Commie Killer wrote:
TeamZephyr wrote:
The Soviet Union defeated itself.
Well yea, without Reagan thought it would of lasted a decade or two longer.
Right, whatever works for you. The Soviet Union was on a path to destruction the moment Stalin came into power, Reagan just used the "I'm fighting the Soviet Union" as a way to win those votes of Americans who were shit scared of the decades old "Red Scare".
Reagan only sought to bring back the old 50s Cold War were everyone was scared of being missiled from the Soviets, he took the SALT treaties and the goals achieved by Nixon during Detente and burned them in his White House fire. Reagan didn't end the Soviet Union, he used the Cold War as a way to maintain conservative power during the 80s in America, and it worked. America hasn't had a true liberal in power for a LONG time now (Clinton doesn't count, he is as conservative as Bush is).
The Soviet Union killed itself through a number of things, not a person.
1. Food Shortages, these were rampant and it meant that the populance was getting sick of the Soviet Union, creating internal tension.
2. Corruption, this also was rampant in the Kremlin and there was major conflict between Communist Party officials. (Look up the tanks in the Kremlin incident).
3. War In Afghanistan, this drained Soviet resources that were needed to put down people's struggles in Eastern Europe, which showed the world that the Soviet Union was draining itself.
4. Not ruling with an iron fist, When people's struggles began in place such as Poland 1980 (the allowance of Solidarity to exist) and the Revolutions of 1989 also known as the "Year Of Miracles" or "Autumn of Nations". By not putting down people's struggles in Poland and Hungary the Soviet Union showed weakness that the Eastern European nations used to get rid of Soviet power. Same applies for The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.
5. Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost. These reforms and that man probably did the most damage to the Soviet Union. By liberalising the economy and allowing the police state to be weakened the Soviet Union collasped.
There were many other reasons, too many to mention in fact, but if there's one general rule about revolutions (the collaspe of the Soviet Union was a revolution) is that,
Preconditions + Precipitants = Revolution.
The Soviet Union collasped because of a number of preconditions such as the food shortages and corruption in the Kremlin and the number of precipitants that occured during the 80s such as the Invasion of Afghanistan, the victories of Solidarity in Poland, and the weakning of the Police State. Reagan was neither a precondition or a precipitant that lead to the collaspe of the Soviet Union.
