American University of Beirut

Hani Shamseddeen 201200722

Research Paper The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

Dr. Ohanes Geukjian PSPA 201

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The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

Commonly known as The Soviet Union, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a constitutionally socialist state that rose to provenance in Eurasia during 1922 and lasted until 1991 when it disintegrated into 15 sovereign states. The sheer size of the USSR, number of different nations it included, the manner in which it was formed, and the manner in which it was governed are very remarkable. Even more remarkable is the role it played in the realm of international politics, becoming such a formidable player that rivaled the US hegemony for about 50 years in what was known as the cold war. Speculatively the cold war was the main contributor to the downfall of the USSR in 1991. Origins of the USSR date back to the Russian Empire which was ruled by the Tsar Nicholas 2nd during world war one. The Russian Empire in that time was a place of civil unrest with the Tsars position being threatened by different factions that strove to seize power. The most prominent of which was the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of the Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The Tsar was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 in what is known as the October Revolution. The country fell into civil war between the communist Bolsheviks reds and anti-communist whites. After years of bloody fighting which saw the allies interfere and aid the anti-communists and a famine in 1921, the communist Bolsheviks were able to win and end the war in 1922. On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR (Sakawa, 1999, p.140). Many saw this as the rise of Marxs proletarian state mainly because the Bolshevik party was mainly formed of the lower classes in society and Lenin was a Marxist.

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Indeed Marxism was the ideology that Bolshevik party was built upon. Marxism is a form of socialism that was proposed by Karl Marx, who is arguably the most influential socialist theorist. Socialism in the broadest is an economic system characterized by social ownership and/or control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy according to the (Britannia Academic Edition, 2012). Marx believed that the worker class will realize class awareness and will seek freedom by overthrowing capitalism. "It is not the consciousness of [people] that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness" (Marx, 1859). Marx speculated that communism can only be truly achieved after a certain phase, which is the rise of the proletarian state. The formation of the state of the workers, which will be established after proletarian revolution, is the transition stage in Marxs theory. Afterwards Marxs says that the proletarian state will slowly wither away into communism. Marxs ideologies were adopted by Lenin and implemented in the formation of the Soviet Union. Since its formation in 1922 and up until its dissolution in 1991 the USSR saw seven presidents. The first of which was Lenin who lead the Bolshevik revolution. His rein was characterized by setting the foundations of the USSR, putting economical plans in action like the five year plans. After the death of Lenin there was a struggle between different candidates who wanted to seize power. That struggle was won by Joseph Stalin. The rein of Stalin was mainly characterized by Stalins totalitarian authority. Stalin used the KGB as terror weapon to annihilate anyone that opposed him. Stalin lead Russia into World War 2 and captured Berlin. After Stalin came Nikita Khrushchev, who had won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression. Khrushchev

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promoted some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing living standards to rise dramatically while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Leonid Brezhnev was the successor of Khrushchev his long period in power saw no fundamental change in socio-economical or military standards of the USSR. The time he was in power was called a standstill. Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old and Konstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was the last president of the USSR his rein so economic decline, withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the 1989 revolutions. He was forced to step down from the presidency in 1991 when the USSR was no more. The USSR was very diverse when it came to ethnic groups, because it had more than 100 different ethnic groups. By 1991 the USSR was the homeland of about 293 million citizens belonging to different ethnic groups. The majority of the population (about 50%) was Russian; other ethnic groups were more prominent than others like the Ukrainians and the Uzbeks. Even though some ethnic groups developed antagonistic relations, some groups like the Russians, Belarusians, and the Ukrainians maintained close relations. Moreover, the USSR was home to many different nations. Most notable are the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Uzbek, Armenian, Lithuanian, Latvian Kazak, and Estonian nations among others. In all the USSR encompassed 15 different major nations, which all later became independent states after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

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The USSR featured one political party which is the Communist party. The communist party controlled much of the politics in the USSR. At the head of the communist party was the Central Committee which was elected during party congresses and conferences. The Central Committee in turn voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 19521966), Secretariat and the General Secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the highest office in the USSR (Law, 1975, p.193). In government, the USSR was governed by the Supreme Soviet which was the only institution with the power to pass constitutional amendments. It was responsible for electing the Presidium, forming the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Court, and appointing the Procurator General of the USSR. Upon formation of the Soviet Union radical changes and plans were put in action. The first of which was the GEOL which aimed to fully electrify the country by building 30 power plants. The plan was fully completed in 1931. The economy was the center of much change as the USSR was the first country to adopt a planned economy. The communist party in power soon adopted war communism which involved nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate the circulation of money, as well as private enterprises and free trade. During the time of Lenin the economy didnt respond positively to the drastic measures that were taken, Lenin replaced War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), legalizing free trade and private ownership of smaller businesses. The economy quickly recovered. (Gregory, 2004, p.218). However, the successor of Lenin Joseph Stalin who took the reins of the USSR in 1927 swiftly abandoned NEP and pushed towards complete socialization. He started forced

