Dissolution of the Soviet Union Central Committee Secretariat. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger and more energetic men into government. On September 27, 55-year-old Nikolai Ryzhkov replaced 79-year-old Nikolai Tikhonov as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, effectively the Soviet prime minister, and on October 14, Nikolai Talyzin replaced Nikolai Baibakov as chairman of the State Planning Committee (GOSPLAN). At the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. On December 23, 1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin. Gorbachev continued to press for greater
Mikhail Gorbachev other republics. Around the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in July 1989, the Soviet government formally acknowledged that the plan had included the placing of the Baltic states into the Soviet sphere of influence, which paved the way for their annexation into the USSR in 1940. The revelation supported the long-denied proposition that the Baltic states had been involuntarily brought into the Soviet Union, and so it boosted the Baltic aspirations to reestablish their independence. Finally, the Eastern bloc fragmented in the autumn of 1989, and Gorbachev made the decision not to use military force