History of the Soviet Union (1982–91) the people. It was still that this country was governed and kept together, as a structure, as a government structure, by the fear from Stalinist times." The principal elements of the old Soviet political system were Communist Party dominance, the hierarchy of soviets, state socialism, and ethnic federalism. Gorbachev's programs of "perestroika" (restructuring) and "glasnost" (openness) produced radical unforeseen effects that brought that system down. As a means of reviving the Soviet state, Gorbachev repeatedly attempted to build a coalition of political leaders supportive of reform and created new arenas and bases of power. He implemented these measures because he
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