December marks twenty yearssince the collapse of the Soviet Union.Mikhail Gorbachev was the last Soviet leader.His reforms influenced the Soviet Union's fall.In nineteen eighty-five,Mr. Gorbachev was elected General Secretaryof the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.He was fifty-four years old- the youngest member of the ruling committee,called the Politburo, that voted him into power.For the next six years, Mr. Gorbachevworked toward a series of reformsthat radically changed the Soviet Union.His reforms included loosening press restrictionsand releasing political prisoners and dissidentsfrom jail and exile within the country.One institution Mr. Gorbachev failed to reform,however, was the Soviet Communist Party.And it was people within the party,along with the leadership of the military and the KGB,the Soviet intelligence service,that attempted a coup against Mr. Gorbachevin nineteen ninety-one.The coup failed.And the Soviet Union collapsed four months later.On December twenty-fifth, nineteen ninety-oneMr. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president.Russia has made major economic progresssince the collapse of the Soviet Union.Incomes have increased sharply.But twenty years after demonstrations against communism,Russians are again taking to the streets.This time the demonstrations are not for capitalist revolution,but for democratic reform.Masha Lipman marched in the nineteen ninety-one protests.She is now an expert at Carnegie Moscow Center.MASHA LIPMAN: "It's very symbolicthat we are having this public activismon the rise exactly twenty yearsafter the collapse of the USSR."In nineteen ninety-one the major concern was economic.Vladimir Ryzhkov, at the time,was trying to run a provincial city.VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: "The economy was destroyed.Nothing worked.I remember we had meetings every dayto discuss very simple questions:Where could we get coal?Where could we get kerosene?We even had a meeting to figure outhow to assure the supply of bread and milk for the city."In the twenty years since the Soviet collapse,Russians' real incomes have increased.But democratic institutions have not kept up.Public opinion expert Lev Gudkov saysinstitutions did not evolve with Russia's consumer economy.LEV GUDKOV: "Government is still vertical,it is not controlled by the society and in essence,despite all the changes,is built the same way it was built in the Soviet Union.And its base is mainly political police, criminal police,there is no independent court,prosecution and system of education."Next March, Russian citizens will elect a new presidentto replace Dmitry Medvedev.Former president and current prime minister,Vladimir Putin is expected to win.Russian President Medvedev is stepping downto make way for Mr. Putin's candidacy.Suspected cheating in the December fourth Russian parliamentary elections has caused the largest protestssince the collapse of the Soviet Union.Activists say Mr. Putin's United Russia partyillegally won a narrow majority.They want to throw out the results and hold a new vote.And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special Englishwritten by Brianna Blake.