With all the recent tensions caused over Russia's reemergence as a global and regional player, it's rather hard to imagine (especially for recent generations) what the world was once like before the collapse of communism in the late 1980s. Though it may come as a shock to learn that the end of communism didn't necessarily mean the end of the Soviet Union. Prior to its collapse in 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev worked to not only reform the USSR, but to keep it united. This resulted in a "New Union Treaty," which was to be signed on August 20, 1991. The goals of the treaty were to eventually reform the USSR into an equal federation of republics.