History of the Soviet Union (1985–1991)
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The Soviet Union's dissolution into independent nations began early in 1985. After years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, economic growth was at a standstill. Failed attempts at reform, a stagnant economy, and war in Afghanistan led to a general feeling of discontent, especially in the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe.
Greater political and social freedoms, instituted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, created a bad atmosphere of open criticism of the Moscow regime. The dramatic drop of the price of oil in 1985 and 1986, and consequent lack of foreign exchange reserves in following years to purchase grain profoundly influenced actions of the Soviet leadership.[1]
Several Soviet Socialist Republics began resisting central control, and increasing democratization led to a weakening of the central government. The USSR's trade gap progressively emptied the coffers of the union, leading to eventual bankruptcy. The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin seized power in the aftermath of a failed coup that had attempted to topple reform-minded Gorbachev.
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Although reform in the Soviet Union became more and more powerful between 1969 and 1987, a generational shift gave new momentum for reform. The war in Afghanistan, often referred to as the Soviet Union's "Vietnam War"[2] (see Vietnam War), led to increased public dissatisfaction with the Communist regime in Moscow. Also, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 added impetus to Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reforms, which eventually spiraled out of control and caused the Soviet system to collapse.
Changing of the Guard
After years of stagnation, the "new thinking" of younger Communist apparatchiks began to emerge. Following the death of terminally ill Konstantin Chernenko, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in March 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young, reform-oriented technocrats, who had begun their careers in the heyday of "de−Stalinization" under Nikita Khrushchev (1958–1964), rapidly consolidated power within the CPSU, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.
Jimmy Carter had officially ended the policy of Détente, by militarily aiding President of Pakistan Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who in turn funded the anti−Soviet Mujahideen movement in neighboring Afghanistan, which served as a pretext for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan six months later, with the aims of supporting the Afghan government, controlled by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Tensions between the superpowers increased during this time, when Carter placed trade embargoes on the Soviet Union and stated that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War."[3]
East-West tensions increased during the first term of U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1981–1985), reaching levels not seen since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis as Reagan increased US military spending to 7% of the GDP. To match the USA's military buildup, the Soviet Union increased its own military spending to 27% of its GDP and froze production of civilian goods at 1980 levels, causing a sharp economic decline in the already failing Soviet economy. However, it is not clear where the number 27% of the GDP came from. This thesis is not confirmed by the extensive study on the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union by two prominent economists from the World Bank- William Easterly and Stanley Fisher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “… the study concludes that the increased Soviet defense spending provoked by Mr. Reagan's policies was not the straw that broke the back of the Evil Empire. The Afghan war and the Soviet response to Mr. Reagan's Star Wars program caused only a relatively small rise in defense costs. And the defense effort throughout the period from 1960 to 1987 contributed only marginally to economic decline."[4]
Moreover, according to this thesis, major motivational factor for Gorbachev was his realization that the Soviet Union could not compete economically with the USA. However, if economic premises are taken into account, it is not clear why the Soviet leaders did not adopt the Chinese option - economic liberalization with preservation of political system. Instead Gorbachev chose political liberalization during the years leading to the collapse of the USSR, while not implementing any significant economic reforms.
