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The Collapse of the Soviet Union

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Title: The Collapse of the Soviet Union


1
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
  • And the world watched with wonder

2
Eastern Bloc
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
15 Republics Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,
Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
7 Satellite Countries Bulgaria, Czech Republic,
East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia
3
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4
Was the Collapse Due to Force? No
  • The Cold War cost more than 11 trillion. But the
    collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites
    was not a result of force.
  • No NATO tank fired a shot.
  • No bomb fell on the Kremlin.

5
A Home-Grown Insurgency
  • Instead, a massive, home-grown insurgency, led by
    a number of different participants, contributed
    to the collapse
  • Workers
  • Dissident intellectuals
  • Advocates of national self-determination
  • Reformers

6
Polish Trade Union Solidarity
  • The downfall began in 1980 when striking Polish
    workers organized Solidarity, an independent
    trade union of nearly 10 million members.

7
Support from Catholic Church
  • Solidarity, which had strong support from the
    powerful Polish Catholic Church, demonstrated how
    a working-class movement could offer an entire
    nation moral and political leadership.

8
Solidaritys Chairman Lech Walesa
  • The Polish military drove Solidarity underground
    in 1981. However, in 1983, Solidaritys chairman,
    Lech Walesa, won the Nobel peace prize. In 1990,
    he would be the first freely elected president of
    the Polish nation in more than sixty years.

9
The Gorbachev Revolution
  • Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985 as
    the General Secretary of the Communist Party of
    the Soviet Union (CPSU), recognized that the
    Soviet Union could not remain politically and
    economically isolated and that the Soviet system
    had to be changed if it was to survive.

10
Gorbachev's Five-Point Plan
  • The key pieces to Gorbachev's plan for the
    survival of the Soviet Union were a series of
    reforms
  • Glasnost (openness) greater freedom of
    expression
  • Perestroika (restructuring) decentralization of
    the Soviet economy with gradual market reforms
  • Renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (armed
    intervention where socialism was threatened) and
    the pursuit of arms control agreements
  • Reform of the KGB (secret service)
  • Reform of the Communist Party

11
The Objective Survival
  • Gorbachev knew that the Soviet Union would have
    to change if it was to survive.
  • Central planning in a modern industrial economy
    brought many inefficiencies.
  • The factory management system provided little
    incentive to make technological improvements and
    every incentive to hide factory capacities to
    ensure low quotas
  • The socialist farm system was inefficient there
    were poor worker incentives and storage and
    transportation problems.
  • The Soviet State could no longer afford the high
    defense spending that accompanied the Cold War.

12
Insistent Calls for Change
  • He believed that his reforms were necessary and
    used his leadership and power to attempt to
    implement them.
  • The policy of glasnost (openness) made it
    possible for people to more freely criticize the
    government's policies. When people realized it
    was safe to speak out, the calls for change
    became more insistent.

13
Reforms Were Too Slow
  • The gradual market reforms and decentralization
    of the economy (perestroika) were too slow and
    failed to keep pace with the crisis and his
    people's demands.
  • The Soviet Union was suffering a deterioration of
    economic and social conditions and a fall in the
    GNP.

14
Party Reforms a Failure
  • His attempts to reform the Communist Party were a
    failure. Change was too slow to keep pace with
    events and he was continually hampered by his
    need to give in to the hard-liners in order to
    retain power. As communism collapsed in Eastern
    Europe, reform of communism in the Soviet Union
    became unlikely.

15
Release from Soviet Domination
  • The renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (armed
    intervention in support of socialism) released
    the Eastern European states from Soviet
    domination.
  • The communist rulers of these states could not
    survive without the support of the Soviet Union.

The Brezhnev Doctrine was articulated in 1968
when the Soviet army occupied Czechoslovakia to
end the Prague Spring, an attempt by Alexander
Dubcek to build socialism with a human face.
16
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17
Reagans Brandenburg Gate Speech
  • President Ronald Reagan called upon Gorbachev to
    tear down the Berlin Wall "In the Communist
    world, we see failure, technological
    backwardness, declining standards... Even today,
    the Soviet Union cannot feed itself. The
    inescapable conclusion is that freedom is the
    victor. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek
    peace,if you seek prosperity for the Soviet
    Union, if you seek liberalization Come here to
    this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr.
    Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

18
President Reagan giving a speech at the Berlin
Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Federal Republic of
Germany. June 12, 1987
19
Wave of Demonstrations
  • Beginning in September 1989, a wave of huge
    demonstrations shook Communist regimes across
    eastern Europe. A massive tide of East German
    emigrants surged through Czechoslovakia and
    Hungary to the West, undermining the authority of
    the Communist hard-liners who still clung to
    power in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

20
A tram is blocked by East German demonstrators in
the center of the city in October 1989. Their
banner reads 'Legalization of opposition
parties, free democratic elections, free press
and independent unions.'
21
The Wall Came Down
  • Finally, on the night of November 9, 1989,
    ordinary Germans poured through the Berlin Wall.
    The GDR quickly disintegrated, and by the end of
    1990, all of East Germany had been incorporated
    into the wealthy, powerful Federal Republic of
    Germany.

