Collapse of Communism

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Collapse of Communism

• Suddenness
• Failed promise of Marxism
• Gorbachev
• Disunion of Soviet Union
• End of Cold War

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Problems

• Nationalism
• More than 50 non-Russian
• Failed economies
• Costly arms race
• Failed ideology
• Marxism

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Mikhail Gorbachev andForeign Affairs

• Withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan (88)
• End of arms race
• Nobel Prize for Peace (90)

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Gorbachev

• Glasnost opening up (democratization)
• Political prisoners freed
• Free expression assembly
• Opening of political system
• Perestroika restructuring (of the economy)

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Soviet Dis-Union

• What had held the USSR together?
• 15 separate countries
• Baltic states first to go
• Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia
• Russian Republic
• Boris Yeltsen (91)
• USSR dissolved
• (12/91)

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Eastern Europe

• Poland
• Unification of Germany
• Hungary
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Czechoslovakia
• Czech Republic Slovakia
• Yugoslavia
• Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia
  Herzegovina, Serbia Montenegro