The Beginning of the Soviet Empire
The Soviet empire was born in 1917. The same year the revolutionary Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and established a socialist empire in the territory that had once belonged to the Russian empire.
The Soviet Union was supposed to be “a society of true democracy,”. In 1924 dictator Joseph Stalin came to power, the state exercised totalitarian which is control over the economy, they watched all industrial activities and collected farms. It controlled every aspect of political and social life. People who argued against Stalin’s policies were arrested and sent to labor camps or executed.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet leaders put away his brutal policies but stayed with the Community Party’s power. They focused in the Cold War with Western powers, engaging in a costly and destructive “arms race” with the United States while exercising military force to suppress anticommunism.
Mikhail Gorbachev's
In March 1985, a longtime Communist Party politician named Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the leadership of the USSR He inherited a free economy and a political structure that made reform all but impossible.
Gorbachev introduced two sets of policies that he hoped would help the USSR become a prosperous and a productive nation. The first of these was known as glasnost, or political openness. Glasnost eliminated traces of Stalinist repression, like the banning of secret police, and gave new freedoms to Soviet citizens. Political prisoners were released. Newspapers could print criticisms of the government. For the first time, parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections.
Another reform was known as perestroika, or economic restructuring. Gorbachev felt the best way to revive the Soviet economy, was to loosen the government’s involvement. He believed that private initiative would lead to innovation, so individuals and cooperatives were allowed to own businesses for the first time since the 1920s. Workers were given the right to strike for better wages and conditions.
However, these reforms were slow to take action. Perestroika had destroyed the “command economy” that had kept the Soviet state afloat, but the market economy took time to mature. In his farewell address, Gorbachev summed up the problem: “The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.” Rationing, shortages and endless scarce goods seemed to be the only results of Gorbachev’s policies. As a result, people grew more and more frustrated with his government.
The Fall of the Soviet Union
Gorbachev believed that a better Soviet economy needed better relationships with other countries, especially the United States. This policy of isolationalism had important consequences for the Soviet Union. It caused the Eastern European alliances to, as Gorbachev put it, “crumble like a dry saltine cracker in just a few months.”
This atmosphere of possibility soon enveloped the Soviet Union itself. Frustration with the bad economy combined with Gorbachev’s hands-off approach to Soviet satellites to inspire a series of independence movements in the republics on the USSR’s fringes. One by one, the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) declared their independence from Moscow. Then, in early December, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine broke away from the USSR and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Weeks later, they were followed by eight of the nine remaining republics. (Georgia joined two years later.) At last, the mighty Soviet Union had fallen.
The Soviet empire was born in 1917. The same year the revolutionary Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and established a socialist empire in the territory that had once belonged to the Russian empire.
The Soviet Union was supposed to be “a society of true democracy,”. In 1924 dictator Joseph Stalin came to power, the state exercised totalitarian which is control over the economy, they watched all industrial activities and collected farms. It controlled every aspect of political and social life. People who argued against Stalin’s policies were arrested and sent to labor camps or executed.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Soviet leaders put away his brutal policies but stayed with the Community Party’s power. They focused in the Cold War with Western powers, engaging in a costly and destructive “arms race” with the United States while exercising military force to suppress anticommunism.
Mikhail Gorbachev's
In March 1985, a longtime Communist Party politician named Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the leadership of the USSR He inherited a free economy and a political structure that made reform all but impossible.
Gorbachev introduced two sets of policies that he hoped would help the USSR become a prosperous and a productive nation. The first of these was known as glasnost, or political openness. Glasnost eliminated traces of Stalinist repression, like the banning of secret police, and gave new freedoms to Soviet citizens. Political prisoners were released. Newspapers could print criticisms of the government. For the first time, parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections.
Another reform was known as perestroika, or economic restructuring. Gorbachev felt the best way to revive the Soviet economy, was to loosen the government’s involvement. He believed that private initiative would lead to innovation, so individuals and cooperatives were allowed to own businesses for the first time since the 1920s. Workers were given the right to strike for better wages and conditions.
However, these reforms were slow to take action. Perestroika had destroyed the “command economy” that had kept the Soviet state afloat, but the market economy took time to mature. In his farewell address, Gorbachev summed up the problem: “The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.” Rationing, shortages and endless scarce goods seemed to be the only results of Gorbachev’s policies. As a result, people grew more and more frustrated with his government.
The Fall of the Soviet Union
Gorbachev believed that a better Soviet economy needed better relationships with other countries, especially the United States. This policy of isolationalism had important consequences for the Soviet Union. It caused the Eastern European alliances to, as Gorbachev put it, “crumble like a dry saltine cracker in just a few months.”
This atmosphere of possibility soon enveloped the Soviet Union itself. Frustration with the bad economy combined with Gorbachev’s hands-off approach to Soviet satellites to inspire a series of independence movements in the republics on the USSR’s fringes. One by one, the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) declared their independence from Moscow. Then, in early December, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine broke away from the USSR and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Weeks later, they were followed by eight of the nine remaining republics. (Georgia joined two years later.) At last, the mighty Soviet Union had fallen.