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Matthew Pipes
Professor Leopold Lovelace
POL 334 American Foreign Policy
December 12th, 2015
The Collapse of the Soviet Union, and the End of the Cold War
The end of the cold war coincides with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR), or the Soviet Union. Many Americans would like to believe that the Cold
War ended because the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Soviet Union collapsed because they
could not keep up in the arms race with the United States of America (USA). This view does not
hold up to scrutiny because, the Cold War ended before the Soviet Union collapsed. The Cold
War did not end because the Soviet Union collapsed, or because they could not keep up with the
arms race, in fact from 1985-1990 Soviet military spending had held steady The Soviet Union
collapsed because Marxism-Leninism had been discredited, and the Cold War was effectively
over in 1989 when the communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed, long before the Soviet
Union collapsed in 1991. (Kramer)(Forsberg).
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union did have an effect on each
other, but not for the nationalistic reasons often considered by Americans. The Soviet Union, as
well as Communist Eastern Europe, was held together under the threat of force (Reuveny). Once
the Soviet Army was not seen as invincible after the Afghanistan war, it was as if tension was
released and separatist movements and challenges to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe
sprang forth (Reuveny). At the same time the Soviet Army was defeated in Afghanistan, and its
stranglehold on Eastern Europe was released, the Soviet economy collapsed. Revolutions in
Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia deprived the Soviet Union of powerful

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military allies (Mandelbaum). The Soviet Union could no longer compete on the same level with
the United Sates in power politics. These pressures eventually led to the tandem end of the Cold
War and the Soviet Union (Forsberg).
Glasnost and Perestroika
When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he championed the movements of glasnost and
perestroika, which were critical reform movements. Glasnost, or transparency, began to chip
away at the totalitarian state by exposing the public to information that the state did not want
them to know. Originally, the USSR citizens were told they had been invited to bring stability to
Afghanistan, and there was little resistance. As more and more disabled veterans were visible to
the public, and stories of wounded veterans began to slip past the censors, the knowledge of
fighting in Afghanistan became inescapable. As a free press was more invigorated by glasnost,
they were able to report on and expose crimes and corruption associated with the war.
Perestroika sought to make the state more responsive to the needs of the citizens of the USSR. In
effect, this meant cleaning up corruption and introducing some market and democratic reforms.
The dissent caused by the Afghanistan war caused a surge in support for both perestroika and
glasnost. The effects of these two idealist practices on the Soviet leadership were profound. So
much so that Gorbachev broke with diplomatic tradition and decided that reunified Germany had
the right to choose which alliances it entered into, and he surprisingly decided not to object to a
reunified Germany being a member of NATO (Forsberg). The effect of these two forces,
transparency and reform, might also have been too great for the Soviet system to handle. They
led to so much dissent that the entire union disintegrated (Reuveny). It is possible that in his
attempt to reform the Soviet Union, by taking away its Stalinist tendencies and making the
Soviet Union a modern state, Gorbachev actually destroyed it. Glasnost and perestroika had the

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effect of discrediting the Soviet institutions, the Communist Party, and their accepted history
since 1917. For the first time, citizens of the USSR learned of the terror imposed by Lenin and
Stalin (Mandelbaum).
The War in Afghanistan and the Soviet Union
Reuveny and Prakash describe how the war in Afghanistan was far more than just a
strategic defeat for the Soviet Union. They argue the defeat struck at the core of what had held
Eastern Europe together since the end of World War II. That core was the legitimate threat of
force by the Soviet Army (Reuveny). Others argue the communist block was held together by
ideology, but I agree with the conclusions of Reuveny and Prakash. Previously in
Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Hungry in 1956, the Soviet Army had intervened to ensure
Communist rule. So why did they not do the same in the late eighties and early nineties. The
Afghanistan war affected this reversal in a few main ways. The first of which is that Soviet
leaders began to doubt how effective such an action would be. Although previously successful,
they now had their doubts (Reuveny). The second effect was that the moral of the Soviet Army
was depleted, and its legitimacy questioned by its own soldiers. In addition, the war created an
open wound for the Soviet leadership that only accelerated the movements of perestroika and
glasnost. Finally, the citizens of communist bloc countries no longer feared the Soviet Army as
they had before, and they were emboldened to take steps previously thought unthinkable
(transparency) (Reuveny).
The Mujahidin of Afghanistan had been supplied by the Americans with surface to air
missiles, which were particularly useful in the valleys, canyons, and mountains of Afghanistan
against the Soviet helicopter gunships. The Mujahidin received rockets, mortars, and
communications equipment from the Americans as well (Reuveny). This drove up the casualties