22
The Rise of Nationalism
  • With the iron grip of the centralized Soviet
    state relaxed and the growing failure of the
    state to adequately feed and clothe its people,
    nationalism in the republics surged and
    separatist movements threatened the very
    existence of the Soviet Union.

Super Cute Protesters Moldova The hot, angry
face of nationalism - Apr 13, 2009
23
Events in Eastern Europe
  • Communist governments in Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
    and Bulgaria either tumbled or underwent reform.
  • The Communist dictatorship in Romania fell after
    a week of bloody street battles between ordinary
    citizens and police, who defended the old order
    to the bitter end.

24
Radical Change
  • Radical change finally reached the Soviet
    heartland in August 1991, when thousands of
    Russian citizens poured into the streets to
    defeat a reactionary coup d'état.

25
Independent Republics
  • The Communist party quickly collapsed, and the
    Soviet Union began the painful and uncertain
    process of reorganizing itself as a loose
    confederation of independent republics.

26
Boris Yeltsin
  • Boris Yeltsin, who headed the Russian Republic,
    replaced Gorbachev as president of a much-
    diminished state. Gorbachev found that there was
    no Soviet Union to lead and retired into private
    life.

Time magazine's July 15, 1996, issue, featured a
10-page spread about a squad of U.S. political
pros who "clandestinely participated in guiding
Yeltsin's campaign.
27
Nobel Peace Prize
  • Gorbachev won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. He
    brought a peaceful end to the cold war, and
    dramatic change to his country's economy, though
    not in the way he intended.

28
The End of the Cold War
  • The Cold War was over, brought to a close not by
    the missiles and tanks of the principal
    participants, but by the collective courage and
    willpower of ordinary men and women.

29
Ronald Reagans Role
  • In the United States, partisans of Ronald Reagan
    claimed much of the credit for ending the Cold
    War. Reagan's frank denunciation of the Soviet
    Union as an evil empire," along with his
    administration's military buildup, were said to
    have inspired eastern bloc dissidents at the same
    time the arms race exhausted the productive
    capacity of the Soviet Union and other
    inefficient Communist regimes.

30
Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945-2006
Source data from Robert S. Norris and Hans M.
Kristensen, "Global nuclear stockpiles,
1945-2006," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62,
no. 4 (July/August 2006), 64-66. Online at
http//thebulletin.metapress.com/content/c41206509
12x74k7/fulltext.pdf
31
The National Debt
438 billion deficit
US Pop 304,998,272 Share of Debt/Person
34,526.04 Daily Increase 3.84 billion
32
Another Side to the Story
  • According to U.S. diplomat George Kennan, author
    of "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" (1947) and
    architect of the containment policy, the West's
    militarized posture helped the Communists to
    rationalize their authoritarian rule. The more
    U.S. policies followed a hard line, the greater
    was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the
    controls and to discourage liberalizing
    tendencies.

33
The Collapse of the Soviet Unionand the End of
the Cold War
John Paul IIsCATHOLICCHURCH
East GermanNATIONALISM
Lech Walesa'sSOLIDARITY
Gorbachevs REFORMS
Eastern Bloc
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Glasnost
Ronald Reagans FOREIGN POLICY
Perestroika
EVIL EMPIRESpeech
No BrezhnevDoctrine
MILITARY BUILDUP
Ordinary MEN WOMEN
ReformKGB
ARMS RACE
COURAGE
ReformComm Party
WILL POWER
34
Remaining Communist Countries
  • At its peak, communism was practiced in dozens of
    countries
  • Soviet Union Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
    Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,
    Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
    Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan
  • Asian Countries Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mongolia,
    and Yemen
  • Soviet Controlled Eastern bloc countries
    Bulgaria, Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary,
    Poland, Romania, Slovakia.
  • The Balkans Albania, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
    Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia,
    and Slovenia.
  • Africa Angola, Benin, Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia,
    Eritrea, and Mozambique.
  • Currently only a handful of countries identified
    as communist remain Laos, North Korea, Vietnam,
    China, and Cuba.
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