XVI. the Collapse of the USSR

8/6/2019 XVI. the Collapse of the USSR

1/18

The Collapse of the USSR

Although some reforms were realized in theUSSR between 19641982, only a generationalshift in the Politburo gave a new momentum for

reform in the Soviet Union.While it was Jimmy Carter who had officiallyended the policy of Dtente following the Sovietintervention in Afghanistan, East-West tensionsduring the first term of U.S. President RonaldReagan (19811985) reached very high levels notseen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.


2/18

B y the same period of time, Mikhail Gorbachevushered in the process that would lead to the

political collapse of the Soviet Union through his programs of glas no st (political openness),

pere stroik a (economic restructuring), and u skorenie (speeding-up of economicdevelopment) while the Soviet economy wassuffering from both hidden inflation and supply

shortages.


3/18

Mikhail Gorbachev took office in March 1985,shortly after Konstantin Chernenko's death.Gorbachev instituted a number of politicalreforms called glas no st (including relaxing

censorship and political repression, reducing the powers of the KG B and democratisation).Actually, the reforms were intended to break down resistance to Gorbachev's economic

reforms by conservative elements within theCommunist Party.


4/18

H owever, Mikhail Gorbachev's relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more politicalopenness had the unintended effect of re-awakening long suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the Soviet Union's constituentrepublics.

During the 1980s calls for greater independencefrom Moscow's rule grew louder. This wasespecially the case in the B altic Republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which had been

annexed into the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalinin 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold inother Soviet republics such as Ukraine andAzerbaijan.


5/18

These nationalist movements were strengthenedgreatly by the declining Soviet economy,

whereby Moscow's rule became a convenientscapegoat for economic problems.Gorbachev had accidentally unleashed a forcethat would ultimately destroy the Soviet Union.Additionally, economic and military pressures of fighting the Cold War, particularly in matchingRonald Reagan's S t a r W ar s program, bankruptedthe weakened Soviet treasury.O n February 15, 1989, Soviet forces completedtheir withdrawal from Afghanistan.


6/18

The Soviet Union continued to support thecommunist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

with substantial aid until the end of 1991. In 1989the communist governments of the SovietUnion's satellite states were overthrown one byone (in Poland, Romania, H ungary,

Czechoslovakia and B ulgaria) with weak resistance from Moscow.Relaxation of censorship resulted in theCommunist Party losing its control on the media.In a short time, much to the embarrassment of theSoviet authorities, the media began to exposesevere social and economic problems which theSoviet government had long denied existed andcovered up.


7/18

The media also began to expose crimescommitted by Stalin and the Soviet regime, suchas the G ulags ( Soviet forced labour camps ) andthe Great Purges. In all, the very positive view of Soviet life which had long been presented to the

public by the official media was being rapidlydismantled, and the negative aspects of life in theSoviet Union were brought into the spotlight.This began to undermine the faith of the public inthe Soviet system.

Political openness began to produce unintendedconsequences. In elections to the regionalassemblies of the Soviet Union's constituentrepublics, nationalists swept the board.


8/18

As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of theUSSR's central government in Moscow to impose

its will on the USSR's constituent republics had been largely undermined.O n February 7, 1990 the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up itsmonopoly of power.


9/18

The USSR's constituent republics began to assert

their national sovereignty over Moscow, andstarted a "war of laws" with the central Moscowgovernment, in which the governments of theconstituent republics repudiated all-union

legislation where it conflicted with local laws,asserting control over their local economies andrefusing to pay tax revenue to the centralMoscow government. This strife caused

economic dislocation, as supply lines in theeconomy were broken, and caused the Sovieteconomy to decline further.


10/18

Gorbachev made desperate and ill-fated attemptsto assert control, notably in the B altic Republics,

but the power and authority of the centralgovernment had been dramatically andirreversibly undermined.O n March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared therestitution of independence and announced that itwas pulling out of the Soviet Union. The SovietUnion initiated an economic blockade of Lithuania and kept troops there " to secure theri g ht s of ethnic Ru ssian s."


11/18

In January of 1991, clashes between Soviettroops and Lithuanian civilians occurred, leaving20 dead.This further weakened the Soviet Union'slegitimacy, internationally and domestically.O n March 30, 1990, the Estonian supremecouncil declared Soviet power in Estonia since

1940 to have been illegal, and started a process toreestablish Estonia as an independent state.


12/18

O n March 17, 1991, in an all-Union referendum78% of all voters voted for the retention of theSoviet Union in a reformed form.H owever, Ukraine and the B altic states boycottedthe referendum. Also amongst Gorbachev'sreforms was the introduction of a directly elected

president of Russia. The election for this post washeld in June 1991. The populist candidate B oris

Yeltsin, who was an outspoken critic of MikhailGorbachev, won 57% percent of the vote,defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate.


13/18

O n August 20, 1991, the republics were to sign a

new union treaty, making them independentrepublics in a federation with a common president, foreign policy and military.H owever, on August 19, 1991, Gorbachev's vice

president Gennadi Yanayev, prime minister,defense minister, KG B chief, and other senior officials acted to prevent signing of the uniontreaty by forming the "State Committee on theState Emergency." The "Committee" putGorbachev (vacationing in the Crimea) under house arrest and attempted to restore the unionstate.


14/18

Coup organizers expected popular support for their actions, but the public sympathy in Moscow

was largely against them. The organizers tried but ultimately failed to arrest B oris Yeltsin, whorallied mass opposition to the coup.After three days, on August 21, the coup

collapsed, the organizers were detained, andGorbachev returned as president of the SovietUnion.H owever, Gorbachev's powers were now fatallycompromised. Neither union nor Russian power structures obeyed his commands. Through thefall of 1991, the Russian government took over the union government, ministry by ministry.


15/18

In November 1991, Russian President B orisYeltsin issued a decree banning the CommunistParty of the Soviet Union throughout the Russianrepublic.After the coup, the Soviet republics acceleratedtheir process towards independence, declaringtheir sovereignty one by one.O n September 6, 1991, the Soviet governmentrecognized the independence of the three B altic

states. In December 1, 1991, Ukraine declared itsindependence from the USSR after a popular referendum in which 90% of voters opted for independence.


16/18

O n December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian,

Ukrainian, and B elarusian republics met to issuea declaration that the Soviet Union was dissolvedand replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States.O n December 25, 1991, Gorbatchev resigned as

president of the USSR and turned the powers of his office over to B oris Yeltsin. The next day, theSupreme Soviet voted to dissolve itself andrepealed the declaration written in 1922 that hadofficially established the USSR.


17/18

The four principal elements of the old Sovietsystem were the hierarchy of soviets, ethnicfederalism, state socialism, and CommunistParty dominance.H owever, Gorbachev's program of pere stroik a

produced radical unanticipated effects that

brought that system down.B ut by using structural reforms to widenopportunities for leaders and popular movementsin the union republics to gain influence,

Gorbachev also made it possible for nationalist,orthodox communist, and populist forces tooppose his attempts to liberalize and revitalizeSoviet socialism.


18/18

Although some of the new movements aspired toreplace the Soviet system altogether with a liberaldemocratic one, others demanded independencefor the national republics. Still others insisted onthe restoration of the old Soviet ways.

A ttention

Ultimately, Gorbachev could not forge acompromise among the reactionary forces andcould not prevent the collapse of the USSR!

XVI. the Collapse of the USSR

Documents