Question about Soviet Union - Essay Example

Thesis statement: In the article ‘Everything you think you know about the collapse of the Soviet Union is wrong’ Leon Aron states that combination of economic, political and social factors accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union. The popular assumptions and misunderstandings upon the collapse of the Soviet Union According to Aron, popular assumptions upon the collapse of the Soviet Union are based upon misunderstandings. For instance, people misunderstood that American influence was behind the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990s.

This is totally wrong because America did not expect rapid collapse of the Soviet Union. Aron (2011)opines that “There did not seem to be any other signs of a pre-revolutionary crisis either, including the other traditionally assigned cause of state failure -- external pressure” (p.2). To be specific, the leaders of the Communist Party in Soviet Union did not share information on the socio-political and economic scenarios. One cannot expect that the decline in GDP growth in 1980s did collapse the Soviet Union because people were conditioned to cope with problems.

Besides, the financial problems faced by Soviet Union, related to the unexpected drop in oil price in 1980s did not harm her economy. There were less political problems in 9180s, so it cannot be considered as an important factor of the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. But the Afghan war exerted a little bit pressure upon the financial background of Soviet Union. Besides, Soviet Union cunningly suppressed the anti-communist uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. In short, Soviet Union in 1980s was a global super power with less socio-economic and political problems.

Aron (2011) opines that “Certainly, there were plenty of structural reasons -- economic, political, social -- why the Soviet Union should have collapsed as it did, yet they fail to explain fully how it happened when it happened ” (p.2). The popular assumptions on the collapse of the Soviet Union were based upon misunderstandings and the questions on the collapse are still answerless to an extent. If America is not behind the rapid collapse of Soviet Union, and then, who is the mastermind behind the same?

From a different angle of view, one can see that the aspiration of the people in Soviet Union to regain human dignity and individual liberty accelerated the collapse of Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the moral quest of individual freedom The author believes that it is important today to fully understand the collapse of the Soviet Union because more and more people are misjudging the scope of innovative measures adopted by Mikhail Gorbachev (say, perestroika and glasnost). Gorbachev considered that these political polices can renovate the Russian society to morality and liberalization.

He very well knew that the Russians were fed up with the single party system in Soviet Union. First of all, Gorbachev decided to seek answer to the moral problems faced by the people. The political policies like perestroika and glasnost, adopted by Gorbachev, were able to solve the social problems in the Russian society. For instance, perestroika restructured the Russian society, and glasnost accelerated openness towards innovation. Now, it is time to take steps to solve the economic problems faced by Russia.

The Soviet Model did not help the Russian society to be free from lawlessness and corruption. Instead, it