audrey’s Weblog

Throughout history, many wars have been fought. For purpose of this essay, however, I only chose to focus on the cold war and the reasons for its end in the Soviet Union.

In December 1991, the unthinkable happened. The world’s first communist state – the Soviet Union collapsed into 15 constituent republics. [1] The Cold War was a period of East West competition, tension and conflict. [2] It was essentially a conflict between the world’s two major powers – The United States of America (US) and the Soviet Union. They were championing two different ideologies, democracy and communism respectively. The Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1991[3], ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union.  How did this happen?

When Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, the Soviet economy was already in a bad shape, approximately half the size of the US economy. He came up with 2 main policies, Glastnost and Perestroika. Glastnost was the policy of openness, which promoted the principle of freedom to criticize and reduction of censorship. Perestroika involved the restructuring and reform of the economy. However, these policies were not very successful, and were major contributing factors for the fall of the Soviet Union.                            

As a result of Glastnost, Gorbachev began to lose control of public opinion. Soviet citizens interpreted this openness to include criticisms of Soviet history and its leaders. This eventually led to a hardliner coup as there was a complete loss of mandate and control, thrusting liberals to the forefront of Soviet politics. Another of Gorbachev’s policies involved radical Perestroika, which involved restructuring of the electoral system with radical election laws. This involved the executive presidency where he allowed himself to stand unopposed. He was a leader who preached democracy, but claimed the right to stand above it himself. Hence, this threatened the structure of the Soviet Union.

In the economic sphere, the Soviet economy failed as its pace was too quick and it had competency problems. Gorbachev implemented radical reforms with some degree of flexibility. However, there was no shift to market economy or private enterprise and no retreat from planned economy. His reforms hence had the effect of destroying the rationale of the old system, without putting viable new mechanisms in its place. Communism proved to be a failed system, and Perestroika in its last hope could not save it. These policies by Gorbachev caused the stagnating Soviet system to worsen further.

As a result of Perestroika and Glastnost, and the removal of controls on information and control and the democratization of Soviet life, reform was also spreading to Eastern Europe at a rapid speed. Revolutions started in East Germany with the eventual collapse of the Berlin Wall, in Czechoslovakia which swept the communist party from power, as well as Romania where a bloody revolution was involved. It was Gorbachev’s policies and the power of the people that led to the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe.

We also cannot discount the fact that Gorbachev implemented new policies such as Perestroika and Glastnost in response to US actions . The US added stress on the Soviet, forcing them to keep up. US President Reagan, built up US military power to attain clear superiority over the Soviet Union, and weakened it further by denying it access to western technology and economic support. This caused the Soviet Union to rethink its commitment and foreign policy. Hence Gorbachev’s policies could be a direct response to the West which forced Soviet to confront its internal weakness and narrowed options open to them.

Therefore, we can say that it was the West who pushed the Soviet to a corner, but it was the policies of Gorbachev that allowed the spread of reform within the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that brought the Cold War to an end.

Web References:

Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War, Apr 5 2006, http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/1531/gorbachev_and_the_end_of_the_cold_war.html?breadcrumb=%2F

Cold War – Special Reports from CNN.com, 1998, http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/