At the end of a dramatic year that witnessed an attempted coup against his rule, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party's authority, President Mikhail Gorbachev bowed to the inevitable on December 25, 1991. In a ten minute address to the nation, he officially resigned from his position as Soviet President, and by the end of that historic night, the Red Flag was no longer flying above the Kremlin. Simon covered the Soviet Union's last moments for "World Monitor", then the nightly news program produced by The Christian Science Monitor for America's "Discovery Channel"