December 25, 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev Resigns, the End of the Soviet Union

December 25, 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union. The next day, the Supreme Soviet dissolved, its last act being to dissolve the Soviet Union itself after 74 years.

Gorbachev had been named President in 1985, after the death of Konstantin Chernenko, the last of the old-line Communists. Born in 1931, Gorbachev was the 1st Soviet leader who did not remember the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. So he was uniquely poised to lead reforms, which he called "perestroika" (reconstruction) for domestic change, and "glasnost" (openness) for foreign relations.

That gave the West a chance to make peaceful overtures to a changing adversary. Britain's Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said in an interview, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together." The equally conservative American President, Ronald Reagan, met with him in 5 summits: In Geneva, Switzerland in 1985; in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986; in Washington in 1987, signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; in Moscow in the Summer of 1988; and in New York toward the end of the year, including President-elect George H.W. Bush.

In 1987, Time magazine named Gorbachev its Man of the Year, recognizing him as the person who had most affected the news during the calendar year. (Remember: It's not an "award" that a person "wins.") In 1989, suggesting that he deserved it again, and then som, Time named him Man of the Decade. In 1990, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

But the hardline Communists of Gorbachev's generation didn't like the changes he was making to what those of their forefathers had done. In August 1991, he was overthrown in a coup. But Boris Yeltsin, already President of the substate the Russian Federation, rallied the country, getting the Red Army on his side. With several of the Soviet "republics" having already declared their independence, the plotters could not expect help from elsewhere, and the coup collapsed. After 4 days, Gorbachev was back in power.

But he had very little support. The country had still rallied around Yeltsin, who was seen as even more of a reformer. Gorbachev become the opposite of "a man without a country": He was, in effect, a one-man country. On Christmas Day, he bowed to the inevitable, and resigned his office.

Gorbachev continued to advocate for social-democratic reform, was a critic of current Russian President Vladimir Putin, and died on August 30, 2022, at the age of 91.

The sad part is, the end of the Soviet Union was not the end of tyranny in its former lands. Putin ruled the Russian Federation with an iron fist from 2000 until 2008, when the country's Constitution term-limited him out. So his Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, became President, while Putin became Prime Minister. Before Medvedev's term ran out in 2012, the Constitution was amended to allow Putin to return in 2012, and to have no limits.

Meanwhile, some of the other former Soviet "republics" had their own dictators: Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan, 1990-2006; Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan, 1991-2016; Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan, 1991-2019; Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus, since 1994; Emomali Rahmon, Tajikistan, since 1994; and Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan, since 2003.

It's as if these countries decided, "We don't want to be a part of the Soviet Union, but we do like what the Soviets do, we just want to do it ourselves."

Following viewer demands for a battle with a Russian, a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, featured a five-man "battle royale": "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin; while "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev.

*

December 25, 1991 was a Wednesday. Baseball was in midseason. There was 1 college football game: Georgia Tech beat Stanford, 18-17, in the Aloha Bowl at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The NHL, as usual, did not play on Christmas Day. The NBA usually does, and there were 2 games. The Chicago Bulls beat the Boston Celtics, 121-99 at the Chicago Stadium. Michael Jordan scored 14 points; on his own team, he was outscored by Scottie Pippen (27), B.J. Armstrong (18) and Horace Grant (17). But the Celtics were crumbling, and this would be the last season for Larry Bird.

And the Los Angeles Lakers went back to their 1st home in L.A., the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, and beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 85-75.