who was the head of the soviet union when it collapsed
Dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.[1] The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do so at all. On the previous day, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers – including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes – to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag.[2]
History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953) Even so, the basic structures and tensions that marked the cold war were not yet in place in 1945–46. Despite the necessary means of the United States to advance a different vision of postwar Europe, Joseph Stalin viewed the re-emergence of Germany and Japan as the Soviet Union's chief threats, not the United States. At the time, the prospects of an Anglo-American front against the USSR seemed slim from Stalin's standpoint.[citation needed] Economic advisers such as Eugen Varga reinforced this view, predicting a postwar crisis of overproduction in capitalist countries which would culminate by 1947–48 in another great depression.[citation needed] For one, Stalin assumed[citation needed] that the capitalist camp would soon resume its internal rivalry over colonies and trade and not pose a threat to the Soviet Union.