Nagorno-Karabakh War new general secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in 1985, he began implementing his plans to reform the Soviet Union. These were encapsulated in two policies: "perestroika" and "glasnost". While "perestroika" had more to do with economic reform, "glasnost" or "openness" granted limited freedom to Soviet citizens to express grievances about the Soviet system itself and its leaders. Capitalizing on this new policy of Moscow, the leaders of the Regional Soviet of Karabakh decided to vote in favor of unifying the autonomous region with Armenia on 20 February 1988. The resolution read: On 24 February, Boris
Foreign relations of the Soviet Union power struggles and foreign intervention, requested the neighboring Soviet Union to send military aid. Soviet intervention was seen as a hostile invasion by the United States and its allies, who funded the counter-revolutionary Mujahadeen, and thus led to a return to hostilities which were greatly exacerbated in the following years. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, he sought to restructure the Soviet Union to resemble the Scandinavian model of western social democracy and thus create a private sector economy. He removed Soviet troops from Afghanistan and began a hands-off approach in the USSR's relations