Why and when did the Soviet union collapse

Collapse of the Soviet Union

2005

The Soviet Union occupied principal place among the most powerful countries of XX century . It was a country with rich and dramatic history : it survived wars , international conflicts , political repressions , economic and social crises , etc . It was the country , which had the largest army on earth , located in military bases in almost all continents . It was the country with blossoming culture and science which is still known all around the world with its achievements in space science and medicine , with its incredible literary heritage and

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For more than 70 years the Soviet Union was such a monolithic and ideologically strong community , that even in the mid 80 's it was very difficult to imagine that it can collapse . Nevertheless , in the beginning of 90 's in formation of 15 new independent states , which were former republics of the union . This work is an attempt to sum up and analyze the preconditions and backgrounds of this breakdown , which are mostly rooted in imperfections and stagnation of the whole soviet system

For many people the collapse of the USSR is associated with the name of the last leader of this country , Mikhail (Sergeevich ) Gorbachev , who came to the power in March , 1985 , and occupied the position of the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the USSR . He was a candidate from so called younger generation ' of the Communists , who started introducing some slight elements of democracy into static and stagnating command system of the country

Gorbachev 's most famous reformation is economic program , called perestroika (reconstruction . First of all , it allowed industrial state enterprises to plan their activity more independently and determine the amounts of their production without involvement of centralized planning managerial committees of the government . Besides , perestroika introduced a new form of collective property called cooperative , which contradicted with communist imaginations about domination of state property in industry and agriculture . Also , this reformation favored to foreign investments into Soviet economy and opened some new horizons in foreign trade

Another set of reformations of Gorbachev is called glasnost (transparency , openness , which were political changes , directed on melting down of conservative ideology of the whole communist society and , in particular , Gorbachev 's opponents . This reformation included some considerable relaxation of censorship in the country and granting freedom to mass media to express different opinions . Furthermore Gorbachev ed to slow down the activities of KGB (Soviet Committee for State Security , which used to serve as secret police of the government . Since the times of political repressions of Josef Stalin , it has been keeping usual citizens of the country in real fear

It is obvious , that innovative ideas of such reformations fell in deep contradiction with well established and rooted principles of command economy and communist ideology . That is why , unfortunately , both these significant programs could not bring to some expected results or stabilization . On the contrary , they increased the misbalance and chaos both in economy and political life of the whole country . Besides...