The Soviet Union was splitting along all of its seams. Gorbachev, though he may not have followed Alexander Nikolaevich’s recommendations precisely, had been doing nothing but looking for a way out instead of solutions. Organizations that called themselves “popular fronts”—a term coined in Nagorny Karabakh—appeared, one after another, in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as Ukraine and Belorussia. All proclaimed support for perestroika as their goal, but it quickly emerged that their goals did not match Gorbachev’s.
