History of Tajikistan of university graduates per 1000 people. Living standards were undermined during the tenure of Kahar Mahkamov as first secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan from 1985. Mahkamov's attempted marketisation of the Tajik economy aggravated the poor living conditions and unemployment. On the eve of the Soviet collapse Tajikistan was suffering from a declining economy and dim prospects for recovery. The glasnost policy of openness initiated by Mikhil Gorbachev offered disgruntled Tajiks a chance to voice their grievances. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Tajikistan declared its independence. The Tajikistan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was among the last republics
Mikhail Gorbachev Another of those promoted by Gorbachev was Boris Yeltsin, who was made Secretary of the Central Committee in July 1985. For the first two years of his leadership, Gorbachev's watchword was "acceleration". He claimed that the Soviet Union would accelerate industrial output to the extent that it would match that of the United States by 2000. To boost agricultural productivity, he merged five ministries and a state committee into a single entity, Agroprom. By late 1986, he was referring to this reform as a failure. Drunkenness was a major social problem in the 1980s, and Andropov had planned for a