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| | Mapping Out the Soviet Union's Disintegration |
 | | When Soviet citizens woke up on Monday, Aug. 19, 1991, and heard that their president, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been deposed by Communist hardliners and tanks had rolled into Moscow, many were hit by the news as if by lightning out of a blue sky. |
 | | But the rift that had polarized the country's political elite and culminated in the disintegration of the Soviet Union was no overnight phenomenon. |
 | | It had been growing steadily throughout Gorbachev's reign, as the relatively young Soviet leader — who made unprecedented attempts to liberalize the economy, augment civil liberties, decentralize government control and chip away at the political monopoly of the Communist Party — increasingly found himself caught between die-hard conservatives and reformers far more radical than himself. |
| www.themoscowtimes.com /stories/2001/08/14/012.html (220 words) |
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