The Collapse of the Soviet Union - Essay Example

Gorbachev and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Introduction. On March 11, 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev, at age 54, was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party. He was the youngest leader since Stalin and also became the Partys first leader to have been born after the Russian Revolution of 1917. When Brezhnev died in 1982, the plight of the U.S.S.R. had reached crisis proportions. Brezhnev had not been in effective control of the country during his last few years owing to senility. The Politburo was dominated by old men: Yury Andropov and then Konstantin Chernenko led the country from 1982 until 1985, but their administrations failed to address critical problems (Kotkin 13). “Uskoreniye”. On April 20, 1985, Gorbachev announced a slogan and a politics called “uskoreniye” (acceleration), aimed at the acceleration of social and economical development of the Soviet Union. For the first time in Soviet history the leader of the USSR admitted the slowing down of the economic development and inadequate living standards. The acceleration was planned to be based on the technical and scientific progress, revamping of heavy industry, taking "human factor" into an account, and increasing the labor discipline and responsibility of “apparatchiks” (officials). In practice, it was implemented with the help of massive monetary emission infused into the heavy industry, which further destabilized the economy. Thus, central planning was modified without making truly fundamental changes. This politics eventually failed, which was de-facto admitted, and the "uskoreniye" slogan was phased out in favor of less ambitiously sounding term "perestroika" (economic restructuring) (Brown 93). “Perestroika”. In July 1987, the Supreme Soviet (the supreme legislative body) passed the Law on State Enterprises, according to which enterprises had to fulfill state orders, but they could dispose of the remaining output as they saw fit. The law also shifted control over the enterprise operations from ministries to elected workers collectives. The Law on Cooperatives, enacted in May 1988, permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors: cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene. This program permitted the ministries of the various industrial and agricultural branches to conduct foreign trade in sectors under their responsibility rather than having to operate indirectly through the bureaucracy of trade ministry organizations. The most significant of Gorbachevs reforms in the foreign economic sector allowed foreigners to invest in the Soviet Union in the form of joint ventures with Soviet ministries, state enterprises, and cooperatives (Gorbachev 34-36). Nevertheless, by 1990, the government had virtually lost control over economic conditions. Although these economic measures made some inroads in decentralization, Gorbachev and his team left intact most of the fundamental elements of the Stalinist system — price controls, inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and the government monopoly over most means of production. Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies continued. 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. In general, Gorbachevs new system bore the characteristics of neither central planning nor a market economy. Instead, the Soviet economy went from stagnation to deterioration. At the end of 1991, when the union officially dissolved, the national economy was in a virtual tailspin. In 1991 Soviet GDP had declined by 17 percent and was declining at an accelerating rate. Between 1990 and 1991, retail prices in the Soviet Union increased 140 percent (Brown & Shevtsova 85-103). “Glasnost”. Gorbachevs goal in undertaking glasnost (“openness” or “new method of thinking” or “freedom of speech”) was to pressure conservatives within the Communist Party who opposed his policies of economic restructuring. He also hoped that through different ranges of openness, debate and participation, the Soviet people would support and participate in perestroika. Glasnost gave new freedoms to the people, such as a greater freedom of speech — a radical change, as control of speech and suppression of government criticism had previously been a central part of the Soviet system. There was also a greater degree of freedom within the media. In the late 1980s, the Soviet government came under increased criticism, as did Leninist ideology (which Gorbachev had attempted to preserve as the foundation for reform), and members of the Soviet population were more outspoken in their view that the Soviet government had become a failure. The media began to expose severe social and economic problems which the Soviet government had long denied and covered up. Long-denied problems such as poor housing, food shortages, alcoholism, widespread pollution, creeping mortality rates and the second-rate position of women, were now receiving increasing attention (Hough 68-80). This began to undermine the faith of the public in the Soviet system. Political openness continued to produce unintended consequences. In elections to the regional assemblies of the Soviet Unions constituent republics, nationalists swept the board. As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of the USSRs central Moscow government to impose its will on the USSRs constituent republics had been largely undermined. During the 1980s calls for greater independence from Moscows rule grew louder (Brown & Shevtsova 142). This was especially marked in the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which had been annexed into the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin in 1940. Starting in the mid-1980s, the Baltic states used the reforms provided by glasnost to assert their rights to protect their environment and their historic monuments and, later, their claims to sovereignty and independence. The rise of nationalism under glasnost also reawakened simmering ethnic tensions throughout the union. For example, in February 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region in the Azerbaijan SSR, passed a resolution calling for unification with the Armenian SSR. Violence against local Azeris was then reported on Soviet television, which provoked massacres of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait (Remnick 122). Whilst thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were released in the spirit of glasnost, Gorbachevs original goal of using glasnost and perestroika to reform the Soviet Union was not achieved. “Demokratizatsiya”. In January 1987, Gorbachev introduced a slogan called “demokratizatsiya” ("democratization") calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Unions increasingly geriatric and ossified political process. Gorbachev increasingly found himself caught between criticism by conservatives, who wanted to stop reform, and liberals, who wanted to accelerate it. In June 1988, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus. He again called for multi-candidate elections for regional and local legislatures and party first secretaries and insisted on the separation of the government apparatus from party bodies at the regional level as well. In the face of an overwhelming majority of conservatives, Gorbachev still was able to rely on party discipline to force through acceptance of his reform proposals (Kotkin 119). In December 1988, the Supreme Soviet approved formation of a Congress of Peoples Deputies, which constitutional amendments had established as the Soviet Unions new legislative body. The Supreme Soviet then dissolved itself. The amendments called for a smaller working body of 542 members, also called the Supreme