When Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary in 1964, the Soviet Union began an era of stagnation. As economic growth slowed and military tensions with the United States were reduced during détente, the Soviet leadership pursued a policy of stabili…
When Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary in 1964, the Soviet Union began an era of stagnation. As economic growth slowed and military tensions with the United States were reduced during détente, the Soviet leadership pursued a policy of stabilization, demonstrating their resolve when the military dispatched Warsaw Pact tanks into Prague to stop reforms being pursued in Czechoslovakia. By the 1980s, the economic and political stagnation had worsened, however, and Mikhail Gorbachev began a series of reforms of his own in the Soviet Union under perestroika. As the 9-year war in Afghanistan began draining government coffers already run low by a substantial decline in oil prices, the USSR started to break apart as communist East Germany rejoined its capitalist brother to the west, and Warsaw Pact nations such as Poland and Lithuania began moves towards independence. On Christmas Day, 1991, Gorbachev officially announced the dissolution of the USSR, and Boris Yeltsin was declared President of Russia. What followed was a severe economic contraction, with unemployment rising and many ordinary citizens falling into homelessness and early mortality. Large portions of strategic state assets in the heavy mining, energy, and industrial sectors were parceled off to these same citizens, who often out of desperation sold their shares and ended up handing much of the Russian economy to a new class of billionaire oligarchs. This concentration of wealth continued until 2000, when Vladimir Putin became Russian president and began a series of moves reversing much of the economic chaos and restoring some semblance of order to Russian society.
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https://myth20c.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/collapse-of-the-soviet-union/
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-- References --
- Failed Empire, Zubokov (2009)
- The Limits of Partnership (2014)
- The Colder War, Katusa (2014)
- The Oligarchs, Hoffman (2002)
- Red Plenty, Suppford (2012)
- Inside the Soviet Army, Suvorov (1983)
- Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn (1974)
- Magnetic Mountain, Kotkin (1995)
- A Failed Empire, Kubok (2007)
- National Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State, Bessinger (2002)
- The 33 Strategies of War, Greene (2007)
