After years of food shortages, rising nationalist movements and an attempted coup, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, resigned on Christmas Day 1991. His resignation 25 years ago was the final nail in the coffin of the USSR.
To mark the anniversary The Guardian asked readers across the region to share their memories of the monumental events, and to tell how they felt about the change from a communist, collective system, to a capitalist one.
