The final years of the Soviet Union were a strange mix of good and bad.  The Soviet economy stagnated, but trade with the West opened up.  The military was withdrawn from Afghanistan, but the threat of nuclear war was much less than it had been at the beginning of the 1980's.  Still, the problems that had been ignored under Leonid Brezhnev only grew larger.

By the mid-1980's the Soviet Union realized that it could no longer continue the massive military buildup that had followed the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Shortages of consumer goods, the war in Afghanistan, and the constant pressures of the Cold War with the United States were rapidly draining the Soviet Economy.  This changed somewhat with the death of Konstantin Chernenko in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union.  He proposed a series of reforms to stimulate the Soviet economy and relax tensions with the West called Glasnost and Perestroika.

A series of Summit meetings with United States President Ronald Regan led to a relaxing of tensions, including the signing of the CFE treaty.  In 1989 the Soviet Union pulled out its forces in Afghanistan.  Eastern European nations also demanded that the Soviets do the same.  In an effort to reduce the costs of sustaining so many troops abroad, the Soviets pulled their troops out of Eastern Europe.  The Berlin Wall fell later that year and many wondered how long it would take for the Soviet Union to do so as well.  In other military matters, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved as many of the Eastern European nations attempted to distance themselves from Russia.

Internal strife and breakaway republics compounded the Soviet situation.  The republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war, Ukraine had a growing independence movement, and Soviet Georgia wanted to break away.  In some cases these breakups were peaceful, but others degenerated into violent armed confrontation. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Chechnya erupted into wars that had to be stopped by the Army.

All the news of this era was not bad.  The MIR space station was launched and enabled the Soviet space program to carry out long duration space flights.  Trade with the United States and other Western nations increased.  This allowed the exchange of Western consumer goods - blue jeans, records, magazines, and even McDonalds and Playboy.

Despite these reforms, the shortages continued.  Attacks from political rivals also increased as censorship was lifted.  People grew very concerned about the direction the Soviet Union was headed.  To many it seemed that society was sliding into immorality and chaos.  Their fears were not far from the truth.  The end of the Soviet era came on December 25, 1991 when the Soviet Union passed into history.