How did the Soviet Union collapse?

Question

Can someone explain IN DETAIL how this happened?

Answer 1

it smoked too much, was always drinking vodka & never got any exercise

Answer 2

There are a lot of factors which contribute to the collapse. The weapons race against America is often the most cited, but it probably is all the social turmoil. I would say Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policies, which made the Soviet government more lax. Relaxation under glasnost resulted in the Communist Party losing its absolute grip on the media. The media began exposing numerous problems in the Union, such as the large-scale corruption, crimes committed by the state.

This seriously undermined the people's faith in the government, which was previously glorified and thought to be infallible. And it didn't just reflect on the government, the people blamed communism. The second wave of nationalism under glasnost also reawakened a lot of ethnic tensions in various Soviet republics, further disjointing the Union. In the 1990s from civilian pressure Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union agreed to give up its role as only party. A bunch of pro-independence movements sprung up across the Soviet states.

The coup de grace to the Soviet Union was the August Coup, in 1991, when hardline members of the Soviet Union disposed of Gorbachev and attempted to take control of the country. The coup ended in three days, and pretty much crushed any hopes of retaining a Soviet Union.

Answer 3

As the old hard liners died out, like Brezhnev, Andropov etc. Gorbachev took over, at the same time Solidarity in Poland, Led to Pokerepa in Bulgaria all these were movements by anti Soviet forces in the East Block nations. after the crack down of 1983, the Polish labor movement picked up steam as they instituted reforms but too few and too slow, major demonstrations led to further unrest, until millions of citizens refuse to go to work, and the troops sent to stop the unrest refused to shoot and often joined in. only KGB/. GRU continued to keep the old Soviet power structure intact. contrary to popular thought US spending had little or nothing to do with Soviet downfall, the Ruble was based on next years production, ( much like the Dollar is today) after several poor years, it was becoming inflated and people were angry at leaders for their excesses. Ron Reagan made a speech about the Berlin wall, and ran a huge deficit, while selling weapons to Iran, that had little effect on the lives of the average Soviet Block citizen who was street demonstrating for freedom, they were the hero's of the end of the Cold war.

Answer 4

Haha, it just so happens that I am reading that in my social studies book rigt now, so here is what it says:

In 1991 a group of traditional soviet leaders treid to take over the soviet government. Thousands of people opposed this coup d'etat and the coup failed. Then, one by one, the soviet republics declared independance. The Warsaw pact was dissolved. By the end of 1991, The Soviet Union no longer existed. The huge country had become 15 different nations.

Idk if that makes sense but thats what it says.

Answer 5

Oh sweet Lord lets hope I can get all this out in without a bout of carpal tunnel.
For starters, there is no concrete answer to this, as there are many differing arguments for the fall. I will attempt to shed light on them all. I come from the school of thought that ALL had a role in the fall. That there did not exist a silver bullet that took the USSR down, but a series of difficult blows.
1) The Planned Economy of the USSR was reaching a point in the 70s where it could not compete with the Western advances. This was largely due to the nature of Communism, as it is not designed to be innovative. So manufacturing was the principle production power in the world at the start of the USSR, and so they excelled within that. The corruption gradually started to eat away at the overall manufacturing capabilities of the USSR, meanwhile the West was exploding in manufacturing with the application of computer technology to the assembly line. Technology became a multiplier to manufacturing that the USSR could not compete against.
2) Poland and the Catholic Church. No I am not Catholic, but Pope John Paul (recently deceased) played a huge role in the downfall of the USSR. Of course, he wasn't Pope at the time. Poland was stiff necked when it came to communism. The Solidarity movement resisted the USSR and the Kremlin incessantly, with protests and riots. This became harder and harder to contain, especially with the increased technology of communication. Which leads to 3.
3) Radio and TV technology allowed the West to infiltrate the Iron Curtain invisibly, passing on glimpses of the world outside the Iron Curtain and dispelling the lies of the Kremlin...as most citizens of the USSR were led to believe the West was a raving world of chaos and backwardness.
4) Afghanistan (in conjunction with the strategy of #5). This became a 10 year bleeding sore for the USSR and an opportunity to bleed the Soviets like they did to us in Vietnam. The USSR spent billions fighting that war with nothing to show for it.
5) Star Wars. Sure the program wasn't really operational and existed in theory, but the thought of it startled the Soviets to the technology gap that had developed since the 60s between the two world powers. This (in conjuction with Afghanistan) led the Kremlin to increase its spending on defense and the arms race. Essentially, spending the USSR into bankruptcy.
6) Make way for Gorbachev. He was known as something of a radical in his thoughts about the longevity of the Union, and so it comes as no surprise he would be nominated and then lead the in the dismantling of the USSR. This leads many to think that the expected demise was well known in the higher eschelons of power within the Communist party. Also, arguing that as the power structure was being dismantled, these individuals were the ones making grabs for property and power in order to maintain any position in the aftermath of the fall. Mikhail introduced several reform plans (glasnost, perestroka to gradually initiate the dismantling of the USSR.

