Question by Leo: What were the main factors in the breakdown of the USSR?
I have a faint idea about it but I’m afraid i’m getting mixed up with the ending of the Cold War
i got Reagan’s strict anti-communist views
The economic situation of the USSR at the time
Gorbachav’s Glasnost and Perestroika
How other satellite states wanted independence
Is the Polish Solidarity Movement another reason?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Spellbound
Solidarity does feature in the collapse of Soviet authority and Communist hegemony over Eastern Europe, but not really in the collapse of the USSR, similarly with the Satellite countries – they WERE independent, although they were “encouraged” not to deviate too much from the communist path of economic development. Or did you mean the periphery republics of the USSR, in which case, local nationalisms did play a part in the break up – although only a small bit, as Moscow could easily have crushed the nationalist movements; it was more that the centre had lost the appetite to suppress dissent in the outlying republics.
The Soviet economy was slowly becoming stagnant, whilst military spending went through the roof. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was seen as a threat to be countered, and the Soviets threw more money at the military – the US was spending 15-18% of its Gross Domestic Product (how much the country earns) at the military, the Soviets were spending up to 35% – they were bankrupting themselves.
To counter this stagnation Gorbachev introduced the policies of Glasnost’ and Perestroika (Openness and Re-Structuring) hoping that people would be open about how to rebuild the communist system, and make it work better. All it did was allowed people to openly criticise the system – soon they were calling for it to be replaced.
Communism was also simply not delivering the promised “workers paradise”, wages were stagnant, housing shoddy, cars a rarity, and, from the 1970s they could see the differences between their lifestyle and the West on TV – especially when the (uncensored) Olympics were on.
Soviet Youth were growing tired of being told that they couldn’t see certain films, couldn’t listen to Western Music, or listen to Western Radio stations, even wearing jeans were frowned on. Glasnost’ allowed them to speak out against the regime – and enabled them to listen to the music they wanted.
In the Republics, people were tired of being told what to do by Russians, they wanted to govern themselves, or, at least, have more autonomy within the Soviet framework – but the centre would not budge. Because of Glasnost’ they could criticise and soon they began to organise. Eventually the people in the Baltic Republics started protesting – demanding independence, and soon, with the collapse of the union, they got it.
The event that pushed the Soviet Union into the history books was the failed coup of August 1991, when communist hard-liners tried to remove Gorbachev from office, and put in place a more Stalinist system – within two months of this coup the Soviet Union was no more.
On top of all this was the fact that the party-state elite no longer believed in communism, and saw in capitalism the chance to gain the wealth that they saw their Western contemporaries earn. This elite abandoned any pretence of communism from about 1989 onwards, setting up businesses, banks and taking over the ownership of the enterprises where they worked.
The capitalist revolution was, in fact, a revolution by the elite, for the elite.
See:
The Revolution from Above by David M Kotz and Fred Weir
http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1985perestroika&Year=1985
http://www.historyorb.com/russia/intro.php
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Lies your teacher Ta says
CIA
Gerald Cline says
The Soviet command economy always was pretty shaky, but limped along fulfilling the basic necessities of the Soviet Citizens for most of the USSR's existence. The fall of the Soviet Union actually started with a victory. The USSR took the position that the US pull out of Vietnam in 1973 meant they had won the Cold War, and they could do anything they damn well pleased in the future without those pesky Americans interfering with them.
The Democratic Congress agreed with the Soviet Union and disengaged the US from the Cold War. The Communists followed that up by overrunning Southeast Asia without any further American interference. Jimmy Carter institutionalized the American withdrawal by changing the focus of American foreign policy from containing Communism to offending our non-Communist friends by accusing them of human rights violations and encouraging Communist takeovers of their governments
For the next eight to ten years the Soviet Union went berserk sponsoring Wars of National Liberation in SEA, South and Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. They deployed SS-20 missiles in Europe to neutralize NATO. They encouraged their client states in the Middle East to attack Israel and Iran, threatened to invade Poland, and did invade Afghanistan.
The American people got fed up with the Democrats and elected Ronald Reagan to reengage the US in the Cold War. By this time the USSR was badly overextended. Reagan pushed them to the edge by rebuilding the American military, confronting the recent Soviet victories in Africa and Central America, opposing ongoing Wars of National Liberation (particularly the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, deploying Pursing II missiles to counter the SS-20s in Europe. He gave the Poles moral support. Then he pushed them over the edge with his Strategic Defense Inactive (SDI). The threat to neutralize their offensive ICBM force could not be ignored but they did not have anything left to challenge the US with.
About that time Mikhail Gorbachev took over the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was a true believer who thought he could fix Communism and make it competitive. He tried to ease things up with Perestroika and Glasnost, but it was to little to late. Solidarity in Poland took advantage to get themselves elected as the new non-Communist government. When the Soviets didn't invade and put down the overthrow of the Communists the rest of Eastern Europe jumped on the bandwagon and revolted too. The Berlin Wall fell in 1981. Over the next two years the situation deteriorated in the Soviet Union itself as the economy collapsed and the various republics of the union demanded freedom too. By 1991 it was all over, and the Soviet Union was dissolved.
The journey between 1973 and 1991 was long an very strange. The American left-wing liberals have never come to grips with what happened and try to blame all kinds of exotic factors for the failure of Soviet Communism. They studiously ignore the 70s and early 80s when the Soviet Union sponsored many Wars of National Liberation that killed millions of people all across the world. They try to use the concept of détente in the 70s to explain things, but do not succeed very well.
The short answer is the Soviet economy collapsed after the USSR overextended itself in the 70s an 80s and the US reengaged it in the Cold War in 80s pushing it over the edge. The liberals hate this reason as it give Reagan's hard-line policies way more credit then they want to give him.