Reagan deployed the CIA's Special Activities Division to Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were instrumental in training, equipping and leading Mujaheddin forces against the Soviet Army. This effort has been given credit for assisting in ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.[5] Finally, Reagan also actively hindered the Soviet Union's ability to sell natural gas to Europe whilst simultaneously actively working to keep gas prices low, which kept the price of Soviet oil low and further starved the Soviet Union of foreign capital. This "long-term strategic offensive," which "contrasts with the essentially reactive and defensive strategy of "containment", accelerated the fall of the Soviet Union by encouraging it to overextend its economic base.[6] The proposition that special operations by CIA in Saudi Arabia affected the prices of the Soviet oil was refuted by Marshall Goldman- eminent and one of the leading experts on the economy of the Soviet Union in his latest book. He pointed out that the Saudis decreased their production of oil in 1985 (it reached 16 year low), whereas the peak of production of oil was reached in 1980. They increased the production of oil in 1986, reduced it in 1987 with subsequent increase in 1988, but not to the levels of 1980 when the production reached the highest level. The real increase happened in 1990, by the time when the Cold War was almost over. In his book he asked the question if Saudi Arabia had such an effect on the Soviet oil prices why the prices did not fell in 1980 when the production of oil by Saudi Arabia reached the highest level- three times as much oil as in the middle of eighties and why the Saudis had been waiting till 1990 to increase their production -five years after CIA supposed intervention? Why the Soviet Union did not collapse in 1980 then? [7]
However this theory ignores the fact that the Soviet Union had already suffered several important setbacks during “reactive and defensive strategy” of “containment”. In 1972, Nixon normalized American relationship with China, thus creating pressure on the Soviet Union. Egyptian president Sadat in 1979 after signing of Camp David peace accord severed military and economic relations with the USSR (by that time the USSR provided a lot of assistance to Egypt and supported it in all its military operations against Israel).[8]
By the time Gorbachev ushered in the process that would lead to the dismantling of the Soviet administrative command economy through his programs of glasnost (political openness), uskoreniye (speed-up of economic development) and perestroika (political and economic restructuring) announced in 1986, the Soviet economy suffered from both hidden inflation and pervasive supply shortages aggravated by an increasingly open black market that undermined the official economy. Additionally, the costs of superpower status—the military, space program, subsidies to client states—were out of proportion to the Soviet economy. The new wave of industrialization based upon information technology had left the Soviet Union desperate for Western technology and credits in order to counter its increasing backwardness.
Reforms
The Law on Cooperatives enacted in May 1988 was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. Under this provision, cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene.
Glasnost resulted in greater freedom of speech and the press becoming far less controlled. It is likely that Gorbachev's primary goal in undertaking glasnost was to pressure conservatives who opposed his policies of economic restructuring, although he also hoped that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people as a whole would support his reform initiatives.
Thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were also released. Soviet social science became free to explore and publish on many subjects that had previously been off limits, including conducting public opinion polls. The All−Union Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM) — the most prominent of several polling organizations that were started then — was opened. State archives became more accessible, and some social statistics that had been kept secret became open for research and publication on sensitive subjects such as income disparities, crime, suicide, abortion, and infant mortality. The first center for gender studies was opened within a newly formed Institute for the Socio−Economic Study of Human Population.
In January 1987, Gorbachev called for democratization: the infusion of democratic elements such as multi−candidate elections into the Soviet political process. A 1987 conference convened by Soviet economist and Gorbachev adviser Leonid Abalkin, concluded: "Deep transformations in the management of the economy cannot be realised without corresponding changes in the political system."[9]
In June 1988, at the CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus. In December 1988, the Supreme Soviet approved the establishment of a Congress of People's Deputies, which constitutional amendments had established as the Soviet Union's new legislative body.
Elections to the new Congress of People's Deputies were held throughout the USSR in March and April 1989. Gorbachev, as General Secretary of the Communist Party, could be forced to resign at any moment if the communist elite became dissatisfied with him. To proceed with reforms opposed by the majority of the communist party, Gorbachev aimed to consolidate power in a new position, President of the Soviet Union, which was independent from the CPSU and the soviets (councils) and whose holder could be impeached only in case of direct violation of the law.[10] On March 15, 1990, Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president. At the same time, Article 6 of the constitution was changed to deprive the CPSU of a monopoly on political power.[11]
Unintended consequences
Gorbachev's efforts to streamline the Communist system offered promise, but ultimately proved uncontrollable and resulted in a cascade of events that eventually concluded with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Initially intended as tools to bolster the Soviet economy, the policies of perestroika and glasnost soon led to unintended consequences.
Relaxation under glasnost resulted in the Communist Party losing its absolute grip on the media. Before long, and much to the embarrassment of the authorities, the media began to expose severe social and economic problems the Soviet government had long denied and actively concealed. Problems receiving increased attention included poor housing, alcoholism, drug abuse, pollution, outdated Stalin-era factories, and petty to large−scale corruption, all of which the official media had ignored. Media reports also exposed crimes committed by Stalin and the Soviet regime, such as the gulags, his treaty with Adolf Hitler, and the Great Purges, which had been ignored by the official media. Moreover, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and the mishandling of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which Gorbachev tried to cover up, further damaged the credibility of the Soviet government at a time when dissatisfaction was increasing.
