THE END OF AN ERA

The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the End of the Cold War

One of the most dramatic changes of the twentieth century was the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1989-1991), as well as the end of the Cold War

If the twentieth century, as a historical era, began not with 1900 but the outbreak of World War I in 1914, one can argue that it ended not in 1999 or 2000, but in 1991, the year the USSR ceased to exist

The end of the Cold War came about because of a combination of diplomatic negotiation, the United States’ widening lead in the arms race, increased unrest throughout Eastern Europe, and the internal disintegration of the Soviet Union

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites has been a great blow to communist movements worldwide

Within two years, nine communist regimes – including history’s first – had ceased to exist

The Soviet Union broke apart into 15 independent nations

Communist governments continued to exist, most notably in China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea

As a global force, however, communism was greatly diminished after 1991

The end of the Cold War has brought about a tremendous shift in the balance of global power

The Cold War had been a condition of bipolar equilibrium, in which military and political might was concentrated in the hands of two superpowers

From 1991, onward, the world has been in the unprecedented situation of having only one superpower – the United States – capable of diplomatic, strategic, and economic action on a truly global scale

The first thing to note about the “communist world” during the 1980s is that, by this time, there were several communist “worlds”

The Soviet Union, the oldest and largest communist regime, was still paramount

It also dominated the six nations of the Warsaw Pact: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany

Cuba remained an ally of the USSR, but was an increasingly independent actor

China, the world’s second largest center of communism, rivaled the USSR and was hostile to it

The 1980s were a turbulent time for the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc

Internationally, the period of détente had come to an end in 1979, with the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan

Another point of tension was the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (1979)

The Soviets supported the Sandinistas, while the United States sponsored their enemies, the Contras

The latest arms treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, SALT II (1979), went unratified

In the Soviet Union itself, the political system was corrupt, and the economy was failing

From the late 1970s until Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982, and also under the two leaders who followed him until 1985, the USSR went through a period of stagnation

Shortages of consumer goods were extreme

An ever-increasing percentage of the Soviet gross national product went toward the arms race

The war in Afghanistan was a disappointing failure, killing thousands of young Soviet soldiers all for nothing

The dissident movement – a community of protestors, humanitarians, and intellectuals that had formed during the 1970s – grew larger, louder, and more determined during the 1980s

Among the most famous of the Soviet dissidents were writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who had been expelled from the country during the 1970s) and the husband-and-wife team of physicist Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner

The Eastern bloc became dangerously restless during the 1980s

It was in Poland, however, that Soviet rule over Eastern Europe met its gravest challenge

In 1980, economic shortages and labor disputes led to the creation of the trade union Solidarity

At first, Solidarity’s goal was simply to improve the conditions of Poland’s working class

Very rapidly, under the leadership of Lech Walesa, Solidarity became a political movement as well as a trade union

Joined by intellectuals and Catholic clergy, Solidarity became a focal point for protest and outrage against the Soviet-backed communist regime, as well as the USSR itself

In December 1981, Poland’s communist regime declared martial law

This state of martial law remained in effect until the end of the decade

In the meantime, Walesa was arrested, and Solidarity was driven underground

However, throughout the 1980s, the Polish resistance agitated against the communist regime and the Soviet Union

Over the course of the decade, Solidarity’s illegal activities made it increasingly difficult for the USSR to maintain control over Eastern Europe

China was much more fortunate than the Soviet Union

China underwent a painful modernization process under Mao Tse-tung

Mao’s death in 1976 led to great changes

In 1978, after a power struggle, Deng Xiaoping came to power in China, having defeated the so-called Gang of Four (which included Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing)

Like Mao, Deng was a modernizer He instituted a “four modernizations”

program, focusing on industry, agriculture, technology, and national defense

However, while Mao had been idealistic, inflexible, and revolutionary, Deng was pragmatic, willing to compromise, and gradual

Although a communist, Deng was more concerned with China’s well-being and growing strength than he was with absolute commitment to abstract Marxist ideals

Famously, he commented that whether a cat is black or white makes no difference, as long as it catches mice

In opposition to Mao’s militant anticapitalism, Deng allowed limited free-market reform in China

Under the slogan, “create wealth for the people,” Deng permitted private enterprise, small business, and limited capitalist exchange

Economically, the result was clear: China experienced a fabulous economic growth throughout the 1980s

Wages and standards of living improved considerably

There was, however, a social and cultural effect as well

With greater wealth came the desire for greater freedom

This was a luxury even Deng was not prepared to allow

When student members of pro-democracy movement gathered at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Deng order the army in to stop the protests

In March 1985, Soviet communism was on the threshold of major changes

That month, Mikhail Gorbachev, a young, dynamic, reform-minded politician, became leader of the USSR

His assumption of power followed the long, stagnant Brezhnev period, as well as two and a half years of gerontocracy (rule by the old), when elderly and dull senior members of the Communist Party had taken control of the government

Gorbachev inherited a Soviet Union in crisis

The economy was worsening and the political system was riddled with corruption and apathy

