Dissolution of the Soviet Union

1988–1991 breakup of the sovereign state

On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved and ceased to exist as a sovereign state and subject of international law. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political and economic stagnation. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted from several factors: chronic economic stagnation, the unsustainable financial burden of the arms race with the United States and foreign conflicts, intense ethnic nationalism and separatism within its union republics, and the destabilizing effects of Gorbachev's reforms (particularly glasnost and perestroika).

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