Essay On The Rise And Fall Of The Soviet Union

My cherished friend, I regret to inform you that our beloved Soviet society has ceased to exist. Our solid red flag with its magnificent gold emblem of the hammer and sickle flew above the Kremlin for the very last time on Christmas day, 1991. Prior to this gloomy day, eleven of the fifteenth Soviet republics that once made up the strong and prosperous Soviet Union, met in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, to announce that they would no longer partake in the Soviet Union, and had created a Commonwealth of independent states. Our Baltic brothers: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were the first to break apart, while Georgia remained as the last republic in the Soviet Union. I have served the Soviet Union as Minister of Foreign Affairs

The December of 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union—and with it, an entire era. Like the February Revolution of 1917 that ended tsardom, the events leading up to August 1991 took place in rapid succession, with both spontaneity and, to some degree, retrospective inevitability. To understand the demise of Soviet Union is to understand the communist party-state system itself. Although the particular happenings of the Gorbachev years undoubtedly accelerated its ruin, there existed fundamental flaws within the Soviet system that would be had been proven ultimately fatal. The USSR became a past chapter of history because it was impossible to significantly reform the administrative

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

Moreover, while things were getting out of control in the Soviet Union, one nation that can illustrate how the Soviet Union finally collapsed is Russia. Things were like as it is when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power following the death of Konstantin Cherenko in 1985. Gorbachev used the policy of Glasnot, or “openness to freedom of

The Zbigniew Brzezinski defined a Soviet victory as entailing “the submissive neutralization of both Western Europe (through the dismantling of NATO) and Japan, and the withdrawal of U.S. political military presence across the oceans. Moreover, victory was also defined as attaining the worldwide economic supremacy of communism over capitalism” . Part of this view is corroborated in the infamous Long Telegram by American diplomat George F. Kennan, which, among other things, claimed that the USSR wanted to further socialism at the cost of Western capitalism. . From both sources, one can assume the terms of victory for the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and, consequently, these can be compared with the actual events of the Cold War to determine how large a defeat the Soviet Union suffered. It is indeed true that the Western capitalism emerged victorious in the end. Western Europe wasn’t “neutralised”; in fact, it was Eastern Europe that submitted to Western politics as the USSR collapsed. Similarly, by the end of the Cold War it was the USSR’s political presence - rather than the US’ - that had collapsed, leaving the US seemingly unopposed as the leading global superpower. In each of these cases, it appears that the Soviet Union suffered a total defeat far removed from any conditions of victory. However, while this paper will begin by examining these areas of defeat, it will then go on to argue that the defeat was not necessarily total. Finally, it will argue that survival and

The Cold War was a state of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States soon after WWII had ended. The war was deemed “cold’ because there was no direct fight between the two key countries. When World War II ended, there were only two super powers left and both had intentions of spreading their incompatible ideological system across the globe. Soviet’s Communism and the United States’ Capitalism were the different views that sparked the Cold War. Problems started when the USSR started its expansionism in Eastern Europe which went against the rules brought about in the Yalta Conference. The Yalta Conference was the meeting of the heads of governments of United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union (Brinkley p. 655). The conference was designed to prepare a post-war peace plan. The United States saw the Soviet’s expansion as a threat so they planned to contain the growth of communism. Under President Truman, the United States aided countries in Europe to stop the spread of communism. This aid cost the United States approximately 400 million dollars which went to the Greek and Turkish governments. The Cold War had a massive impact on numerous countries around the world with proxy wars occurring in places like Korea and Vietnam. While the war was pulling other countries into conflict, the United States was being influenced as well. Fear and a shift in opinion of homosexuals were present in the time of the Cold War and even continued when the Cold War came to an

In December of 1991, the Soviet Union separated into fifteen distinctive countries. Its collapse was enthusiastically greeted by the west as a triumph for freedom. This is a victory of democracy over totalitarianism. The US celebrated as its dreadful enemy defeated, thereafter ending the Cold War, which had fought between two superpowers, America and Soviet Union, since the end of World War II. Cory Booker says, “If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse”. In reality, the disintegration of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union faced numerous problems in the 20th century that mostly revolved around world war one expensive and the effect it had on Russians back home. In addition to factors stemming from WWI the Soviet crashed as they tried to become a fully communist nation.

