Mikhail Gorbachev · Full chronicle and history

Yeltsin took control of Russia to halt tax remittances to the center and seized central financial institutions, causing the Soviet central fiscal deficit to skyrocket. On December 25, Gorbachev handed over the nuclear briefcase, and the Soviet Union officially dissolved.

In 1989, Zhao Ziyang bluntly told visiting Gorbachev that Deng Xiaoping was the absolute authority ruling from behind the curtain. During the June Fourth period, as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, he was unwilling to order the massacre, and was therefore politically purged.