The Collapse of the Soviet Union

1. The Collapse of the Soviet Union And the world watched with wonder …

2. Eastern Bloc Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 15 Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan 7 Satellite Countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia

4. Was the Collapse Due to Force? No • The Cold War cost more than $11 trillion. But the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites was not a result of force. • No NATO tank fired a shot. • No bomb fell on the Kremlin.

5. Polish Trade Union: Solidarity • The downfall began in 1980 when striking Polish workers organized Solidarity, an independent trade union of nearly 10 million members.

6. Support from Catholic Church • Solidarity, which had strong support from the powerful Polish Catholic Church, demonstrated how a working-class movement could offer an entire nation moral and political leadership.

7. Solidarity’s Chairman: Lech Walesa • The Polish military drove Solidarity underground in 1981. However, in 1983, Solidarity’s chairman, Lech Walesa, won the Nobel peace prize. In 1990, he would be the first freely elected president of the Polish nation in more than sixty years.

8. The Gorbachev Revolution • Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985 as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), recognized that the Soviet Union could not remain politically and economically isolated and that the Soviet system had to be changed if it was to survive.

9. Gorbachev's Five-Point Plan • The key pieces to Gorbachev's plan for the survival of the Soviet Union were a series of reforms: • Glasnost (openness) – greater freedom of expression • Perestroika (restructuring) – decentralization of the Soviet economy with gradual market reforms • Renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (armed intervention where socialism was threatened) and the pursuit of arms control agreements • Reform of the KGB (secret service) • Reform of the Communist Party

10. Insistent Calls for Change • He believed that his reforms were necessary and used his leadership and power to attempt to implement them. • The policy of glasnost (openness) made it possible for people to more freely criticize the government's policies. When people realized it was safe to speak out, the calls for change became more insistent.

11. Reforms Were Too Slow • The gradual market reforms and decentralization of the economy (perestroika) were too slow and failed to keep pace with the crisis and his people's demands. • The Soviet Union was suffering a deterioration of economic and social conditions and a fall in the GNP.

12. Party Reforms a Failure • His attempts to reform the Communist Partywere a failure. Change was too slow to keep pace with events and he was continually hampered by his need to give in to the hard-liners in order to retain power. As communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, reform of communism in the Soviet Union became unlikely.

14. Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate Speech • President Ronald Reagan called upon Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall: "In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards... Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself. The inescapable conclusion is that freedom is the victor. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace,if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

15. Wave of Demonstrations • Beginning in September 1989, a wave of huge demonstrations shook Communist regimes across eastern Europe. A massive tide of East German emigrants surged through Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the West, undermining the authority of the Communist hard-liners who still clung to power in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

16. A tram is blocked by East German demonstrators in the center of the city in October 1989. Their banner reads: 'Legalization of opposition parties, free democratic elections, free press and independent unions.'

17. The Wall Came Down • Finally, on the night of November 9, 1989, ordinary Germans poured through the Berlin Wall. The GDR quickly disintegrated, and by the end of 1990, all of East Germany had been incorporated into the wealthy, powerful Federal Republic of Germany.

18. Events in Eastern Europe • Communist governments in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria either tumbled or underwent reform. • The Communist dictatorship in Romania fell after a week of bloody street battles between ordinary citizens and police, who defended the old order to the bitter end.

19. Independent Republics • The Communist party quickly collapsed, and the Soviet Union began the painful and uncertain process of reorganizing itself as a loose confederation of independent republics.

20. Boris Yeltsin • Boris Yeltsin, who headed the Russian Republic, replaced Gorbachev as president of a much- diminished state. Gorbachev found that there was no Soviet Union to lead and retired into private life. Time magazine's July 15, 1996, issue, featured a 10-page spread about a squad of U.S. political pros who "clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign.“

21. Nobel Peace Prize • Gorbachev won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. He brought a peaceful end to the cold war, and dramatic change to his country's economy, though not in the way he intended.

22. The End of the Cold War • The Cold War was over, brought to a close not by the missiles and tanks of the principal participants, but by the collective courage and willpower of ordinary men and women.