The USSR: 1964–1991

Under Leonid Brezhnev, who led from 1964 to 1982, economic reforms were carried out at first (1965), but in the 1970s growth slowed, dependence on raw-material and oil exports increased and the management system became rigid; this period is called “stagnation”. In 1968 the reforms in Czechoslovakia (the Prague Spring) were halted by the entry of Warsaw Pact troops, and in December 1979 Soviet troops entered Afghanistan; the war lasted until 1989 and brought heavy losses. After the short periods of Andropov and Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader in March 1985 and proclaimed the course of “perestroika”, “glasnost” and “new political thinking”; the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986 showed the system’s weaknesses. In 1988–1991 elections, press freedom and multi-party politics expanded, national movements grew in the republics and economic difficulties deepened. On 19–21 August 1991 the State Committee (GKChP) attempted a coup and failed; the republics declared independence one by one (Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991), on 8 December the Belovezha Accords created the CIS, and with the Alma-Ata Declaration of 21 December eleven republics (including Uzbekistan) became part of it, and on 25 December Gorbachev resigned and the USSR ceased to exist.