The deadly accident at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, demonstrated clearly the inefficiency of the Soviet system

The Afghan War raged on Unrest in Eastern Europe was worsening And the Soviet Union was falling behind

in the arms race

At home, Gorbachev’s response to all these problems was to attempt a thorough reform of the Soviet system

In his famous policy of perestroika (“restructuring”), Gorbachev tried to strengthen the Soviet economy

He emphasized local control over central planning

He allowed limited free enterprise and loosened rules regarding private property

He set into place some of the foundations of a free-market economy

In many ways, much of perestroika was similar to what Deng Xiaoping was doing in China during the 1980s

The major difference was that, while economic liberalization led to prosperity in China, it did not do so in the USSR

This was largely due to ingrained inefficiency in the Soviet system, dating back to the Stalin period

It also had to do with the fact that Deng dealt better with conservative opposition in China than Gorbachev did in the Soviet Union

Another difference between Gorbachev’s liberalization and Deng’s was that Gorbachev allowed political and cultural liberalization at the same time

Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (“openness”) provided for greater freedom of the press and media, frank discussion of the Soviet Union’s clouded past (especially the Stalin period), public criticism of contemporary problems, and exposure of political corruption or workplace abuses

Gorbachev’s hope was that glasnost, greater social and cultural freedom, would motivate the Soviet population to carry out perestroika in the political and economic spheres

To the rest of the world, Gorbachev turned a friendly face

Realizing that the USSR could not continue to compete with the United States in the arms race, Gorbachev sought to reduce tensions between the superpowers

To Western leaders such as Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Gorbachev portrayed himself as (in Thatcher’s words), “a man one can do business with”

For the first time since 1979, relations between the Soviet Union and the West cooled rather than heated

A diplomatic breakthrough came in 1987, when Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which removed short- and intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe

Moreover, Gorbachev began to loosen the Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern Europe

Gorbachev’s stance toward Eastern Europe gained him a great deal of approval in the West, and contributed to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990

However, it also weakened the USSR militarily and diplomatically

With regard to the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe, Gorbachev chose to allow them to go their separate paths

In a famous joke, the Soviet foreign minister stated that the USSR was replacing the Brezhnev Doctrine (which declared the right of the Soviets to intervene in East European affairs) with the “Sinatra Doctrine,” according to which each East European country could “do it ‘My Way’”

When dissident movements in East European nations began to press for greater freedom in 1988 and 1989, Gorbachev informed East European communist leaders that the Soviet Union would not go to the financial expense or take the political risk of supporting them militarily, in the event of crisis

In Poland, Solidarity, which had emerged from underground in 1988, was made legal in 1989

That summer, Solidarity was allowed to take part in nationwide elections, winning a huge victory and bringing a noncommunist leadership to power

The Hungarian Communist Party opened the country’s borders to the West, then voted itself out of existence

November 1989 was the great climax In Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution,” Vaclav

Havel’s dissident movement, Civic Forum, swept to power

Bulgaria’s communist leadership resigned Most striking of all, however, the East German

Communist Party, the strongest and most hard-line in Eastern Europe, collapsed

In December, Romania’s communist leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed, in one of the few violent episodes involved with the collapse of East European communism

Later, in October 1990, the map of Europe would be dramatically redrawn by the unification of Germany, brought about principally by the efforts of West Germany’s chancellor, Helmut Kohl

With Eastern Europe gone, the Soviet Union now had its own problems to cope with

Popular discontent with Gorbachev was growing in 1990 and 1991, as the economy failed to improve

Non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union were now agitating openly for their freedom

Liberal politicians, such as Boris Yeltsin, began to oppose Gorbachev, calling for greater reforms and a complete break with communism

From the other end of the political spectrum, conservative, hard-line communist elements with the government were plotting against Gorbachev

Finally, in August 1991, the hard-line communists struck

They staged a three-day coup, placing Gorbachev under house arrest and attempting to take over the government

Thanks to popular resistance and the bold leadership of Boris Yeltsin, who called for citizens to oppose the coup, the takeover failed

Gorbachev was brought back to power, but only for a few months

Unlike in Eastern Europe, where “revolution from below” spurred the collapse of communist regimes, in the USSR it was the political leaders who acted as the architects of the country’s demise

During the fall and early winter, the various republics of the USSR, including Russia itself, decided to go their separate ways, and Gorbachev was too weak to stop them

In early December 1991, Yeltsin (President of the Russian Republic) and the leaders of the Ukraine and Belarus declared the formation of a new, post-Soviet confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States

In effect, this declaration made the USSR irrelevant

Leaders of the former republics of the Soviet Union, with the exception of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia chose to form the Commonwealth of Independent States as a way to maintain ties and attempt a smooth transition from Soviet rule

Bowing to the inevitable, on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Soviet Union

At the same time, he declared an end to the USSR itself

Soviet Communism, whose birth in 1917 had been one of the major events of the early twentieth century, did not live to see the twenty-first