individuals Flashcards
1
Q
Reasons why Gorbachev is blamed
A
- perestroika: 3 phases weakened USSR
- glasnost: undermined faith in the system
- democratisation: Gorbachev’s control of the party weakened, lead to the crisis as reform was unneeded in 1985
- ‘New Thinking’: new language of politics allowed radicals to advocate radical alternatives to communism
- e.g. perestroika instead of reform (reform associated with K)
- Westernising: endorsing Western values such as human rights and pluralism
- mistakes and miscalculations: perestroika, glasnost, policy mistakes
- failed to win over the Party: Gorbachev had no power to hold the USSR together. Shouldn’t have introduced political freedoms at the same time as economic reforms (tried to reform too many things at once)
2
Q
Yeltsin
A
- popular radical, attacked leadership of the Party
- won 89% at 1989 Soviet elections, made him opponent to Gorbachev
- coup and counter coup: Yeltsin as the hero as he organised the counter coup and popular risings against the Party. Ended Russian involvement in the USSR
- Union: stopped supporting the Union as he advocated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and not New Union Treaty
- 1990: moved Russia to sovereignty and separated it from USSR, resigned from the Party
- nationalism: encouraged independence
- New elite: used support in the lower and middle ranks (70% of the main government) to break up the Party
