Perestroika was disrupted as a result of the State Committee on the State of Emergency's actions and those who made use of the situation emerging after the 1991 August coup to tear the country apart, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Thursday, Sputnik News reports.
"The failure of perestroika in 1991 was a result of actions by the GKChP putschists and those who made use of the situation after the coup to pull the country apart. But this no way cancels the importance of perestroika", Gorbachev said.
He acknowledged that perestroika, the movement to restructure the Soviet Union's political and economic life, did not always proceed smoothly, with some mistakes committed, stressing that it had anyway provoked a dramatic reform of society.