Overall Demise and Collapse of the Soviet Union

Overall Demise and Collapse of the Soviet Union

Research Writing 104, 07

James Workman

October 6th, 2013

Abstract

This essay serves to explore what events ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union and the parties involved. The Cold War lasted 46 years before the Soviet Union collapsed. Due to self-destruction by the Soviet Government and its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the constant competition to be on top in the war, the Soviet Union was out outmatched. Once a known powerhouse by the whole world, the Soviet Union was no more. The collapse of the Soviet Union, other than the cold war itself, was political and economic and overall the result of the culture of war.

Fall of the Soviet Union

During World War II, there were two types of governments throughout the world. There was one, which was the western Democratic Party, the same type of government that we in the United States still have today, who mostly make their decisions based on what the people want. And the other government was the eastern political party, which puts the power in the hands of the government and only the government. The two powers had been fighting against each other for a very long period of time until the falling of the Soviet Union communist party in 1991. The destruction of the Soviet Union, other than the cold war itself, was political and economic and overall the result of the culture of war. Ronald Regan, the last standing President of the United States during the Cold War and USSR President, Mikhail Gorbachev, fought not just one war but different wars all in one. The arms war(weapons, technology, etc), the space race war, and the actual war of taking down what was then Communist Russia. Political and economic reforms set in place by Gorbachev such as “Glasnot” and “Perestroika”, along with the need to compete with the United States in the “arms race” and “space race” took an exponential amount of money, which Gorbachev did not have. The Soviet Union slowly began to roll downhill due to this factor and the physical disbandment of the Soviet Union itself as some groups of the Union no longer wished to be ruled under the communist