Who could have imagined when Michael Gorbachev was appointed General Secretary of the Soviet Union in 1985 that just five years down the road, all communist countries of Eastern Europe would be dissolved, the Soviet Union itself would be in a state of dissolution and the Cold War would be coming to an end. In 1991, Russia declared itself independent, putting an end to the first communist regime in the world. Perhaps the most symbolic events of all were the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the reunion of Germany in 1990.
It is certainly no exaggeration to say that the economic, political and social consequences of perestroika and glasnost, introduced by Gorbachev in 1985, were so dramatic that no one could have anticipated the outcome, least of all those who were in power in the Kremlin.