Reasons for the end of the cold war
Throughout the 1980s, the Soviet Union fought an increasingly frustrating war
in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Soviet economy faced the continuously
escalating costs of the arms race.
Dissent at home grew while the stagnant economy faltered under the
combined burden. Attempted reforms at home left the Soviet Union unwilling
to rebuff challenges to its control in Eastern Europe. During 1989 and 1990, the
Berlin Wall came down, borders opened, and free elections ousted Communist
regimes everywhere in eastern Europe. In late 1991 the Soviet Union itself
dissolved into its component republics. With stunning speed, the Iron Curtain
was lifted and the Cold War came to an end.
The most important long-term reason was communism's inability to achieve
anything other than a totalitarian system that supported repression,
exploitation, and often murder or imprisonment of the people by a tiny wellorganized elite that enjoyed what little wealth and privilege the system
produced. At worst, as in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, to name a
few, communism resulted in genocide. State ownership and planning of the
entire economy failed, often tragically, to achieve sustained economic
development. The massive industrialization efforts of communist states
contributed little to development or wealth. Central planning failed to create
dynamic, profitable industries, infrastructure, or agriculture. Instead, what
happened in every communist country was a tremendous misallocation or
waste of human, natural, technology, and financial resources. Soviet statistics
about becoming the world's largest producers of steel, for example, were
often grossly inflated and actual production often grossly misallocated.
Virtually none of the former Soviet Union's industries are competitive with
foreign industries. By emphasizing the distribution rather than the creation of
income and wealth, the communists have merely succeeded in making more
people poor. Although the communist systems did achieve significant gains in
literacy, health care, and safety, these gains could not balance the system's
economic failings. Meanwhile the democratic industrial nations forged further
ahead economically.
Communism's collapse was accelerated by America's containment policy. If
Soviet-backed communist parties had taken power in the industrial
powerhouses of western Europe and Japan, communism's demise would have
been delayed immeasurably as those geo-economically strategic regions
became communist, rather than liberal democratic, showcases.
The short-term reason for the end of the cold war, was democratic revolutions
that swept eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was Mikhail Gorbachev. He
understood that central planning had failed to achieve prosperity or equality.
By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union could no longer afford to maintain its
eastern European empire, its military buildup, and operate a centrally
planned economy. Gorbachev chose to give up the empire and military
buildup, in a desperate attempt to concentrate all resources to reform and
revive the Soviet economy. In February 1986, Gorbachev denounced the
‘Brezhnev Doctrine’, which justified a Soviet invasion of any communist
country that was threatened by a democratic revolution. Instead, Gorbachev
called for radical reforms in the Soviet Union, which would be achieved by
‘glasnost’.
Although Gorbachev intended to reform the Soviet Union and Communist
party, the political changes that he enacted proved so revolutionary that they
eventually destroyed both the Soviet empire and communism. Ironically, the
domino effect of revolution that American policymakers feared so much
throughout the cold war occurred only in Eastern Europe. The democratic
revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 were largely the
result of peaceful mass demonstrations that convinced the communists to
allow free elections. Only Romania experienced a violent revolution, in which
the communist dictator Ceausescu and other members of his government
were executed. Elections brought democratic parties to power in Poland, East
Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and reformist communist
governments to power in Romania and Bulgaria. Gorbachev's policy of
allowing each eastern European country,
and eventually each of the 15
Soviet republics, to choose its own system, even if it meant the end of
communism, was popularly known as the "my way" doctrine.
The only significant resistance to the democratic revolution was in the Soviet
Union itself. On August 19, 1991, the day before Soviet President Gorbachev
would have signed a treaty allowing the Soviet republics to become
independent, hard-line communists attempted to overthrow him. For three
days between August 19 and August 21, the conspirators held Gorbachev
hostage at his Crimean home and attempted to besiege Russian President
Yeltsin with his supporters inside the Russian parliament. Over 50,000
Russians rallied around the Russian parliament building, putting their bodies
in front of the Soviet tanks and troops loyal to the communists. As increased
numbers of Russian troops defected to Yeltsin, the coup leaders gave up and
released Gorbachev, who returned to Moscow. The coup leaders were arrested
and tried for treason.
The failed coup accelerated the destruction of communism and the Soviet
empire. During the coup, Latvia and Ukraine declared their independence,
and statues of Lenin were toppled in Estonia and Lithuania. On August 24,
Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist party and recommended that
its central committee be disbanded. On August 29, Yeltsin and Gorbachev
appeared before the Russia parliament. Over Gorbachev's protests, Yeltsin
dramatically issued a decree abolishing the Communist party across Russia. On
September 2, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies approved a plan to
reduce the Kremlin's authority and allow a looser federation of the Soviet
republics. On September 6, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. On October 18, Gorbachev and presidents of
eight other Soviet republics agreed to join an economic union; the Ukraine
joined on November 4. On December 4, 1991, Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus
declared the Soviet Union dead but agreed to form a commonwealth.
Communism and the Soviet empire had all but vanished.
A small but ultimately decisive factor in the toppling of the cold war was the
USA’s ‘missile defense system’. The USA spent billions, ultimately bluffing
Russia into believing that if a war did ever happen, they would lose.