What destroyed the Soviet Union?

[Australian rePublic]

I don't think anyone knows. Certainly nobody knew at the time. A lot of things all together. I'm saying Extra Bonus Option: Not enough women in high places.

Did ANY country have a women in high places back then?

[The Sotoan Union]

A giant meteor.

That was the empire.

[Alyakia]

I don't think anyone knows. Certainly nobody knew at the time. A lot of things all together. I'm saying Extra Bonus Option: Not enough women in high places.

Did ANY country have a women in high places back then?

thatcher?

[Aumbria]

Oppressive policies, cultural and national divides, as well as a failing infrastructure due to a majority spending on the military in trying to keep up with the Americans.

[Indira]

The Reagan Administration's role in its collapse is undeniable. The Soviet Union's economic weaknesses were systematically exploited by the US government, who also aided anti-communist movements in Europe, Asia and Africa. The pressure of the oil glut, US military spending and other economic issues meant that the USSR had no other choice but to disband its empire when Eastern Europe revolted.

Do you have an UNBIASED source?

[Berdanvia]

All the options in the poll are reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed, even the Jews.

[Lerodan Chinamerica]

Pevvania is my gameplay nation, and if you'd bothered to actually read the essay, you'd learn a thing or two about a subject you clearly have pre-conceived notions about. Great job, you've just won the Lazy Debator of the Month Award.

yes, and if you read in defence of stalin, you'd learn a thing or two as well. i bet you even have some pre-concieved notions about him.

So in other words, you have no argument. Thanks for proving me right.

[The Sotoan Union]

All the options in the poll are reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed, even the Jews.

Find the biggest one.

Read the whole OP.

[Allet Klar Chefs]

I don't think anyone knows. Certainly nobody knew at the time. A lot of things all together. I'm saying Extra Bonus Option: Not enough women in high places.

Did ANY country have a women in high places back then?

Not really (at least not throughout the higher political and economic reaches of society, rather than just a PM or dictator like Peron), but the Soviet Union did have a massively disproportionate number of women compared to men, and a lot of them were in work. Seems a shame they never escalated up the party ranks.

[The Sotoan Union]

Did ANY country have a women in high places back then?

Not really (at least not throughout the higher political and economic reaches of society, rather than just a PM or dictator like Peron), but the Soviet Union did have a massively disproportionate number of women compared to men, and a lot of them were in work. Seems a shame they never escalated up the party ranks.

I think there's a pretty significant difference from having them as workers and having them as party members.

[Arkinesia]

Ronald Reagan had no net effect on the Soviet collapse, I don't know why people keep jerking off to him as a consequence of this thing that never happened.

What Reagan did vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was just a continuation of Carter's policies. Carter developed an actual counter-strike doctrine and Reagan (rightly) saw that it was a pretty strong one. Carter began rebuilding the US military and Reagan saw that it was a good decision and carried it on.

I would say that the biggest hammer smash to the Soviet Union was the opening up of the Soviet economy. A lot of the “strength” of the Soviet Union came from the united front that it claimed to present. Without that solidarity, the whole house of cards came down rather dramatically. Of course, it was always a catch-22—it had to be opened up eventually, but that opening up was always going to crush the Soviet Union without some pretty seismic changes to its organization.

[The Scientific States]

Economic stagnation, corruption, a botched war in Afghanistan, declining oil revenues, along with instability within Russia caused the USSR to collapse.

[Allet Klar Chefs]

I think there's a pretty significant difference from having them as workers and having them as party members.

Well you're wrong, basically.

[4years]

In a word: bureaucracy. The system was doomed from the beginning, the only question from 1924 on was when and what would be the result.

[Sternberg]

Regarding the OP's question, I'd say that a combination of the first four options all, directly or no, lead to the USSR's collapse.

But, to take it one step further, in my personal opinion, as a political practice or way of life for an entire nation or superpower, Marxism/communism could never have survived in its original and unchanged form in the long term. In order to adapt to political and socio-cultural realities, sacrifices to its doctrines and the ideologies it espoused would have had to have been made. It was either change, survive and potentially give up on the much-vaunted "global workers revolution", or stagnate and die in a failed utopia.

