At 7:32 p.m. December 25, 1991, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag, which symbolized the disintegration of Soviet Union. Early in day, the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned his post, and Boris Yeltsin became the president of the newly independent Russian state. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the campaign between Soviet Union and the United States ended. Nonetheless, although the end of cold war make people around the world enters a peaceful time, until now both people in the past and historians are amazed why previous powerful Soviet Union collapsed suddenly. Thereby, the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union
In fact, around 1975, the Soviet Union began to enter a period of economic stagnation because of long-playing huge imbalance between light industry and heavy industry even if the crisis of oil in 1973 helped Soviet Union increase the proportion of light industry by imports. Additionally, by later 1980s, the price of petroleum declined and the demand of grains increased so that the Soviet Union had to borrow money from Western banks to purchase the grains to distribute to people for maintaining the economy. Besides, during the military race, although Soviet Union’s military budget was 1/3 of that of the United State, it still had achieved parity with the United States in military power as at least 50 percent of the industrial output of the Soviet Union was going to the military according to Western intelligence sources and the government cut down the the expense of investment in the rest of the economy. Meanwhile, owing to the Stalinist system, people in Soviet lack the incentives for productivity. Consequently, insurmountable crisis in agriculture and other light industry issues appeared, which caused a visible decline in the rate of growth and then its complete stagnation. Thus, Soviet Union had malformed economic system to curb the development of Soviet Union, which at last led to the collapse of the
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with a vision of reform, perestroika and glasnost, which means to restructure the economy. Gorbachev would like to privatize farms, make industries more efficient, and trim down imports. In order to get people’s support of perestroika and glasnost, Gorbachev conceded some individual rights and freedoms. For instance, mass media like newspaper was allowed to criticize the missteps and wrongdoings of the Stalinist era. In addition, Yakovlev, Gorbachev’s confidante and Secretariat of the Soviet Communist Party, restored creative works such as such as books and movies and returned more than 400,000 religious buildings and places of worship to publics. Public affairs, press, politics, education, and free speech were glasnost. Without surprise, glasnost and perestroika gradually became people’s favor and overthrew the socialism. As a result, owing to loosening controls over the people and making reforms to the political and economic elites, liberated minority groups, under-represented and mistreated for ages, began requiring self-determination and the Soviet government emerged weak and vulnerable to the publics. Furthermore, one of the reform, the permission of private ownership, exacerbates the economy of the Soviet Union because the nation subsidized unprofitable private enterprises and the paucity of state oversight
The major factor that led to the true end of the Cold War was the ongoing personal and diplomatic relationship between Presidents George H. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. This resulted in the reduction of the Russian military and favorable arms agreements. Key indicators of the substance behind this relationship were the Soviet troop withdrawals from Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and Hungary (lifting the Hungarian/Austrian “Iron Curtain” along the border). Subsequently the opening of the Berl...
In fact the Soviet people never saw any of these rights. Constitutional rights could only be used to support the regime, not to criticize it. In conclusion, many Soviet citizens appear to believe that Stalin’s positive contributions to the U.S.S.R. far outweigh his monstrous acts. These crimes have been downplayed by many of Stalin’s successors as they stress his achievements as collectivizer, industrializer, and war leader. Among those citizens who harbor feelings of nostalgia, Stalin’s strength, authority and achievement contrast sharply with the pain and suffering of post-revolutionary Russia.
During the twentieth century, China developed the strongest economy throughout the world. The mass population of the Chinese people helped in the production in goods which in tailed helped China’s economy grow. Russia was not far behind China after the Industrial revolution, Russia needed a plan if they were going to catch up to China. China was relying on the exporting of goods and long term goals for profit. Russia focused on Five-Year Plans, “the form of economy worked for communism, consistently appealing to the intellectuals of developing countries in Asia” (Paul Craig Roberts 2). The Industrial Revolution had helped the growth of both China and Russia’s economy throughout the Twentieth
... 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 overall collapse of the Communist regime came rather quickly, but there were underlying causes of the collapse that were apparent during the preceding decades. On the surface, the 1970s looked good for the Soviet Union. A lot of certain aspects were still going the Soviet Unions way. However, in 1975, the Soviet Union’s power peaked. In 1975, the Soviet Union’s power began to dwindle and there were six underlying causes of the collapse that can be dated back to that year. In this essay I will discuss these six causes and how they helped bring about the actual collapse of the Soviet regime.