In all, the positive view of Soviet life long presented to the public by the official media was rapidly fading, and the negative aspects of life in the Soviet Union were brought into the spotlight.[12] This undermined the faith of the public in the Soviet system and eroded the Communist Party's social power base, threatening the identity and integrity of the Soviet Union itself.
Fraying amongst the members of the Warsaw Pact nations and instability of its western allies, first indicated by Lech Wałęsa's 1980 rise to leadership of the trade union Solidarity, accelerated, leaving the Soviet Union unable to depend upon its Eastern European satellite states for protection as a buffer zone. By 1989, Moscow had repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine in favor of non−intervention in the internal affairs of its Warsaw Pact allies. Gradually, each of the Warsaw Pact nations saw their communist governments fall to popular elections and, in the case of Romania, a violent uprising. By 1991 the communist governments of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania, all of which had been imposed after World War II, were brought down as revolution swept Eastern Europe.
The Soviet Union also began experiencing upheaval as the political consequences of glasnost reverberated throughout the country. Despite efforts at containment, the upheaval in Eastern Europe inevitably spread to nationalities within the USSR. In elections to the regional assemblies of the Soviet Union's constituent republics, nationalists as well as radical reformers swept the board. As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of the USSR's central Moscow government to impose its will on the USSR's constituent republics had been largely undermined. Massive peaceful protests in the Baltic Republics such as The Baltic Way and the Singing Revolution drew international attention and bolstered independence movements in various other regions.
The rise of nationalism under freedom of speech soon reawakened simmering ethnic tensions in various Soviet republics, further discrediting the ideal of a unified Soviet people. One instance occurred in February 1988, when the government in Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region in the Azerbaijan SSR, passed a resolution calling for unification with the Armenian SSR. Violence against local Azerbaijanis was reported on Soviet television, provoking massacres of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait.
Emboldened by the liberalized atmosphere of glasnost, public dissatisfaction with economic conditions was much more overt than ever before in the Soviet period. Although perestroika was considered bold in the context of Soviet history, Gorbachev's attempts at economic reform were not radical enough to restart the country's chronically sluggish economy in the late 1980s. The reforms made some inroads in decentralization, but Gorbachev and his team left intact most of the fundamental elements of the Stalinist system, including price controls, inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and the government monopoly over most means of production.
By 1990 the Soviet government had lost control over economic conditions. Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies to continue. Tax revenues declined as republic and local governments withheld tax revenues from the central government under the growing spirit of regional autonomy. The anti−alcohol campaign reduced tax revenues as well, which in 1982 accounted for about 12 percent of all state revenue. The elimination of central control over production decisions, especially in the consumer goods sector, led to the breakdown in traditional supplier−producer relationships without contributing to the formation of new ones. Thus, instead of streamlining the system, Gorbachev's decentralization caused new production bottlenecks.
Dissolution of the USSR
The weakening of the Soviet government led to a series of events that eventually caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a gradual process that took place from about January 19, 1990, to December 31, 1991.
Summary
The four principal elements of the old Soviet system were the hierarchy of soviets, ethnic federalism, state socialism, and Communist Party dominance. Gorbachev's programs of perestroika and glasnost produced radical unforeseen effects that brought that system down. As a means of reviving the Soviet state, Gorbachev repeatedly attempted to build a coalition of political leaders supportive of reform and created new arenas and bases of power. He implemented these measures because he wanted to resolve serious economic problems and political inertia that clearly threatened to put the Soviet Union into a state of long−term stagnation.
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 communism. 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. Ultimately, Gorbachev could not forge a compromise among these forces and the consequence was the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Post−Soviet restructuring
To restructure the Soviet administrative command system and implement transition to a market-based economy, Yeltsin's shock program was employed within days of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The subsidies to money-losing farms and industries were cut, price controls abolished, and the ruble moved toward convertibility. New opportunities for Yeltsin's circle and other entrepreneurs to seize the former state property were created thus restructuring old state-owned economy within a few months.
