Mikhail Gorbachev And The Soviet Union

Mikhail Gorbachev, the new General Secretariat in 1985, seemed to represent this new generation of power. After two decades of decaying social and economical conditions, it was clear that restructuring of governmental policies were in dire need. As it was the only legal party allowed in the USSR until the repeal of Article Six of the Constitution in 1990, the Communist Party, although conceptualized as a homogenous dictating organization, had long harbored many variants of ideologies. The leadership of Gorbachev was an accumulated manifestation of the reformist wing within the ruling elites. Such a wing had always existed despite hard partiinost, and to Strayer they were the "alternative tradition" which saw "Leninism and democracy, the plan and the market, as compatible with each other" (Strayer, 87). Gorbachev was a student of Khrushchev's "thaw" who moved much more skillfully than his ideological predecessor at pushing for real reforms—reforms that eventually destroyed the system they were supposed to save in a great stroke of irony.

Glasnost was the concept of openness that was introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev when he was elected as the Soviet Union General Secretary of the Soviet Union. This concept had a significant effect on Soviet Union during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. In employing glasnost, Gorbachev attempted to rid the Soviet Union of the lies that had been established as a result of The Leninist system that was previously in place. Ultimately, he wanted to bring transparency to the Soviet Government. Additionally, Gorbachev wanted to enable greater freedom in areas such as media, individual ideology, and religion.

Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost eliminated the strict censorship practiced for hundreds of years. Glasnost stands for openness, and Soviet citizens were now allowed to speak openly about their country's problems. Perestroika, or

Did Gorbachev implement Glasnost with the aim of turning the Soviet Union into a democratic capitalist economy?

Gorbachev told the Central Committee who elected him that when the people are elected, “the more consciencely they act, the more actively they support the party” (Steven White). With the knowledge of the past- information to define the good and the bad actions of the Soviet Union he believed the people would make a concerted effort in restructuring the economy and participating in reforming their country. Many a critic

Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of a government that was set up to make reform impossible and a stagnant economy. Due to these two hurtles Gorbachev tried to improve the Soviet Union. But his improvements would only make the Soviet Union’s problems worse. He did this by introducing two knew polices. These polices were called Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost was a policy put into effect for political openness. Through Glasnost Gorbachev hoped to eliminate Stalinist repressions, such as banning books and the secret police. It gave new freedoms to the Soviet citizens. Through the Glasnost policy political prisoners were released. The Soviet Union newspapers were now allowed to print criticisms of the government, something had not been allowed under communism. Probably the most important change brought on by Glasnost was that other political parties, besides the communist party were now able to participate in

The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had emerged eventually into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union was crumbling at this period both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant aspect of every government. The soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1. fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government

Almost everyone knows what a monster Adolf Hitler was, but most people do not know that one of the great ally leader of World War II, Joseph Stalin, had committed even greater atrocities than Hitler. Joseph Stalin was a ruthless and yet diligent dictator of the Soviet Union, whose rise to power influenced a multitude of major events in his country’s history. Due to Stalin’s impactful reign, he made the Soviet Union become a global superpower, underwent difficult hardships such as the Great Famine in the Soviet Union, and after his death, caused the Soviet Union to go through a process known as de-Stalinization.

In 1945, one major war ended and another began. After World War II, the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union were involved in what became known as the Cold War, which was a period of mutual fear and distrust. The war was given the name "cold" because the two sides never actually came into direct armed conflict; it was a war of words and ideologies rather than a shooting war (Crawford, 2009, p. 6). The Soviet Union and the United States came out from World War II as the new world superpowers, and despite their common victory with the defeat of their enemies, their primary bond was broken. There were deep-rooted ideological, economic, and political differences between the United States and the Soviet Union prior to the Second World War. Their differences, most notably their political systems and their visions of a postwar Europe, were intensified as a result of their mutual suspicions and during and after the Second World War drove the allied nations into an ideological conflict that lasted for 45 years.

In the year 1981, the American, anti-communist Ronald Reagan became president of the United States (Doc 70, pg.426). During the first term of his presidency, Reagan expressed a great sense of danger and threat that was deeply embedded in his general convictions regarding the nature of communism, particularly, in the Soviet Union (Renshon and Larson, pg.15). However, Reagan eventually began to express alternative views in his second term of presidency. He significantly altered his perception of the Soviet threat and accepted the idea of possibly working together with the Soviet Union towards achieving peace (Doc 70, pg.427). This transformation is reflected though Reagan’s initial hatred towards the USSR, to his cooperation with Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit, their great attempts to negotiate at the Reykjavik Summit and finally their signing of the INF treaty. Ronald Reagan transformed from an essentialist who viewed the Soviet Union as “evil” and ruled by an ideology seeking world communism and absolute power, to an interactionist who viewed the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms of mutual misinterpretation (Renshon and Larson, pg. 20). This change ultimately caused Soviet-American relations to significantly strengthen throughout the 1980’s as U.S President Reagan cooperatively worked together with USSR General Gorbachev, a leader who shared in the same goal of achieving a peaceful, non-nuclear world.

