[ti:20 Years After the Soviet Union, Renewed Calls for Political Reform ] [ar:Mario Ritter] [al:IN THE NEWS] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. [00:12.01]December marks twenty years [00:14.66]since the collapse of the Soviet Union. [00:18.45]Mikhail Gorbachev was the last Soviet leader. [00:23.14]His reforms influenced the Soviet Union's fall. [00:28.26]In nineteen eighty-five, [00:30.45]Mr. Gorbachev was elected General Secretary [00:34.49]of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. [00:38.78]He was fifty-four years old [00:41.63]- the youngest member of the ruling committee, [00:45.28]called the Politburo, that voted him into power. [00:49.13]For the next six years, Mr. Gorbachev [00:54.17]worked toward a series of reforms [00:56.71]that radically changed the Soviet Union. [01:00.66]His reforms included loosening press restrictions [01:04.80]and releasing political prisoners and dissidents [01:08.40]from jail and exile within the country. [01:11.80]One institution Mr. Gorbachev failed to reform, [01:16.18]however, was the Soviet Communist Party. [01:19.72]And it was people within the party, [01:22.41]along with the leadership of the military and the KGB, [01:27.34]the Soviet intelligence service, [01:29.87]that attempted a coup against Mr. Gorbachev [01:33.57]in nineteen ninety-one. [01:36.40]The coup failed. [01:38.15]And the Soviet Union collapsed four months later. [01:42.68]On December twenty-fifth, nineteen ninety-one [01:47.13]Mr. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. [01:51.91]Russia has made major economic progress [01:56.56]since the collapse of the Soviet Union. [01:59.10]Incomes have increased sharply. [02:02.54]But twenty years after demonstrations against communism, [02:07.58]Russians are again taking to the streets. [02:10.98]This time the demonstrations are not for capitalist revolution, [02:16.66]but for democratic reform. [02:19.05]Masha Lipman marched in the nineteen ninety-one protests. [02:25.08]She is now an expert at Carnegie Moscow Center. [02:29.87]MASHA LIPMAN: "It's very symbolic [02:31.36]that we are having this public activism [02:33.96]on the rise exactly twenty years [02:36.56]after the collapse of the USSR." [02:38.16]In nineteen ninety-one the major concern was economic. [02:43.23]Vladimir Ryzhkov, at the time, [02:46.46]was trying to run a provincial city. [02:49.47]VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: "The economy was destroyed. [02:54.37]Nothing worked. [02:55.46]I remember we had meetings every day [02:57.36]to discuss very simple questions: [02:58.90]Where could we get coal? [03:00.76]Where could we get kerosene? [03:02.30]We even had a meeting to figure out [03:04.06]how to assure the supply of bread and milk for the city." [03:07.06]In the twenty years since the Soviet collapse, [03:12.02]Russians' real incomes have increased. [03:15.27]But democratic institutions have not kept up. [03:19.97]Public opinion expert Lev Gudkov says [03:24.64]institutions did not evolve with Russia's consumer economy. [03:29.47]LEV GUDKOV: "Government is still vertical, [03:35.20]it is not controlled by the society and in essence, [03:39.24]despite all the changes, [03:40.34]is built the same way it was built in the Soviet Union. [03:42.48]And its base is mainly political police, criminal police, [03:47.37]there is no independent court, [03:48.56]prosecution and system of education." [03:50.17]Next March, Russian citizens will elect a new president [04:01.54]to replace Dmitry Medvedev. [04:04.84]Former president and current prime minister, [04:08.98]Vladimir Putin is expected to win. [04:12.43]Russian President Medvedev is stepping down [04:16.23]to make way for Mr. Putin's candidacy. [04:19.77]Suspected cheating in the December fourth Russian [04:24.01]parliamentary elections has caused the largest protests [04:28.85]since the collapse of the Soviet Union. [04:31.90]Activists say Mr. Putin's United Russia party [04:37.03]illegally won a narrow majority. [04:40.33]They want to throw out the results and hold a new vote. [04:45.92]And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English [04:51.56]written by Brianna Blake. [04:53.97]I'm Mario Ritter.