Remember when: The Soviet Union fell in late 1991 as the Gold Coast's theme parks boomed

CHRISTMAS is normally a quiet time of year but back in 1991 it was anything but uneventful as the Soviet Union fell after nearly seven decades

Gold Coast History: Gold Coast Bulletin 1991, December 26. Front page.

Gold Coast Bulletin, Thursday December 26, 1991

CHRISTMAS is normally a quiet time of year but back in 1991 it was anything but uneventful.

World affairs took a long-expected turn when the Soviet Union, long teetering on the edge of collapse, finally fell.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation, bringing down the curtain on the era of the Iron Curtain.

Gorbachev resignation came as he bowed to the inevitable after the position was abolished following a meeting days earlier with 11 republican leaders who declared the Commonwealth of Independent states in the Kazakhstan capital Alma.

The man who was said to have ended the Cold War and “freed his country from seven decades of totalitarian communist rule” declared his office extinct before a television audience of more than 170 million people.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared that he would take control of the crumbling communist state’s 27,000 nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, back on the Gold Coast, visits to the city’s theme parks jumped 30 per cent despite a national downward trend.

The deregulation of the national airlines and the opening of Warner Bros Movie World were attributed with pushing the industry to new heights.

Movie World chief executive John Menzies said the park had spent more than $5 million on interstate promotion.

Police also appealed to dentists across the country to help them in the hunt for two men who murdered a Surfers Paradise couple the same week.