The Collapse of the Soviet Union.
On December 25th of 1991, the World spectated as the Soviet Union lowered their flag and distributed into over 10 different and separate countries.
The Soviet state itself was established in the year 1922, just around 75 years later, the once powerful and influential Soviet Union had completely collapsed and been renamed and is now know is the country Russia.
This extremely important change in the large country had occurred with very little blood shed. Representatives from 11 different republics within the Soviet shared that they no longer wanted to be involved within the union (History.com Staff "Fall of the Soviet Union" 2011). On top of that, President Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned that same day, adding
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Mikhail Gorbachev’s executive decisions and “steering the Soviet Union into failure”
A lot of citizens within the Soviet believed that Gorbachev’s decision making was negatively impacting the Union. “In this period of time, the economy had dropped a lot, impacting the people within the union and the satellite states” (Jules Suzdaltsev "The Fall Of The Soviet Union" 2016). During his presidency, Gorbachev stated, “The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working, and the crisis in the society become even more acute” (History.com Staff "Fall of the Soviet Union" 2011).
“Poland was the first out of the 11 satellite states within the Soviet Union to shift out of the USSR as a whole” (Jules Suzdaltsev "The Fall Of The Soviet Union" 2016). Poland's newly established free elections and overall independence with no trace of communism was influenced by Gorbachev and his newly established policies. Specifically, the Glasnost policy, which attempted to isolate any communism. Soon following, the 10 other satellite states had broken free and established their own common wealth societies, separate from the Soviet Union.
C. Mikhail Gorbachev
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But, the Russian government assumed the functions of the collapsing Soviet government as the various republics agreed to form a new commonwealth under Yeltsin’s leadership. On Christmas day of 1991, Gorbachev had decided to resign his presidency in the Soviet Union, therefore contributing more to the fall of the Union itself, on the same day. Following up Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation, in the year of 1996, Gorbachev had attempted to run for president in Russia. Sadly, “Gorbachev had gained less than 1% of the electoral and popular vote” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica "Mikhail Gorbachev" 2017). Though upsetting, Gorbachev still remained a strong active politician in the public eye. Not too recently in the years 2006 and 2008, Gorbachev had paired up with fellow Russian politician, Aleksandr Lebedev, and attempted to create a new political party. Mikhail Gorbachev was a world changing president that made quite the impact on Russia and other European countries
After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild. The United States, led by President Truman, wanted to form democracies in Europe and create a capitalistic society to build economically strong nations that would compliment the American economy through trade. In contrast, the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, wanted to rebuild itself and spread communism through Europe and Asia. In a desperate attempt to rebuild, many countries devastated by war fell under soviet influence and resorted to communism. The Soviet Union called these nations Satellite nations and hoped that they would serve as ?buffer? nations, preventing invasion from the west .In its efforts to defend democracy, the U.S. created the policy of containment. In this new policy, the United States would try to block Soviet influence by making alliances and supporting weaker nations. Winston Churchill described this strategy as an ?iron curtain?, which became and invisible line separating the communist from the capitalist countries in Europe. To help enforce the ideas of containment, President Truman create...
World War II left the Soviet Union feeling uneasy; Stalin had lived to see his country invaded a total of three times. Stalin was determined to prevent further damage to his country, so he began creating a buffer zone by essentially forcing the countries of Central Europe to agree to a communistic government that was closely aligned with the USSR. Stalin created the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which bound Central Europe together. However, after Stalin died his iron grip was no longer available to keep the countries of Central Europe in line. Stalin’s successor Khrushchev was an advocate for loosening of the iron grip. Khrushchev believed in the idea that there was “more than one road to socialism.” It was Khrushchev’s policies in regards to socialism
He wanted to cut taxes and increase defense spending. He felt that the United States of America should take a confrontational approach towards Russia.3 Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader of Russia in 1985. He wanted to improve. the Russian economy. He also wanted to improve relations with the United States.
... rule came to an end in a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia (Kennedy 1034). In addition, East Germany began to allow its people to pass freely to West Berlin through the Berlin Wall, and the East Germans soon began to tear the wall down. Germany was reunified in 1990, when East Germany united with West Germany (Walker 388). In 1991, the Soviet Communist Party lost control of the Soviet government. Later that year, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and the republics that made up the nation became independent states. Russia was by far the largest of these states. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President George Bush formally declared that their countries did not regard each other as potential enemies (Walker). These events marked the end of the Cold War and of communist threat as we know it.
