In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took control of the Soviet Union. He realized that the old Soviet ways were choking the economy of the USSR and all the other Eastern Bloc countries. He instituted several policies meant to stimulate economic reform. One such policy, glasnost, allowed Soviet citizens greater opportunity to voice discontent with their government. Whatever his goals, Gorbachev had opened the crack that would eventually bring down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union itself.