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of the Soviet Army and aided in their defeat. Very soon, wounded and disabled veterans became
a common sight in the urban landscape of the USSR, despite media censors attempting to block
out anything not in line with the government position. The Soviet Army was not a volunteer
force, but a conscripted force. In addition, there were many Muslim republics in the USSR, and
the majority of the Soviet Army fighting in Afghanistan was made up of non-ethnic Russians,
such as Tajiks and Uzbeks, both of whom are also present in Afghanistan. These soldiers felt that
they were being forced to fight against their own people. Many movements began to spring up in
these non-Russian republics of dodging the draft. Morale of Soviet soldiers was low and many
developed drug addictions while in the opium production capital of the world. In addition, some
sold their weapons and equipment to their enemy for food and commodities. Soviet Army
soldiers returned bitter and openly critical of the Soviet system, and many of them joined
secessionist movements. The discord inside the Soviet Army was so bad that 450 soldiers were
killed in Afghanistan near Kunduz in 1985 when non-Russian soldiers in the Soviet Army fired
on ethnic Russian soldiers because of human rights abuses committed against civilians
(Reuveny, 700). By 1986, the non-Russian republics were fed up with sending their young men
to fight against their own brethren for the goals of Moscow. Anti-war sentiments were strong in
those Republics and when the Soviet Army withdrew from Afghanistan, those republics began to
seek independence from Moscow with much more ferocity. They now viewed the Soviet system
as weak, and that moment as their chance to gain independence.
All of this came into the consideration of Gorbachev when he decided not to use force to
try to maintain the Soviet position in Eastern Europe as well as the USSR as a whole. At the time
that the Soviet loss in Afghanistan became apparent to the entire world, including USSR citizens,
the USSR was suffering under the high costs of the Cold War. The Soviet Empire had spread

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itself too thin. Subsidizing other communist economies as well as the massive military
expenditures needed to ensure their communist governments survival was a cost that the Soviet
Union could not continue to bear (Reuveny). The tight fiscal situation was compounded by the
defeat of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, because once secessionist movements started popping
up, the money and political will were not there to crush them militarily as had been the case
before. If force were to be used to crush any dissent and resistance, an ethnically divided army
with low morale, little legitimacy, and a drug problem was the army that was going to carry out
the task. Considering how well the war in Afghanistan had gone, the use of force to do so was
not a viable option in Gorbachev’s mind (Reuveny). With the Soviet Army defeated, and their
economy in deep recession, the Soviet system could not handle enforcing communist rule in East
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungry, while fight secessionist wars in Central Asia, all
at the same time. Gorbachev had to manage the breakup diplomatically. With the threat of force
removed, all bets were off.
The Poor Soviet Economy
The economy of the Soviet Union was in serious decline going back to the late eighties.
Several instances were severely costly to the budget of the USSR, such as the Chernobyl
meltdown, the war in Afghanistan, and an earthquake in Armenia. Another costly measure was
Gorbachev’s drive to get the Soviet citizenry to consume less alcohol. This led to home brewing
and a significant drop in income for the government. Unlike his predecessor, Brezhnev,
Gorbachev was an incompetent money manager, and he poured money into investment projects
and wage increases meant to buy off the support of the people. As the communist parties of the
non-Russian republics in the USSR were given more responsibilities into decision making, they
sent less and less money back to Moscow. This widening gap in the budget caused by these

