Instead, I always thought that it was the internal contradictions of Communism, the inefficiencies of the system, and the inability of their economic system to both deliver commercial goods and compete with the Regan buildup that finally caused Gorbachev to pursue glasnost and peristroika.
I always thought it did not end at all, but rather just re-tooled the hammers and sickles into "capitalist" symbols and the old nomenklatura remained in all the positions they occupied before the "fall of communism," but were much better paid. Did they not?
Some of the old nomenklatura did continue on. But I think that there was a lot of social mobility, much of it of the "shit floats" variety.