American University of Beirut

Hani Shamseddeen

201200722

Research Paper

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

Dr. Ohanes Geukjian

PSPA 201

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 2

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 Tsar’s 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 Marx’s

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 Marx’s

theory. Afterwards Marx’s says that the proletarian state will slowly wither away into

communism. Marx’s ideologies were adopted by Lenin and implemented in the formation

of the Soviet Union.

Since its formation in 1922 and up until it’s 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 Stalin’s 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

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 4

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.

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 5

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 1952–1966), 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 didn’t 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

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 6

collectivization of agriculture and enacted draconian labor legislation. The USSR was

swiftly industrialized and reached it full industrial capacities by the 1930’s. 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 didn’t 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

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 7

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 other’s 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 Marxist-

Leninist 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 70’s 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

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 9

demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing

to the pressure for change (Adam, 1991). The USSR couldn’t 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.

Russia’s 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 doesn’t exist anymore in today’s 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 didn’t quite work out. Communism

lost much of its supporters after the dissolution of the USSR, yet its last vestiges are still

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 10

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 today’s world and after Russia’s significant progress, it

can once again take a major part in global politics, and rival US hegemony.

The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 11

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.