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What Was the Context for the Collapse of the USSR in 1991?
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Russia – The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991
In this course, Professor Richard Sakwa (University of Kent) discusses the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the first lecture we explore the context for the ultimate collapse of the USSR in 1991, looking back through the leadership of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. In the second lecture we examine Mikhail Gorbachev’s political reforms, including Perestroika, Glasnost and Demokratizatsiya. In the third lecture we inquire into the economic and social reforms implemented by Gorbachev. In the fourth lecture, we highlight Gorbachev’s foreign policy, bringing the Cold War to an end and reconstructing relationships across Europe. In the fifth lecture, we identify Gorbachev’s nationalities policies, and the impact of policies such as Perestroika and Glasnost on the Soviet Socialist Republics. Finally, in the sixth lecture, we conclude with an overview of the multiple factors that led to the decline and fall of the USSR, questioning whether Gorbachev’s reforms were indeed the primary cause of collapse.
What Was the Context for the Collapse of the USSR in 1991?
In this lecture we think about the context for the collapse of the USSR, focussing on: (i) the impact of Gorbachev’s reforms, intending to revive the Soviet Union, but instead leading to its 1991 collapse and the independence of its republics; (ii) the extent to which the reforms were the main cause for collapse, exploring in conjunction the role played by global pressures; (iii) the lasting impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union, including strained relations like those between Russia and Ukraine.
Hello.
00:00:06I'm, Richard Sackler,
00:00:06professor emeritus of politics and history from the University of Kent.
00:00:08Over the years I've taught a number of subjects in
00:00:14particular Soviet politics, Soviet history,
00:00:16and today Russian and East European politics and history.
00:00:20Today I want to talk about I'll be focusing on the end of
00:00:25the Soviet Union, which ended both with a bang and a
00:00:29whimper, to quote TS Eliot.
00:00:34The way that the Soviet Union ended was unexpected.
00:00:38We're talking about a system that was established in October
00:00:43nineteen seventeen when the Bolsheviks seized power.
00:00:47They established a bit later the Soviet Union,
00:00:51and through the long history of the Lenin,
00:00:55the Stalin years, the second world war,
00:00:58for the Soviet Union was nineteen forty one, forty five,
00:01:01followed by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.
00:01:04And the Soviet system has many achievements to its credit,
00:01:08but also some spectacular failures.
00:01:13When Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
00:01:16came to power in March nineteen eighty five,
00:01:19he inherited a system that was
00:01:23perhaps declining but it still was viable.
00:01:27It didn't necessarily have to end.
00:01:31Nevertheless there were clear symptoms of a system that was
00:01:33in dire need of change, of reform.
00:01:38And this certainly was the view of Gorbachev and his colleagues.
00:01:42And in the next six years and this will be what I'll be
00:01:46talking about in this and in the succession succeeding
00:01:50sections, about how the Soviet Union changed.
00:01:54Six years that changed the world.
00:01:59It certainly changed the Soviet Union because
00:02:02in March nineteen eighty five,
00:02:06the system that Gorbachev inherited
00:02:08was and still is the world's largest country.
00:02:11But the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
00:02:16as it was called at the time the USSR,
00:02:19was one of the great superpowers.
00:02:22It was,
00:02:25the pair competitor of the United States and the Western
00:02:27Alliance and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
00:02:31And when Gorbachev finally left
00:02:35office in December nineteen ninety one,
00:02:39the Soviet Union had disintegrated.
00:02:42The communist system had dissolved,
00:02:45and the country was changed forever.
00:02:48It had begun the path towards democracy, a stony path,
00:02:53which is still not complete.
00:02:57So the big question then is,
00:03:00why did Gorbachev launch his reforms?
00:03:02What what sort of system was he dealing with and trying to reform?
00:03:06Because the big story is that Gorbachev
00:03:11reformed the system out of existence.
00:03:16So if he hadn't gone started the reforms,
00:03:19the Soviet Union could have continued.
00:03:23One thing we should make absolutely clear,
00:03:26the impetus for reform came from
00:03:29within the Soviet system.
00:03:33Of course, international politics,
00:03:35outside developments had a major impact on the Soviet
00:03:37Union.
00:03:42Of course, given the changes in world economy,
00:03:43the emergence of what soon became known as globalization,
00:03:46also massive technological and other changes,
00:03:51communications changes, all had an effect,
00:03:55all shaped the environment in which reform took place.
