Failure of the Communist System

Failure of the Communist System

The communist system fell for various reasons. In time, I don't think

that this could have been avoided as the communist ideal had a basic

flaw in it. It misunderstood human nature. Their ideology was based on

every man working to the best of his ability for the good of the

nation. However, humans will not work for more than they have to and

therefore this massive decline in the quality of the work in communism

led to its downfall as there was no will to work.

One of the main reasons that communism fell in the 1980's was that

over the years, the Cold War had drained them of their money. The

Space Race stripped them of 20% of their entire national income as

they spent billions on their defence. This took away lots of money

from their economy which they could have spent on the poor and needy

but since this was not the case, the communist standard of living,

especially in the USSR, declined. This caused communism to have a bad

image and most of the people disliked it as they saw the riches and

wealth of the west in contrast to their rags. The war in

Afghanistantook a large chunk out of their budget ($8 billion a year)

and this left them very short handed and unable to economically hold

the Soviet Empire together. The freedom to do what they wanted

appealed to the people as the Stalinist regime was fresh in their

minds. The saw a glimpse of hope to experience democracy as in October

1983, the US troops over throw the regime in Grenada. This further

instigated the people with feelings of hate against the communist

system.

Another thing wrong with the system was that there was lots of

corruption i...

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...d a hard-line communist government.

As you can see these countries were both brought back under the Soviet

control through force. They both had reforms passed that the USSR did

not like and were therefore responded to viciously. However, in the

1980's the USSR was in a great economic crisis. It did not have the

money to deal with the uprisings as it did before. With the

introduction of the new president (Gorbachev), who was realistic and

knew that it was inadvisable to use the same tactics as his

predecessors. They had just pulled out of Afghanistan, which cost them

billions and received international condemnation. If they started to

attack another country, to suppress the people, not only would it take

a huge toll on the Soviet economy but the international image would be

very shaken and could lead to confrontation.