GLASNOST, PERESTROIKA & GORBACHEV (1985-1991)

EAST MEDITERRANEAN: BLACK & CASPIAN SEAS

North Africa

USSR

Perestroika

The 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Chernobyl, Ukraine 1986

Pripyat funfair was due to be opened on May 1st. The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26th. It remains one of the most irradiated parts of Pripyat since the disaster, making it still dangerous today, 22 years on.

Matthias Rust & plane flying onto Red Square, Moscow

Matthias Rust

Matthias Rust & Plane

Anatoly Scharansky

•Andrei Sakharov• Physicist and human rights activist.

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking as a delegate to the Congress of People’s Deputies—the first Soviet parliament with democratically elected representatives. Late 1980s. Only a few years before, Sakharov was still under house arrest in Gorky.

PhotoCourtesty of Yuri Rost.

The American Soviet Walk• In the summer of 1987 about

230 Americans and 200 Soviets marched from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to Moscow, USSR. The Walk, aimed at “ending an arms race nobody wants,” was unprecedented in the history of the American-Soviet relations. For the first time ever the citizens of the two opposing nuclear superpowers united in a large-scale, joint march for peace and nuclear disarmament.

Gorbachev’s address to the UN General Assembly Dec.1988

Caucasus- Armenia- Azerbaijan- Georgia

Central Asia- Kazakhstan- Kyrgyz Republic- Tajikistan- Turkmenistan- Uzbekistan

Kazahkstan

Right: Banner from ‘the Baltic chain’ showing the three Baltic states symbolically linked in national costumes.Latvian War Museum, Riga.

left: A poster for ‘the Baltic chain’ in August 1989 from Tallinn to Vilnius.

Latvia, Lithuania, & Estonia. August 23, 1989

Armenia & Azerbaijan

Ukraine

Europe 1989

Map of Eastern Europe after 1989