The End of the Bipolar World, 1989-1991 C.E.

1. The End of the Bipolar World, 1989-1991 C.E. Ximena Ramirez Period 3 Mr. Marshall AP World History 3/31/09 ("A Peep into the Soviet Union“ 1)

2. ("Communists: Crisis Will Help Us Regain Power.“ 1) Crisis in the Soviet Union • Under U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union’s General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, the public speaking of the Cold War remained intense. • Massive new U.S. investments in artillery, including a space-based missile protection system that never became operational, placed heavy burdens on the Soviet economy, which was unable to absorb the cost of developing similar weapons. (Bulliet 858) • Soviet economic problems were general; shortages of food, consumer goods, and housing were an ongoing part of Soviet life. (Spodek 795) • Obsolete industrial plants and centralized planning that stifled initiative and responsiveness to market demand led to a declining standard of living relative to the West. Society contrasted greatly than that of the West. • Despite the unpopularity of the war in Afghanistan and growing discontent, Brezhnev refused to modify his rigid and unsuccessful policies. • The writer Alexander Solzhenitzyn punished the Soviet system and particularly the Stalinist prison camps. He won a Nobel Prize in literature but was charged with treason and expelled from the country in 1974. (Andrea 435) • The physicist Andrei Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner protested the nuclear arms race and human rights violations and were condemned to banishment within the country. Some Jewish dissidents spoke out against anti-Semitism. (Bulliet 858) • When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR in 1985, weariness with war in Afghanistan, economic decay, and vocal protest had reached critical levels. Casting aside Brezhnev’s hard line, Gorbachev authorized major reforms in an attempt to stave off total collapse. • His policy of political openness (glasnost) permitted criticism of the government and the Communist Party. His policy of perestroika (“restructuring”) was an attempt to address long-suppressed economic problems by moving away from central state planning and toward a more open economic system. (Armstrong 260) • In 1989 he ended the war in Afghanistan, which had cost many lives and much money.

3. The Collapse of the Socialist Bloc ("Freedom Agenda.“ 1) • In 1980 protests by Polish shipyard workers in the city of Gdansk led to the formation of Solidarity, a labor union that soon enrolled 9 million members. (Bulliet 859) • The Roman Catholic Church in Poland, strengthened by the elevation of a Pole, Karol Wojtyla, to the papacy as John Paul II in 1978, gave strong moral support to the protest movement. • As Gorbachev loosened political controls in the Soviet Union after 1985, communist leaders elsewhere lost confidence in Soviet resolve, and critics and reformers in Poland and throughout eastern Europe were emboldened. (Armstrong 272) • Beleaguered Warsaw Pact governments hesitated between relaxation of control and suppression of dissent. • Just as the Catholic clergy in Poland had supported Solidarity, Protestant and Orthodox religious leaders aided the rise of opposition groups elsewhere. This combination of nationalism and religion provided a powerful base for opponents of the communist regimes. (Spodek 765) • Threatened by these forces, communist governments sought to quiet opposition by seeking solutions to their severe economic problems. • By the end of 1989 communist governments across eastern Europe had fallen. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of a divided Europe and the bipolar world, vividly represented this transformation. (Bulliet 859) • Leaders in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia reformed while in Romania the dictator Nicolae Ceausescurefused and was executed. • The comprehensiveness of these changes became clear in 1990, when Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was elected president in Poland. • Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a tidal wave of patriotic enthusiasm swept aside the once-formidable communist government of East Germany. In the chaotic months that followed, East Germans crossed to West Germany in large numbers, and government services in the eastern sector nearly disappeared. Some Europeans recalled German militarism earlier in the century and worried about reunification. But there was little concrete opposition, and in 1990 Germany was reunified. ("Freedom Agenda.“ 1)

4. (Grossman 1) The Collapse of the Socialist Bloc (cont.) &The Persian Gulf War • Soviet leaders looked on with dismay at the collapse of communism in the Warsaw Pact countries. • The year 1990 brought declarations of independence by Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, three small states on the Baltic Sea that the Soviet Union had annexed in 1939. Violent ethnic strife soon erupted in the Caucasus region. Gorbachev tried to accommodate the rising pressures for change, but the tide was running too fast. (Bulliet 859-860) • The end of the Soviet Union came suddenly in 1991. After communist hardliners failed a poorly conceived rebellion against Gorbachev, disgust with communism boiled over. • Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic and longtime member of the Communist Party, led popular resistance to the overthrow in Moscow and emerged as the most powerful leader in the country. • Russia, the largest republic in the Soviet Union, was effectively taking the place of the disintegrating USSR. (Armstrong 273) • In September 1991 the Congress of People’s Deputies—the central legislature of the USSR, long subservient to the Communist Party—voted to dissolve the union. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), was created. The same month Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. • Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia also dismembered. The first significant conflict to occur after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was the Persian Gulf War. The immediate causes were local and bilateral. (Spodek 764) • Iraq’s ruler, Saddam Husain, had borrowed a great deal of money from neighboring Kuwait and sought unsuccessfully to get the size of this debt reduced. He was also eager to gain control of Kuwait’s oil fields. Husain believed that the smaller and militarily weaker nation could be quickly defeated, and he suspected that the United States would not react. The invasion came in August 1990. • President George H. W. Bush ordered an attack in early 1991 because he thought that Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer and U.S. ally, would be affected in the war. (Bulliet 860-862) • The missiles and bombs of the United States destroyed not only military targets but also “relegated [Iraq] to a pre-industrial age,” the United Nations reported after the war, and Hussein remained in power. (Andrea 435)

5. Bibliography • Andrea. The Human Record: Sources of Global History. Vol. 1-2. NY: Houghton Mifflin Co. • "A Peep into the Soviet Union." Yvonne Foong: Fighting Neurofibromatosis. 30 Mar. 2009 <http://www.yvonnefoong.com/.../13122692_fbd3200bbc.jpg>. • Armstrong, Monty, David Daniel, Alexandra Freer, and Abby Kanarek. Cracking the AP World History Exam.2008 Edition. New York: Random House, Inc., 2006. • Bulliet. "Chapter 11: Peoples and Civilizations of the Americas, 600 – 1500 C.E.” The Earth and Its People. By Bulliet. Third ed. • "Communists: Crisis Will Help Us Regain Power." Javno. 29 Nov. 2008. 30 Mar. 2009 <http://www.javno.com/.../g2008 /m11/y188778861821302.jpg>. • "Freedom Agenda." Freedom Agenda. 30 Mar. 2009 <http://www.freedomagenda.com/images/1989-11-09_People_freed_from_communist_East_Germany_for_first_time_in_40_years_as_the_Berlin_Wall.jpg>. • Grossman, Mark. "The Persian Gulf War." Ebook PDF Download - Free Ebook Download. 30 Mar. 2009 <http://www.ebookpdf.net/screen/cover3/1122722345.jpg>. • Spodek, Howard. The World's History. 2nd ed. NJ: Prentice Hall. 383-84.