How to Understand the Collapse of the Soviet Union

In 1991, the world watched with astonishment as the Soviet Union-a nation that had existed since the Russian Revolution of 1917-voluntarily dissolved itself after nearly three-quarters of a century. As dramatic as it was, though, the collapse of the U.S.S.R. wasn't an entirely unexpected event. Here's how the Cold War finally came to a crashing end.

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Instructions

1. The 1980 invasion of Afghanistan had been a disaster. This ill-considered war, ostensibly meant to prop up a tottering Communist regime in Afghanistan but interpreted by the West as an act of sheer aggression, bled the Soviet army for nine years and reinvigorated defense spending in the United States. The tattered remnants of the Russian army finally withdrew in 1989, long after the war had become obviously a lost cause.

2. The U.S.S.R. was on the financial brink. Decades of a "command economy"-in which Communist Party headquarters in Moscow dictated what products would be manufactured, where, and when-had put the Soviet Union at a severe disadvantage compared to the market economies of the West. In addition, the need for constant defense spending to offset military outlays by the United States drained the Russian treasury.

3. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. By the mid-1980s, it was clear to the Communist Party that younger, more dynamic leadership was needed to put the U.S.S.R. back on course. Shortly after assuming the post of General Secretary, Gorbachev initiated the policies of "Glasnost" (political openness) and "Perestroika" (restructuring of the economy)-small steps by Western standards, but huge ones in the Russian context.

4. Gorbachev's policies spun out of control. Until the 1980s, the Soviet Union had been a police state, with a huge network of informers, severe censorship of the media and an active intolerance of individual initiative. Once the rigidity of the Soviet state had loosened slightly, Russians (and citizens of other S.S.R.'s) became aware of their inferior economic and social position compared to the West, and demanded further change.

5. The crisis came in 1990. By the turn of the decade, the Soviet government was working feverishly on various fronts to prop up the Communist system, pouring huge sums of money into badly run state enterprises at the same time as various regions stopped paying taxes to the center. As Moscow lost control, power devolved to non-Communist bodies (such as ethnic regions or even alternate parties).

6. Boris Yeltsin presided over the final stages. In June 1991, Yeltsin won the popular vote in Russia's first-ever presidential election. In August, a failed coup attempt by Communist hard-liners further accelerated the pressure for reform, and in December the leaders of the Soviet Union including representatives from Russia, Beylorussia, and the Ukraine voted to dissolve the U.S.S.R. in favor of a loose confederation of republics.