The Collapse of the Soviet Union: Causes and Key Events

Introduction: An Empire's End

From the outside, it seemed as if it happened almost overnight. It was the biggest event of the twentieth century — unparalleled in its scope and unmatched in its sheer unbelievability. The world watched as it all came tumbling down; the most visible moments were Boris Yeltsin standing atop a tank in Moscow and the Berlin Wall being hammered into rubble. The Soviet Union had collapsed, brought down by the weight of its own ineptitude and financial ruin — and helped along by three courageous leaders an ocean apart: Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Ronald Reagan.

In attempting to create a unified socialist state, the original communist founders and leaders encountered several fundamental problems. First, the people of the Soviet Union — ethnic groups who made up more than 50% of the population — resisted being "Russianized." Second, socialist economic planning failed miserably to accommodate the vast needs of an enormous country locked in an extravagantly expensive arms race with the United States. This economic disaster, decades in the making, ate away at the stability of the Soviet Union until Ronald Reagan pushed it over the edge with his "evil empire" rhetoric and his proposed "Star Wars" missile defense system, which financially ruined the U.S.S.R. Finally, the ideal of Communism itself never truly took root among these independent, non-Russian working people — people who would eventually discover what their country and their leaders had really been.

Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985. His predecessors — Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko — had all held the same position and had all died in office within the previous three years. Soviet leadership knew it could not suffer another short-term leader, and so appointed Gorbachev, then 56, as General Secretary. It was a "mistake" from their perspective — one they would come to regret beyond anything they could have imagined.

That moment in history marks the day the Soviet Union began its true collapse. Gorbachev had only one priority in mind: reform. Though it may have appeared that the collapse happened overnight, it was at this moment that the process truly started. The breakdown of the "old guard" USSR was more complex and more intriguing than it appeared from the outside. Gorbachev, with Ronald Reagan's tacit support, drove the transformation. His appointments and his sweeping reformist agenda introduced glasnost, perestroika, and a nascent form of democracy that split open the tomb-like secrecy of the communist state and showed the world what it really was.

Gorbachev and the Reform Era

And what the world saw was staggering: historical atrocities beyond belief, economic mismanagement and incompetence, and a people carrying a pent-up frustration and animosity that would ultimately change the world.

Glasnost means openness. Gorbachev hated lies above all else, and lies were the very foundation upon which the country he loved had been built. Entire eras of Soviet history, once revered, and former General Secretaries who had been celebrated as heroes, were exposed as frauds. Stalin was finally revealed as the horrifying tyrant and brutal dictator he had been. Leaders like Chernenko and Brezhnev were laid bare as the murderers they truly were.

For the Soviet people, this must have been, at first, their worst nightmare — as if Lenin himself had been Jack the Ripper. Yet Lenin, their saint and founder, largely retained his revered status. The entire history of the U.S.S.R. was being torn apart. It was as if, in the United States, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy had been exposed as leaders whose brutality matched that of Adolf Hitler. The country was being rent from end to end.

One telling detail captures the full scope of this upheaval: in 1988, all school history examinations in the Soviet Union were cancelled. The nation's history had been revised so dramatically that existing textbooks were rendered useless.

Predictably, extreme factions emerged on both ends of the political spectrum. Radicals on one side demanded that reform move faster, while hardline "old guard" leaders on the other could not face or accept the changes, blaming everything on a single man — Gorbachev. Pravda, the newspaper of the Communist Party, continually attacked the "extremists and nationalists who were hiding their true face behind a mask of commitment to perestroika."

This broad critical reexamination of history, unleashed by glasnost, was unprecedented in a communist country. Khrushchev had criticized Stalin before, but only in a self-serving manner to advance his own career, and only through half-truths that did not expose Stalin's true brutality. Glasnost went far further. The liberal press was finally permitted to print almost anything, and the real truths came out in torrents. Television, radio, newspapers, and magazines all published the genuine history of the U.S.S.R.'s past. And when that became old news, the press turned its attention to the necessity of reform and the perceived "slowness" of Gorbachev's progress — even as he was attempting to overturn seventy years of communist lies and enforced silence.

Glasnost and the Unraveling of Soviet History

By around 1989, even Gorbachev's glasnost was no longer considered sufficient by the liberal press. Freedoms of speech and expression took all forms and aimed at every target imaginable. Subjects that could only have been whispered in the back rooms of private homes just a few years earlier were now openly debated in the media. Abolishing the Communist Party, the failures of perestroika (restructuring), and the merits of democracy were discussed openly.

This new openness was also on display during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Initially, for the first forty-eight hours, Soviet authorities responded with their customary silence. But then came an unprecedented wave of complete honesty and information. Glasnost was truly at work. The environment suddenly became a major topic of public discussion, and the incompetence of former Soviet leaders on environmental matters was laid bare. One example — that Soviet leaders had turned Central Asia into a desert by diverting rivers to supply water for cotton plantations — became a focal point for media criticism of gross governmental negligence. As small incidents can do, it further enraged the public.

The whole country was in chaos, but for the first time the media was explaining it, and the people understood the full scope of the ineptitude and brutality that had been taking place for years. They were angry — extremely angry. Soviet leadership now faced something it had never confronted before: an emotionally aroused population demanding answers. They were not begging or asking or hoping. They were commanding their leaders to come forth — immediately. Glasnost and perestroika were no longer enough.

Gorbachev had awakened a sleeping giant, and now that giant was alive — a revolutionary atmosphere taking shape across the entire country. The people wanted giant leaps forward, while Gorbachev, who understood the dangers of moving too fast, proceeded more cautiously.

It was in the fringe areas of the U.S.S.R. — the regions where the majority of ethnic minority groups lived — that the collapse began. Dissent emerged first in the Baltic states, just two years after Gorbachev came to power. Estonia demanded autonomy. Lithuania and Latvia followed, directly challenging Gorbachev's glasnost policies.

Gorbachev needed to maintain control as the country's leader, but did not want to react too harshly to the rebellion, while also recognizing that leaving the dissent unchecked could mean the unraveling of the entire Soviet Union. Demands for independence then arose from the southern regions, including from Armenians in Azerbaijan. The Armenians sought to secede and staged massive demonstrations to that end. Gorbachev refused, and the dispute turned violent.

These rebellions spread across the country to Georgia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, the Central Asian republics, and Moldova. Gorbachev's government was further weakened by its inability to rely on local governments to help suppress the revolts.

It was late afternoon on August 18, 1991. Gorbachev was at his dacha on the Black Sea with his family, taking a well-deserved rest after six years of driving glasnost, perestroika, and managing his country's revolt against the slow pace of reform.

At around 5 p.m., while Gorbachev sat at his desk, his guard approached and informed him that a group of Communist Party officials had arrived at the dacha demanding an audience. He picked up the phone to find out what they wanted and discovered that all five telephone lines were dead.