Summary of a Review Christopher Ward’s review of Robert Strayer’s Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? Understanding Historical Change begins by expressing the vast amount of books produced on the subject of the Soviet Union. He then proceeds to explain how this book positively differentiates itself from the rest: by presenting the Soviet Union as “a unique political and social entity in world history.” This approach to the book is important, because it focuses little on comparisons to other events in history, and focuses on the event itself.
This investigation examines the extent to which the changes Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan had lead to the development of a greater industrial society. After the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Stalin had hoped to continue the Soviet Union’s development by expanding its economy. To assess the degree to which the people and economy of Russia had improved as an affect of the First Five-Year Plan, the results of the plan will be given, including the effects of the plan on the different industries in Russia. The details of why Stalin had chosen to introduce the First Five-Year Plan will also be observed.
It also marked the end of cold war between the Soviet Union and United States leading to reformed political, economic and military alliances worldwide. Upon its formation, outcome of Bolshevick Revolution of 1917, Soviet Union adopted Socialism later transforming to Communism. The main objective for Socialism and eventual Communism was to create a unified state based on centralized economic and political system. This ideology later transformed into totalitarian state. The underestimation of resistance from non-Russian ethnic groups (which was more than 50% of total population), and failure of the communism system to meet economic needs of the people were some of the reasons which to led to the decline of the USSR economy and arms competition with United States. Despite the Government’s effort to instill the ideology of communism to its people, it never took firm roots and Government ended up losing the grip of the people. With the political and economic stagnations caused by the communism, there was no choice but to change the way of doing things leading to dissolution of USSR in December 1991. The fifteen newly formed countries had overwhelming tasks of developing the economy, reorganizing the political systems, and settling the territorial disputes created earlier. There has been wars in the boundaries of the former
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.
A general economic problem for the Soviet Union was that there was a lack of profit incentives for productivity. The Soviet citizens would pretend to work because the government would pretend to pay them. One of the main reasons the Soviet Union failed was because seventy percent of the industrial output was going to the military, which is an unrealistic number to maintain while also supporting a country. In the Soviet Union they would create an incentive for an item, but they would get a surplus and then the items would go to waste. In the United States every individual determines their successes or failures. For example, a private owned business can only succeed if the owner and workers have the incentives to make a profit which requires marketing, networking, and putting in many hours. Americans have the incentive to make a larger profit so they can buy better food, bigger houses, and provide more for their family. These incentives lead to Americans figuring out a career path in high school, attending college, and pursuing competitive companies. The Soviet Union and the United States have contrasting economic systems in regards to their government involvement in the economy, economic efficiency, and supply/demand incentives. The Soviet Union’s government was too involved, their production was inefficient, and they lack incentives; all of which led to the collapse of the Soviet
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.
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.
Because of the extreme diversity of the Soviet Union’s satellite nations - having 92 different nationalities and over 100 recognized languages - ethnic tensions were high under the unified, Russian-centric government. The heavy-handed, oppressive regimes of previous decades did well to quell any potential uprisings from satellites, but under Gorbachev’s lax rule of openness, pressure began to rise. Within a year of Gorbachev legalizing the creation of other political parties, all 15 Soviet satellites had revolted against Soviet rule and voted for complete independence. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Gorbachev had resigned, and Boris Yeltsin had taken over as the new president of
Rethinking the Soviet Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Gorbachev and Glasnost: viewpoints from the Soviet press. Isaac J. Tarasulo, Ph.D.
The term “Era of Stagnation” itself was born when Mikhail Gorbachev blamed Leonid Brezhnev for the economic issues that appeared in 1964. The main reasons of stagnation were increased expenditures. The spending increased firstly on military consumer goods and slowly went to economic issues such as work inefficiency. However, author of: ”Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System” David Michael Kotz argues that militarization could not cause significant changes within Soviet economy as military spending has historically been high. One of the most important events in the history of 20th century of course was expedition to the Moon and that also was something that required a serious amount of resources. ...