The Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Soviet system collapsed between 1985 and 1991, and part of the even older Russian empire fell apart as well. This was one of the signal developments of the late 20th century. It had repercussions that will almost surely persist for decades in terms of the future political and economic systems of Russia and other successor states and world diplomatic alignments give the end of Soviet-United States Cold War rivalries.

Change began when Mikhail Gorbachev was named to the top leadership position in the Soviet Union, as first secretary of the Communist Party. Gorbachev was the first leader selected of his generation, and he had a different vantage point from older Bolsheviks. More important, he faced a number of crucial economic problems, after several post-World War II decades in which Soviet industrial growth had seemed quite strong. Workers’ motivation was weakening, in part because of the absence of satisfactory consumer goods. Growing alcoholism and massive environmental problems were damaging health. Military expenditures, part of the Cold War competition, were consuming up to a third of the total national product, limiting other kinds of investment and output. Gorbachev was firmly wedded to a socialist vision, but he argued that the Soviet version of this vision required massive transformation. Greater freedom for criticism and commentary was essential—what Gorbachev called glasnost—along with a restructuring of management to provide greater flexibility and motivation (perestroika), including more participation in the international economy.

Gorbachev’s reforms unleashed a massive process of change, although political results accelerated more rapidly than economic shifts. New parties began to compete in elections. Eastern European countries in the Soviet empire began to insist on greater autonomy and then, by 1989, on abolition of the communist system. Hungary and Poland installed noncommunist governments in 1989, and other countries followed. Then in 1990 and 1991 regions within the Soviet Union began to press for independence, led by the Baltic States—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—which headed a parade that soon included key areas in Central Asia as well.

Many Soviet leaders were appalled at this process, and in August 1991, several organized a coup that imprisoned Gorbachev in his summer home. Led by a self-styled leader of democracy, Boris Yeltsin, the coup was thwarted; but Gorbachev resigned his position, now as president under a new constitution, at the end of the year. The process of change continued, both in Russia and in the newly independent nations. Market economies gained ground, although often with considerable disruption and hardship, against the old state-run operations. Efforts to revise international relations and internal political arrangements continued as well, with many uncertainties about ultimate outcomes.

The three documents I would like you to read illustrate key aspects of the Soviet crisis (you can read all three documents by clicking here). In the first document, from 1986, Gorbachev explains his initial reform policies to a regional Communist Party meeting in the Asian city of Khabarovsk. In the second document, Vladimir Kryuchov, head of the KGB (the secret police), outlines pressing concerns about Soviet stability in a secret memo to Gorbachev in 1991, as the Soviet Union had already begun to break apart. Kryuchov was at this point a communist conservative, hoping to stem the tide of reform; he would later be a leader of the anti-Gorbachev coup and was arrested and expelled from the KGB after the plot failed. Finally, the third document stems from Gorbachev’s resignation speech on December 25, 1991. Following his resignation the heads of the component Soviet Republics voted to dissolve the USSR and form the much looser Commonwealth of Independent States in its stead, and Boris Yeltsin assumed the leadership of the new Russian state.

The end of the Soviet system was as dramatic as its beginning in the 1917 revolution, and as significant in terms of larger world history. Seldom does a structure seemingly so well-established unravel so completely. Documents provide crucial insight into how reforms turned into collapse, and why the tide could not be turned back. Additionally, because we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of 1989 this year, the BBC has excellent coverage of perestroika, and you can read some of the coverage by clicking here. An awesome map of the fall of communism can also be accessed by clicking here.

After reading the documents, I would like you to think about and discuss the following: What kinds of reforms did Gorbachev envision in 1986? What problems was he trying to address? What did he mean by “restructuring” and “public openness?” What kinds of threats did the Secret Police highlight in 1991? How does the view of Soviet society implied here compare with Gorbachev’s reform intentions? Does the report suggest the basis for Kryuchov’s later attempted coup? What kind of state and society does Kryuchov seem to want? What does Gorbachev say caused him to resign? What, by 1991, were his goals for Russian society, and how did they compare with the goals of 1986? How had his outlook toward the West changed? For these documents, how much can be determined about the nature of and reasons for the collapse of the Soviet system? What kinds of disagreements persisted into the 1990s about the appropriate directions for Russian political and economic systems? Your thoughts…