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series of fiscal disasters was closed by simply printing more money. This process left the
economy in very poor shape by the mid-1991 (Mandelbaum).
Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl
It is a common idea that by 1989 the Soviet leadership had recalibrated what they thought
was in their best interest, and they had decided that keeping Eastern Europe under a communist
bloc was not in their interest anymore. This has been called the Soviet leadership’s “new
thinking” that they wanted to be less confrontational with what they then viewed as a docile
West. This version of events propagated by the media flattered the new Soviet leadership and
covered for their obvious losses. That change in thinking reflected the realities that the Soviet
economy was collapsing, and their army was demoralized and spread too thin, not to mention the
USA was not slowing down any (Reuveny) (Forsberg). Rather than trying to find the circle of
life in a rainbow and stroke the egos of those in power, it is much easier to understand
Gorbachev’s actions in a constructivist Realpolitik way of thinking. The Soviet Union was weak
after their defeat in Afghanistan and the collapse of their economy. In need of money and in no
position to start more costly conflicts in the most sensitive hotspot in the world at the time,
Gorbachev sought the best possible position for the Soviet Union. The Chancellor of the Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany), Helmut Kohl, was a man that Gorbachev eventually
trusted, and saw as a partner in leadership (Forsberg). Tuomas Forsberg posits that this bond of
trust allowed them to take the first actions that seemed unthinkable to observers at the time, like
the reunification of Germany. Language and cultural barriers between the Soviet Union and
Japan impeded their development of trust, which is why there was not as much progress in their
relations, specifically in relation to the Kurile Islands. When the power relations changed
because the Soviet Union was considerably weaker, and they were now unable to support

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regimes that they had held up for so long, both Japan and West Germany sought concessions
from the USSR. The USSR still had the same nuclear deterrent, which made West Germany and
Japan did not want to confront the USSR. What made the difference between the USSR’s
relations with West Germany, and their relations with Japan, was the trust and common bonds
between West Germany and the USSR that did not exist with Japan (Forsberg).
Communism in Eastern Europe Collapses and the End of the Cold War
In the summer of 1989 at a meeting in Bonn, Germany, a cordial relationship began to be
built based upon shared understanding and trust between Gorbachev and Kohl. Gorbachev was
confident that West Germany was not going to capitalize on the USSR’s weak position, and Kohl
was confident that Gorbachev wanted to end the cold war. Gorbachev wanted economic
assistance to modernize the economy of the USSR, but he was worried that the request for
assistance would be taken as sign of weakness. It was Gorbochev’s trust in Kohl that overcame
that fear and allowed a peaceful transition. The aid, delivered in secret, came in the form of food
and a line of credit from which to take out loans. In addition, Kohl urged other EU and G7
nations to provide the USSR with economic assistance as well. These actions convinced
Gorbachev that West Germany really was a nation that had departed with its Nazi past and was
really willing to be a partner instead of an adversary. In return, Gorbachev did not object to the
reunification of Germany or it admittance into NATO. The weakness of the Soviet position
forced them to rethink what was possible, and holding Germany apart by force was considered to
be not possible anymore. This recalibration of the position of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe
was made possible by the trust amongst the leaders, and the continued nuclear deterrence
guaranteeing the security of the Soviet Union from external threat. This allowed the Soviet
leadership to concede to the demands of the Eastern European states (Forsberg).

