In May 1990, Princess Anne, Princess Royal became the first member of the British Royal Family to visit Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The significance of the Princess Royal’s visit cannot be overstated: Tsar Nicholas II, a cousin of Princess Anne’s ancestor George V, was, along with his family, imprisoned and executed by the Bolsheviks during the civil war that followed revolution. The relationship between Britain and the USSR was defined by varying levels of hostility for most of the 20th century. Princess Anne’s visit reflected the "thawing" of the Cold War; the warming of East-West relations that characterised the late 1980s. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost, or “openness”, saw calls for greater political freedoms from across the USSR. Only months before Anne’s visit, the Berlin Wall - the symbol of East-West division - was brought down, and pro-democracy movements began sweeping through the Eastern Bloc.
As well as visiting Moscow, the Princess Royal visited Siberia, Turkmenistan, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), and Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of the Ukrainian SSR. Ukraine would not declare itself independent of the USSR until 24 August the following year. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.
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