Soviet, to be elected from the 2,250-member Congress of Peoples Deputies. To ensure a communist majority in the new parliament, Gorbachev reserved one-third of the seats for the CPSU and other public organizations. The results of the election held in March 1989 stunned the ruling elite: throughout the country, voters crossed off the ballot unopposed communist candidates, many of them prominent party officials, taking advantage of the nominal privilege of withholding approval of the listed candidates. However, the Congress of Peoples Deputies that emerged still contained 87 percent CPSU members. Genuine reformists won only some 300 seats. In May the initial session of the Congress of Peoples Deputies electrified the country. For two weeks on live television, deputies from around the country railed against every scandal and shortcoming of the Soviet system that could be identified. Nevertheless, a conservative majority maintained control of the congress. Gorbachev was elected without opposition to the chairmanship of the new Supreme Soviet; then the Congress of Peoples Deputies elected a large majority of old-style party apparatchiks to fill the membership of its new legislative body. The first Congress of Peoples Deputies was the last moment of real control for Gorbachev over the political life of the Soviet Union (Dallin & Lapidus 256). In the summer of 1989, the first opposition bloc in the Congress of Peoples Deputies was formed under the name of the Interregional Group. The members of this body included almost all of the liberal and Russian nationalist members of the opposition led by Boris Yeltsin. A primary issue for the opposition was the repeal of Article 6 of the constitution, which prescribed the supremacy of the CPSU over all the institutions in society. Faced with opposition pressure for the repeal of Article 6 and needing allies against hard-liners in the CPSU, Gorbachev obtained the repeal of Article 6 by the February 1990 Central Committee plenum. Later that month, before the Supreme Soviet, he proposed the creation of a new office of President of the Soviet Union, to be elected by the Congress of Peoples Deputies rather than the people. Accordingly, in March 1990 Gorbachev was elected for the third time in eighteen months to a position equivalent to Soviet head of state. By the time of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress in July 1990, the CPSU was regarded by liberals and nationalists of the constituent republics as anachronistic and unable to lead the country. The CPSU branches in many of the fifteen Soviet republics began to split into large pro-sovereignty and pro-union factions, further weakening central party control (Brown 208-216). Consequences. Finally, in a series of humiliations, the CPSU had been separated from the government and stripped of its leading role in society and its function in overseeing the national economy. After that, the USSRs 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 (Hough 198). 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 Unions 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. The Baltic States, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova boycotted the referendum. In each of the other 9 republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of the Soviet Union. In June 1991, direct elections were held for the post of president of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialistic Republic (RSFSR). The populist candidate Boris Yeltsin, who was an outspoken critic of Mikhail Gorbachev, won 57% percent of the vote, defeating Gorbachevs preferred candidate, former Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov, who won 16% of the vote (Brown 261). Faced with growing republic separatism, Gorbachev attempted to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state: 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. The new treaty was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, which needed the economic power and markets of the Soviet Union to prosper. However, the more radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required and were more than happy to contemplate the disintegration of the USSR, if that was required to achieve their aims. The conservatives, still strong within the CPSU and military establishment, were completely opposed to anything, which might contribute to the weakening of the Soviet state. On August 19, 1991, Gorbachevs vice president Gennadi Yanayev, prime minister Valentin Pavlov, defense minister Dmitriy Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, and other senior officials acted to prevent the 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. The coup leaders quickly issued an emergency decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers. However, the public sympathy in Moscow was largely against them. Thousands of people came out to defend the "White House" then the symbolic seat of Russian sovereignty. 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. But Gorbachevs powers were now fatally compromised. Neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands (Hough 176-183). Through the fall of 1991, the Russian government took over the union government, ministry by ministry. In November 1991, Yeltsin issued a decree banning the CPSU 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 (Dallin & Lapidus 248). Formation of the CIS. On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha to issue a declaration that the Soviet Union was dissolved and replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Gorbachev described the declaration as an illegal and dangerous constitutional coup. Yet, he had become a president without a country. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR and was replaced by Boris Yeltsin. By December 31, all official Soviet institutions had ceased operations (Remnick 174). Conclusion. In sum, the Soviet Union left a legacy of economic inefficiency and deterioration to the fifteen constituent republics after its breakup in December 1991. Arguably, the shortcomings of the Gorbachev reforms had contributed to the economic decline and eventual destruction of the Soviet Union, leaving Russia and the other successor states to pick up the pieces and to try to mold market economies. At the same time, one should admit, that the Gorbachev programs did start Russia on the precarious road to full-scale economic reform. The collapse of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics radically changed the worlds economic and political environment. The speed with which the Soviet system was transformed and the Soviet state disintegrated took almost everyone by surprise. However, USSRs collapse was the result of many unsolved problems. Gorbachev’s appointment and his early reforms allowed the problems of the USSR to be uncovered and become public knowledge, which, in turn, became the cause of the collapse. Works cited. 1. Brown, Archie & Shevtsova, Lilia. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin: Political Leadership in Russias Transition. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001. 2. Brown, Archie. The Gorbachev Factor. Oxford University Press, 1996. 3. Dallin Alexander & Lapidus, Gail W. The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse. Westview Press, 1995. 4. Gorbachev, Mikhail. Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World. Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1988. 5. Hough, Jerry F. Democratization and Revolution in the USSR 1985-1991. Brookings Institution, 1997. 6. Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000. Oxford University Press, 2001. 7. Remnick, David. Lenins Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Viking, 1993. Read More