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Gorbachev did not have the same partners in every nation. East Germany was to be
absorbed by West Germany, so they were going to be fine. The other future members of the
former communist bloc were not going to be so fine economically or security wise. Helmut Kohl
and most of the citizens of West Germany had not suffered under Soviet oppression and
intimidation. A relationship of trust is much easier to build amongst near equal rivals than
oppressor and oppressed.
In 1989, Eastern European Communist regimes were being overthrown by their own
people, as had almost happened in early events, all of which had been put down violently by the
Soviet Army. The difference this time was that without the Soviet Army to come to the rescue of
these Communist Regimes, there was nothing standing in between them and their people
(Reuveny)(Kramer). Similar to the domino theory popular with American foreign policy experts
before the Vietnam War, the Soviets had a similar idea they called spill-over theory. The idea
was that unrest and instability in the Communist bloc outside of the Soviet Union would spill-
over into the Soviet Union. The idea was that instability would spread from west to east. When it
actually happened, at first unrest spread from east to west. The recession in the Soviet Union and
their diminished military capabilities provided the initial jolts of instability that would eventually
spill-back-over into the Soviet Union many times larger than it had initially gone out. Perestroika
and glasnost poured gasoline on these fires of unrest adding more and more dissent, and allowing
for political opponents like Solidarity in Poland, and Yeltsin in Russia to gain legitimacy
(Kramer).
The media stroked the ego of the Soviet leadership by portraying Gorbachev’s
acquiescence as a change in thinking. In reality, the truth is that Gorbachev could not counter
these uprisings militarily, and he had to allow them, and even facilitate them, in order to prevent

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mass death and civil wars. For this, Gorbachev was rightfully awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
and that restraint and humanity is the hallmark of his legacy. To do this, Gorbachev had to
abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine, which allowed for all of the other socialist commonwealth
countries to impose communist rule in any other country in the socialist commonwealth. Part of
Gorbachev’s perestroika was giving state and local bodies more power to decentralize decision
making from Moscow. This inevitably led to less control of the domestic affairs of Easter
European states. In addition to this, Soviet military units were to return to the Soviet Union as
well. The fraternal assistance from the Soviet Union to the Eastern European Communist
regimes was all that was propping up those regimes, and once that assistance was gone they all
started to fall one after another. What was intended to increase stability by making decision
making more responsive to the citizens had actually unleashed a torrent of dissent and upheaval.
Faced with open revolt, general strikes, and mass protests, the Eastern European regimes were
ready to repeat the Tiananmen Square massacre in their capitals too.
Gorbachev, though, persuaded them not to, and to go as peacefully into the night as they
could. Most of them took his advice, mainly Romania did not. In Poland, they did, and the
transition was loud, but peaceful. A grand deal was reached in April 1989 to have elections in
June that were won resoundingly by Solidarity. The collapse of the Polish Communist regime
had a significant impact on the Soviet Union itself. The new government in Poland was headed
by Solidarity, which had organized many of the strikes that forced the communist government to
allow the election in the first place. The election results were immediately recognized by the
Soviet Union, and they pressured the Polish communist party to abide by the vote. Solidarity had
connections with so many other labor organizations all over the eastern bloc, and the
repercussions would have been massive. The Polish election and the Tiananmen Square

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Massacre happened on the same day, and soon afterwards Romania tried to get the other Eastern
European countries to join them in sending troops to remove Solidarity from power in Poland
and reinstate the communist party. This was headed off by Gorbachev who eventually talked
them down from this position. Gorbachev was hoping to curry favor with Solidarity in order to
prevent them from fomenting unrest and instability inside the Soviet Union. That was not to be
the case (Kramer).
When Solidarity took over the government of Poland, it gave them a vehicle from which
to spread change all over the communist bloc. Beyond being a symbol of what was possible to
the rest of the people of these nations, Solidarity lent them a helping hand. Solidarity assisted
labor movements organize structure and strikes to challenge their own communist regimes.
Labor strikes in mines, factories, and docks started crippling these nations and bringing them to
the point that the communist government would have to relinquish power in order to get the
country running again. The reach of Solidarity even extended into the Soviet Union itself. This
was the beginning of the spill-over effect. Strikes in mines all across the Soviet Union were
inspired and organized by people who had been trained and organized by Solidarity. The Baltic
republics of the Soviet Union Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all in close proximity to Poland;
Lithuania even shares a border with Poland. When the Baltic republics started pushing for
independence from the Soviet Union, Polish media was able to get to the citizens of those
republics and keep them well informed of information the Soviet leaders did not want them to
know with pamphlets smuggled in, as well television and short wave radio broadcasts. In
Ukraine, Solidarity was instrumental in giving inspiration and guidance to their revolution.
Solidarity facilitated the conjoining of the ethnically Russian Donbass protesters with the
ethnically Ukrainian protesters in the West of the country in Kiev. These strikes struck at the

