Once upon a time, there was a group of people who were in charge of taking care of the country. The group of people were called communists. The communists formed a big country which was called the Soviet Union. The picture you can see down here is the flag of the Soviet Union.

Like the United States have presidents, the Soviet Union also have presidents. Mikhail Gorbachev was a president of the Soviet Union. He wanted to build something that has been destroyed. That something was called economy. Economy means the amount of money a state/country has. He called the building economy 'Perestroika'.

This is Mikhail Gorbachev.

He also wanted people to talk freely about the group of people who had the power to control a country or a state. The group of people who have the power were called the government. Gorbachev called the talking freely thing 'Glasnost' which means 'openness'. But people spoke bad things about the government instead of saying good things.

Before Gorbachev could do anything about it, the people performed a coup. A coup (koo) means people fight against the government suddenly. Mikhail Gorbachev knew he had lost his power in the government. So after a while, he gave up his place as the president. After that, the Soviet Union lost power and fell.

Coup =

THE END !