On December 26, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to cease the existence of the Union. All the republics that became part of it became independent and sovereign states. Mikhail Gorbachev announced the termination of his activities as President a day earlier. Historians identify a number of possible causes of the collapse of the USSR.
Instruction manual
1
The political reason is that all more or less significant decisions in all areas of life of the Soviet republics were made in Moscow, despite the fact that each republic had its own leadership. The incompetence of the central apparatus, the reluctance to transfer part of the power to the republican governing bodies led to ineffective governance, loss of time and resources, to discontent of the population and the leadership of the republics.
2
In many republics, in the wake of Gorbachev’s democratic reforms, centrifugal nationalist tendencies arose and gained strength, interethnic contradictions began to arise, aspirations for an early separation from the USSR and for independent development of their country. Many internal national conflicts - the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Transnistrian conflict, the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict - are closely connected with the aspirations of national self-determination and self-government.
3
Economic reasons for the disproportionate development of the national economy. The arms race, the space race, the war in Afghanistan, the endless assistance to the countries of the socialist camps demanded more and more financial investments, which affected the production of consumer goods. The military budget exceeded the social budget by 5-6 times. The technical lag in the field of civil industry has long become apparent and has only grown over the years. Economic imbalances were expressed in the inequality of development of the republics of the USSR, in terms of the shortage of goods and the development of the shadow economy
4
Gorbachev’s CCCP reforms not only failed to produce positive results, but even accelerated the collapse of the Union. As already mentioned, democratic changes have led to national tension. An attempt to reduce the technical backlog using a package of measures called “Acceleration” failed because of the weakness of the USSR economy.
5
Most consumer goods produced in the USSR were of the same type, simplified to the limit, made of cheap materials. Production efficiency was measured by the quantity of goods produced, quality control was minimal. All this, together with periodic interruptions in food and consumer goods, together with various prohibitions and restrictions, together with the constant lag of living standards from the West, gave rise to discontent among Soviet citizens with the socialist way of life.
6
The next reason is the artificially created “iron curtain”: difficulties traveling abroad, even to countries of the socialist camp, a ban on listening to “enemy voices”, difficulties in acquiring high-quality imported goods, and a strict ban on currency transactions. All this, together with the insolvency of the Union’s economy, has given rise to an active growth of the shadow economy — clandestine production and sale of various goods and services.
7
Strict censorship in the media, hiding information about internal problems in the USSR and about the life of Western countries, a ban on the publication of a number of works, unknown facts of Soviet history, and hiding information on technological disasters - all this was reinforced by the US information war against the USSR.