As one of the leaders of the Soviet Union, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was a canny and careful Communist Party functionary who sought to make his country the military equal of the United States and promote its political influence around the world through the policy of detente. While Nikita Khrushchev another leader of the Soviet Union during the climax of the cold, largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, he instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by placing nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. At home, he initiated a process of “de-Stalinization” that made Soviet society less repressive. I think it would have been a good idea to keep Khrushchev in power. Because, although he played major roles in things that could of lead to a global tragedies like the Cuban missile crisis or the berlin wall. Khrushchev was the first of the Soviet leaders who begin the trend of liberalization that ultimately peaked with Gorbachev. He also ended the "socialist primitive accumulation" that spanned all of Stalin 's rule. He also abandoned the concept of class struggle. In actual fact, while “revisionistically" breaking from the industrialization-and-purge era of 1929-1941, he ensured continuity with the immediate post-war era of 1946-1953. In 1966, China’s Communist leader Mao Zedong launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution, in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. Believing that current Communist leaders were taking the party, and China

During the cold war era, President Reagan’s strong anti-Soviet feelings and rhetorical “attack” style was an approach that his own administration saw as extreme and even dangerous (Rowland, p 23). And unlike many American leaders before him, who avoided the strained relations between the United States and Soviet Union, President Reagan set out to exploit and end communist tyranny. President Reagan’s devotion to ending tyranny was stronger than any other leader during the time period. For example, he criticized the Carter administration for their failure to deal with "the adventurousness of the Soviet Union" (Fisher, p 303). He believed that their foreign policy enabled the Soviet Union to view the United States in a weak and vulnerable state. President Reagan 's staunch opposition to communism and his willingness to confront the Soviet Union during a time when it was not popular, played a key role in the failure of the Soviet Union. Aiding him in his lone stand against tyranny was his rhetoric style of "ideological and moral clarity." A rhetoric style that he utilized to demonstrate a strong moral position towards the Soviet Union, while reducing the risk of conflict. In doing so he was able to set the stage for successful negotiation between the two nations (Rowland, p 24). This essay will examine Ronald Reagan 's June 12, 1987, address at the Brandenburg Gate. Mainly, the rhetoric style of "ideological and moral clarity", he utilized to exploit the Soviet Union, while

Former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the disintegration of a country based on an uncompromising ideological dogma, the unlikely inheritor of Marxist/Leninist communist philosophy. The Soviet Union’s unwieldy economic superstructure left it vulnerable to Ronald Reagan’s aggressive economic/military policy, an approach based on the belief that a military build-up would force the Soviets to spend to keep pace, an effective strategy because it pushed the Soviet economy over the edge into ruin. The subsequent implosion ended communist domination in Eastern Europe and opened the way for democratic elements that radically altered the political landscape in Moscow. When the Soviet Union officially came to an end in 1993, it briefly recalled the end of tsarist rule in 1917, with the potential for the kind of chaos and violence that turned the Russian Revolution into a bloodbath. President Boris Yeltsin used the military to disband parliament but his call for new elections moved the country toward a more open, democratic form of government. Lacking any real background in representative government, Russia ultimately proved incapable of fulfilling the promise of democratic government and descended into a form of anarchy riddled by increasingly strong criminal elements. In recent years, the rise of Boris Putin, a new strongman in Moscow, helped restore a sense of order and allowed the resurgence of communist elements. The government that now holds power, and which

During the era of the Cold War, starting in 1947 and definitively ending in 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union faced off in conflicts with each other through smaller states.

The many long-term internal causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union centralized around weaknesses in their economy. They had an inflexible central planning system, the inability to modernize, and the inefficiency in their agriculture production. Sometime around the 1970's the computer and automation revolution had emerged. This revolution took over the West, but practically missed the Soviet Union, except in the military sector (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Gorbachev's goal in economic restructuring was to create a separation between the economic and the political. The major changes began with the legalization of private farming and business co-operatives, and the allowing of foreign company ownership over Soviet enterprises (Baylis &Smith, 2001) All of Gorbachev's ideas on economic restructuring backfired on him since the price levels were inconsistent, and a sense of social confusion about the future of their state was created.