Generational renewal is a vector of social and political change in any society. A shared generational outlook can sometimes explain the dynamics that unfold during moments of profound rupture. But to what extent can the Soviet Union’s collapse be interpreted through a generational prism and how important was the question of generational belonging for contemporaries of the 1980s? What can we learn more generally about the history of communism and its end when looking at it through a generational prism? We will discuss these questions and also contextualise the changes that 1991 symbolises in a wider European and global context.