12.6: The Collapse of the Soviet Union

The End of Communism in Eastern Europe

While the end of Soviet domination was not a complete surprise, when it occurred it did so in spectacular fashion. Figure 12.6.1 shows the Berlin Wall, which had been erected during Khrushchev's regime, being torn down by Germans on both sides of the wall in November and December 1989. Spontaneous celebrations broke out on both sides, as people freely walked into West Germany from the East and vice versa for the first time in nearly 40 years, and families reunited.  Communist political systems and governments collapsed in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany. Within the Soviet Union itself, many of the republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, for example) had a long tradition and history that had nothing to do with the Soviets, and as glasnost spread, they began to demand greater freedoms and recognition. In March 1990, Lithuania declared itself independent from the Soviet Union, following six months of changes which had included allowing the use of the Lithuanian language.  These reforms and changes were followed by the rest of the Soviet Union with great interest. Later that year, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he viewed as a somewhat dubious honor, given that the Soviet Union's power was diminishing at an increasingly fast rate. By March 1991, all three of the Baltic republics – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- had voted for independence, with Georgia following suit in April that same year. Natural disasters, including a devastating earthquake in Armenia, coupled with the discovery of several mass graves of Stalin's victims, including nearly a million bodies that were discovered buried outside of Minsk, Kyiv, and Sverdlovsk, increased dissatisfaction with the Communist party and specifically with the Gorbachev government.

Figure 12.6.1: Fall of the Berlin Wall, Lear 21, is licensed under CC BY-SA

Discussion Question 

Why was the fall so significant?

In August 1991, a group of hard-line communists attempted a coup while Gorbachev was on vacation.  While the coup was eventually put down, due in large part to the actions of Boris Yeltsin, it was a clear sign that change was going to happen.  The actions of Yeltsin were particularly interesting.  In the years leading up to glasnost and perestroika, he had been a hard-line communist leader in Ekaterinburg, where he had ordered the house where former Tsar Nicholas II and his family had been shot to be torn down to prevent it from becoming a shrine.  Disenchanted with Gorbachev’s ideas in the late 1980s, in 1990 he broke with the Party and declared the Russian Republic to be independent of the rest of the USSR.  Yeltsin was seen as a powerful figure within the Party despite this, and his opposition to the 1991 coup was sufficient to ensure that the coup was thwarted.  By the end of the summer, it was clear that Gorbachev’s days in power were numbered, and on December 25, 1991, he resigned. With his resignation, all of the republics declared their independence, if they had not already, and the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist. Most of them declared an interest in the formation of a commonwealth of some form, which would initially be called the NIS (Newly Independent States) and then the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States).  Gorbachev retired to a lucrative career of speaking engagements and consulting, a very different fate than most of his predecessors who had been forced out of office.

Crisis and the Rise of Vladimir Putin 

Those living in the former Soviet Union were largely in favor of these changes.  Globalization, which had already influenced many in the USSR, expanded, and goods and services that had not previously been available in the Soviet Union became readily so.  Unfortunately, life was not all sunshine and roses.  Many of the states that had declared themselves independent (Ukraine is a great example) quickly found that they were not economically able to be completely free of their previous overlords. Much of the industry of the former states had been done in the Russian Republic, and as a result, the economies of these states were tied to Russia which, despite the creation of a commonwealth, was still clearly the leader of the state.  Unemployment skyrocketed as states turned to a more Western, capitalistic model and therefore eliminated jobs that had been created simply because communism promised everyone a job.  The lack of development within some of these states, most notably Albania, where a significant portion of the population did not have running water by 2000, prevented many Europeans and Americans from wanting to visit, meaning that tourism was not an option. Other cities, such as Prague, Budapest in Hungary, and Kyiv in Ukraine cashed in on the low exchange rates and welcomed tourists into what became the vacation destinations in Central Europe through the 1990s. 

The Russian state also continued to struggle with problems such as alcoholism and chronic work absenteeism and saw the added burdens of social problems including the alienation of those diagnosed with AIDS or as HIV positive.  The AIDS crisis was exacerbated by the fact that the Soviet leadership had outlawed homosexuality and had declared publicly that there were no gay people in the USSR, which obviously prevented people from seeking help or treatment.  Yeltsin, who was a known alcoholic, also struggled; his finest moment seemed to have been on top of a tank during the 1991 coup, and he surrounded himself with enablers such as his own children, who plundered the state treasury and promoted themselves and their cronies to positions of power.  Russia teetered along under his leadership until 1999, when he resigned in favor of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB chief.  Putin’s model for reigning seems to be more along the lines of Stalin than of the more recent leaders – his regime has been marked by increased repression of dissent, accusations of spying, and assassinations of those who oppose him.  Within months of coming to power, Putin was confronted with the sinking of a Russian nuclear submarine, the Kursk, and he not only refused to come home from vacation to deal with it, he also refused to ask for assistance from the West in time to save the crew that had survived the initial blast on board the sub.  

Perhaps most notably in the last years of the 2010s and first years of the 2020s has been Putin’s friendship with hard-line conservatives, including Viktor Orban in Hungary and Donald Trump in the United States, as well as increasingly tough positions against many of the former republics, most notably Ukraine.  When Russia seized Crimea in 2014, following the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Putin president, it was just the first in a series of subsequent encroachments on lands that the Russian leadership has proclaimed have historically been part of Russia. Additional “hybrid” wars continued through the rest of the 2010s, most notably in Donbas, with Russian separatist groups there declaring those areas independent of Ukraine. While most of these actions were heavily protested, there was little armed fighting until 2022, when war broke out between Russia and Ukraine.  

For some of the successor states to the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, there have been other crises.  In addition to economic problems, including a lack of modernization or infrastructure, many of the states found themselves ripped apart by nationalist conflicts.  Some, such as Czechoslovakia, separated into two distinct nations (the Czech and the Slovak Republics) without difficulty, but others, such as Yugoslavia, were nearly destroyed by years of civil war.  The Bosnian-Serbian conflict, for example, killed nearly a quarter of a million people and displaced 3 million more.  Conflicts over religion, regional differences, and long-time rivalries all came to the front and threatened to once again engulf the Balkans in flames.  In recent years, war crime trials have resulted in some of the most egregious of these dictators and ethnic cleansers being punished, but the area continues to struggle economically, due not only to the warfare in the region but also to the lack of basic foundations in terms of government and infrastructure.

Review Questions

• Why were the former republics in the Soviet Union ill-prepared for the collapse?
• How did glasnost and perestroika help lead to the end of the USSR?