The Fall of Communism The fall of communism can be linked to several reasons. Some of these reasons were internal, while others were the results of outside influence. For a form of any type of government to work, the people must support it, true a government can use force to make their populace submit to the will of the government as with China in Tiananmem Square. In that case, the government used armed military force to put down student demonstrators demanding democracy reform.
The Soviet Union’s economy and essential needs would eventually start to fall apart and crumble one by one. "Food supplies fell. Factories faced closures as metal, oil and other raw materials failed to be delivered. Banks ceased to bail out industrial enterprises. The civilian administrative system, which was already creaking under wartime strains, started to collapse. Transport and communication became unreliable. Workers called for higher pay and secure employment. Soldiers in the garrisons supported a peace policy: they were horrified by the possibility of being transferred to the front line (UKEssays). All of the Soviet Union’s power sources has now been hindered. Many areas now seen this as a golden opportunity to bring down the Soviet Union. Stalin was very aware that his death was near because he killed many officials from rival areas. Stalin knew he wasn’t going out without fighting because he had much more pride than that so he ordered his men to fight. Stalin then met Hitler and they signed an agreement to not have any aggressive attacks. Little did Stalin know that Hitler was actually planning a huge attack against Stalin. “Over the next few days, the members would vote on Supreme Commander. It was not until the 10th of July, that Stalin was appointed the position. As the three million German forces crept closer to Moscow, panic began to pervade all of USSR because
Gorbachev be released. On August 21, only two days later the communists in the rebellion gave themselves up and were imprisoned. Yeltsin wanted to end communism, so he forced Gorbachev to end the communist party. By December 1991 the USSR had broken up. On December 25 Gorbachev resigned and Yeltsin was now in control of the nuclear weapons. Despite the ending of the Cold War there are still many nuclear weapons in the world. There is still the slight possibility of a nuclear war.
The purpose of this investigation is to assess how significant Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost, and Perestroika polices contribute to the collapse of the USSR. In order to understand how significant of a factor Gorbachev policies were to the collapse of the USSR, we will investigate from how significant were the reforms emplaced by Gorbachev, to how the USSR was doing economically from the time Gorbachev came into power. The main sources for this investigation range from an Excerpt from The cold war: The United States and the Soviet union by Ronald Powaski who states facts about both the economic and political issues of the time. Excerpts from “New political thinking” from perestroika by Gorbachev which states how he believes new political ideas are for the good for the USSR. Finally in The Dissolution of the Soviet Union by Myra Immell who goes over many of the factors of the USSR’s collapse.
happened ? What did the Soviet Union do wrong to cause a breakdown of their
to assume the role of dictator. This was a phenomenon which was to become a
One of Lenin's ideas was 'International Socialism,' it was under this idea that he set up the Comintern with the purpose of spreading communism throughout the world. His successor, Josef Stalin, took a different approach in his ideas of 'Socialism in one country." Josef Stalin led the U.S.S.R. from the death of Lenin to his own in 1953. Stalin led the Soviets through the betrayal of the Germans in the Nazi-Soviet Pact, he turned back the Nazis on the Eastern front, and brought the U.S.S.R. out of the Second World War as one of the only two superpowers in the world. After the end of the World War Two Stalin spread the Soviet sphere of influence to include East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had emerged eventually into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union was crumbling at this period both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant aspect of every government. The soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1. fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government needs a strong economy to maintain its power and influence, but in this case the economic planning of the Soviet Union was just not working, which had an influence in other communist nations in Eastern Europe as they declined to collapse.
1996 Ed. Columbia University Press. " Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich; Russia; United Soviet Socialist Republic; Yeltson, Boris Nikolayevich; Communism; Commonwealth of Independent States".
of the Union in 1984-85. From 1985 to 1990 he was a Member in ‘the
The cold war was failed by the Soviet Union for many reasons, including the sudden collapse of communism (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) This sudden collapse of communism was brought on ultimately by internal factors. The soviet unions president Gorbachev’s reforms: glasnost (openness) and perestroika (political reconstructering) ultimately caused the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Gorbachev’s basics for glasnost were the promotion of principles of freedom to criticize; the loosening of controls on media and publishing; and the freedom of worship. His essentials of perestroika were, a new legislature; creation of an executive presidency; ending of the ‘leading role’ of the communist party; allowing state enterprises to sell part of their product on the open market; lastly, allowing foreign companies to own Soviet enterprises (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Gorbachev believed his reforms would benefit his country, but the Soviet Union was ultimately held together by the soviet tradition he was trying to change. The Soviet Union was none the less held together by “…powerful central institutions, pressure for ideological conformity, and the threat of force.