Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika in the 1980s significantly contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, but they were not the sole causes. While these reforms aimed to revitalize the Soviet system, they exposed underlying economic weaknesses and fuelled nationalist movements, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Communist Party’s control. The end of the Cold War was influenced by a combination of Gorbachev’s policies, external pressures from the West, and the actions of Eastern European populations. In this paper, the author focuses on the effects of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR, but also on the aftereffects today in Europe and the rest of the world. Was the disintegration of the Soviet Union a good idea? And, furthermore, this paper examines how Glasnost functioned as an unintentional engine of Soviet disintegration. At last, we would assess how this disintegration, Perestroika and Glasnost maybe caused the instable political system in Europe in 2026, and the West’s less-than-flattering role.
