The Dissolution of the Soviet Union
By Alfie Stubbs, Third Year History
On 25 December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation as the last President of the Soviet Union and General Secretary for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CSPU), ending his attempts to reform the Soviet political and economic systems. On that same evening, the Moscow Kremlin lowered the flag of the Soviet Union for the last time, replacing it with Russia’s modern tricoloured flag. The following day, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) would be officially dissolved as a sovereign state, ending 69 years of dictatorship across 15 countries.
Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
The reason for this collapse cannot be put down to one simple factor, as various longstanding social, political and economic issues came to a head during Gorbachev’s time in office from 1985 to 1991. Previous growing dissent across the USSR is encapsulated by public uprisings, such as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, caused by discontent with political decisions and leadership, alongside a growing disinterest in hearing the public voice. In an effort to reform Communist thought, Gorbachev introduced the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) but his idealistic future never came to fruition.
Glasnost opened the floodgates for heavy criticism of the USSR, resulting in the loss of state control of media and the public sphere. Perestroika led to an economic reformation that was made up of the worst capitalist and communist systems, resulting in the plummeting of the USSR’s previous longstanding economic stagnation.
Additionally, due to the new glasnost policy, various countries across the USSR began to act upon nationalist thought and claim independence. Some examples include Hungary and the Eastern Bloc which gained independence in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Baltic States which gained independence in August 1991 after a three-year campaign.
A map of the USSR and the independent countries that succeeded it. From Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.
Reactions to the collapse were generally positive, especially from those on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain was an ideological barrier that separated the Capitalist West from the Communist East, and was sometimes physically represented by structures like the Berlin Wall. There was optimism about the future following the collapse, especially because citizens were able to regain control through changes which had been brought about by the people themselves.
Yet despite this optimism, the collapse had caused a variety of issues for Russia and newly independent countries. There was an increased opportunity for crime and corruption in Russia; an escalating demand for cultural and social change within former Soviet countries; a plummeting economy; and consequentially, increased social deprivation.
Today, public memory of the Soviet Union varies massively. Within Ukraine, the Soviet past is primarily referenced negatively, whilst in some countries, like Armenia, there is a sense of nostalgia when remembering the USSR. This is most likely due to the decline in living standards experienced post-USSR, an attitude shared by Kyrgyzstan, where economic and social modernisation took place during the Soviet Union. 33 years later, one debated question remains: was the collapse of the USSR inevitable?
Edited by Ben Bryant