990 elections (runoffs on 14 October) were characterized by intimidation; several Popular Front candidates were jailed, two were murdered, and unabashed ballot stuffing took place, even in the presence of Western observers.

On 28 October UAOC faithful, supported by Ukrainian Catholics, demonstrated near St. Sophia's Cathedral as newly elected Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Aleksei and Metropolitan Filaret celebrated liturgy at the shrine.

More radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required, even if the eventual outcome meant the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several independent states.

In contrast to the reformers' lukewarm response to the treaty, the conservatives, "patriots", and Russian nationalists of the USSR – still strong within the CPSU and the military – were opposed to weakening the Soviet state and its centralized power structure.

[152] On 18 December, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Council of Republics) adopted a statement, according to which it accepts with understanding the Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States and considers it a real guarantee of a way out of the acute political and economic crisis.

Overall, the fifteen independent states that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union face problems stemming from uncertain identities, contested boundaries, apprehensive minorities, and an overbearing Russian hegemony.

[228] In a slightly different vein, David Kotz and Fred Weir have contended that Soviet elites were responsible for spurring on both nationalism and capitalism from which they could personally benefit, which is demonstrated also by their continued presence in the higher economic and political echelons of post-Soviet republics.

For example, Edward Walker has argued that minority nationalities were denied power at the Union level, confronted by a culturally destabilizing form of economic modernization, and subjected to a certain amount of Russification, but they were at the same time strengthened by several policies pursued by the Soviet government (indigenization of leadership, support for local languages, etc.).

[231] An opinion piece by Gorbachev in April 2006 stated: "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[234]According to political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in their book In Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (2022), the cohesion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership had declined by the 1980s.