Mikhail Gorbachev major campaign to limit alcohol consumption, which Gorbachev—who believed it would improve health and work efficiency—oversaw. His wife keenly supported the measure. As a result, crime rates fell and life expectancy grew slightly between 1986 and 1987. The reform had significant costs to the Soviet economy, resulting in losses of up to $100 billion between 1985 and 1990. Gorbachev later considered the campaign to have been an error. In April 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred; in the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, 336,000 people were evacuated
1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt case a state of emergency was declared in the USSR. Later, Kryuchkov brought Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, Premier Valentin Pavlov, Vice-President Gennady Yanayev, Soviet Defense Council deputy chief Oleg Baklanov, Gorbachev secretariat head , and CPSU Central Committee Secretary Oleg Shenin into the conspiracy. The members of the GKChP hoped that Gorbachev could be persuaded to declare the state of emergency and to "restore order". On 23 July 1991, a number of party functionaries and literati published in the hardline newspaper "Sovetskaya Rossiya" as a prime factor to an anti-Perestroika manifesto entitled A Word