Collapse of the Soviet Union - Essay Example

This happened in march of 1985. It was a result of the emergence of younger communists. These people had radical thinking and were fed up with the years of stagnation in the Soviet Union both politically and economically. Gorbachev had a team of reform-oriented technocrats who thought that economic development was at a very slow pace in the USSR (Brown, 1996). With these things in mind and a hope to achieve rapid economic development, Gorbachev introduced programs like glasnost that is political openness, and perestroika, which meant Economic restructuring (R.English, 2000). Adding to it was the policy named Uskoreniye, which meant gearing up economic development. These policies came up in 1986 (Brown, 1996). These can be marked as the main weapons that led to the dismantling of the great Soviet Union (Helene, 1992). As the conservatives at that time did not agree with Gorbachev regarding these reforms by the name of economic restructuring, he introduced glasnost stating that the transformations in the economy would be difficult to achieve without corresponding changes in the political scenario in the nation (R.English, 2000). Gorbachev thought that these reforms would speed up the Economic Development of the USSR and was confident that he would have people’s support by having their views in a wide range of openness through glasnost. However, Glasnost resulted in an unexpected situation where freedom of speech became much more prominent and the fourth estate’s domination started (David, 1994). This gave the opportunity for the press to be more comfortable in expressing the loopholes in the Soviet Union and the hidden truths that were never known to people. Many political prisoners were released as a result and USSR was a topic that was free to explore by many foreign sources as well (David, 1994). Many topics that were hidden in the past were now brought to light. People started to become aware of the atrocities that were done by previous rulers of the USSR. Gorbachev at this time introduced democratic principles in the Soviet. He also introduced many radical reforms that led to compulsory constitutional amendments (Brown, 1996).

Gorbachev did all this in order to strengthen the communist system in the USSR however; it resulted in many unintended situations and gave way to a series of events that led to the demise of the USSR. Introducing glasnost paved the way for the press to become more control and the communist party had almost lost grip over the press and media. The media took this opportunity to focus on many social and economic problems that the Soviets never cared to address. Drug abuse, pollution, and crimes committed by Stalin are a few to mention (Ronald, 1993). Another strong reason for the Soviet’s decline was the mishandling of the Chernobyl incident (Ronald, 1993). On the 26th of April the fourth reactor of the nuclear plant at the now known Ukraine exploded. This disaster happened in 1986 and this led to evacuating of thousands of square miles of land and the loss of uncountable lives. The effect of this disaster is still faced in many parts of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The government was not properly informed about the incident by the military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union. Added to this was the role of conservatives. They with their grudge against Garbechev’s government blocked the information regarding this incident (David, 1994). This led to the mishandling of the situation and a delay in the official responsible for this incident. Many organizations internationally blamed Gorbachev’s government for this and the people and allied nations started losing confidence in the Soviets. The event was followed by the break up of the Warsaw pact between the allied nations (Ronald, 1993). The rise of the new trade leader during this time led to friction between the Soviets and its western allies. This led to the lesser intervention of Moscow in trade-related matters and lesser dependency on them. Soviet could neither achieve the economic benefit nor any profits due to this. It led to instability in here and curtains for the Warsaw pact. During the same time, there was a tide of revolution in many individual nations and all the allies in the Warsaw pact experienced the fall of their communist parties for the first time.

Notable among these are the democratic revolution of Poland and the independence movement of the Baltic state Lithonia (Helene, 1992). In Feb 1990, USSR agreed to end its monopoly of power. Individual states started to form and establish their individual governments. Gorbachev at this time tried to bring some of the states into an alliance known as the Republic of Independent nations having common military, foreign policy, and government. Response to this was positive (Brown, 1996). However, many of the conservatives and the leaders with Gorbachev house arrested him and formed a coup, commonly known as the August Coup of 1991, which banned the newspapers and tried to stop perestroika (David, 1994). However, to their surprise, the people opposed it strongly and the Coup collapsed and Gorbachev was back to power. However, he was in a no man’s land now with no native party. These events led to the dissolution of the USSR.