The essentials
The USSR came into being after the Russian Revolution of 1917. It had a one-party system led by the Communist Party, a centrally planned economy with state ownership of property, and a group of allied socialist states in Eastern Europe called the Second World, bound together by the Warsaw Pact.
By the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet economy was stagnating, consumer goods were scarce, and much of the national wealth went into the arms race and into supporting allied states. Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, introduced perestroika (economic and political restructuring) and glasnost (openness). These reforms raised expectations faster than they could be met, while nationalist movements grew in the republics.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed. The three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) pressed for independence. A coup attempt against Gorbachev in August 1991 failed, and Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Russian republic, gained prominence. In December 1991, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus declared the end of the USSR and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Key points
- The USSR was made up of 15 republics, all of which became independent states.
- Russia was accepted as the successor state of the USSR and took its permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
- Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
- Causes usually given: economic stagnation, lack of political freedom, burden of the arms race, and the rise of nationalism in the republics.
- After 1991, conflicts broke out in places such as Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia and Tajikistan.
Common mistakes
- Thinking the USSR ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall fell in 1989; the USSR ended in December 1991.
- Confusing perestroika (restructuring) with glasnost (openness).