After obtaining power, the vast majority of "idealistic" reformers gained huge possessions of state property using their positions in the government and became business oligarchs in a manner that appeared antithetical to an emerging democracy. Existing institutions were conspicuously abandoned prior to the establishment of new legal structures of the market economy such as those governing private property, overseeing financial markets, and enforcing taxation.
Market economists believed that the dismantling of the administrative command system in Russia would raise GDP and living standards by allocating resources more efficiently. They also thought the collapse would create new production possibilities by eliminating central planning, substituting a decentralized market system, eliminating huge macroeconomic and structural distortions through liberalization, and providing incentives through privatization.
Since the USSR's collapse, Russia faced many problems that free market proponents in 1992 did not expect. Among other things, 25% of the population lived below the poverty line, life expectancy had fallen, birthrates were low, and the GDP was halved. These problems led to a series of crises in the 1990s, which nearly led to election of Yeltsin's Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, in the 1996 presidential election. In the recent years, the economy of Russia has begun to improve greatly, due to major investments and business development and also due to high prices of natural resources.
See also
- CIA
- Cold War (1985-1991)
- Korean Air Lines Flight 007
- Making the History of 1989 (online database)
- Predictions of Soviet collapse
- Reagan Doctrine
- Revolutions of 1989 (Eastern Europe)
- Special Activities Division
References
- ↑ Gaidar, Yegor (****-**-**). "The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil". On the Issues: AEI online. American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/issue/25991. Retrieved 2009-07-09. (Edited version of a speech given November **, **** at the American Enterprise Institute.)
- ↑ Tamarov, Vladislav (1992). Afghanistan: Soviet Vietnam. Mercury House. ISBN 1-5627-9021-8.
- ↑ Carter, Jimmy. "State of the Union Address, 1980". Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/su80jec.phtml. Retrieved 12 July 2010.
- ↑ Dale, Reginald (June 17, 1994). "Many Can Learn From Soviet Downfall". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/17/business/worldbusiness/17iht-think_2.html?pagewanted=1. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
- ↑ Crile, George (2003). Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0871138549.
- ↑ "The Collapse of the Soviet Union and Ronald Reagan". Wais.stanford.edu. http://wais.stanford.edu/History/history_ussrandreagan.htm. Retrieved 2010-08-01.
- ↑ Petrostate: Putin, power, and the New Russia. Oxford University Press. 2008. p. 49. ISBN 0195340736. http://books.google.com/?id=bit8YHI8Hn0C&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=Marshall+Goldman+William+Casey+oil+USSR&q.
- ↑ "Sadat and Nasser". Commentarymagazine.com. http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/sadat-and-nasser-13023. Retrieved 2010-08-01.
- ↑ Voprosy Ekonomiki (Moscow), no. 2 (1988), p. 79.
- ↑ Российская история | Персонажи | Горбачев Михаил Сергеевич
- ↑ "Отмена 6-й статьи Конституции СССР о руководящей роли КПСС. Справка". RIA Novosti. 14 March 2010. http://www.rian.ru/spravka/20100314/213855855.html. Retrieved 12 July 2010.
- ↑ Acton, Edward,, (1995) Russia, The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy, Longmann Group Ltd (1995) ISBN 0-582-08922-0
Further reading
- Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations, Basic Books, 1992, ISBN 0-465-09818-5
- Gaidar, Yegor (April 19, 2007). "The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil". AEI Online. http://www.aei.org/issue/25991. Retrieved 2009-07-09.
- Gaidar, Yegor (2006). Gibel' Imperii: Uroki dlya sovremennoi Rossii [The Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia].
Gaidar, Yegor Gaidar; Antonina W. Bouis (2007). Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8157-3114-6. http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/2007/collapseofanempire.aspx. - Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Random House, 1995, ISBN 0-679-41376-6
- David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, Vintage Books, 1994, ISBN 0-679-75125-4
- Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Stanford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8047-2247-1
External links
- Reform, Coup and Collapse: The End of the Soviet State by Professor Archie Brown.
- Soviet Archives collected by Vladimir Bukovsky
- Candid photos of the Eastern Bloc September–December 1991, in the last months of the USSR
- Kuliabin A. Semine S. Some of aspects of state national economy evolution in the system of the international economic order.- USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES FAR EAST DIVISION INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC & INTERNATIONAL OCEAN STUDIES Vladivostok, 1991
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