So you see, there are literally many things going on at once that contributed to the collapse of the USSR. All played a significant role, and I only touched on them slightly. Poland was an amazing study and I chose not to go into great depths on that aspect. If you are looking to approach this for school, I would incorporate them all, as this would certainly impress me as a professor if a student was able to pull off all of these as an answer and actually explain them correctly. Good luck.
I hope this was helpful enough.

Answer 6

Tune in
Turn on
Drop out

Looks like the Soviet Union was the only one listening to Timothy Leary.

The arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union and now it's bankrupting the United States.

Answer 7

A combination of CIA intervention , Ronald Reagan getting Gorbachev to do his bidding. NB Gorbachev is now making lots of money from the West. The CIA united and played all the hostile forces such as the Catholic Church, Muslims, Croatians and others to dismember the USSR and other Socialist countries like Yugoslavia. Now in Eastern Europe there is rampant capitalism, unemployment, poverty, privatization. limits on medical care and abortion.

Answer 8

Kiker makes some excellent points. He looked at a lot of the political aspects of it. I'll touch on some of the social aspects.

Communism is a repressive ideology. Under it, people weren't allowed to be creative -- long known for being artists, the Russians were put under constrictive guidelines as to what they could and could not produce.

Men, naturally programmed to be providers (either by God or through evolution - you take your pick) no longer had to provide for their families as the government gave people their jobs, their food, their housing, and their allowance. They emotionally checked-out because they had their manhood stripped from them. There was no longer a drive for excellence.

Additionally, tens of millions of men were killed during the two World Wars. Whenever you strip an entire generation of fathers and grandfathers (or mothers and grandmothers) failure of the ideology is eminent.

The church was practically shut down as members of the state-sponsored Russian Orthodox Church were given inferior living conditions and limited choices in schooling and jobs for themselves and their offspring.

No incentive to do more. Taking away people's souls. Taking away their fathers. No chance to be creative. Not allowed to worship God. These are the true factors that destroyed the USSR.

Answer 9

Ronald Reagan Conquered Russia

One day in a delirium of Alzheimer's induced fog. He saddled up and rode ole Rusty over to Moscow.

With Pearl handled 6 shooters he brought down the Wall

Answer 10

They collapsed for all of the above reasons and they were also fighting a war in a middle eastern country that they could not win. The country I speak of is none other then Afghanistan.

Answer 11

Because they trimmed their infrastructure budget to boost their military spending to keep up with America's defense spending, mostly in the form of building nuclear missiles.

As they needed more money, they squeezed it out of the people via taxes, while still doing nothing to improve the lives of the people paying those taxes.
Meanwhile, the mujahedeen, so-called "freedom fighters" funded by ...[will remain nameless] attacked them and prevented their expansion and created further social distress.

When you have defense spending like the USSR had, while providing very little defense from terrorists, while at the same time taxing the crap out of people for that military spending, people tend to get a little hot under the collar and start rioting, protesting, and everything else that comes with being completely disatisfied with your government, including their own military personel stealing and selling their military equipment to raise their standard of living.