Modern World History

Dr. Dragoş C. MATEESCU

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 Communist Regimes and their Collapse in
the USSR and Eastern Europe
• WOODRUFF, William. 1998. A concise history
of the modern world: 1500 to the present,
Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 241-257.
• Relevant sections from Kennedy (1988) and
the other sources indicated in bibliography.

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 Communist Regimes and their Collapse in
the USSR and Eastern Europe

• Stalin died on 5 March 1953.

• The new leader, Nikita
Khrushchev, criticised Stalin’s
brutality and narrow
interpretation of the Marxist
doctrine.

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Stalinist ‘violence’:
• According to official Soviet estimates, more than
14 million people passed through the GULAG
(Russian acronym for the Main Administration of
Corrective Labor Camps) from 1929 to 1953.
• A further 7 to 8 million were deported and exiled
to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including
entire nationalities in several cases).
– For academic documentation regarding this aspect,
see Robert Conquest (1997), "Victims of Stalinism: A
Comment ", Europe-Asia Studies, 49 (7): 1317–1319.

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GULAG
 Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964)
• Released most of Stalin’s political prisoners.
• Built the first Soviet nuclear submarine (1958), in response to the
first ever, from the USA (1954).
• Expanded the Soviet space programme. The first artificial satellite
‘Sputnik’ was launched in 1957.
• The Soviet Union maintained a lead in manned space flights until
1969, when the US spacecraft ‘Apollo II’ landed on the moon.

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Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964)
• Poor economic performance in agriculture, almost
no remarcable industry.
• Continued reliance on the export of natural
resources.
• Violent Soviet interventions against revolts in East
Berlin (1953), Poland (1956) and Hungary (1956).
• 1954: Crimea ceded internally to the SSR Ukraine.
• The Cuban missile crisis (1962).

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Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982)

• The Soviet sea power in the Pacific

and Indian oceans was enlarged.
• 1968: Brezhnev halted the erosion
of Soviet control in eastern Europe
by invading Czechoslovakia with
some of the communist allies (only
Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary
and Poland).

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Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982)

• The Soviet sea power in the Pacific

and Indian oceans was enlarged.
• 1968: Brezhnev halted the erosion
of Soviet control in eastern Europe
by invading Czechoslovakia with
some of the communist allies (only
Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary
and Poland).
• Continued obsession about securing
an exit to warm seas.

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Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982)
• 1979: USSR invaded Afghanistan.
• Increased persecution of Russian
dissidents.
• Despite improved dialogue with the US,
Brezhnev rejected western attempts to
interfere in Russia’s internal affairs,
including human rights issues.
• Massive military aid in the late 1960s
and early 1970s to North Vietnam.
• Massive spending on weapons.
• Massive spending for sponsoring
communist movements and regimes
around the world.
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Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991)
‘Perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’: critical of
communist policies but not
supporting the abandonment of
communism as a whole.
His purpose was to reform
communism, not destroy it.
Perestroika: acceptance of the profit
motive, free enterprise and a market
economy, as well as private property.
Glasnost: transparency of
government, freedom of expression
and of religion.
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 The fall of the Berlin Wall and
the end of the Cold War
• 19 August 1989: Hungary disabled its border defense system with Austria.
• September 1989: more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through
Hungary to Austria.
• 9 November 1989: the demolition of the Berlin Wall (built in 1961) begun.
• December 1989: the leaders of the East German Communist Party resigned.
• 3 October 1990: German reunification.
• The end of the ‘cold war’ and of the ‘iron curtain’ (Churchill’s metaphors).

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Erich Honecker, (Leader of the GDR 1971-1989)
Helmut Kohl
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 The Collapse of Communism
• The satellite states of the Soviet
Union began to break away.
• November 1990: the cold war was
formally ended.
• June 1991: Boris Yeltsin becomes
the first democratically elected
President of Russia.
• August 1991: Communist Party
activities were suspended (later
banned altogether) and the Warsaw
Pact dissolved.
• December 1991: the USSR was
dissolved and broke up into fifteen
independent states.
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Democracy, human and minority rights and free market economy
as conditions for accession to NATO membership
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(Ex)Yugoslavia (1918-1992)
(Ex)Yugoslavia (1918-1992)
• Josep Broz Tito, Prime
Minister and President
(1943-1980).
• Neutrality policy.
• Multinational, federal
state.
• Federal system designed
to limit Serbia’s
authority.
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(Ex)Yugoslavia (1918-1992)
• January 1990: the Yugoslav Communist Party
renounced the leading role in the state.
• April-May 1990: the noncommunist parties
won in the first multi-party elections in
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Macedonia and proposed a new federal
structure, favouring separatism.
• National self-determination led to the end of
Yugoslavia.

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(Ex)Yugoslavia (1918-1992)
• June 1991: Slovenia and Croatia declared their
independence. Light wars.
• March 1992: Bosnia-Herzegovina followed in March 1992.
The so-called Bosnian War followed 1992-1995, concluded
in 1995 with the Dayton Peace Accord.

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 Ratko Mladic
Radovan Karadzic

1995
 (Ex)Yugoslavia
• 1997– 98: continued Serbian attrocities forced hundreds
of thousands of Kosovars to flee to Albania and
Macedonia.
• 1999: NATO air strikes in Kosovo and Serbia. Serbia was
forced to surrender.
• A multinational protection force was installed in Kosovo
(50.000 soldiers from France, Italy, Britain, Germany and
US).
• With NATO’s help, by September 1999, most Kosovar
refugees had returned home. Fearing revenge, 70,000
Serb civilians had fled.
• Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Russia and China
oppose its recognition in the UNSC.

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Democracy, human and minority rights and free market economy
as conditions for accession to NATO membership
The “Copenhagen criteria” (1993) as conditions for EU membership.
Technical assistance from OSCE and CoE.
Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian
Federation (1991-1999)
• Yeltsin paved the way for NATO to admit eastern
European nations.
• With foreign financial assistance (IMF, World Bank, EU,
BERD, etc.), the Russian Federation seemed to be
headed for economic growth and prosperity.
• Yet after centuries of feudalism and decades of
communism, the Russians had little idea about the
conditions and institutions under which capitalism
works.
• Brutal war against separatist Chechnya.
• By 1998 Russia had reached the point of total economic
collapse – the rise of businesses based on crime and
corruption.
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Vladimir Putin, President and Prime Minister of
the Russian Federation (2000- ?)
• Initially supporting democratic
and market economy reforms.
• April 2000: ratified two nuclear
weapons treaties (START II and
the Comprehensive Nuclear-
Test-Ban Treaty).
• He also declared war on crime
and terrorism, while also trying
to curb the power of regional
chieftains and business tycoons.

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Vladimir Putin, President and Prime Minister of
the Russian Federation (2000- ?)
• Excellent growth rate (8.3%) in
2000 helped by high oil prices, a
very cheap currency, increased
foreign investment and trade
surplus.
• Constant and growing decline
after 2008.
• By trying to consolidate Russian
grip on the Ukraine, Belarus,
Moldova and Armenia, Putin is
accused of trying to rebuild the
Soviet Union.
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Vladimir Putin, President and Prime Minister of
the Russian Federation (2000- ?)

Bankrupt as Russia is, Putin

approved a 50% increase in
military spending (before
2010).

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