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
Mikhail Gorbachev the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered from the Kremlin and was replaced with the Russian tricolor flag. The next day, 26 December, the Soviet of the Republics, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet, declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a functioning state, and formally voted both itself and the Union out of existence. Two days after Gorbachev left office, on 27 December 1991, Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev's old office. Gorbachev had aimed to maintain the CPSU as a united party but move it in the direction of Scandinavian-style social democracy. But when the