Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1947 by politician Nikolai Bulganin. Two Marshals were executed in postwar purges: Kulik in 1950 and Beria in 1953, following Stalin's death. Thereafter the rank was awarded only to professional soldiers, with the exception of Leonid Brezhnev, who made himself a Marshal in 1976, and Ustinov, who was prominent in the arms industry and was appointed Defence Minister in July 1976. The last Marshal of the Soviet Union was Dmitry Yazov, appointed in 1990, who was imprisoned after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Marshal Sergei Akhromeev committed suicide in 1991 during the fall of the Soviet
Communist Party of the Soviet Union Brown added that a different leader than Gorbachev would probably have oppressed the opposition and continued with economic reform. Nonetheless, Gorbachev accepted that the people sought a different road and consented to the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991. He said that because of its peaceful collapse, the fall of Soviet communism is "one of the great success stories of 20th century politics". According to Lars T. Lih, the Soviet Union collapsed because people stopped believing in its ideology. He wrote: When in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed not with a bang but a whimper, this unexpected outcome was partly the