The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the End of the Cold War

 One of the most dramatic changes of the twentieth century was the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe ( ), as well as the end of the Cold War  If the twentieth century, as a historical era, began not with 1900 but the outbreak of World War I in 1914, one can argue that it ended not in 1999 or 2000, but in 1991, the year the USSR ceased to exist  The end of the Cold War came about because of a combination of diplomatic negotiation, the United States’ widening lead in the arms race, increased unrest throughout Eastern Europe, and the internal disintegration of the Soviet Union

 The collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites has been a great blow to communist movements worldwide  Within two years, nine communist regimes – including history’s first – had ceased to exist  The Soviet Union broke apart into 15 independent nations  Communist governments continued to exist, most notably in China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea  As a global force, however, communism was greatly diminished after 1991

 The end of the Cold War has brought about a tremendous shift in the balance of global power  The Cold War had been a condition of bipolar equilibrium, in which military and political might was concentrated in the hands of two superpowers  From 1991, onward, the world has been in the unprecedented situation of having only one superpower – the United States – capable of diplomatic, strategic, and economic action on a truly global scale

 The first thing to note about the “communist world” during the 1980s is that, by this time, there were several communist “worlds”  The Soviet Union, the oldest and largest communist regime, was still paramount  It also dominated the six nations of the Warsaw Pact: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany  Cuba remained an ally of the USSR, but was an increasingly independent actor  China, the world’s second largest center of communism, rivaled the USSR and was hostile to it

 The 1980s were a turbulent time for the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc  Internationally, the period of détente had come to an end in 1979, with the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan  Another point of tension was the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (1979)  The Soviets supported the Sandinistas, while the United States sponsored their enemies, the Contras  The latest arms treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, SALT II (1979), went unratified

 In the Soviet Union itself, the political system was corrupt, and the economy was failing  From the late 1970s until Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982, and also under the two leaders who followed him until 1985, the USSR went through a period of stagnation  Shortages of consumer goods were extreme  An ever-increasing percentage of the Soviet gross national product went toward the arms race  The war in Afghanistan was a disappointing failure, killing thousands of young Soviet soldiers all for nothing

 The dissident movement – a community of protestors, humanitarians, and intellectuals that had formed during the 1970s – grew larger, louder, and more determined during the 1980s  Among the most famous of the Soviet dissidents were writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who had been expelled from the country during the 1970s) and the husband-and-wife team of physicist Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner

 The Eastern bloc became dangerously restless during the 1980s  It was in Poland, however, that Soviet rule over Eastern Europe met its gravest challenge  In 1980, economic shortages and labor disputes led to the creation of the trade union Solidarity  At first, Solidarity’s goal was simply to improve the conditions of Poland’s working class  Very rapidly, under the leadership of Lech Walesa, Solidarity became a political movement as well as a trade union

 Joined by intellectuals and Catholic clergy, Solidarity became a focal point for protest and outrage against the Soviet-backed communist regime, as well as the USSR itself  In December 1981, Poland’s communist regime declared martial law  This state of martial law remained in effect until the end of the decade  In the meantime, Walesa was arrested, and Solidarity was driven underground  However, throughout the 1980s, the Polish resistance agitated against the communist regime and the Soviet Union  Over the course of the decade, Solidarity’s illegal activities made it increasingly difficult for the USSR to maintain control over Eastern Europe

 China was much more fortunate than the Soviet Union  China underwent a painful modernization process under Mao Tse-tung  Mao’s death in 1976 led to great changes  In 1978, after a power struggle, Deng Xiaoping came to power in China, having defeated the so-called Gang of Four (which included Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing)  Like Mao, Deng was a modernizer  He instituted a “four modernizations” program, focusing on industry, agriculture, technology, and national defense

 However, while Mao had been idealistic, inflexible, and revolutionary, Deng was pragmatic, willing to compromise, and gradual  Although a communist, Deng was more concerned with China’s well-being and growing strength than he was with absolute commitment to abstract Marxist ideals  Famously, he commented that whether a cat is black or white makes no difference, as long as it catches mice  In opposition to Mao’s militant anticapitalism, Deng allowed limited free- market reform in China

 Under the slogan, “create wealth for the people,” Deng permitted private enterprise, small business, and limited capitalist exchange  Economically, the result was clear: China experienced a fabulous economic growth throughout the 1980s  Wages and standards of living improved considerably  There was, however, a social and cultural effect as well  With greater wealth came the desire for greater freedom  This was a luxury even Deng was not prepared to allow

 When student members of pro-democracy movement gathered at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Deng order the army in to stop the protests

 In March 1985, Soviet communism was on the threshold of major changes  That month, Mikhail Gorbachev, a young, dynamic, reform-minded politician, became leader of the USSR  His assumption of power followed the long, stagnant Brezhnev period, as well as two and a half years of gerontocracy (rule by the old), when elderly and dull senior members of the Communist Party had taken control of the government  Gorbachev inherited a Soviet Union in crisis  The economy was worsening and the political system was riddled with corruption and apathy

