Fall of the Soviet Union
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Gorbachev believed that a better Soviet economy depended on better relationships with the rest of the world, especially the United States. Even as President Reagan called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” and launched a massive military buildup, Gorbachev vowed to leave the arms race. He announced that he would withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, where they had been fighting a war since 1979, and he reduced the Soviet military presence in the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. This policy of nonintervention had important consequences for the Soviet Union–but first, it caused the Eastern European alliances to crumble down.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader, the country was in a situation of severe stagnation, with deep economic and political problems which quickly needed to be addressed and overcome. Recognizing this, Gorbachev introduced a two-tiered policy of reform. On one level, he initiated a policy of glasnost, or freedom of speech. On the other level, he began a program of economic reform known as perestroika, or rebuilding. What Gorbachev did not realize was that by giving people complete freedom of expression, he was unleashing emotions and political feelings that had been pent up for decades, and which proved to be extremely powerful when brought out into the open. The first revolution of 1989 took place in Poland, where the non-Communist trade unionists in the Solidarity movement bargained with the Communist government for freer elections in which they enjoyed great success. This caused a peaceful revolutions across Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall fell in November; that same month, the “velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia overthrew that country’s Communist government. Frustration with the bad economy combined with Gorbachev’s hands-off approach to Soviet satellites to inspire a series of independence movements in the republics on the USSR’s fringes. One by one, the Baltic states declared their independence from Moscow. Then, in early December, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine broke away from the USSR and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Weeks later, they were followed by eight of the nine remaining republics. In December of 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its formidable enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the Cold War. |
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/jul/14/soviet-union-collapse-in-pictureshttp://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/jul/14/soviet-union-collapse-in-pictures |