A severe economic contraction characterized the late s and early s, which would be the last years of the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders no longer had the power to intervene amidst the growing economic chaos. Newly-empowered local leaders demanded greater autonomy from central authority, shaking the foundations of the command economy, while more localized cultural identities and priorities took precedence over national concerns. With its economy and political unity in tatters, the Soviet Union collapsed in late , fragmenting into fifteen separate states.
The early strength of the Soviet command economy was its ability to rapidly mobilize resources and direct them in productive activities that emulated those of advanced economies.
Yet by adopting existing technologies rather than developing their own, the Soviet Union failed to foster the type of environment that leads to further technological innovation. After experiencing a catch-up period with attendant high growth rates, the command economy began to stagnate in the s.
Rather than saving the economy, various piecemeal reforms instead only undermined the economy's core institutions. Accessed Oct. Department of State. Library of Congress. British Library. International Markets. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors.
Your Money. Personal Finance. Your Practice. Popular Courses. Economy Economics. Table of Contents Expand. Beginnings of the Soviet Command Economy. He followed up with a remarkable speech to the UN in December of that year, promising to withdraw tens of thousands of Soviet troops, tanks and artillery systems from Eastern Europe, in order to assure the world that the USSR no longer had large scale offensive military capability in Europe.
This Soviet policy shift weakened the negotiating position of the Polish Communist Party, which agreed to let the independent union Solidarity Solidarnosc run candidates against them in free elections in April Solidarity had long received covert financial and advisory support from the Vatican and the United States, enabling it to survive long enough to reach this accomplishment.
Instead, Solidarity candidates shockingly won every contested seat, despite having been outspent considerably by their opponents. Although the Reagan administration certainly played a role in the support of Solidarity—though not enough for them to have adequate campaign financing—;there was little expectation of an immediate domino effect as dramatic as what actually occurred.
Secret intelligence briefings that year gave no hint that regime overthrow in East Germany was a realistic possibility. The USSR declined to intervene in any of these revolutions, as it was already committed to unilateral withdrawal from Eastern Europe.
The U. Massive resources would have been needed to orchestrate a collapse in Eastern Europe. Such an operation could not remain invisible for very long, nor could agencies responsible for such a project fail to anticipate the possibility of its success.
The collapse of the East must be understood by studying the East, not the speeches of Western politicians, which at best had an inspirational effect, but provided no tangible aid to independence movements. A key to the success of national anti-Communist movements was the refusal of the Soviets to exert military force to maintain control. A variety of factors went into this decision, including the relative cost and benefit of direct military occupation, the weaknesses exposed in Afghanistan, and the liberalizing tendencies of Gorbachev.
It is not clear how much of the bloc the Soviets would have been able to retain by force, but they certainly made a deliberate strategic decision in relinquishing all of it.
If the Soviets hoped the Communist regimes would survive without military intervention, this proved to be a miscalculation. Eastern Europeans did not need Western propaganda to teach them to despise their dictatorial governments; the everyday facts of life provided ample cause. Romania was even more economically isolated than most Warsaw Pact nations, making foreign economic sabotage unfeasible.
Even after the loss of its European buffer zone, the Soviet Union remained formidable. There was no longer a real danger of war with Western Europe, so the bloc had lost its strategic significance as well.
It would be a mistake, then, to perceive the loss of Eastern Europe as a severe wound to the domestic Soviet economy or military. On the contrary, it enabled the Soviet government to focus its resources on more critical areas. At the end of the s, the Soviet Union had serious economic problems, but it was still financially sound, due to its enormous assets in gold, oil and natural gas. Western intelligence agencies were reasonable in their assessment that the regime would struggle, while expecting that it would persist.
What actually happened in was not the top-down reform demanded by Reagan, but something far more radical. A broad popular uprising took matters into its own hands, abolishing the East German regime altogether.
No serious analyst anticipated such a breathtaking turn of events. While Reagan and his cabinet certainly wished for the demise of Communism and did everything in their power to hasten that end, in fact they had very limited means at their disposal. Western powers played only a marginal role in the events of , as in the aforementioned covert operations in Poland. Still, Reagan deserves credit, if not for causing the Communist collapse, then at least for astutely perceiving the internal weakness of the Communist regimes.
His conviction in the unsustainability of the Communist system encouraged him to take a firm diplomatic stand with Warsaw Pact nations, refusing to make things easy for them. Despite his bellicose rhetoric, Reagan actually developed a cooperative relationship with the Soviet Union and a respectful understanding with Gorbachev.
The Reagan era was marked with significant bilateral arms control agreements, as well as greater economic openness between the West and the Soviet bloc. This warming of relations continued under President George Bush, who made plain his commitment to a unified Soviet state, even as nationalist fervor aroused separatist sentiments in the Baltics and the Ukraine. Bush was concerned that a sudden breakup of the Union would have negative consequences for global security and free trade, though he was not opposed to republican independence in principle.
