| abstract
| - After continuous economic reforms under the more liberal administration of Kosygin the Eastern Bloc became more open to democratic ideals which were seeded during the revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia two decades earlier and now had grown mature. In spite of the economic reforms, the Soviet Union was faced with increasing demands of greater political reforms and freedom of expression. To improve economical performance the government had to decentralize decision power and expand commercial relationships with the rest of the world, the peoples of the USSR and Eastern Europe became more compelled to challenge the government's position whenever the pace of the reforms felt short of their widening expectations. On the other hand, hardliners were increasingly dissatisfied with the perceived radical policies of Kosygin and the dwindling influence of the CPSU. They wanted to curb the raising levels of dissidence and considered the shift towards private enterprise as a betrayal of socialism. When Kosygin died in 1980 he was succeeded by hard-line oriented Yuri Andropov whose administration would shift focus from economical reforms and improving East-West relations to military expansion and confrontation with the West. This would pave way for the Invasion of Afghanistan in 1981 to aid the fledgling Communist government to retain power and recover instability in neighboring Soviet ally. Such a war would drain down Soviet public opinion and dissatisfaction with would be unfinished economical and political reforms drove the citizens farther away from the government. As the war dragged on and economical problems led to political instability in the Eastern Bloc, elements of the Soviet military began to consider the CPSU as hampering the progress of the country's development. Yuri Andropov passed away on 9 February 1984 after nearly a year hospitalized because total renal failure, he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev who reinstated the USSR in the path of economical and political reforms. Gorbachev's attempts at reforms tried to rekindle and expand those initiated under Kosygin through Perestroika and Glasnost, however, his disengagement from military intervention in Warsaw Pact countries coupled with shifting distribution of wealth resulted in further weakening of the CPSU's hold on power while driving hardliners and the military leadership farther into paranoia that their country was breaking apart. It all culminated in the Revolutions of 1989 as uprisings swept through Warsaw Pact countries relinquishing single party Communist governments. As the Baltic republics expressed their desire to break away from the Soviet Union this served to confirm the fears from hardliners who decided the time had came to put forward a counter revolution. From since the beginning of economical and social unrest after the invasion of Afghanistan, military personnel dissatisfied with the rule of the CPSU began to organize a future coup to remove the party from power and state a military junta compromised with the stability and prosperity of the USSR. As the Soviet Army lost influence under Gorbachev, more and more high ranking officers, rather than supporting civilian democracy, began to rally behind Soviet commander in Afghanistan Colonel General Sergei Vasiliev in the view that the losing tide of the war and the deteriorating conditions of the USSR came from the inept Communist party that unleashed reforms it couldn't implement much less control.
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