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The Collapse of the Soviet Union 1985-1991. The Collapse of the Soviet Union
1985-1991 By: David R. Marples Chris Holmes Mod. Eur. ...
Collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a global superpower, possessing
the largest armed forces on the planet with military ...
Collapse of the soviet union. Another leader who had a lot to do with the
collapse of the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev. He ...
... War. Many believe the United States won the Cold War since (it) had resulted
in the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. While ...
food. The causes and reasons for the decline and ultimate collapse of the
Soviet Union are many and of a vastly varying nature. Yet ...
Submitted by oppapers on December 25, 2004
Category: History Other
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The Soviet Union was a global superpower, possessing the largest armed forces on the planet with military bases from Angola in Africa, to Vietnam in South-East Asia, to Cuba in the Americas. When Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, nobody expected than in less than seven years the USSR would disintergrate into fifteen separate states.
Gorbachev's attempt at democratising the totalitarian Soviet system backfired on him as the Soviet republics began to revolt against Moscow's control. This was not a case of economic and political crisis producing liberalisation and democratisation. Rather, it was liberalisation and democratisation that brought the regime to crisis point.
After coming to power, Gorbachev implemented domestic economic reforms that he hoped would improve living standards and worker productivity as part of his perestroika (reconstruction) program. The Law on Cooperatives, enacted in May 1987, was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. The law initially imposed high taxes and employment restrictions, but it later revised these to avoid discouraging private-sector activity. Under this provision, cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene.
Gorbachev's introduction of glasnost (openness) gave new freedoms to the people, such as a greater freedom of speech; a radical change as control of speech and suppression of government criticism had previously been a central part of the Soviet system. The press became far less controlled and thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were released in the spirit of glasnost.
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