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core of the Soviet Union and were unthinkable only a few years earlier. These strikes created a
milieu in which the orthodox way of thinking was discredited (Kramer).
Marxism-Leninism Discredited
Striking miners were not the only form of dissent with which the Soviet leadership had to
contend. The entire socialist commonwealth was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.
This ideology called for a universal social welfare system, elimination of property rights and the
bourgeoisie, a command economy planned from top to bottom by central decision making, and
lastly a totalitarian one party political system meant to safeguard the gains of the revolution that
put that government in power. This ideology also called for the exportation of Marxism-
Leninism to other nations, and the maintenance of those governments as well. With the
introduction of glasnost and perestroika, this ideology was open to questioning as it never had
before. Very effective propaganda and education of Soviet citizens and leadership had kept
ideological cohesion solid up to that point, and it survived a few years into perestroika and
glasnost. When the communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed and the soviet system did
not intervene to rescue the gains of the communist revolution, the ideology was faced with an
ideological challenge that it had never been subjected to before. In addition to that direct
challenge, glasnost had allowed for more accurate reporting of the Soviet system that exposed
the Soviet citizens and their leadership to previously unknown information. Many instances of
inter-ethnic conflicts, corruption, war casualties, widespread environmental damage, social
problems, inefficiencies in the command-economy system, and blatant contradictions of
communist norms were reported in the media and this information caused many Soviet citizens
and leadership to begin to doubt what they had believed in and fought for their entire lives. By
1990, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was in the single digits in public opinion surveys

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of the Soviet Union. It became common to view the communist system as having adopted the
most extreme distortions of the ideology to benefit the whims of the day. This realization,
experienced by many, could be likened to feelings a highly religious person feels when they
realize their religion is all a lie. Information released from collapsing communist regimes in
Eastern Europe only strengthened that dissent when even more, highly damaging information
was released about the actions of Soviet agents. The ideological doubts about Marxism-Leninism
went all of the way to the top of the Soviet leadership and back down to the proletariat.
Gorbachev had discarded long held ideological beliefs of previous Premiers by 1989, and soon
after, as many as one fourth of all members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had
rescinded their membership or stopped paying their dues.
The Collapse of the USSR
One of these deserters of the Communist Party was Boris Yeltsin who would eventually
become the first democratically elected president of the new Russian Republic. Boris Yeltsin
departed from the Marxist-Leninist ideology much sooner and more decisively than Gorbachev.
He formed his own political party in which he wished, and eventually achieved, to displace the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union from its authoritarian rule. These new democratic forces
inside the Soviet Union sought similar negotiations with the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union that had occurred in other Communist Eastern European states. They wished to have what
were called “roundtable discussions” in which more democratic and responsive political
structures would be negotiated. Eventually they did get the negations and democratic
concessions from the Soviet system (Kramer).
This questioning of Soviet orthodoxy was not universal though. Many in the military
wished to crackdown on these political liberalization movements and restore the old order to the

