Fall of the USSR Flashcards
What was Perestroika?
(Restructuring)
A program instituted in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev (in the mid-1980s) to restructure Soviet economic and political policy
What did Perestroika aim to do?
. 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
What is ‘Acceleration’ also known as in Russian?
Uskorenie
What was Uskorenie?
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)
Uskorenie meant a huge increase in …
Investment which was designed to modernise the Soviet economy and therefore make it more efficient
What did Gorbachev predict the new investment would lead to?
20 per cent increase in industrial production in the next 15 years
What is a major reason for the failure of Uskorenie and why?
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
The oil price fell from …
$70 a barrel in 1981 to $20 a barrel in 1985
As a result of financing acceleration from Western countries debt rose from …
$18 billion in 1981 to $27 billion in 1988
What did the increasing levels of debt mean?
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
What did The 1988 Law on Co-operatives do?
Made it legal to set up large-scale private companies
How many Co-operatives / private companies had been set up across the USSR by 1990?
nearly 200,000
What did Gorbachev’s reforms undermine? What did this mean?
The Central Planning System
There was no effective way of distributing goods and shortages of essential goods increased
How many tones of grain did Soviet farms produce in 1990? Why did this not matter?
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
Prices increased rapidly example
Price of beef in January 1990 = 2 Roubles
Price of beef in April 1990 = 7 Roubles
In 1991 Oil production fell by …
9 per cent
In 1991 steel and tractor production both fell by …
12 per cent
What was Glasnost?
Soviet policy of open discussion of political and social issues
Who was responsible for the liberalisation of media?
Aleksandr Yakovlev
What film did Yakovlev release?
Repentance (made in 1984 but released two years later)
Was highly critical of Stalin’s terror
What did the liberalisation of media lead to?
Public criticism of Marx and Lenin that attacked the foundation of Soviet Communism
Why was nationalism one of the most dominant political forces of the 20th century?
Played a prime role in world wars and civil wars across Europe and the world
Why did nationalism take Gorbachev by surprise?
He genuinely believed that Soviet citizens had renounced their national identity and become a united ‘Soviet people’
What was the Sinatra Doctrine?
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.
What was the Brezhnev doctrine?
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
What was the Prague Spring?
Soviet forces had invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the reform movement known as the Prague Spring.
What was the Velvet Revolution?
nationwide protest movement in Czechoslovakia in November–December 1989 that ended more than 40 years of communist rule in the country.
When did the Berlin Wall fall?
9 November 1989
What happened at the Tbilisi massacre?
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
