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Q.Arrange the following events in chronological order :

(i) Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party
(ii) Socialist Revolution in Russia
(iii) The Berlin Wall was broken by the people
(iv) Disintegration of the USSR Choose the correct option : (A) (ii), (i), (iii),
(iv) (B) (i), (ii), (iii),
(iv) (C) (iv), (iii), (ii),
(i) (D) (iii), (ii), (iv), (i)
CBSECBSE Class XII Board 2025MCQ· 1mImportance★★★★★
✓ Free question

The correct chronological order is: Socialist Revolution in Russia (1917), Gorbachev becomes General Secretary (1985), Berlin Wall falls (1989), Disintegration of the USSR (1991).

To place these four events in their proper sequence, we need to step back into the broad sweep of twentieth-century history. The Socialist Revolution in Russia — often called the Bolshevik Revolution or the October Revolution — took place in 1917. That event marks the beginning of the Soviet state, a communist superpower that would reshape global politics for the next seven decades. Everything else on this list happens much later, toward the end of that same Soviet story.

Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985. He was the last leader of the USSR, and his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were intended to reform the stagnant Soviet system. Instead, they unleashed forces that the party could no longer control.

The Berlin Wall was breached by crowds of ordinary East Berliners on the night of November 9, 1989. That dramatic moment was not the direct work of any single government — it was a spontaneous, joyful uprising of people who had had enough of division. The fall of the Wall became the most powerful symbol of the collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe.

The disintegration of the USSR itself came later, in December 1991, when the Soviet Union formally dissolved into fifteen independent republics. Gorbachev resigned on December 25, and the red flag over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time.

Note

The Berlin Wall fell before the USSR broke up, not after. Many students mistakenly reverse these two because the Soviet collapse feels like the bigger event, but the Wall came down while the USSR still existed — though barely.

So the sequence is clear: first the revolution that created the Soviet state (1917), then Gorbachev's rise to power (1985), then the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and finally the dissolution of the USSR (1991).

✓Final answer

The correct option is (A): (ii), (i), (iii), (iv) — Socialist Revolution in Russia, Gorbachev becomes General Secretary, Berlin Wall broken, Disintegration of the USSR.

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