00:03:58Nevertheless, it was a reform that was
00:04:01generated from within.
00:04:04And this the big lesson, I suppose,
00:04:07is that it proved, it demonstrated
00:04:10that the Soviet Union was reformable.
00:04:13But we should distinguish between two things.
00:04:17One, the change to the system, the communist system,
00:04:20socialist system,
00:04:23and the second is the changes to the geographical territory.
00:04:24The USSR in December nineteen ninety one,
00:04:30as we shall see later, disintegrated.
00:04:33The fifteen union republics split apart
00:04:35and one of them, Russia,
00:04:39the Russian Federation became the continuous state,
00:04:42and the fourteen other states to this day are independent.
00:04:45One of them, Ukraine,
00:04:49is today locked in war with Russia,
00:04:52and that is also one of the legacies of Gorbachev's reform
00:04:54and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
00:04:59So the big questions I think can be seen as follows.
00:05:02This as I mentioned the Bolsheviks seized power in
00:05:07October nineteen seventeen with a vision to create
00:05:11a a communist system, a socialist system,
00:05:16but the key point is that it was also presented
00:05:19as an alternative to Western modernity, to capitalist,
00:05:23democracy.
00:05:28At the same time, the Soviet Union claimed to be a
00:05:29better version of the West.
00:05:33So Marxism which inspired Lenin and which in fact inspired the
00:05:36whole Soviet experiment was based on the idea that the
00:05:41West had many achievements but with capitalist exploitation,
00:05:46with the profits as it were taken by the
00:05:51capitalist class and not shared amongst the workers,
00:05:55those who actually delivered the goods,
00:05:58that the Soviet Union socialism is a better version of the
00:06:00West.
00:06:05So the whole Soviet experiment can be seen as a type of
00:06:06rebellion, a rebellious child of Western modernity.
00:06:10What Gorbachev had in mind when he launched his reforms in
00:06:15March nineteen eighty five was that they needed the Soviet
00:06:20Union needed to get back to perhaps a better version to
00:06:24this original vision which he claimed to be Lenin's vision, Vladimir Lenin,
00:06:29the leader of the Bolsheviks in nineteen seventeen who died in
00:06:33January nineteen twenty four, that we
00:06:36could get back to a better vision of that socialism.
00:06:41One which was less violent, one which was more democratic,
00:06:45one which was more inclusive and ultimately more tolerant
00:06:49and more pluralistic.
00:06:53This was the vision that inspired Gorbachev's reforms
00:06:54and the idea was that it could get rid of
00:06:58the the distortions.
00:07:02And of course the major distortion was the violence
00:07:05associated with of course the Bolsheviks initially,
00:07:08but above all taken to an absolute extreme in the years
00:07:11of Stalin's leadership.
00:07:15As I mentioned, Lenin died in January nineteen twenty four
00:07:17and after a succession struggle Stalin took over with
00:07:21a single power by the end of the 1920s.
00:07:27He launched industrialization
00:07:31in nineteen twenty nine,
00:07:33well a bit earlier but collectivization
00:07:36that is he expropriated the peasants from
00:07:39their individual farms and put them into collective or state farms.
00:07:42Two years earlier they'd adopted to a nineteen twenty
00:07:46eight the five the first five year plan.
00:07:49So a planned system.
00:07:53But of course this was accompanied by massive violence
00:07:55in the night mid nineteen thirties.
00:07:59We had the purges when it nearly a million people
00:08:01were sent to the gulag and shot and more than a million sent to gulag.
00:08:06But yet the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors
00:08:11created a major industrial power.
00:08:15And so the legacy that Gorbachev inherited was the one
00:08:19that faced also Khrushchev.
00:08:24How to salvage the what they considered the good things of
00:08:26the Soviet Union while getting rid of the bad things including
00:08:31Stalinist repression.
00:08:35Khrushchev in the nineteen fifties,
00:08:37early sixties failed to get a adequate balance,
00:08:39but Gorbachev thought he could do better.
00:08:44And so his plan was to save socialism
00:08:47not to end it.
00:08:51However, things turned out very differently indeed.
00:08:53
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Sakwa, R. (2024, November 15). Russia – The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991 - What Was the Context for the Collapse of the USSR in 1991? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/russia-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-1985-1991
MLA style
Sakwa, R. "Russia – The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991 – What Was the Context for the Collapse of the USSR in 1991?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 15 Nov 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/russia-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-1985-1991