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communist bloc. These forces were at first marginalized in the late eighties as Gorbachev was at
the zenith of his power. Because of nationalist reasons, when Eastern Europe slipped from the
grip of the USSR, these factions were more empowered, and Gorbachev weakened. Hardliners in
Soviet leadership saw the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and rightfully
feared that the same thing could happen in the USSR. Their resolution was to crack down on
dissent as had happened in previous instances. Gorbachev did not waiver in his conviction not to
use force to ensure the continued existence of the Soviet Union. Although, while out of the
country, a crisis erupted in Georgia in which thousands of protesters were attempting to shut
down the republic to bring down the communist regime there. Without the approval of
Gorbachev, the military went ahead with a crackdown. Gorbachev returned immediately and put
an end to the crackdown and apologized for the actions of the military. Later, Gorbachev would
send in the Soviet Army to put down a secessionist movement in Azerbaijan, but in that instance,
the war of succession had turned into a bitter ethnic conflict against Armenians. These two
actions by Gorbachev led the leaders of secessionist movements in the Baltic nations to believe
that they would only be countered non-violently by the Soviet system. This was called the Tbilisi
syndrome (Kramer).
The crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters in China, in which 1,000 students
were killed and thousands more injured, effectively ensured communist rule, even to this day,
and it provided a road map for Soviet hardliners. This example of how to effectively silence
dissent in a communist ruled nation was held up by hardliners as an example of how the Soviet
system should respond. This had been tried in Romania though, and the crackdown had
backfired. The opposition grew and responded more ferociously than the government could, and
it resulted in the summary execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. When the crises in the

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Baltic republics came to a head, the decision of Gorbachev, likely sensing a coup, was to
crackdown. The crackdown was not the massive response of force as the Chinese had exhibited,
but was a half-hearted attempt. The crackdown backfired and criticism poured in from all over
the world and Gorbachev retreated from his position (Kramer).
A Coup in a Superpower
Just as the reformers were about to see real concessions from the Soviet system, the
military attempted a coup in August 1991. This caused massive public protest and resistance
which threw the USSR into a tail spin that they could not pull out of. After the coup, the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and all of its Soviet institutions were discredited and held
no public support. By the end of 1991, it had not only changed its political system, but its
borders, flag, name, and leader (Kramer).
Three main events precipitated the coup. The first was a privatization law that 50% of
state owned enterprises must be sold off. The second was Yeltsin’s first decree as president on
July 1st, 1991 that barred the state from organizing political parties and mass movements, which
flew in the face of Marxism-Leninism. The final straw for the hardliners was when Pravda
published the Treaty of the Union of Sovereign States on August 15th, 1991, which would
effectively end the USSR. The Soviet hardliners reacted by instantly beginning to plan a coup to
head this off (Bowring). The Vice President Gennady Yanayev, Defense Minister General
Dimitri Yazov, and KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov began to act on August 18th. They organized
the State Committee for the Emergency in the USSR that ordered the arrest of Gorbachev and
ordered Yeltsin to be on house arrest. Unfortunately for the leaders of the coup, they faced mass
protest against the coup, and the USSR Supreme Soviets inability to validate the coup. 10,000
protesters fought pitched battles with the security forces on the streets of Moscow on the night of

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August the 21st in which five people were killed and members of the Soviet forces captured by
the protesters. The leaders of the coup were unable to respond effectively to the mass opposition
their coup faced. In fact the leaders of the coup were incompetent, and the accusation has been
made that they were drunk throughout the majority of the coup. It is because of this
incompetence that Yeltsin was able to get a subordinate out of the country during the coup in
order form a government in exile in case it became necessary. This was able to happen because
the arrest warrant for Yeltsin’s associate was only sent to the VIP section of the airport, and the
associate just went through the normal entry point unopposed. In addition, it took the leaders of
the coup a whole six hours after declaring a state of emergency to order troops to the streets of
Moscow and they failed to immediately arrest Yeltsin. On top of all that, the Russian
Parliament’s lines of communications were never cut, allowing the liberal reformers
communication with the outside world (Mandelbaum). After the leaders of the coup were unable
to gain the validation of the Supreme Soviet, they abandoned the coup. The next day the security
forced pulled out of Moscow.
The End of the Soviet Union
All of the highest ranking members of the Communist Party and Soviet System, except
Gorbachev, were complicit in the coup. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the
Communist Party and encouraged the Communist Party to dissolve itself. Two days later, all
property and land owned by the Communist Party was seized by Yeltsin and declared property of
the state. On August 29th, 1991 the Communist Party dissolved itself (Bowring). The coup was
the final straw for the Soviet Union. This caused massive public protest and resistance which
threw the USSR into a tail spin that they could not pull out from. The Communist Party of the
Soviet Union and all of its Soviet institutions were discredited and held no public support. In