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collectivization of agriculture and enacted draconian labor legislation. The USSR was swiftly industrialized and reached it full industrial capacities by the 1930s. By then the USSR had become a super power that played a major role in World War 2. World War 2 started in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and a chain of events transpired which to all an out and total war. The USSR took a major part in the war in 1941 after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact he had agreed upon with Stalin back in 1939. The USSR fought alongside the allies (England and France), as Hitler made a move towards the east threatening Soviet land in what was known as the eastern front. The Germans invaded the USSR and seized a significant amount of land including the city of Kiev. However, the Russians fought valiantly against the Nazi forces and defended Moscow preventing Hitler from entering it. As the war progressed and the Nazi troops and supplies were stretched to the limit, Stalin ordered his Red Army to advance towards Germany. In 1924 the Red Army had completely surrounded Berlin and 1930 Hitler committed suicide and Germany was under soviet control. Afterwards Stalin wanted to seize complete control over Germany which didnt go well with the allies. After much dispute between both sides they reached an agreement to divide Germany into two countries. Western Germany belonged to the allies and Eastern Germany became part of the USSR. After World War 2, two dominant forces immerged on the world stage as super powers. The years following World War 2 featured a power struggle between capitalist USA in one corner and communist USSR in the other corner. The cold war lasted from 1945 to 1991, and it featured different aspects of struggle, as the opposing forces competed in different fields. They competed to develop better weapons in an arms race

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that saw both sides develop nuclear weaponry. The world lived with the threat of nuclear Armageddon looming over the horizon, especially during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which saw the USSR install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The missile crisis ended with a secret agreement between John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev (presidents of USA and USSR at the time). Moreover, the cold war pitted the soviet KGB against the American CIA as both sides tried to spy on one another and gain intelligence on the others secret projects. The cold war heated up on multiple occasions in what was known as proxy wars. The USSR would sponsor communist revolutions in different parts in the world like Latin America and Southeast Asia, and the US would counter by subversion or military intervention. The first incident of military conflict in the cold war was the Korean War (1950 - 1953) which saw South Korea backed up by the US engage in battle with North Korea who was backed up by the USSR. Perhaps the most famous proxy war is the Vietnam War (1955 1975) which saw US invade Vietnam and fight on the side of the South Vietnamese against the communist North Vietnamese. Another one of those military conflicts was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to support the MarxistLeninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (Emadi, 2005, p.45). The Soviets in Afghanistan faced stiff opposition in the form of CIA funded and equipped Taliban insurgents which later became the terrorist group Al Qaeda. The cold war also had a very interesting side to it which was known as the space race. Both sides strove to beat the other in space exploration, which lead to groundbreaking innovations from both sides. The first satellite ever launched in to outer space was Sputnik which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. The Soviets

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exhibited astronomical superiority over their American rivals with a number of milestones like sending the first dog into outer space, the first orbit around the earth by Yuri Gagarin, and the first woman Valentina Tereshkova. The Americans responded by landing on the moon in 1969 in the Apollo 11 mission. By the Late 70s the Soviet planned economy was proving too rigid to deal with the changing world and was starting to show signs of decline. It lacked the flexibility to deal with an ever changing global economy that was manipulated mainly by the US. The Afghan War had left the people of the country with a feeling of discomfort especially in the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe. Greater political and social freedoms, instituted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, created an atmosphere of open criticism of the communist regime. The dramatic drop of the price of oil in 1985 and 1986, and consequent lack of foreign exchange reserves in following years to purchase grain profoundly influenced actions of the Soviet leadership (Gaidar, 2009). The main contributor to the drop of price of oil is Saudi Arabia who acted upon American consent. In an attempt to revive the Soviet economy, in the 1980s, Gorbachev set forth an operation that aimed at increasing political liberalization (glasnost/perestroika) in the erstwhile totalitarian, communist one-party state. However, this liberalization led to the emergence of long-repressed nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the diverse republics of the Soviet Union. In 1989, the USSR was the site of revolutions that will ultimately lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. One feature common to most of these developments was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance

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demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to the pressure for change (Adam, 1991). The USSR couldnt hold out much longer and it disintegrated by the end of 1991, resulting in 14 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan) declaring their independence from the Soviet Union and the bigger part of the country being Russia. After the dissolution of the USSR the standard of living in post communist Russia decreased mainly due to employing the free market economy. However, Russia soon gained economic stability and prosperity under the presidency of Vladimir Putin. Russias political system today is federal semi-presidential republican. According to the Constitution of Russia, the President of Russia is head of state, and of a multi-party system with executive power exercised by the government, headed by the Prime Minister, who is appointed by the President with the parliament's approval. Russian politics are supposedly built on democracy, however many argue that Putin has seized control of the country and become somewhat of a dictator. None the less, on 4 March 2012 Putin won the 2012 Russian presidential elections in the first round, with 63.6 % of the vote. Other states of the former Soviet Union have also implemented democratic systems. And many argue that such democratic systems are not really democratic because they are under the influence of the KGB. To conclude, the USSR doesnt exist anymore in todays world but its remnants are very much present and play an important role in global politics and economy. The USSR was supposed to be a communist utopia, but it didnt quite work out. Communism lost much of its supporters after the dissolution of the USSR, yet its last vestiges are still

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present in the form of socialist parties all over the world, and most notably in the countries that still apply it like North Korea. The USSR was once the only force that could threaten US hegemony. In todays world and after Russias significant progress, it can once again take a major part in global politics, and rival US hegemony.

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References:
-Adam R., Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions, Albert Einstein Institution, 1991. -Emadi, H. Culture and customs of Afghanistan, Greenwood Press, 2005 p.45. -Gaidar, Y. "The Soviet Collapse: Grain and Oil". American Enterprise Institute. 2009 -Gregory, P. R. The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives. Cambridge University Press. 2004. p. 218. -Law, D.A. Russian Civilization, Ardent Media. 1975. P.193 -Marx, K. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859 -Sakawa, R. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 1917-1991. 1999. p.140.