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The fall of the Soviet Union
Dismantling of the Soviet Union
The fall of the Soviet Union
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DISMANTLING OF THE SOVIET UNION
Introduction
The fall of the once might soviet union was as a result unwarranted succession of events. There is a likelihood of some arguing that a certain even led to the dismantling but this would be a fallacious assertion.
Dismantling of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was one of the three strongest nations in the world. Between 1964 and 1982, the Soviet Union competed militarily with the world’s best. The Soviet Union and its system appeared impervious to rudimentary change especially when Politburo was headed by Leonid Brezhenev. It was almost impossible even for the most disaffected nationalities like Baltic people of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia to think that the Soviet Union could fall leading to national independence of individual states.
Russia occupied slightly over three-quarters of the Soviet Union and remained to be the most influential nation in the region. By the time Chernenko died, Russia had seen radical transformation when compared to the state of the country when Joseph Stalin took office 32 years before. Millions of youths were well educated with millions entering higher education.
The well-educated professionals became instrumental in creating social groups that embraced cultural liberalization as introduced in Gorbachev’s era. At the same time, the region’s economic apparatus was stagnant and little progress was conceivable in the horizon. This created anxiety among adults resulting in excessive consumption of alcohol. In return, life expectancy of adults drastically reduced coupled with high infant mortality rates.
Although the Soviet Union had previously prevailed in the technology world, stagnation in political and economic status led to the region falling ...
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...putation of publishing authenticated information. The website has multiple editors whose function is to confirm and accredit content from individual authors. Additionally, the website provides the credentials of its author who is a professor of Politics at Oxford University and a Fellow of St Antony’s College.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Soviet Union was dismantled in a systematic manner. A series of events culminating in its disbandment have been documented. Nonetheless, its dismantling was quite peaceful.
Works Cited
Adas, Michael, Peter N. Stearns, and Stuart B. Schwartz. Turbulent Passage: A Global History of the Twentieth Century, 4th ed. London: Longman Publishing Group, 2008.
Archie Brown. “Reform, Coup and Collapse: The End of the Soviet State.” BBC History. Last Modified 17 Feb 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/soviet_end_01.shtml.
Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
revolution in which there is a break up and elimination of the state and no
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
"The Fall of the Soviet Union." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. History: War. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Student Resources in Context. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.
This shows that even though economic factors played a huge role in the collapse of the Soviet Union the Political factors out weigh them. Since Inflation and the famine only put pressure on the political factors such as the S.U government deciding to leave the eastern block countries and losing all their resources. Which caused several rebellions throughout the Soviet Union.
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.
Graham, James. “The Collapse of the Soviet Union.” Today in History, Birthdays & History Articles. 03 December. 2013 http://www.historyorb.com/referencing.php
The end of the Cold War was one of the most unexpected and important events in geopolitics in the 20th century. The end of the Cold War can be defined as the end of the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had existed since the end of the World War II. The conclusion of the Cold War can be attributed to Gorbachev’s series of liberalizations in the 1980s, which exposed the underlying economic problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states that had developed in the 1960s and 70s and prevented the USSR from being able to compete with the US as a superpower. Nevertheless, Reagan’s policies of a renewed offensive against communism, Gorbachev’s rejection of the Brezhnev doctrine and the many nationalities
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
Russia is generally apportioned the benefit of having introduced a political phenomenon that basically provided an alternative for capitalism; communism. Since this concept was only set in motion at the turn of the 20th century, we can therefore deduce that, to a large extent, Russia is, to most people, synonymous with leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev. This supposition is entirely based on the premise that the Russian revolution of 1914 inherently altered the socio-cultural and socio-political direction of the nation, bringing into birth a never before envisioned era where Russia was not ruled by the Tsars, but by simple men; men who spoke to and articulated the needs of the masses. To this extent, communism, therefore, is largely misconceived as having been the fulcrum of Russia’s civilization. Much of this misconception , as signaled earlier, is based on the growth and progression of the Russian society in the years after the revolution until 1990, when the Berlin wall fell, essentially bringing down with it decades of Soviet Union tradition based on communism.
Reagan showed his recognition of the eventual self-destruction of the Soviet Union in his speech to the British Parliament: “The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us…The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base” (D’Souza,
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.
Macdonald, D. J (1995), 'Communist bloc: expansion in the early cold war: Challenging realism, refuting Revisionism', International Security, Vol. 20, N°3, The MIT Press. (Online). Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539142?seq=7 (Accessed: 16th November 2013)
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 most powerful communist country in history, the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, also known as the Soviet Union. Although being the biggest country the world has come to know, the country’s domestic struggles led to its downfall. Others suggest the Union’s desperation to outperform the United States of America in military and space flight led to excessive spending and in the end, stagnation. Moreover after decades of repressive communist rule, domestic attitudes towards the governments went to their all-time lows and led to the population’s unrest. Economic and political issues failed to get prioritized and continued to get ignored. Mikhal Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, introduced his plans, attempting to change the flaws of their government while keeping the same fundamentals of Communism. In the end, his plans backfired and the population used its new found freedom of speech, given to them by Gorbachev, against the communist government.