Cause & Effect Essay: The Collapse of the Soviet Union
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a pivotal political event of the 20th century that signaled the eclipse of a major political and economic ideology of the 20th century, i.e., Communism, and left the United States as the sole and unchallenged superpower in the world. Most political analysts and historians were taken by surprise by the seemingly sudden and unexpected collapse but were quick to propose the reasons for the failure, as it is always easy to find causes for an event in hindsight. In this paper I shall discuss just three of the most important causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union.A number of people, particularly the ones who are firmly opposed to Marxism, argue that the Soviet "experiment" was doomed to fail from the start. They consider the Communist ideology-the very basis of the formation of the Soviet Empire-as inherently flawed. Hence an imminent collapse of the Soviet Union was predicted by a number of Western writers since long ago who believed that it was only a matter of time before the contradictions of an "unnatural" system caught up with it. To them the collapse of Soviet Union was no surprise; the real surprise was how it survived for such a long period of about three-quarters of a century,
It provoked a further slowdown in economic growth and resulted widespread shortages of consumer goods. He opted to pursue the policies of glasnost (openness) in political and cultural affairs and perestroika (restructuring) in economic affairs. The Soviet Union had been administered for the past 70 years through a tight control on information and a highly regulated "planned economy. pressured its European allies to cancel or delay a major Soviet pipeline project from Siberia and provided massive arms and strategic support to the Afghan Mujahideen to help bleed the Soviets in Afghanistan. Soviet Union's new role as a super power pitted it in competition with the US in the Cold War and obliged it to make considerable spending on the military. " When the tight leash on the Soviet public was loosened through Gorbachev's policy of openness, it threw open the floodgates. " (Kennan, 1947) Hence, he premised that if the USSR were not allowed to expand through a policy of containment, it would soon collapse. The country, which had achieved a remarkable victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, albeit at great cost, emerged as a major world power in the war's aftermath. Gorbachev's "reforms" thus proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the Soviet Union and resulted in its rapid demise. a fragile affair, a permanent house of cards awaiting its natural fate.
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