Cold War

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics also known as USSR was created in 1922, and was the first communist state to be put in existence. The USSR was run by the Secretary General which would be the same as the President of the United States. The General Secretary answered to the communist Party who in turn controlled everything from agriculture to manufacturing of goods. Because of this harsh control, the Soviet Union ended in 1991 carving a path for Capitalism. The major contributing factor to the downfall of the USSR was the poor state of economy which in turn triggered the various attempts to make major changes by prominent party leaders. The changes that were made and the who was involved create the the ultimate downfall of the USSR.

Vladimir Lenin led the All-Russian communist party during the start of the USSR bet he never became General Secretary, in 1922 he became leader of the NEP or New Economic Policy, which allowed small businesses and firms carry small trade and make a little private profit. Although individuals could do this the major infrastructure such as, finance transportation and foreign trade was kept to the government's control. On April 3rd 1922 Joseph Stalin was declared to be the Secretary General, from here he started the first five year plan. This plan was in place by the mid-1930s. Almost all the major infrastructure was controlled by the government.

The planned economy had set goals and prorities for the entire country, mainly its economy. The major priority was to increase net production, consequencly leading to an amount of farms created that was controlled exclusively by the government. The more wealthy and influential peasants who refused to join the new farms where destroyed by the government because of their lack of cooperation. More that 5 million homes and farms were destroyed. Then their property was taken and became government property. The peasants that survived this were sent to Siberia as little more than slaves. The plan that was put in place did increase bet production.

The planned economy performed reasonably well up to the year 1960, after which, economic growth began to decline. The prolonged decline from the 1970s to the 1980s convinced many that there were serious problems with the Soviet economic model. The annual expansion rate of gross natural product (GNP), which was 5.7 percent in the 1950s, had decreased to a mere 2 percent by the mid-1980s. Shortages of goods (including food) began to spread more throughout the state."

The economy was doing poorly due to other reasons also, one of which includes the vast amount of money that was being stolen by the government. Everyone was stealing, from important officials all the way down to simple workers.° Also, there was no incentive for anyone to work well, use materials efficiently, or come up with new ideas, etc. The reason for this was because if someone were to do their job well and put in extra effort they would receive absolutely no reward, so why work harder for the same outcome.°

Another problem was the threat of the Cold War. The over inflated budget for the military and space programs that the state could ill-afford added to the growing problems of the economy. One of the largest arms races in history took place during the Cold War. The scramble for stocking up on nuclear weapons between the United States and the USSR reached epic proportions and expenses ran high." All of these problems of the economy finally led the leaders of the state to begin to realize that some changes must be made in order to get the USSR back on its feet, and so the decision to make reforms slowly crept over the communist party.¹

The final factor that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union was fueled by the economic problems, the changes made by the party leaders. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to the post of general secretary. Gorbachev, without intending to do so, triggered a revolution that unseated him and the Communist regime. He inherited a country knee-deep in economic and foreign policy troubles. In his first nine months in power, he replaced 40% of the regional-level leadership and unleashed a vigorous campaign against the use of alcohol." He began approving measures aimed at loosening social restraints. Gorbachev started to open small business opportunities for the people by loosening the laws on private possessions and allowing "cooperatives", which were small enterprises run by people (but the government still had a lot of control over them).° He called these policies the policies of "openness" and "restructuring". These measures were expected to improve the economy by increasing the free flow of goods and information.

All of these new reforms were immediately put to the test (particularly the "openness" policy). On April 26, 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded, spreading radioactive material over a large area." The Soviet government immediately began to try to cover up the extent of the disaster, but Gorbachev dramatically ended the cover-up by lifting the restrictions off of reporting. This triggered issues, such as the widespread poverty of the Soviet people and the country's waste of resources, to be openly discussed for the first time because now the realization occurred to the people that they were simply allowed to do so.

For the next two years, changes of a similar kind were made. The reforms swayed back and forth between increasing and decreasing social restraints. Changes in policy introduced lawful financial inequality for the first time in many years.° The psychological affect was devastating on the population, the people were not ready. Crime rates rose, slowly but surely, and the first attempt made by Communist conservatives at overthrowing the government (Gorbachev) failed.¹ In time, however, enough people had tasted their new gains in freedom and began to realize that they must try harder to rid themselves of the oppression put on them by Communism.

Events might have taken a much different course if Gorbachev had been willing to either use military force to control the ever-growing discontent or to resign right then and there. He did neither, and therefore found himself caught in a pinch between conservative and liberal points of view." The Union Republics that made up the Soviet Union benefited from the turmoil of Gorbachev's administration. For most of their existence, the Union Republics had been nothing more than hollow shells of powerlessness, but now they found that they had the ability to challenge Moscow and the government.¹

The Republics profited from a new sense of nationalism, from hopes that they could reform the economy and fix the things their government was unable to, and from a belief that they were the only barrier left that separated the country from complete chaos.° All of Gorbachev's reforms and the cries of an unsatisfied Soviet people finally began to boil down to a climax. The collapse had begun. One by one, the Republic parliaments adopted resolutions that stated their sovereignty and that their laws were above Soviet legislation. Some of the republics took a big step further and declared complete independence from the Soviet Union. Gorbachev, having been swaying back and forth between oppressive policies and the opposite since he was appointed as general secretary, decided to make a gamble in the spring of 1991 and tried to renegotiate with the republics about the 1922 treaty that had formed the USSR. They had managed to work out a draft Union Treaty, which a good number of the Union Republics were prepared to sign on the chosen day of August 20, 1991."

The signing ceremony never took place. On August 19th of the year 1991, one day before the date of the signing, disaster struck. In desperation, a group of senior officials (Gorbachev's own people) led by Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, Vice President Gennady Yanayev, and the heads of the KGB and the Interior Ministry, detained Gorbachev at his dacha (a country house), therefore preventing him from being present at the ceremony the next day at which he was to sign the treaty that would grant greater independence to the USSR's constituent republics. The incident was known as the August Coup. It failed due to military leaders and Republic Presidents leading popular resistance to the attempted takeover. The coup leaders were arrested and Gorbachev was returned to his position as the head of state, but he was discredited due to his poor handling of the crisis and therefore, he never recovered from it. Actual power had been handed down to Republic Presidents, specifically Boris Yeltsin. On August 24th, Gorbachev resigned from his post as general secretary. Within several days the Communist Party's activities had ceased, and in November 1991, Yeltsin dissolved it and seized its assets.¹ The Communist Party in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been banned.

The independence of the Baltic states and Ukraine was recognized shortly after the ban of the Communist Party." The heads of the other Union Republics soon passed similar resolutions. Yeltsin met with the Ukrainian and Belorussian heads of state in Belorussia. The three leaders signed an agreement proclaiming the Soviet Union to be defunct and announcing the formation of a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Two weeks later, five other republics (Belorussia, Moldavia, Kirgizia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan) joined the CIS.¹ Finally, on December 25th, 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation as president through a very solemn television address to the people. The next day, on December 26th, the remnants of the Soviet parliament passed its final resolution which acknowledged the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On December 31st, the first Communist state ceased its remaining tasks. The USSR no longer existed.

A streak of seemingly unsolvable economic problems and the reactions to the former made by the Communist Party leaders ended up sending the USSR into a downward spiral towards collapse. The Soviet Union's apparatus of oppression was finally shut down after almost a century of its people's struggles.

The correct answer is NO

I am sorry but I fail to see why you asked this question.