Collapse Of The Soviet Union

Another leader who had a lot to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev. He wasn’t able to stop personal computers from surfacing in the mid 1980’s. This hurt Gorbachev because he couldn’t control the spreading of the information to the public.

Also, when Gorbachev tried to reform communism, it created political unrest. The Soviet Union was losing strength because it couldn’t handle its own reforms. Gorbachev’s main contribution to why the Soviet Union collapsed was “glasnost”, or free press. He also had perestroika, the economic reforms. The reason why glasnost was the one that lead to the USSR’s failure is because in China, only perestroika was introduced and China withstood collapse. However, perestroika did have some effect on the death of the Soviet Union. According to Michael Kort, when Gorbachev introduced it, factories fired unnecessary employees, and people were left jobless for the first time since 1920 (Kort, M 1993).

Also, Gorbachev made the mistake of accepting the loss of communism in Eastern Europe, and only concentrated on saving it in the Soviet Union. According to Seweryn Bialer, “Gorbachev’s attempt to reform the government exposed the crisis of leadership in the regime and brought on its downfall”(Bialer S, 1999, P42) The free market reforms weren’t going to work because there was not enough political freedom.

The Soviet Union collapsed because Russia in particular was not suited for communism. Russia is near the Arctic and it started with no warm water ports.