The Collapse of the USSR

Although some reforms were realized in the USSR between 1964–1982, only a generational shift in the Politburo gave a new momentum for reform in the Soviet Union.

While it was Jimmy Carter who had officially ended the policy of Détente following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, East-West tensions during the first term of U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1981–1985) reached very high levels not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

By the same period of time, Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in the process that would lead to the political collapse of the Soviet Union through his programs of “glasnost” (political openness), “perestroika” (economic restructuring), and “uskorenie” (speeding-up of economic development) while the Soviet economy was suffering from both hidden inflation and supply shortages.

Mikhail Gorbachev took office in March 1985, shortly after Konstantin Chernenko's death. Gorbachev instituted a number of political reforms called glasnost (including relaxing censorship and political repression, reducing the powers of the KGB and democratisation).

Actually, the reforms were intended to break down resistance to Gorbachev's economic reforms by conservative elements within the Communist Party.

However, Mikhail Gorbachev's relaxation of censorship and attempts to create more political openness had the unintended effect of re-awakening long suppressed nationalist and anti-Russian feelings in the Soviet Union's constituent republics.

During the 1980s calls for greater independence from Moscow's rule grew louder. This was especially the case in the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1940. Nationalist feeling also took hold in other Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Azerbaijan.

These nationalist movements were strengthened greatly by the declining Soviet economy, whereby Moscow's rule became a convenient scapegoat for economic problems.

Gorbachev had accidentally unleashed a force that would ultimately destroy the Soviet Union. Additionally, economic and military pressures of fighting the Cold War, particularly in matching Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program, bankrupted the weakened Soviet treasury.

On February 15, 1989, Soviet forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union continued to support the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan with substantial aid until the end of 1991. In 1989 the communist governments of the Soviet Union's satellite states were overthrown one by one (in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria) with weak resistance from Moscow.

Relaxation of censorship resulted in the Communist Party losing its control on the media. In a short time, much to the embarrassment of the Soviet authorities, the media began to expose severe social and economic problems which the Soviet government had long denied existed and covered up.

The media also began to expose crimes committed by Stalin and the Soviet regime, such as the “Gulags (Soviet forced labour camps)” and the 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 rapidly dismantled, and the negative aspects of life in the Soviet Union were brought into the spotlight. This began to undermine the faith of the public in the Soviet system.

Political openness began to produce unintended consequences. In elections to the regional assemblies of the Soviet Union's constituent republics, nationalists swept the board.

As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of the USSR's central government in Moscow to impose its will on the USSR's constituent republics had been largely undermined.

On February 7, 1990 the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly of power.

The USSR's constituent republics began to assert their national sovereignty over Moscow, and started a "war of laws" with the central Moscow government, in which the governments of the constituent republics repudiated all-union legislation where it conflicted with local laws, asserting control over their local economies and refusing to pay tax revenue to the central Moscow government. This strife caused economic dislocation, as supply lines in the economy were broken, and caused the Soviet economy to decline further.

Gorbachev made desperate and ill-fated attempts to assert control, notably in the Baltic Republics, but the power and authority of the central government had been dramatically and irreversibly undermined.

On March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared the restitution of independence and announced that it was pulling out of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union initiated an economic blockade of Lithuania and kept troops there "to secure the rights of ethnic Russians."

In January of 1991, clashes between Soviet troops and Lithuanian civilians occurred, leaving 20 dead.

This further weakened the Soviet Union's legitimacy, internationally and domestically.

On March 30, 1990, the Estonian supreme council declared Soviet power in Estonia since 1940 to have been illegal, and started a process to reestablish Estonia as an independent state.

On March 17, 1991, in an all-Union referendum 78% of all voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union in a reformed form.

However, Ukraine and the Baltic states boycotted the referendum. Also amongst Gorbachev's reforms was the introduction of a directly elected president of Russia. The election for this post was held in June 1991. The populist candidate Boris Yeltsin, who was an outspoken critic of Mikhail Gorbachev, won 57% percent of the vote, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate.

On August 20, 1991, the republics were to sign a new union treaty, making them independent republics in a federation with a common president, foreign policy and military.

However, on August 19, 1991, Gorbachev's vice president Gennadi Yanayev, prime minister, defense minister, KGB chief, and other senior officials acted to prevent signing of the union treaty by forming the "State Committee on the State Emergency." The "Committee" put Gorbachev (vacationing in the Crimea) under house arrest and attempted to restore the union state.

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 Boris Yeltsin, who rallied mass opposition to the coup.

After three days, on August 21, the coup collapsed, the organizers were detained, and Gorbachev returned as president of the Soviet Union.

However, Gorbachev's powers were now fatally compromised. Neither union nor Russian power structures obeyed his commands. Through the fall of 1991, the Russian government took over the union government, ministry by ministry.

In November 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree banning the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the Russian republic.

After the coup, the Soviet republics accelerated their process towards independence, declaring their sovereignty one by one.

On September 6, 1991, the Soviet government recognized the independence of the three Baltic states. In December 1, 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from the USSR after a popular referendum in which 90% of voters opted for independence.

On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics met to issue a declaration that the Soviet Union was dissolved and replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States.

On December 25, 1991, Gorbatchev resigned as president of the USSR and turned the powers of his office over to Boris Yeltsin. The next day, the Supreme Soviet voted to dissolve itself and repealed the declaration written in 1922 that had officially established the USSR.

The four principal elements of the old Soviet system were “the hierarchy of soviets”, “ethnic federalism”, “state socialism”, and “Communist Party dominance”.

However, Gorbachev's program of perestroika produced radical unanticipated effects that brought that system down.

But by using structural reforms to widen opportunities for leaders and popular movements in the union republics to gain influence, Gorbachev also made it possible for nationalist, orthodox communist, and populist forces to oppose his attempts to liberalize and revitalize Soviet socialism.

Although some of the new movements aspired to replace the Soviet system altogether with a liberal democratic one, others demanded independence for the national republics. Still others insisted on the restoration of the old Soviet ways.

Attention

Ultimately, Gorbachev could not forge a compromise among the reactionary forces and could not prevent the collapse of the USSR!