 The deadly accident at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, demonstrated clearly the inefficiency of the Soviet system  The Afghan War raged on  Unrest in Eastern Europe was worsening  And the Soviet Union was falling behind in the arms race

 At home, Gorbachev’s response to all these problems was to attempt a thorough reform of the Soviet system  In his famous policy of perestroika (“restructuring”), Gorbachev tried to strengthen the Soviet economy  He emphasized local control over central planning  He allowed limited free enterprise and loosened rules regarding private property  He set into place some of the foundations of a free-market economy  In many ways, much of perestroika was similar to what Deng Xiaoping was doing in China during the 1980s

 The major difference was that, while economic liberalization led to prosperity in China, it did not do so in the USSR  This was largely due to ingrained inefficiency in the Soviet system, dating back to the Stalin period  It also had to do with the fact that Deng dealt better with conservative opposition in China than Gorbachev did in the Soviet Union

 Another difference between Gorbachev’s liberalization and Deng’s was that Gorbachev allowed political and cultural liberalization at the same time  Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness”) provided for greater freedom of the press and media, frank discussion of the Soviet Union’s clouded past (especially the Stalin period), public criticism of contemporary problems, and exposure of political corruption or workplace abuses  Gorbachev’s hope was that glasnost, greater social and cultural freedom, would motivate the Soviet population to carry out perestroika in the political and economic spheres

 To the rest of the world, Gorbachev turned a friendly face  Realizing that the USSR could not continue to compete with the United States in the arms race, Gorbachev sought to reduce tensions between the superpowers  To Western leaders such as Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Gorbachev portrayed himself as (in Thatcher’s words), “a man one can do business with”  For the first time since 1979, relations between the Soviet Union and the West cooled rather than heated

 A diplomatic breakthrough came in 1987, when Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which removed short- and intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe  Moreover, Gorbachev began to loosen the Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern Europe  Gorbachev’s stance toward Eastern Europe gained him a great deal of approval in the West, and contributed to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990  However, it also weakened the USSR militarily and diplomatically

 With regard to the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe, Gorbachev chose to allow them to go their separate paths  In a famous joke, the Soviet foreign minister stated that the USSR was replacing the Brezhnev Doctrine (which declared the right of the Soviets to intervene in East European affairs) with the “Sinatra Doctrine,” according to which each East European country could “do it ‘My Way’”  When dissident movements in East European nations began to press for greater freedom in 1988 and 1989, Gorbachev informed East European communist leaders that the Soviet Union would not go to the financial expense or take the political risk of supporting them militarily, in the event of crisis

 In Poland, Solidarity, which had emerged from underground in 1988, was made legal in 1989  That summer, Solidarity was allowed to take part in nationwide elections, winning a huge victory and bringing a noncommunist leadership to power  The Hungarian Communist Party opened the country’s borders to the West, then voted itself out of existence

 November 1989 was the great climax  In Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution,” Vaclav Havel’s dissident movement, Civic Forum, swept to power  Bulgaria’s communist leadership resigned  Most striking of all, however, the East German Communist Party, the strongest and most hard-line in Eastern Europe, collapsed  In December, Romania’s communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed, in one of the few violent episodes involved with the collapse of East European communism  Later, in October 1990, the map of Europe would be dramatically redrawn by the unification of Germany, brought about principally by the efforts of West Germany’s chancellor, Helmut Kohl

 With Eastern Europe gone, the Soviet Union now had its own problems to cope with  Popular discontent with Gorbachev was growing in 1990 and 1991, as the economy failed to improve  Non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union were now agitating openly for their freedom  Liberal politicians, such as Boris Yeltsin, began to oppose Gorbachev, calling for greater reforms and a complete break with communism

 From the other end of the political spectrum, conservative, hard-line communist elements with the government were plotting against Gorbachev  Finally, in August 1991, the hard-line communists struck  They staged a three-day coup, placing Gorbachev under house arrest and attempting to take over the government  Thanks to popular resistance and the bold leadership of Boris Yeltsin, who called for citizens to oppose the coup, the takeover failed  Gorbachev was brought back to power, but only for a few months

 Unlike in Eastern Europe, where “revolution from below” spurred the collapse of communist regimes, in the USSR it was the political leaders who acted as the architects of the country’s demise  During the fall and early winter, the various republics of the USSR, including Russia itself, decided to go their separate ways, and Gorbachev was too weak to stop them

 In early December 1991, Yeltsin (President of the Russian Republic) and the leaders of the Ukraine and Belarus declared the formation of a new, post-Soviet confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States  In effect, this declaration made the USSR irrelevant

 Leaders of the former republics of the Soviet Union, with the exception of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia chose to form the Commonwealth of Independent States as a way to maintain ties and attempt a smooth transition from Soviet rule

 Bowing to the inevitable, on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Soviet Union  At the same time, he declared an end to the USSR itself  Soviet Communism, whose birth in 1917 had been one of the major events of the early twentieth century, did not live to see the twenty-first