Not for nothing has this somewhat apocryphal saying made the rounds: "'Whoever doesn't miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.'"

EDIT: I'd hasten to add that, under the form that Marx proposed and Lenin later adopted, communism was, before 1917, an UNTRIED political doctrine that no-one had seen work on a national scale before. Ergo, they had no evidence to advise them that some of the concepts and habits that their leaders picked up or enacted in government over the decades simply would not work in the long-run.

[Gollifray]

It was the inherent flaws of the built system, I think, that doomed the USSR from the start. Socialism was supposed to be by the people, for the people. Instead, a totalitarian police state arose that lead to cult leader worship and an elitist structure with the party on top. Plus, the blatant disregard of human rights...that should be enough said, there.

The Soviet Union had no chance of survival as it was. If it had been like a Scandinavian country, which combines both socialized elements and human rights, then the USSR would probably still be around today. But with such a strong dissonance between ideal and reality...it was only a matter of time.

[Grand Britannia]

Clearly, the Illuminati.

[The Sotoan Union]

I think there's a pretty significant difference from having them as workers and having them as party members.

Well you're wrong, basically.

Great discussion.

No seriously. How does being allowed to work in a factory like everyone else = being allowed a position of actual power.

[Slavonian kingdom]

There was no one reason.

You had ethnic tensions, the delaying of multi-candidate elections, and Perestroika allowing the establishment of small-scale capitalism. Had multi-candidate elections been allowed much earlier (either 1936 when they were first proposed or in the 1950's-60's), then the people would have been content with the system, most likely.

EDIT: But yeah, building up the military in response to Reagan was also a big no-no.

That all what you described are symptoms.

The main reason why all this emerged is that the inhabitans of the Soviet Union have believed in Western social and economic superiority over the Soviet system. Consumerism is one of the highlights of that so they believed if they establish capitalism and liberal democracy they would be like the West. Of course democracy is not what they wanted per se.

[Dr Freud]

The Soviet Union was held together by a combination of improving prosperity and political repression. The former slowed considerably from the late 60s onwards as the lack of market systems, pervasive price controls and bureaucratic inertia caused waste and inefficiency to cripple economic growth and technological progress (outside of the defence industry). The Soviet government was thus forced to rely on imports to satisfy the needs of the population which required a source of foreign currency. The lack of demand for Soviet manufactured goods in international markets left the country reliant on hydrocarbon exports for this foreign currency, but with the slump in oil prices from the 70s onwards this wasn't sufficient so the government had to borrow in foreign currency to fund imports. Gorbachev's attempt to reform the economic system involved some necessary changes such as the lifting of price controls but the immediate effect was that for most people they got a lot poorer pretty quickly as prices rose to market levels faster than incomes. Naturally, this lead to widespread dissatisfaction among millions of people who although not satisfied with the old Soviet system which saw more affluent neighbours in developed countries growing more prosperous while the Soviet economy was at a standstill were also not prepared to be plunged into sudden poverty.

This might not have mattered had the Soviet government maintained strict controls on criticism but Gorbachev's reforms combined encouragement of criticism of the way the government was running the country without allowing people the opportunity to choose how it should be run. Unsurprisingly, the economic mismanagement in Moscow led nationalists in some of the Soviet republics to conclude that they could run their own affairs much better and the Soviet Union's refusal to repeat 1956 and crush the reformers who came to power in 1988 in Hungary led to a widespread belief that local reforms would be tolerated. As the Baltic states moved to secure independence Gorbachev attempted reverse track and repress them through violence which backfired as people in Russia itself rightfully inferred that if the government was willing to shoot critics in Vilnius it would be willing to so the same to them. Gorbachev was forced to backtrack and without the threat of force there was nothing to stop the other Soviet republic from seeking independence.

