Soviet Union in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called "perestroika". His policy of "glasnost" freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the Soviet Union abandoned its nine-year war in Afghanistan and began to withdraw its forces. In the late 1980s, , which paved the way for Revolutions of 1989. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall
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