Fall of the USSR

Question 1

What was Perestroika?

Answer 1

(Restructuring)
A program instituted in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev (in the mid-1980s) to restructure Soviet economic and political policy

Question 2

What did Perestroika aim to do?

Answer 2

. Sought to bring the Soviet Union up to economic par with Capitalist Countries such as Japan and the United States
. To stimulate economic modernisation + higher rates of economic growth + higher levels of production

Question 3

What is ‘Acceleration’ also known as in Russian?

Answer 3

Uskorenie

Question 4

What was Uskorenie?

Answer 4

An economic initiative that aimed to end economic stagnation and get the Soviet economy moving again
Uskorenie was at the heart of the Twelfth, and final, Five-Year Plan (1986-90)

Question 5

Uskorenie meant a huge increase in …

Answer 5

Investment which was designed to modernise the Soviet economy and therefore make it more efficient

Question 6

What did Gorbachev predict the new investment would lead to?

Answer 6

20 per cent increase in industrial production in the next 15 years

Question 7

What is a major reason for the failure of Uskorenie and why?

Answer 7

The decline in the global price of oil
During the 1970s the Soviet economy had made a great deal of money from selling oil to the West but there was a drop in oil revenues
Gorbachev financed acceleration from borrowing from Western countries

Question 8

The oil price fell from …

Answer 8

$70 a barrel in 1981 to $20 a barrel in 1985

Question 9

As a result of financing acceleration from Western countries debt rose from …

Answer 9

$18 billion in 1981 to $27 billion in 1988

Question 10

What did the increasing levels of debt mean?

Answer 10

The government was spending more money on interest payments
Consequently less money for further modernisation or to produce consumer goods
Rather than leading to economic growth … acceleration created an economic crisis

Question 11

What did The 1988 Law on Co-operatives do?

Answer 11

Made it legal to set up large-scale private companies

Question 12

How many Co-operatives / private companies had been set up across the USSR by 1990?

Answer 12

nearly 200,000

Question 13

What did Gorbachev’s reforms undermine? What did this mean?

Answer 13

The Central Planning System

There was no effective way of distributing goods and shortages of essential goods increased

Question 14

How many tones of grain did Soviet farms produce in 1990? Why did this not matter?

Answer 14

218 million tones of grain
There was no longer an effective distribution system - the state distribution systems had been abolished and the market was still developing
There were food shortages across the Soviet Union

Question 15

Prices increased rapidly example

Answer 15

Price of beef in January 1990 = 2 Roubles

Price of beef in April 1990 = 7 Roubles

Question 16

In 1991 Oil production fell by …

Answer 16

9 per cent

Question 17

In 1991 steel and tractor production both fell by …

Answer 17

12 per cent

Question 18

What was Glasnost?

Answer 18

Soviet policy of open discussion of political and social issues

Question 19

Who was responsible for the liberalisation of media?

Answer 19

Aleksandr Yakovlev

Question 20

What film did Yakovlev release?

Answer 20

Repentance (made in 1984 but released two years later)

Was highly critical of Stalin’s terror

Question 21

What did the liberalisation of media lead to?

Answer 21

Public criticism of Marx and Lenin that attacked the foundation of Soviet Communism

Question 22

Why was nationalism one of the most dominant political forces of the 20th century?

Answer 22

Played a prime role in world wars and civil wars across Europe and the world

Question 23

Why did nationalism take Gorbachev by surprise?

Answer 23

He genuinely believed that Soviet citizens had renounced their national identity and become a united ‘Soviet people’

Question 24

What was the Sinatra Doctrine?

Answer 24

Allowing countries in the Soviet Union to determine their own internal affairs
The name alluded to the song “My Way” popularized by Frank Sinatra - the Soviet Union was allowing these states to go their own way.

Question 25

What was the Brezhnev doctrine?

Answer 25

A Soviet foreign policy that proclaimed any threat to socialist rule in any state of the Soviet bloc was a threat to them all, and therefore justified the intervention of fellow socialist states

Question 26

What was the Prague Spring?

Answer 26

Soviet forces had invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the reform movement known as the Prague Spring.

Question 27

What was the Velvet Revolution?

Answer 27

nationwide protest movement in Czechoslovakia in November–December 1989 that ended more than 40 years of communist rule in the country.

Question 28

When did the Berlin Wall fall?

Answer 28

9 November 1989

Question 29

What happened at the Tbilisi massacre?

Answer 29

On 9th April 1989 Georgian nationalists protested against the rights of the Abkhazian minority
On this occasion Soviet troops attempted to restore order by force
Consequently, Soviet forces killed 19 Georgian protestors and wounded thousands more