WHII.40+Identify+the+causes+for+the+decline+and+collapse+of+the+Soviet+Union+and+the+communist+regimes+of+Eastern+Europe.

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Topics on the Page

 * Weaknesses of the Soviet Command Economy **
 * ** The Revolutions of 1989 **
 * Burdens of Soviet Military Commitments **
 * Ronald Reagan's Anticommunist Policies **
 * ** The Reagan Doctrine **
 * Resistance to Communism in the Soviet Union and in Europe **

=**//Focus Question: What factors contributed to the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union?//**=

=**The Weaknesses of the Soviet Command Economy**=
 * One problem that the Soviet Union faced in maintaining its power was its economic transition.
 * It had once been in a command economy, but the country found it harder and harder to keep it up.
 * an economic system where the state directs the economy
 * It was under the weight of this burden that Mikhail Gorbachev (photo below) decided to allow a limited capitalism.
 * //Glasnost//, meaning "openness" had allowed people to speak out more freely about their concerns with the Soviet government
 * An opportunity for criticism that had long been absent from the Russian political scene.
 * Books were no longer banned
 * political prisoners were released[[image:gorb.jpg width="330" height="236" align="right" caption="Mikhail Gorbachev"]]
 * newspapers could print government criticism
 * Political parties could participate in elections, not just Communists
 * This prompted Gorbachev to undertake //perestroika//
 * an economic restructuring project, allowing more capitalism.
 * Companies could be privately owned for the first time in decades
 * Workers could strike for better wages and conditions
 * Foreign countries could invest in Soviet companies
 * This lack of control was problematic due to the great unrest that existed within many parts of the Soviet Union.
 * Due to the oppression of Gorbachev's predecessors, many people, when finally given the chance to raise their voices,
 * began to question their part of a regime they did not agree with.
 * This would lead to many revolutions across Eastern Europe.

The Revolutions of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989, ffice of the Historian, U.S. Department of State

[|The Revolutions of 1989] would lead to the decline and collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, with the Soviet Union falling soon after.

**[|Making the History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe]**, a website with primary sources and teaching modules from the German Historical Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

=**The Burdens of Soviet Military Commitments**= This included Lech Walesa's [|solidarity] movement in Poland, Vaclav Havel's revolt in Czechoslovakia, and another revolution in Romania. With the exception of the Romanian revolution, the revolutions were mainly non-violent and the Soviet Union, for the most part, fell apart quietly.
 * The Soviet Union, during its collapse, found itself extremely divided.
 * The newfound lack of oppression exhibited by Gorbachev prompted many nationalistic movements to take place
 * advocating for different parts of the Soviet Union to break off from it all together.


 * Lech Walesa was a Polish labor activist
 * He worked as an electrician
 * Witnessed the food riots, in which police killed demonstrators
 * Became a union activist in 1976, but lost his job
 * In 1980, he joined a worker strike in the shipyards
 * Elected to strike committee to negotiate
 * Strike demands meet 3 days later
 * Other workers still on strike, so Walesa created a solidarity strike
 * Proclaimed as a general strike, the workers demanded the right to strike and form free trade unions
 * About 10 million Polish workers joined the solidarity strike, which became a confederation of unions
 * In 1981, Poland outlawed solidarity and Walesa was detained for about 1 year
 * In 1988, solidarity was legal once again
 * In 1990,Walesa ran for President of Poland in its first direct election and won

Walesa won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. He was unable to attend the ceremony, but his wife read this speech on his behalf.

