Why did Soviet Union break up? What exactly went wrong?
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A lot of things were compensated/covered up by the oil money and at the end of 80’s the oil price collapsed.
They went broke with military spending and trying to keep the empire together combined with a failure to modernize their economy.
With the glasnost of Gorbachev came an increased flow out outside influences. There had already been a long history out Western information revealing the lies of Soviet State actors and institutions, but the arrival of the VCR and smuggled/pirated video tapes now made them clearly visible.
Credit had been given to the television series Dallas, whose central conflict of two brothers and their families forever at odds with each other mirrored many themes of traditional Russian stories. Except that here, instead of arguments over who got to milk the cow this week, it was over oil fields, and investments. Plus, everybody had a big house, fancy cars, and dressed well — including the plebes who served them! That last part was the knife twist.
As a Central American immigrant supposedly said, “I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat!”
Gorbachev started dating some artist chick who told him he was the smartest one and it just caused so much tension and in-fighting that the whole country broke up.
Boris Yeltsin, a member of Soviet parliament, went to the US and made an unplanned visit to a modest American grocery store. He was shocked by the sheer variety and quantity of food available to the lower classes, when in his home country even the elites didn’t have so many choices. When he returned he pushed for many changes.
There were many reasons why the USSR fell apart, but that’s genuinely one of the things credited with their ~~downfall~~ 30 year pause.
Ok that’s really hard to make Eli5 on this. In very short – Soviet Union had hard times and there always was States in it that really wanted independence. So they used that possibility window.
RONALD REAGAN lifted his voice and demanded that the wall between the east and west be torn down, and like the Mighty Black Bolt the sound of his voice was so powerful that the wall crumbled to bits and the Soviet Union dissolved like a sugar cube in water at the command of the pluripotent ultra-potus! Grown men took their lives, women weeped and tore at their garments as his mighty roar thundered across the continent like a blast wave from a nuclear bomb, shattering windows and blowing out doors as the piercing sonic wave devastated the countryside from Berlin to Siberia, also I talk to Bigfoot daily and sometimes at night I like to shoot my rifle at the moon.
This is a highly debated topic u will see many people claiming they know what happened. There are many factors that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union but I’ll name the major ones.
1. Liberalization. When Gorbachev came in power he attempted to move away from the hardline soviet model. When he did this the foundations of what the Soviet Union was built on crumpled. Opening of the press, western private business, and he gave many Soviet satellite dates the right to gather and protest against the government.
2. Money. The Soviet Union was isolated and lacking behind the western economies. There central planning was lazy. Quotas were instated but supervisors found ways around them, workers had no greater incentive to work harder due, and the soviets threw more man power and material at underperforming factories to help make up.
3. Stagnation. The Soviet economy stagnated in the 70s. They were late to innovate and upgrade to keep up with western economies because again the poorly planned economy.
All of this lead to civil unrest in Eastern Europe and the generally negative opinion of the Soviet system. In the end the Soviet Union bled out from the inside trying to maintain a facade that it couldn’t
Check out the series Pandora’s Box (available on BBC iPlayer in the UK).
They have a great episode on the failure of the Soviet attempts at central control and how the ideal was crippled by over complication, bureaucracy and the available technology. Weirdly, what they needed is exactly what Google and Facebook are doing now.
Obviously not the only reason for the collapse by any means but a great insight into the failure of one of their main logistical ideals. Which certainly added to the reasons their economy couldn’t keep up with the capitalist West.
Largely because they went broke. Who would have ever thought however that it would end in such a velvet thud and not in a bloody coup or civil war. For anybody of my age it was just an amazing experience to see it all come so quickly unglued. A loss has to do with the percentages within the Soviet Union and giving them credit. It could have ended it could have ended a lot lot nastier
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