see [[Mikhail Gorbachev]]
A reformer, he introduced a series of economic and political reforms known as ''[[glasnost]]'' ("openess") and ''[[perestroika]]'' ("restructuring"), which began to creak open the doors of the Soviet's closed system. A failed attempt to reign in the three [[Baltic States]] in 1989 led to a domino-effect of [[Warsaw Pact]] countries abandoning communism; a coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1991 by hard-liners trying to keep their tattering empire ended within days. The USSR was formally dissolved on Christmas Day 1991 by [[Boris Yeltsin]], freeing many from its tyranny. The main successor state to the Soviet Union is Russia; the effort to form a "Commonwealth of Independent States" went nowhere, and the 15 republics of the USSR are now independent states. According to declassified CIA documents, George Soros targeted the Soviet government as early as 1987. Soros worked closely with a CIA linked non-governmental organization, the Institute for East-West Security Studies, to take advantage of Glasnost and Perestroika for the purpose of infiltrating and sabotaging the Soviet economic and political system. <ref>https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/12/09/soros-and-his-cia-friends-targeted-ussr-russia-1987/</ref>
The dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991 was a watershed event in terms of the [[decline of leftism]] and the [[decline of the secular left]].