[Lerodan Chinamerica]

Ronald Reagan had no net effect on the Soviet collapse, I don't know why people keep jerking off to him as a consequence of this thing that never happened.

Then you're either just towing the line of the anti-Reaganites, or you know very little about the USSR's collapse. I'm guessing that it's a little mix of both.

What Reagan did vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was just a continuation of Carter's policies. Carter developed an actual counter-strike doctrine and Reagan (rightly) saw that it was a pretty strong one. Carter began rebuilding the US military and Reagan saw that it was a good decision and carried it on.

What? No he didn't. Carter continued détente up until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when he begun Operation Cyclone and agreed to a moderate increase in defence spending when he succumbed to political pressure. The rest of his foreign policy, as everyone knows, was all smiles and handshakes. Weak, sloppy handshakes. Carter's foreign policy, much like Nixon and Ford's, was based on words instead of actions: bullshit arms agreements, inaction abroad and sitting idly while the Soviet Union, despite assurances to democratise and rein in its empire, expanded its sphere of influence further into Africa and Latin America. Jimmy Carter had the weakest foreign policy of any president in the 20th Century. This was an enormous campaign issue for Reagan, who promised to do pretty much the exact opposite. Which is what he did.

I would say that the biggest hammer smash to the Soviet Union was the opening up of the Soviet economy. A lot of the “strength” of the Soviet Union came from the united front that it claimed to present. Without that solidarity, the whole house of cards came down rather dramatically. Of course, it was always a catch-22—it had to be opened up eventually, but that opening up was always going to crush the Soviet Union without some pretty seismic changes to its organization.

Myth. Truly freeing the economy and making it less dependent on the political forces within the USSR was probably the only option that could have saved it. China converted its economy from a totalitarian state socialist mess into a partial market economy, and triggered explosive growth that not only brought millions out of poverty but also suppressed the urge of the Chinese people to revolt. Freeing the economy effectively bought off the Chinese people.

Perestroika was a pretty half-baked attempt at liberalising the Soviet economy, and the restraint of Gorbachev and the reformers in the Communist Party to go further had disastrous results. From Wikipedia: "Gorbachev's economic changes did not do much to restart the country's sluggish economy in the late 1980s. The reforms decentralised things to some extent, although price controls remained, as did the ruble's inconvertibility and most government controls over the means of production.

By 1990 the government had virtually lost control over economic conditions. Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies continued. Tax revenues declined because republic and local governments withheld tax revenues from the central government under the growing spirit of regional autonomy. The elimination of central control over production decisions, especially in the consumer goods sector, led to the breakdown in traditional supply-demand relationships without contributing to the formation of new ones. Thus, instead of streamlining the system, Gorbachev's decentralisation caused new production bottlenecks. Gorbachev's reforms were gradualist and maintained many of the macroeconomic aspects of the command economy (including price controls, inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and the government monopoly over most means of production)."

[Lerodan Chinamerica]

For those too lazy to follow a link:

How Ronald Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union

There is no doubt that Reagan won the Cold War. The Cold War, as defined by Wikipedia, was "a sustained state of political and military tension between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others such as Japan) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies in Warsaw Pact)." This tension ended in the late 80s after a series of diplomatic meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev culminated in two arms treaties, the INF Treaty and the START Treaty, which cut nuclear stockpiles on both sides by around half. By 1989, the US and the Soviet Union were no longer enemies. America was lending billions of dollars in economic aid to the Russians, who in turn stopped funding terrorist groups and governments in Latin America and Africa. The Cold War did indeed end due to Reagan and Gorbachev's diplomatic advances.

The real debate is over whether Reagan had any impact on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Opinions on the subject are almost always along ideological lines and rarely backed up by hard evidence. But an examination of the data shows that the Reagan Administration played a decisive role in causing the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The first factor to look at is defense spending. Ronald Hilton of the World Association of International Studies wrote, "A central instrument for putting pressure on the Soviet Union was Reagan’s massive defense build-up, which raised defense spending from $134 billion in 1980 to $253 billion in 1989. This raised American defense spending to 7 percent of GDP, dramatically increasing the federal deficit. Yet in its efforts to keep up with the American defense build-up, the Soviet Union was compelled in the first half of the 1980s to raise the share of its defense spending from 22 percent to 27 percent of GDP, while it froze the production of civilian goods at 1980 levels." I was once sceptical of the claim that he "spent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy", but it is indeed true.

