Despite initial rapid economic growth, the Soviet command economy eventually collapsed in 1991. Understand the events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR.

The Soviet Union was a socialist country with a command economy. The government owned most businesses, set prices, and decided what to produce.

But China is not the Soviet Union. It is not an isolated command economy, nor an empire straining under the weight of its military overreach. ... and economic. Yet the Soviet model was brittle.

Nikolai Ryzhkov, a premier of the Soviet Union who in 1990 took the brunt of the blame for economic chaos that engulfed the last years of communist rule, leading to the nation’s political ...

Mikhail Gorbachev – the last leader of the former Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991 – has died at the age of 91. Gorbachev died after a long illness, Russian state news agencies reported.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms put an end to the nuclear arms race and the Cold War, has died.He was 91. Deeply revered in the West — where he was nicknamed “Gorby ...

Mr. Ryzhkov, who ascended to the Soviet Union’s second most powerful post in 1985, took much of the blame for the economic collapse that led to the country’s dissolution in 1991.