On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Sergheyevich Gorbachev resigned as President of the USSR. The newspaper „Moskovskaya Pravda” wrote on December 26, 1991, that „perestroika brought us freedom of speech and thought,” and at the same time, it „gave and shattered many hopes”. Referring to Mikhail Gorbachev and his new policy, Oleg A. Gordievsky, one of the KGB’s most important defectors, noted that Mikhail S. Gorbachev had created a movement for change, but this change gained so much momentum that it got out of hand. He began with the idea of „«uskorenie», that is, of accelerating, of hastening industrial and technological progress, because he had realized that the gap between the Soviet Union and the West had deepened so much that if nothing was done, Russia would end up moving so far away that it would have to submit”. The USSR would cease to exist on December 25, 1991, and would be replaced by a number of states, among which the most important would prove to be, in the perspective of the 21st century, the Russian Federation.