He funded and armed the mujahideen, which produced a turning point in the war in 1986. From Wikipedia:

Through most of the war, the Soviet air force was able to control the skies and fly sorties at will. The Soviets had aircraft that were impervious to Mujahideen attacks, as both aircraft were armored to withstand even large calibre machine gun fire. This meant that whenever the Soviet army would find itself in trouble, all it needed was to call air support and either the SU 25 or Mi 24 would arrive shortly to disperse any marauding Mujahideen units. In 1986, the USA started to supply the Mujahideen with its man-portable anti-aircraft missile system called the Stinger. The US supplied at least 250 launcher systems and at least 500 individual Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen as well as the training needed to operate the system. The introduction of the Stinger changed the battlefield and the Soviet aircraft turned from being the hunter to being the hunted. The SU 25 and Mi 24 were particularly vulnerable as they tended to fly low and thus remained for a long time within the range of a Stinger missile. After the Stinger was introduced to the war, the Mujahideen shot down on average more than one aircraft per day. The suddenly escalating costs of aircraft losses became a major additional drain on the costs of the war and many analysts believe the unsustainable aircraft losses caused Stinger was the primary catalyst to cause the Soviet Union to withdraw from the war. US Congressman Charlie Wilson who was instrumental in funding the Stingers for the Mujahideen said that before the Stinger the Mujahideen never won a set piece battle with the Soviets but after it was introduced, the Mujahideen never again lost one. Many Western military analysts credit the introduction of the Stinger as the turning point in the war. With a kill ratio of about 70% and with over 350 aircraft and helicopters downed in the last two years of the war, most directly attributed to he Stingers, the effect of the Stinger was at least notable. In a 2011 article commemorating several Mujahideen fighters, the Wall Street Journal celebrated the Stinger as "The Missile that Made History." [93] A Foreign Policy article about the Stinger used in Afghanistan called it so much a "game changer" in the Afghanistan war, that military analysts had coined the term "Stinger effect". [94] By mid-1987 the Soviet Union announced it would start withdrawing its forces.

The war in Afghanistan cost the United States about $1 billion per annum in aid to the mujahideen; it cost the Soviet Union eight times as much, helping bankrupt its economy. So from this we can at least assume that the Reagan Administration's funding of the mujahideen did indeed have a damaging economic impact on the Soviet Union and directly contributed to their defeat in the war, and by extension their fiscal collapse.

Reagan's support for the Polish Solidarity movement also a critical blow to the Soviet machine. The Administration was a major funder of Solidarity, a trade union and social movement that helped topple the Communist government. Throughout the 1980s, the CIA provided capital, equipment and intelligence to the group, whose leader later became the nation's president. In response to a government crackdown on the movement in 1981, the Reagan Administration imposed economic sanctions on the country. These sanctions, coupled with US support for the resurgent Solidarity movement in the late 80s (which by this point had over 9 million members, a quarter of the country's population), were undermining the government's power and forced them to liberalise the country's economy and political process. The collapse of Communism in Poland ignited a chain reaction of peaceful protest movements around Eastern Europe that resulted in the death of the Soviet Union and its empire. Gorbachev refused to send troops to the revolting countries. Was it out of respect for the free people of Eastern Europe? Probably not. Gorbachev let go of the USSR's puppet states because he needed to.

What killed the Soviet Union, above all else, was because of oil. The USSR absolutely depended on oil production for two reasons: oil production brought in hard currency that they used to pay for needed grain imports, and these revenues were a major source of finance for the government that effectively kept its puppet states and military presence in Eastern Europe afloat. So the USSR benefited enormously from a steep increase in oil prices in the mid-1970s. The massive increase in revenues and GDP gave them confidence to invade Afghanistan in 1979.