Go here for a [|biography of Lech Walesea]from the Noble Prize committee. Click here for his Britannica entry



=**The Anticommunist Policies of President Reagan**=
 * One of the main focuses of Ronald Reagan's presidency (1981-1989) was to stop Communism from spreading
 * He saw Communism as a great evil that had to be stopped at all costs
 * referred to the Soviet Union as "an evil empire"
 * Combination of Reagan's relenting of this stiff policy and the Soviet Union's softening of their policies to allow freer speech and limited capitalism
 * helped work towards the ending of the Cold War.
 * ** The Reagan Doctrine **
 * Announced in Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address
 * Pledged to support anticommunist revolutions
 * //Afghanistan//
 * United States provided aid to anti-Soviet fighters
 * Helped force the withdrawal of the Soviets
 * //Nicaragua//
 * 1979: Nicaragua's corrupt government was overthrown
 * Young Marxists, known as Sandinistas, took over
 * Claimed to be free and support a mixed economy
 * Really cancelled elections, forced people who opposed them into exile, and looked to the Soviets for leadership
 * Reagan thought Nicaragua would become another Cuba
 * Reagan supported training of anti-Sandinistas rebels
 * The rebels worked against the government with assistance from the CIA
 * In 1990, national elections in Nicaragua overthrew the Sandinistas
 * Reagan was able to receive donations from individuals and other countries who wanted to win the support of the USA
 * Reagan also sold arms to Iran through the CIA and the profits went towards the stop of communism (Iran-Contra Affair)
 * In 1986, a Congressional investigation on the arms sales to Iran began [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Berlinermauer.jpg width="423" height="319" align="right" caption="Berlin Wall, 1986"]]
 * Click here for more on the Reagan Doctrine

Click here for a YouTube video on the [|Berlin Wall's removal] in 1989.

Ronald Reagan's 1987 famous "Tear down this wall" speech at the Bradenburg Gate in Berlin. //Time// magazine article crediting Reagan's speech as "the speech that brought down the wall."

Photographic slide show of The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Click here for a collection of Reagan's State of the Union addresses Click here for the Iran-Contra findings from the Congressional investigation

=**The Resistance to Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe**=
 * Many of the new revolutions in Eastern Europe would reject Communism altogether
 * felt it had failed them as members of the Soviet Union.
 * Lech Walesa's movement was a strong labor movement, but not one of Communism.
 * Vaclav Havel, a playwright and gadfly of the former administration, also rejected Communism as the answer for Czechslovakia.
 * These revolutions, and those like it, generally rejected Communism
 * further led to the dissipation of not only the Soviet Union, but many of the principles that had held it together.
 * Click here for more details on the fall of Communism.

=Coup Attempt=
 * Mikhail Gorbachev had a difficult time leading the Soviet Union
 * He wanted to have a free market economy and believed communist practices should be democratized
 * He also wanted to improve relations with the Western world, especially the United States
 * His policies were criticized heavily in the Soviet Union
 * Many people felt he was making the Soviet Union a second-class country
 * In August 1991 the military and communist government planned a coup against Gorbachev
 * He was put under house arrest and pressured to resign as President
 * Gorbachev refused
 * His supporters in Parliament called for the people of the Soviet Union to oppose the coup
 * Thousands took to the streets in support of Gorbachev
 * The coup failed a few days later
 * Despite the failure of the coup, Gorbachev lacked support from the majority of the Soviet Union
 * He resigned in December of 1991
 * Boris Yeltsin took power
 * Oversaw the dissolution of the Soviet Union
 * Click here for more details

Click here for a lesson plan on what it was like to live in the Soviet Union.

This document link: Summarizes the Fall of Communism in a brief synopsis, by the U.S. Department of State: Found 27 February 2011

Malgorzata Bochenska




 * For more on [|Małgorzata Bocheńska, visit her page on Facebook] here.**

[|Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, 1917-1991] is an online archive of texts, images, maps and video materials on the Soviet Union, including Khrushchev's Secret Speech.

Letter to the Soviet Leaders Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, 1974.

Click here for a BBC timeline of the Soviet Union

Click here for an article from the Guardian, "End of the USSR: Visualization how the former Soviet countries are doing, 20 years on". Includes a graphic. Click here for an animated map of the USSR from 1910 to 1991. Click here for an interactive map of Europe from 1990-2005. This map shows the breakup of the USSR


 * Other sources**

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-214232/Ronald-W-Reagan

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-42078/Union-of-Soviet-Socialist-Republics

http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fall-of-soviet-union

http://www.coldwar.org/articles/90s/fall_of_the_soviet_union.asp