On Christmas Day 1991 one of the most powerful countries and greatest economic experiments in history collapsed as the new Russian Federation flag was raised, officially ending the cold war between the Americans and Soviets. I decided to discuss this topic because of its importance of American history and how the collapse was really the time the world changed for the better. We learned about this in one of Mr Stewards documentaries but it did not go enough into detail that I would have liked it to. The Collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable, during Gorbachev's presidency the Soviet Union began to fail. He went into office with a broken economy and a political structure that was so bad that nothing could have been done to fix it. Gorbachev glasnost policy destroyed allowed political openness in the soviet union... something that leaders like Stalin had spent their entire life trying to prevent in the Soviet Union. Soviet citizens realized they had rights that they had never had before and now were allowed to go against the government without being killed by the secret police. Gorbachev began to incorporate more capitalists ideals in the government as he passed policies the loosened the grip of the Soviet government on trade and the economy allowing private companies to grow.
However with shortages in food and the crash of the economy before Gorbachev's economy could grow many Russians began to protest against the government, finally realizing that maybe, communism just doesn't work. Gorbachev began to create more arms control decreasing the military and nuclear weapons. Because of this many of the Western puppets of the Soviet began to rebel against the Soviets, the first one being Polish, eventually Russia's hold on the west was crumbling and as they backed out of Afghanistan stopping a war that had been going on for decades. with their citizens being able to disagree with the soviets many many countries just broke off from the Soviet Union not needing to rebel in anyway, like Belarus, Estonia and many of the Baltic states that had been in the USSR power since the end of World War 2, eventually the Russian federation broke off from the USSR eventually creating the Russia we have today. Even though the USSR is no longer on the map, it does not mean that ideals of Communism do not exist. The Communist party in Russia still exists and is very popular and the houses and live styles from the Soviet Union can still be seen in Russia today.
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fall-of-soviet-union
However with shortages in food and the crash of the economy before Gorbachev's economy could grow many Russians began to protest against the government, finally realizing that maybe, communism just doesn't work. Gorbachev began to create more arms control decreasing the military and nuclear weapons. Because of this many of the Western puppets of the Soviet began to rebel against the Soviets, the first one being Polish, eventually Russia's hold on the west was crumbling and as they backed out of Afghanistan stopping a war that had been going on for decades. with their citizens being able to disagree with the soviets many many countries just broke off from the Soviet Union not needing to rebel in anyway, like Belarus, Estonia and many of the Baltic states that had been in the USSR power since the end of World War 2, eventually the Russian federation broke off from the USSR eventually creating the Russia we have today. Even though the USSR is no longer on the map, it does not mean that ideals of Communism do not exist. The Communist party in Russia still exists and is very popular and the houses and live styles from the Soviet Union can still be seen in Russia today.
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fall-of-soviet-union
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