How Did The Gorbachev's Failure

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In 1917, the USSR was created and the first secret police of the Soviet Union, the Cheka, was formed. The KGB was created in 1954 off of the Cheka following Stalin’s death. In 1954, the KGB was created to administer to prisons, detention camps, mental institutions, and to be the world’s largest international spy organization. In August 1991, KGB leaders attempted a coup that would have possibly begun a civil war. However, the coup failed because the leaders had forgotten to take certain precautions while planning it . This coup involved intense planning and coordination between the KGB and Soviet army, but experienced many mistakes that were detrimental to the plan and led to the coup’s failure.
The coup began on August 19, 1991 after Mikhail …show more content…
Firstly, many Marxism supporters in the U.S.S.R. were angered by Gorbachev’s rule, but were even more angered that important people in the U.S.S.R. wanted to eliminate the communist government. Many people believed that Yeltsin would be a better ruler than Gorbachev, but they still wanted to preserve the bureaucracy. Their doubt in Gorbachev stemmed from many “conspiracy theories that squared poorly with the way Gorbachev actually looked during the coup” (Mathews). However, after the coup failed, many of the citizens still had more respect for Gorbachev than previously because he managed to prevent the coup from working. Another effect of the attempted overthrow was that Yeltsin was put in charge of Russia on December 25, 1991, when Gorbachev announced his resignation and dissolved the communist state of the U.S.S.R. Yeltsin entered the position with ninety percent of the Russian population favoring his rule, but stepped down after having only an eight percent approval rating. During this time period, Yeltsin prioritized the failing economy he inherited and “[devoted] nearly 90 percent of [the state’s] foreign aid budgets to [economic] reform” (McFaul). This led Russia into even greater debt, which would not have occurred if the coup and many smaller events had not led to the dissolvement of the U.S.S.R. Finally, the third main lasting effect of the coup was that Russia gave more power to their security forces to ensure that an event like this would never happen again. Immediately after the coup, it was rumored that the KGB was to be broken up, which it was for the most part, but not completely. Instead, the KGB remained in Belarus, but it became the Federal Security Bureau, or FSB, in Russia. The FSB currently enforces security in Russia and rarely performs operations outside of their own country. Overall, the coup scared many Russian and U.S.S.R.
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