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The Downfall of the Soviet Union

The fall of the Soviet Union took place between the years of 1979 and 1991(Castellano). This, however, did not come as a result of some politician’s fiery speeches and tough diplomatic posturing for this has been proven ineffective at forcing political transformation in other totalitarian countries (Castellano). The actual cause behind the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union was from several sets of issues they were faced with and were unable to find solutions to.

The first set of issues that led the end of communism and the Soviet Union arose from a period of economic stagnation the Soviet Union entered (Castellano). More and more with time the Soviets looked to Europe, more specifically West Germany, to provide hard currency financing through incredibly large loans and looked to the U.S. as a supplier of grain (Castellano). These trade relations continued between the Soviet Union, Americans, and Europeans in spite of moments of anti-communist grandstanding (Castellano). Unfortunately these relation issues, along with the grandstanding, and some mild economic reforms were not enough to succeed when dealing with the technologically backward and corrupt Soviet command economy. Due to being given false reports by officials pretending to be productive the Soviet Union’s economic planners were frequently unable of identify and fix these problems plaguing them at the time. The problems that were brought on by this stagnation didn’t end there however.

Other problems created from the Soviet Union’s economic stagnation included the Soviets poor living standards as well as a great number of people being unable to afford cars (Castellano). At the time only nine percent of Soviets had automobiles by the 1980s which was actually considered a great improvement under Brezhnev. The Soviet Union also suffered from a technological lag due to state paranoia of telecommunications being used for counterrevolutionary purposes. However, it was able to endure this due to its closed economy protecting it from competition. Despite this the Soviet Union’s ability to maintain military supremacy, it more and with time depended on it’s ability to keep up with Western modernization. This drive for military supremacy over the West then led to the next set of issues that led to Soviet Union’s demise.

The second set of issues that led to the Soviet Union’s end came from the several confrontations they had with the West. These began in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter ended détente by resuming a hostile stance against the Soviet Union and started by boycotting the Moscow Olympics, having guerillas trained to resist Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and using the Soviet menace as reason for military spending. However President Ronald Reagan established early on in his career an openly antagonistic stance toward the Soviet Union and employed potent rhetoric about them by referring to them as “the evil empire”. Many people feared a repeat of the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis due to President Reagan’s confrontational tone and his massive military spending did not help ease the people’s fears. Even his Strategic Defense Initiative, aka SDI, which was meant the end the of fear of a nuclear war by creating an umbrella of reliable defense and was supposedly meant to make nuclear war “winnable” but did not help end these fears. However, it was Reagan’s excessively high military spending that may have incidentally harmed the Soviet economy, but also strengthened the regime’s fanatical elements. At the time of Reagan’s presidency, the Soviet military spending did not increase as a Gross National Product, or GNP, in a considerable way. But the desperately sought after reductions in military spending was made not possible to do easily or conveniently due to the Reagan buildup. President Reagan’s aggressive stance against the Soviet Union also strengthened the hand of Soviet fanatics against President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms which resulted in a much greater Soviet emphasis on nuclear weapons and the development of ballistic missiles. Now despite Reagan’s strategy having mixed effects on the Soviet regime, at no point did Reagan ever force the hand of the Soviets who were still free to react to President Reagan’s threats in a number of ways. The one thing that cost the Soviets was their war in Afghanistan between their forces and the American supported Afghan and Arab guerillas. The conflict was considered by the Soviet Union to have been a costly quagmire both in money and in lives. Despite the fact that this war had ended in defeat and humiliation for the Soviets the losses from this conflict were easily taken by the Soviet military and did not result in any notable increase in military operating budget. In the end, Reagan’s indirect engagement of the Soviet Union exposed their long existing weaknesses they had, but the military and economic reprisals against the Soviets were not enough to account for its demise.

The final set of issues that led to the Soviet Union’s end were those formed President Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms. Gorbachev was known for his independent thinking and was well educated in Western political theory. On March 1985, he took control of the U.S.S.R. and not long after introduced one of two bold concepts to help change the nation called glasnost. Glasnost, which meant openness, allowed both domestic and foreign media to view every aspect of the U.S.S.R. from the past and present. Glasnost also encouraged criticism and it was that criticism that inspired Gorbachev’s second concept perestroika. Perestroika, which meant restructuring, was a complete reconstruction of the economy. His idea was to change their economy from being centralized, state owned, and state managed to a semi-market economy with individual initiative and local decision making. His policies of reform and openness lead to great changes throughout the Soviet Union and under his presidency people were finally allowed to vote for the candidates they wanted. This led to a chain reaction of events that led to the fatal wounding of the U.S.S.R. that signified the fall from power of the communist party as well Mikhail Gorbachev.

Following Gorbachev’s reforms the Eastern European satellite states had broken away from the Soviet Union as a result of Gorbachev’s reforms which abandoned Soviet control of these Communist nations. This signified the beginning of the end for the end of the Soviet Union. On August 1991, a coup was staged by conservative members of the Communist party who opposed Gorbachev and his reforms to remove Gorbachev from power. These conservatives ordered the military into Moscow and had Gorbachev held under house arrest. These actions against Gorbachev were opposed by the people of Russia while the military appeared undecided until they lent their support to Boris Yeltzan leading to the collapse of the coup. It was Gorbachev’s dream that his reforms would give new life to the Soviet Union and bring it into the modern era, but because of the Soviet Union’s inablility to fix the problems plaguing it for decades it ceased to exist by December 1991. The issues of it’s economic stagnation, its push to compete with the United States of America in an arms race, and its inability to modernize in order to continue functioning as it did resulted in the great collapse of the Soviet Union.