The Collapse of the Soviet Union: Causes, Summary, Economy (1993)
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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679751254/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0679751254&linkCode=as2&tag=mg03-20&linkId=0c50c3039e300086c4f27342d395769b The increasing political unrest led the establishment of the Soviet military and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to attempt a coup d'état to oust Mikhail Gorbachev and re-establish a strong central regime in August 1991. On December 26, 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was finalized by declaration no. 142-H of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, acknowledging the independence of the twelve republics of the Soviet Union, and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On the previous day, 25 December 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, declaring his office extinct, and handed over the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That same evening at 7:32 P.M. the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the Russian tricolor. Two weeks later, 8 of the remaining 9 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.[3][4] The dissolution of the state also marked an end to the Cold War. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the end of decades-long hostility between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which had been the defining feature of the Cold War. Many former Soviet republics have retained close links with Russia and formed multilateral organizations such as the Eurasian Economic Community, the Union State, the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and the Eurasian Union to enhance economic and security cooperation. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on 11 March 1985, only three hours after Konstantin Chernenko's death. At age 54, he was the youngest member of the Politburo. Gorbachev's primary goal as General Secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years. In an effort to revive the stagnant Soviet economy, in 1985 new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began a process of increasing political liberalization (glasnost/perestroika) in the communist one-party state. In 1985, he announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganization was needed. Gorbachev soon realized that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation.[5] The reforms began in personnel changes. On 23 April 1985 Gorbachev brought his two proteges Yegor Ligachev, and Nikolai Ryzhkov into the Politburo as full members, and sensibly took the opportunity to keep the 'power' ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member of the Politburo, and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov a Politburo candidate member. Nikonov was brought into the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat. However, this liberalization led to the emergence from 1986 onwards of nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the diverse republics of the Soviet Union.[6] It also led to the revolutions of 1989, which saw the mainly peaceful (Romania excepted) toppling of the Soviet-imposed Communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact,[7] which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Under Gorbachev's leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies,[8] although a ban on other political parties was not lifted until 1990.[9] A 17 March 1991 referendum showed 76.4% of Soviet citizens voting to retain the Union. However, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Georgia, and Armenia did not participate.[10] In May 1985 in Leningrad Gorbachev made a speech advocating widespread reforms. One of the first reforms Gorbachev introduced was the anti-alcohol campaign, begun in May 1985, which was designed to fight widespread alcoholism in the Soviet Union. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised, and their sales were restricted.[11] It was a serious blow to the state budget, a loss of approximately 100 billion rubles according to Alexander Yakovlev, after alcohol production migrated to the black market economy.[11] The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the existing centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms, which tended toward market socialism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_collapse
Comments
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What a jackass! Wasn't he the one of the cheerleaders to Iraq Invasion. Imperialist dumbass. Thinks because he is white and speaks English, he is brilliant.
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What a great actor and narrator, not sure if he is much of an investigator or researcher. Anti-communist propagandist.
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The guy is a Zionist Jew, he went as a traveller ( spy) ! These scumbags like Kissinger, Brzezinski are mass murderers!!! They plan and plot and install puppet governments of Freemasons and Zionists Jews to destroy the world and create a one world government and greater Israhell!
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This guy looks abit like Trotsky!!
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Its sad to think Leninism will probably never return...:(
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This guy is a fucking snob.
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As of 2016, the document that confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union is missing. Is it possible that Russia is secretly still ruling as the Soviet Union just with a different name? It seems like the old republics wanted independence not to break the Soviet Union.
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Such demagogue, I hope he had this speech on instruction from his higher ups, he cant be this stupid. I doubt he ever did his homework on the subject. Soviet Moscow was never like that, and he never lived in it. Its so sad them vultures picking on the corpse of their fallen adversary (so much feared before). The guy is an asshole.
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Communism has never existed under communism the people freely give up their things to the government but that that is contradictory to human nature, nobody is going to willfully give up their own possessions. So, the government had to step in and take these things by force. Communism has never existed and will never exist.
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americans didnt know a shit about Russia,and still dont know)Thats vert good
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While Communisms was alive and strong there was a logo :"Proletarians of all countries, Unite!" ( dont let the capitalist to exploit you). Now that the Communism is dead the unwritten logo is "Capitalist of all countries Unite!" ( exploit the proletarians).
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This is such incredible horseshit. Solzhenitsyn (the anti-semite crypto nazi) claims Stalin killed 60 million.... the population statistics (even Western statistics) do not show any great decrease in the population with the exception of WWII when 27 million people died in the war. Ask yourself this question: if the 27 million die in war and the population reflects that, then how does it not reflect any of these supposed 10s of millions of Stalin's victims?
Stalin's victims number 1 million or less. Probably much much less. From some documents people have gathered that the number of people sentenced to be shot was 600,000. However some historians say that this is way too high. Arch Getty says the number might be tens of thousands and not hundreds of thousands let alone a ridiculous number like millions. -
I swear this guy looks like a cross between Buddy Holly and Elliot Rodger.
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Soviet Union never really recovered WW2. Military losses were too high. System itself made things even much worse.
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Who can accuse Gorbachev of making himself richer ? After all he's the man who officially finished the communism in the world. It's as big success as starting a very profitable business.He deserves every penny.
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Poor thing lived in a Spartan, grim Moscow apartment.
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This guy is brimming with condescension and arrogance.
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This guy Remnick is typical of the Western arrogance of the 90s but he does have some useful information. The West from '91 to '01 wasted valuable time to create a fair New Order that included Russia by patting itself on the back about defeating the USSR, invading countries and expanding NATO while buying off Yeltsen's Russia with aid $$$. American journalists have become so full of themselves and people think these talking heads on steroids are equal to college professors. If Putin brings back a USSR like organization this CSPAN crap and American arrogance on the world stage should get the credit too. Its sad these guys couldn't understand that Russia was a world power feared by western Europe under the Tsars. The UK & France fought the crimean war to contain them. The West thinking the end of the cold war meant Russia would just be complacent and allow NATO/USA to invade countries with impunity (Iraq, libya etc) and allow NATO to expand up to the Russia border was insane. It should be no surprise that Russia is behaving like its doing in 2014-15. The West has forced its hand. Also, the Reason why Gorbi and other former top USSR brass are selling out for $$$ is because they need to support themselves. Yeltsin couldn't be seen with those people and their political skills were only useful in the USSR so they have to make money for survival. Putin is not Gorbi so the West better gets its act together or in this next go round the West may end up "on the ash dump of history" and not any new USSR like creation.
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Well it's been 20 years and that motherfucker is still lying in red square stuffed like Phar Lap. Russia it turns out is just to proud to reform. Who knew?
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