He studiously avoided taking sides in the emerging conflict between the central government and the Soviet republics. There had been nationalist rumblings within the Soviet Union as early as , when the Armenians protested the treatment of their fellows in Karabagh, a territory that Stalin had reallocated to the Azerbaijan republic.
The Soviet republics did not have a long history of nationalist sentiment; rather, secessionism arose because of deep dissatisfaction with the Communist central government in the political and economic spheres. Apart from Communism, there was little reason for the Union to persist in its integrity. In , secessionist movements were strongest in the Baltic republics, which had a history of independence prior to their forcible annexation in Yet decentralizing inclinations would soon arise even in those republics that had no recent history of autonomy, having been part of the old Russian empire.
We cannot explain these movements simply in terms of nationalistic identity. Most of the decentralizing actions taken by the republics, including the declarations of sovereignty made in , were motivated by frustration with the rule of the actual Communist government, rather than intractable ethnic differences.
By making republican law take priority over Soviet law, the republics hoped to free themselves to accelerate political and economic reforms, and assert their institutional independence from the Communist party.
Alarmed by the prospect of the Union disintegrating, Gorbachev put perestroika on hold, and proposed a more decentralized Soviet Union that would be more like a confederation, with the republics having a degree of autonomy and sovereignty. Apart from the Baltic republics and some of the Caucasus nations e. This was proven by a March referendum on preserving the Union, which was favored by over 70 percent of the vote in each of the nine republics that considered it: Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Armenia, Georgia, Moldavia, and the Baltics abstained. A less centralized, yet still united USSR was still a viable possibility, if the will of the Soviet people was to be respected. By August, eight of the nine republics had signed onto the new union treaty. Ukraine still disputed the terms of the treaty, though 70 percent of its voters supported joining the Union in some form. While Gorbachev saw the treaty as the best hope for preserving the Union, Communist hardliners perceived that it would lead to the weakening and destruction of the USSR.
He adamantly refused, so the following day he was held prisoner in his vacation home while tanks and troops were sent into the streets of Moscow. Some leaders of the republics assented to the coup, or at least remained silent. It was not so with Boris Yeltsin, who declared the coup unconstitutional and led a public protest in the streets of Moscow. Soviet troops refused to take any action against the protestors, so the coup leaders relented on August 21, just two days later.
When Gorbachev returned to Moscow, he found himself forced by Yeltsin to agree to the dissolution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union CPSU , which was collectively held responsible for the coup. He resigned as head of the party, while retaining his office as President of the Soviet Union.
For the individuals involved, these things were tragic. We would be glossing over human cruelty to forget this. But the vast masses of people in Russia were not much affected by the change. They only knew that property formerly owned by the monarchy, the aristocracy, the church, the very small middle class, and the big landowners became the property of the Soviet state. The Kremlin has also impressed on the people that they must never permit these resources to pass into the hands of individuals or groups of individuals uncontrolled by the state.
As an incentive it offers them opportunities to increase their piecework wages, or to receive bonuses, or enjoy such special privileges as vacations at state resorts in the Crimea and the Caucasus.
It would therefore be entirely mistaken to think that there is a dead level of economic and social conditions for everyone in Russia. A famous actor, a highly trained engineer, or an experienced industrial manager receives a salary which, in terms of Russian living standards, would compare quite favorably with the salaries of individuals employed in similar capacities in the United States.
On this salary the engineer, manager, or actor can enjoy a higher standard of living in Russia than the unskilled worker or the unskilled peasant.
He will probably be unable to buy some necessities and many luxuries that the average worker can obtain in the United States. But of the goods that are available, he will be able to buy more than his lower-paid fellow citizens. Under no circumstances, however, will he be able to invest any part of his salary in private enterprise. This differentiation in wages and salaries has become more—and more pronounced during the past decade. As a result, Russia, on the eve of the German invasion, for the first time in her history was witnessing the appearance of a large middle class.
This new middle class, however, is in no way linked, as it is in the Western capitalist countries, to a system of private enterprise, and its status is not protected by law.
These are very important distinctions to bear in mind when comparing Russia with the United States. This new group, like the corresponding group in Western countries, is composed of engineers, actors, government officials, industrial managers, administrators of collective farms; doctors, and teachers.
It also includes highly skilled workers known as Stakhanovists, in honor of a worker who set new records of production. Like the middle class in Western countries, it is a changing group, which is being constantly enlarged by the promotion of younger workers and peasants to posts of authority and responsibility.
Promotion may carry with it not only a higher income, but a bigger and better house or apartment and perhaps a car. Such extras as these go with the job—and are lost if the job is lost. With the rise of this group there has also come a way of life alien to the ideas of many early Bolshevik leaders. From their former contempt for the privacy of the home, the Soviet Russians have swung toward respect for home life. From an extremely elastic attitude toward marriage, divorce, and abortion, they have swung over to respect for marriage, encouragement of large families, and prohibition of abortion.
Today in Russia, birth is no barrier to advancement for men and women of ability. If he has the right qualifications, the son of a peasant may become an engineer, an industrial manager, or a general.
0コメント