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addition, shortly after the coup, Leningrad changed its name back to St. Petersburg
(Mandelbaum) (Kramer).
After the coup, the three most important Soviet institutions- the Soviet Army, the
Communist Party, and the USSR itself, were all disintegrating (Mandelbaum). The leadership of
the communist and Soviet systems was not the best nor the brightest their societies had to offer.
The system they led did not encourage, nor reward, initiative, imagination, or decisiveness, but
rather encouraged and rewarded conformity as well adherence to authority (Mandelbaum). Entire
units of the Soviet Army had refused to participate in the failed coup. In fact, some units sent to
the Russian Parliament had defected to Yeltsin’s side. The Soviet Army was divided politically
and ethnically, and draft dodging was common in the non-Russian republics of the USSR.
Outside the Russian Republic, the Soviet Army was seen as an agent of Russian Imperialism.
Inside the Russian Republic the Soviet Army was viewed as a self-serving bureaucracy with an
endless appetite for resources that would bankrupt the country (Mandelbaum).
During the coup Gorbachev had been betrayed by senior members of the Communist
party, such as the Vice President, Defense Minister, KGB chief, leader of the Supreme Soviet,
and others. After the coup, Gorbachev resigned as head of the party, and dissolved the Central
Committee. The public of the USSR had come to see the Communist Party as a criminal
conspiracy that would preserve its own position at all costs. Sensing all of this, non-Russian
Republics of the USSR, including the second most powerful member of the USSR, Ukraine,
began declaring their independence in the wake of the coup. In this circumstance by, “declaring
independence,” what these republics meant was that their local laws were to be above those
dictated from Moscow. They even began recruiting for their own armies. By the end of 1991,
Russia had not only changed it political system but its borders, flag, name, and leader. On

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December 22, 1991, the Russian Republic signed a deal with the other members of the USSR, to
form the Commonwealth of Independent States, which effectively dissolved the Soviet Union.
On Christmas Day, Gorbachev resigned as the President of the now non-existent USSR
(Mandelbaum) (Bowring) (Haupt).
The defeat of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan was the beginning of the end of the Cold
War and the USSR. The Soviet Army was guaranteeing the continued existence of communist
regimes across Eastern Europe, and once the Soviet Army was discredited the people of Eastern
Europe and non-Russian Republics of the USSR took their opportunity to gain independence.
Soviet leadership recognized how difficult the crackdown would be, and with the Soviet Army
discredited and in such bad shape after the Afghanistan War, the Soviet leadership had no
confidence the Soviet Army was up to the task. Once the communist regimes of Eastern Europe
collapsed the USSR no longer had as many powerful military allies, and what was East Germany
joined NATO. Deprived of these allies, stricken with a poor economy, and a faced with a West
that was growing ever stronger, the USSR and what was left of their communist allies could no
longer compete with the West in power politics at the same level. This was the effective end of
the Cold War. There is no surrender date or parade, just a period of time where one side could no
longer compete on an even playing field with the other. The revolutions that brought down the
communist regimes of Eastern Europe eventually spread to the USSR itself. Hardliners in the
USSR made a last ditch effort to restore the old order, but due to their incompetence the coup
failed. The discrediting of Marxism-Leninism as well as the discrediting of the Soviet
institutions was what caused the USSR to collapse. This is contrary to the American nationalist’s
version of events, where the Cold War ended because the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Soviet
Union collapsed because Reagan made them spend so much on the military.

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Gorbachev was a man with a lot of very big decisions to make in a very short period of
time. He was a believer in socialism, but was a better person than the system he inherited could
handle as a leader. Every other leader of the USSR, and the Tsars before them, that had been
faced with a similar situation had made the same decision, except for Gorbachev: confront any
challenge to power with disproportionate violence. He tried to reform the system to make it
better, but the system was so rotten, that the attempt to reform it turned into a revolution that
threw it out.