TIME CHANGERS | CW
TIME
A NEW SERIES WHICH MEASURES TIMES THAT CHANGED OUR WORLD
SPAN
33sec.
“I HEREBY DISCONTINUE MY ACTIVITIES AT THE POST OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS,”
declared the 60-year-old politician, the last leader of an empire of 15 republics with a total population of 290,000,000 people. On 25 December 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev made his resignation speech in a 10-minute address to the nation that had been founded by the Bolsheviks 69 years earlier. Moments after he had finished speaking, figures appeared on the illuminated dome of the Council of Ministers building and prepared to lower the Red Flag flying over the Kremlin. Billowing in a strong winter wind, it takes 33 seconds for this symbol of the might of the Soviet Union to come down for the last time, heralding a period of profound change, not just for those who lived under the hammer and sickle but for the entire world. The following morning Muscovites saw the white-blueand-red striped flag of the new Russian Federation flying over what had been the citadel of Communism. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
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