The Collapse of the

Soviet Union
And the world watched
with wonder …
 Eastern
Bloc
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
15 Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
7 Satellite Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania,
Countries: Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
Bulgaria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine,
Czech Uzbekistan
Republic, East
Germany,
Hungary,
Poland,
Romania,
Slovakia
 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.
 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
 Polish Trade Union: Solidarity
 The downfall began in
1980 when striking Polish
workers organized
Solidarity, an
independent trade union
of nearly 10 million
members.
 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.
Solidarity’s Chairman: Lech Walesa
 The Polish military drove
Solidarity underground in
1981. However, in 1983,
Solidarity’s 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.
 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.
 Gorbachev's Five-Point Plan
 The key pieces to Gorbachev's plan for the survival
of the Soviet Union were a series of reforms:
1. Glasnost (openness) – greater freedom of
expression
2. Perestroika (restructuring) – decentralization
of the Soviet economy with gradual market
reforms
3. Renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (armed
intervention where socialism was threatened)
and the pursuit of arms control agreements
4. Reform of the KGB (secret service)
5. Reform of the Communist Party
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
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.”
Reagan’s 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!”
 President Reagan giving a speech at the Berlin Wall,
Brandenburg Gate, Federal Republic of Germany. June 12, 1987
 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).
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.'
 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.
 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
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.“
 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.
 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.
 Ronald Reagan’s 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.
 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/c4120650912x74k7/fulltext.pdf
The National Debt

$438
billion
deficit

US Pop: 304,998,272
Share of
Debt/Person:
$34,526.04
Daily Increase:
$3.84 billion
 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.
 John Paul II’s
CATHOLIC
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
CHURCH and the End of the Cold War

East German
NATIONALISM
Lech Walesa's
SOLIDARITY

Eastern Gorbachev’s
Bloc
REFORMS
Union of Soviet
Ronald Reagan’s Socialist Republics Glasnost
FOREIGN POLICY
Perestroika
EVIL EMPIRE
Speech
No Brezhnev
Doctrine
MILITARY Ordinary
BUILDUP
MEN & WOMEN Reform
KGB
ARMS RACE
COURAGE
Reform
Comm Party
WILL POWER
 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.