On February 7 , 1987 , dozens of political prisoners were freed in the first group release since the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s . On May 6 , 1987 , Pamyat , a Russian nationalist group , held an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow . The authorities did not break up the demonstration and even kept traffic out of the demonstrators ' way while they marched to an impromptu meeting with Boris Yeltsin , head of the Moscow Communist Party and at the time one of Gorbachev 's closest allies . On July 25 , 1987 , 300 Crimean Tatars staged a noisy demonstration near the Kremlin Wall for several hours , calling for the right to return to their homeland , from which they were deported in 1944 ; police and soldiers merely looked on
deported
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
Dissolution of the Soviet Union