It was not until after World War I that Russia began to undergo a series of changes. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the former Russian empire that had existed from 1721 up until then collapsed, and the Soviet Union was introduced. The geographic renaming of Russia from the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union also brought about many gradual changes. There were also changes in religion, as the new government replaced the role of the Orthodox Church. There was an increase in nationalism because of the conflicts that had existed between the Reds and the Whites. What used to be the czarist regime was replaced by a provisional government and then eventually by communist leaders Lenin and Stalin. There were also shifts in the economy,

Politics involves and deeply influences the people’s life, including the ideology, thoughts, and the perspectives towards different issues and conflicts in the world. If politics is a large chock of meat, music is the thin but essential ribs connecting and supporting the meat. Especially, music, as an influential medium with fast spreading speed, is utilized and even controlled by everyone to reflect and represent the “hot spot” all around the world. As the result, due to the easy controllability and extensiveness properties of music, music is always dominated by the government authorities during war time or turbulent era as an efficient means of propaganda to conduct public opinions arbitrarily. In China during 1966 to 1977, the Chinese government, controlled by the Communist Party, mimicked the ruling ideas and system of the Soviet Union, forced all citizens to obey the one party’s policies, started the Cultural Revolution, restrained the development of culture especially music, art and education, and finally evolved into a national campaign, which was considered as a way of brainwashing.

Communism in the USSR was doomed from the onset. Communism was condemned due to lack of support from other nations, condemned due to corruption within its leadership, condemned due to the moral weakness of humanity, making what is perfect on paper, ineffective in the real world. The end of this system was very violent. It left one of the two most powerful nations in the world fearful of what was to come. <br><br>Communism can either be called a concept or system of society. In a society that follows the communist beliefs groups own the major resources and means of production, rather than a certain individual. In theory, Communism is to provide equal work, and benefits to all in a specific society. Communism is derived from many ancient

The Cold War began as the World War II ended. This war ended two remaining superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Harry S Truman and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin founds themselves on polarized sides of post war, one denounced communism while the other denounced capitalism.

By the mid 1980’s, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics also known as the Soviet Union, or the USSR was weakening under pressure from many different sources. These sources collimated in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, and ultimately, the fall of the Soviet Union itself in 1991. With these events, the USSR saw its division into the Russian Federation, and the 13 independent republics that we see today. This time period was one of uncertainty, and the result was one that even the best intelligence agencies in the West would not predict. Ultimately, the fall of the Soviet Union, as sudden as it was, should have been predicted by the West and sent shockwaves around the world. The aftershocks of this collapse are still present to this day, more than twenty years later. Though the question of what caused the Soviet Union’s collapse is simple in and of itself, its answer is far more complex and requires books to fully discuss. The aim of this paper however is to surmise the largest causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as to see how they were interrelated as well as how they interacted with each other. The causes to be discussed are as diverse as they are deep, ranging from faltering economies, to social unrest, and from increases in defense spending in relation to the West and the war in Afghanistan, to political pressure from unlikely actors.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1991 marked the fall of communism. Built with the idea of utopic society in mind, communism was supposed to be the end of inequality and despair for the Soviet’s. In theory, communism promises to provide more for the people and create a more prosperous economy than the capitalistic economies that exist in the US. Although seemingly a superior concept the Soviet’s soon discovered that a communistic economy has its faults. With a lack of incentives for businesses, and inefficient use of resources the Soviet’s soon realized they had a lower standard of living compared to capitalist economies, which led to the adoption of the market based economy you see in Russia today.

In December 30th, 1922 was born the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The intention behind the founding of this association was to achieve an egalitarian, socialist state and where humble workers, a majority community, were able to gain control over the so-called "capitalists" who sought to keep them at their mercy.