What caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union?

[jmpeer]

What caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
I was told a lot of republics wanted independence, the USSR was oppressive - wouldn't let people leave, they spent too much on their military, they weren't productive enough - deprived people of basic goods, and they pretty much gave way to the allure of cola, jeans, and hollywood.
But, I'm asking you now.

[Billy2]

I figured the USSR just eventually succumbed to the pressure and manipulation of the imperialist powers. Then someone might say, but Cuba and North Korea have been under embargo for decades, and they are smaller. Maybe big countries are easier to wear down?

[scarletghoul]

What caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
I was told a lot of republics wanted independence, the USSR was oppressive - wouldn't let people leave, they spent too much on their military, they weren't productive enough - deprived people of basic goods, and they pretty much gave way to the allure of cola, jeans, and hollywood.
But, I'm asking you now.All of those are true, but they're just symptoms of the deeper cause. That cause was Revisionism, which could rise via bureaucratic degeneration and the party/state becoming detatched from the people. Revisionism means going back on fundamental communist principles like class struggle etc, and the most significant point was the capitalist ideas in economics. For example, Khruschev's economics included the profit motive and so on. These capitalist ideas didnt work very well with a collectivised economy, so, after stagnating under Brezhnev (by which time the state was well and truly separate from the people and a new capitalist class was emerging), the whole collectivised economy collapsed under Gorbachev, giving us the Russia we see today.
In other words capitalism wormed its way in via revisionism.

This is the standard anti-revisionist narrative, and was most clearly pointed out by Mao who tried to prevent the same thing happening in China. Unfortunately he failed, but not without providing us with a wealth of theory and practice to help us avoid Revisionism in the future.

[Bardo]

^(@ Billy) Cuba and NK arent in direct competition with the US for global dominance.

The USSR spent so much on their military because they had to. They had to compete with the US's unprecedented military spending. Reagan ran up the largest deficit in history in order to out-spend the Soviets. Times were tough in America as well around the time the USSR fell, so as far as I can tell the US just outbid the USSR.

But Im no economist or expert historian

[jmpeer]

I was told Gorbachev's reforms brought power to the people and the republics, allowed them to speak more freely without fear of oppression, and in turn, instead of helping their relationship with the USSR, used it to further pursue independence. If this is the case, I don't think he's to blame.

By corruption, do you mean they oppressed the people by accumulating wealth, crushing demonstrations, and staying in office longer than the term, or corrupted the USSR by things like manipulating information and pursuing independence? Also, was there a specific ruler or policy that allowed for this, or was it just by bad design?

I'm most interested in, what caused this economic stagnation?

[Obs]

I was told Gorbachev's reforms brought power to the people and the republics, allowed them to speak more freely without fear of oppression, and in turn, instead of helping their relationship with the USSR, used it to further pursue independence. If this is the case, I don't think he's to blame. That is not the case. You should probably start regarding everything they taught you in History class as suspect.

[jmpeer]

So, it seems to me, aside from the decisions made as a result of this, the USSR's lack of development of technology is what ultimately led to their demoralization and dissolution. Would you agree?

[Iraultzaile Ezkerreko]

So, it seems to me, aside from the decisions made as a result of this, the USSR's lack of development of technology is what ultimately led to their demoralization and dissolution. Would you agree?

No. How did you possibly get that? It was the result of the destruction of the state apparatuses which had formed out of the CPSU in order to govern the USSR. Gorbachev destroyed these, was replaced by Yeltsin, and Russia pulled out of the USSR. With Russia gone there was no reason for the USSR to remain as a political union with all the remaining member states being unconnected, and without the large economy of Russia to support their development.

[jmpeer]

The economic stagnation, and thus demoralization, started before he came to power. Would he have done the same if the people were already enjoying a good standard of living?

[Amphictyonis]

I'll take "a lack of a global socialist revolution" for 500 Alex. The same reason they were never socialist/communist.

[Unclebananahead]

In 1991 there was a Soviet referendum -- or vote -- on the question of whether or not to preserve the existence of the USSR as a "renewed federation of equal sovereign republics," and the Soviet citizenry voted overwhelmingly in favor of this. The truth is that the Soviet Union was overthrown by a pro-capitalist coup orchestrated by Mikhail Gorbachev, and Boris Yeltsin. The western corporate media hailed Yeltsin as a democratic reformer working to bring the free market paradise east. This same 'democratic reformer' went on to dissolve the Russian parliament in 1993, when they weren't being cooperative enough in enacting his free market 'reforms.' This caused a massive outpouring of public indignation from the Russian public, and huge demonstrations erupted denouncing this act. Yeltsin's response was to use the military to violently suppress the demonstrations, killing something like 3,000 people. Yeltsin was still celebrated in the virtually Orwellian western press as a hero of democracy afterwards.

[Crimson Commissar]

I'll take "a lack of a global socialist revolution" for 500 Alex. The same reason they were never socialist/communist.
If the USSR even tried to start revolutions in other countries during the cold war, it could have very very easily turned into a third world war. And WW3 could have also easily lead to a nuclear war. You can't exactly blame them for that.