However, two actions by the Reagan Administration proved catastrophic for the Soviet economy: the removal of domestic oil price controls in 1981, President Reagan's first act in office, and pushing Saudi Arabia to stop protecting the price of oil in 1985. During the next six months, Saudi oil production increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by approximately the same amount in real terms. Other moves by the administration, such as reducing Western technology exports to the USSR that its industrial base badly needed and blocking construction of a natural gas pipeline, also weakened the economy. The following oil glut "benefited oil-consuming countries such as the United States, Japan, Europe, and Third World nations, but represented a serious loss in revenue for oil-producing countries in northern Europe, the Soviet Union, and OPEC."

"As a result," according to former Russian Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Yegor Gaidar, "As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive. The Soviet leadership was confronted with a difficult decision on how to adjust. There were three options–or a combination of three options–available to the Soviet leadership. First, dissolve the Eastern European empire and effectively stop barter trade in oil and gas with the Socialist bloc countries, and start charging hard currency for the hydrocarbons. This choice, however, involved convincing the Soviet leadership in 1985 to negate completely the results of World War II. In reality, the leader who proposed this idea at the CPSU Central Committee meeting at that time risked losing his position as general secretary. Second, drastically reduce Soviet food imports by $20 billion, the amount the Soviet Union lost when oil prices collapsed. But in practical terms, this option meant the introduction of food rationing at rates similar to those used during World War II. The Soviet leadership understood the consequences: the Soviet system would not survive for even one month. This idea was never seriously discussed. Third, implement radical cuts in the military-industrial complex. With this option, however, the Soviet leadership risked serious conflict with regional and industrial elites, since a large number of Soviet cities depended solely on the military-industrial complex. This choice was also never seriously considered. Unable to realize any of the above solutions, the Soviet leadership decided to adopt a policy of effectively disregarding the problem in hopes that it would somehow wither away. Instead of implementing actual reforms, the Soviet Union started to borrow money from abroad while its international credit rating was still strong. It borrowed heavily from 1985 to 1988, but in 1989 the Soviet economy stalled completely."



A $100 billion bailout from the West propped it up for a while, but many Soviet leaders knew that the empire was crumbling around them. At the time, Chairman of the State Planning Committee Yury Maslyukov wrote: "We understand that the only source of hard currency is, of course, the source of oil... If we do not make all the necessary decisions now, next year may turn out to be beyond our worst nightmares... As for the socialist countries, they may all end up in a most critical situation. All this will lead us to a veritable collapse, and not only us, but our whole system. [Nikolai] Ryzhkov [Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers] commented at the same meeting: "The Vneshekonombank's [The Soviet Foreign Trade Bank] guarantees are needed, but it cannot provide them... If there is no oil, then there is no national economy.""

The piece goes on to detail crushing grain shortages in 1991 and the Soviet Union's political inability to intervene in Eastern Europe. The fall of oil prices had handicapped them - they could either accept $100 billion in credit from the West and allow its Eastern European puppet states to fall, or forfeit its economy for the sake of its empire and allow both to collapse. Gorbachev had no choice. The political ramifications of this caused the Soviet Union to be dissolved two years later after an abortive coup attempt.

In conclusion, it was the Reagan Administration's support for anti-communist freedom fighters that elicited the collapse of the USSR's puppet states, and it was the Reagan Administration's calculated economic moves that crippled the Soviet economy and paralysed them from saving their empire. Ronald Reagan was instrumental in destroying the Soviet Union. To deny this now is just pure intellectual dishonesty and ignorance.

[Socialist Tera]

One word: Revisionism.

[The Sotoan Union]

One word: Revisionism.

One word, elaborate.

[Socialist Tera]

One word: Revisionism.

One word, elaborate.

There has been plenty of evidence that the market reforms done by Gorbachev destroyed the USSR's economy. If the system was flawed, it wouldn't of lasted so long, it would of collapsed after 20-30 years.