- The Soviet Union was a country comprising modern day Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. It was in existence from December 30, 1922 until December 26, 1991.
- The Soviet Union was already undergoing great difficulties by the late 1970s and early 1980s, bedeviled by stagnant economic performance, a bloated military budget, profound social problems and a state apparatus that was rife with corruption and cynicism. Following the death of Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, the reform-oriented Yuri Andropov assumed leadership. However, he did not live long enough to do anything truly substantial and was succeeded by hardliner Konstantin Chernenko. Chernenko was a conservative, but also died shortly after assuming power, and was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev set about trying to reform the Soviet state, but ironically his efforts could be described as too much, too late: rather than shore up the Soviet system, they ultimately accelerated its decline.
- Numerous factors led to the collapse of the USSR. Economically, the Soviet Union had become stagnant and perhaps even gone into decline by the mid-1980s. Soviet central planning was never very good at producing efficiency, resulting in vast waste of natural resources. For example, despite being in possession of vast expanses of fertile agricultural land, the Soviet state was never able to feed its people and relied on grain imports right up to its end. Also, the effort to keep up with the United States in the Cold War arms race consumed proportionally more resources from a smaller economy, leaving less capital for investment. As regional governments became more autonomous from the center and control over the economy deteriorated, tax revenues dried up. Exacerbating the problem was Gorbachev's crackdown on alcoholism, which denied the government its important tax revenues from vodka sales. Another profound problem was the war in Afghanistan. The war, with its casualties and its callous treatment of Soviet soldiers, veterans and the families of those slain in the conflict produced widespread disaffection in the Soviet populace. Some of the first stirrings of civil society in the Soviet Union were among the mothers of Soviet soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Also, a war in a Central Asian Islamic country produced stirrings within the Soviet Union's own Central Asian Muslim population. Socially, the Soviet population had become deeply cynical with a government that routinely and blatantly lied to them about everything. This only became worse under the relaxation of censorship that came with Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, as the media began to reveal the truth about life in the Soviet Union. Glasnost also led to the rise of independence protests in Soviet Republics such as Georgia and in the Baltics. Ethnic strife erupted between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh. Meanwhile, Gorbachev's effort to end the Cold War so he could reduce military expenditures had resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. As the Kremlin lost control over the economy and the people, they had the example of East Germany and Poland rising up and peacefully overthrowing their governments.
- The beginning of the end of the Soviet Union was with the coup by Communist hardliners to unseat Gorbachev and steer the country back into authoritarianism. Led by Gorbachev's Vice President Gennadi Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitriy Yazov and KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, the August 1991 coup reintroduced censorship, banned political activity, put soldiers on the streets of major cities and placed Gorbachev under house arrest where he was enjoying his Black Sea vacation. It faltered when popular sentiment turned out to be heavily against the coup, people took to the street and the coup plotters proved unwilling to resort to the use of deadly force to back up their proclamations. In Moscow, recently elected Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin (who had previously been expelled from the Communist Party for being a radical reformer) rallied a mass demonstration against the coup plotters. The coup collapsed after three days. In September 1991, the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia left the Soviet Union and declared independence, and in November Yeltsin issued a decree banning the Communist Party throughout Russia. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
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First and foremost, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to the Cold War, a period marked by almost five decades of tension and suspicion, backed by the ever-present threat of nuclear war. With the possibility of worldwide nuclear annihilation eliminated, the world became a markedly safer place. The end of the Cold War also allowed for a "peace dividend" among Western countries, as the high defense budgets required to meet the Soviet threat were no longer required. U.S. defense spending shrank by roughly two percent of GDP, for example. However, the collapse of Soviet military power also brought the security of former Soviet nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons sites into question, creating a significant-if-lesser threat.
The end of the USSR also created a plethora of new states, some of them (either quickly or eventually) becoming democratic. However, even in the case of those that never made the transition to free markets and democratic governance, only with the arguable exception of Belarus are the people not enjoying more personal freedom than was the case under Soviet times.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was also the death knell of Communist ideology around the world. In China, Deng Xiaoping had already begun to lead his country away from Communist economics and central planning, even if the Chinese continued to live under an authoritarian, one-party state. The collapse of the first and most powerful Communist state left only minor countries pursuing what came to be regarded as a discredited and bankrupt economic system. - Republican ideologues often claim that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Reagan certainly stirred up greater tension in the US-Soviet relationship with his hardline rhetoric, policies and increased defense spending. However, it has never been proven that Soviet efforts to try to keep up with Reagan's defense increases caused their economy to fall apart. Indeed, it was already beginning to crack at the time, regardless of anything Reagan did. Compared to Gorbachev's role in hastening the end of the Soviet Union, Reagan's role was minor indeed, and if being the U.S. president present at the end of the Soviet Union qualifies one to lay claim to "winning" the Cold War, then that title goes to George H.W. Bush and not Reagan.
