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Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?
On December 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Using the words, “We’re now living in a new world,” Gorbachev effectively agreed to end the Cold War, a tense 40-year period during which the Soviet Union and the United States held the world at the brink of nuclear holocaust. At 7:32 p.m. that evening, the Soviet flag above the Kremlin was replaced with the flag of the Russian Federation, led by its first president, Boris Yeltsin. At the same moment, what had been the world’s largest communist state broke into 15 independent republics, leaving America as the last remaining global superpower.
Of the many factors leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a rapidly failing post World War II economy and weakened military, along with a series of forced social and political reforms like perestroika and glasnost, played major roles in the fall of the mighty Red Bear.
The Soviet Economy
Throughout its history, the Soviet Union’s economy depended on a system under which the central government, the Politburo, controlled all sources of industrial and agricultural production. From the 1920s to the start of World War II, the “Five Year Plans” of Joseph Stalin placed the production of capital goods, like military hardware, over the production of consumer goods. In the old economic argument of “guns or butter,” Stalin chose guns.
Based on its world leadership in petroleum production, the Soviet economy remained strong until the German invasion of Moscow in 1941. By 1942, the Soviet Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had plummeted by 34%, crippling the nation’s industrial output and retarding its overall economy until the 1960s.
In 1964, new Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev allowed industries to emphasize profit over production. By 1970, the Soviet economy reached its high point, with a GDP estimated at about 60% that of the United States. In 1979, however, costs of the Afghanistan War took the wind out of the Soviet economy’s sails. By the time the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, its $2,500 billion GDP had dropped to just over 50% of the United States’ $4,862 billion. Even more telling, the per capita income in the USSR (pop. 286.7 million) was $8,700, compared to $19,800 in the United States (pop. 246.8 million).
Despite Brezhnev’s reforms, the Politburo refused to increase the production of consumer goods. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, average Soviets stood in breadlines as Communist Party leaders amassed ever greater wealth. Witnessing the economic hypocrisy, many young Soviets refused to buy into the old-line communist ideology. As poverty weakened the argument behind the Soviet system, the people demanded reforms. And reform they would soon get from Mikhail Gorbachev.
Full Article: https://www.thoughtco.com/why-did-th...llapse-4587809