University College London

RUSSIAN HISTORY Prof. Geoffrey Hosking

WHY DID THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSE?

Discuss the external and internal factors that you consider crucial for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

author: Marianna Petrasova

London, February 2003

WHY DID THE SOVIET UNION COLLAPSE? The most dangerous time for a bad government is when it starts to reform itself. Alexis de Tocqueville

The Soviet Union emerged out of the maelstrom of the Great War as a revolutionary pariah state and over the following decades it evolved into a military superpower with an external empire; an ideological model which, for a time was emulated by a third of the worlds population and was perceived by the rest of the world as a secure and stable society. This makes the astonishing swiftness of the disintegration of the Soviet polity all the more surprising and with little consensus on why it collapsed. On a one hand, the dominant schools of thought are firstly an American-centric perception that Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Communists economically and ideologically through his moral clarity and massive defense spending. On the other, the deterministic view explains that the Soviet Union was inevitably going to collapse because of the intrinsic contradictions of the Soviet planned economy. This paper examines the long-term structural factors behind the collapse and short-term catalysts which stimulated the particular nature of the implosion.

To understand why the Soviet Union collapsed, the nature of the political system needs to be understood. The Communist Party was according to the Marxist-Leninist ideology the vanguard of the proletariat and exercised a totalitarian monopoly of power over the political system. The party managed and guided the state and society on behalf of the universal class, the working class. In practice, however, it was dominated by a unique socio-political stratum, the nomenklatura1; the privileged group of party bureaucrats who gained preferential access to the resources of the State through their position within the ruling party. The legitimacy of the system depended upon the ideological faith among the social layers of society of the sureness of the Marxist-Leninist canon but was

Marin McCauley, Bandits, Gagsters and Mafia, 2001, p.86

crucially underpinned by the coercive state powers of the secret police and the Red Army.

An evaluation of the factors that led to the collapse would be incomplete without noting that the system produced the leaders appropriate to it. Through the Great Terror,

engineered by Stalin and operated through the NKVD (state security), the regime was buttressed by widespread fear and intimidation. The question of how much ideological support there was among the population remains unclear although secret police reports suggested little but terror was a crucial part of the Stalinist system. Khrushchev wanted to part with Stalinism, but not with the system. He rejected the creator of the system, but worshiped the world Stalin had created. Alexander Dallin confirms that the abandonment of mass political terror2 was the underpinning for the general loosing of Stalinist controls on society. The consequences of this was that the State retreated from the private world of the Soviet citizen and this allowed the growth of individualistic expression, freedom of speech and cultural autonomy.3 . Thus the effect of these longterm cultural transformations was to weaken the ideological basis for the Soviet system. The decision by Khrushchev and the bureaucratic party elite to forgo mass repression as a basis of ruling the Soviet Union elevated the role of popular acceptance of the system for the stability of society. However, despite the rise of living standards during the post-war period, by the era of really-existing-socialism, there was widespread skepticism and of the official worldview. The reasons for this are multifaceted; including systematic

corruption, the growing stratification of society, the open intra-elite conflicts, access to the outside world, economic crisis and the rise of a shadow culture opposed to the official Soviet universe. Brezhnevism meant countless economic and moral losses. Much can be fixed relatively quickly, but not peoples souls that have been poisoned by lies. Corruption during the Brezhnevs era reached grotesque levels and included all but the most disadvantaged in society. The most important consequence in the explosion of
2 3

Alexander Dallin & Gail W Lapidise, The Soviet System, From Crisis to Collapse, 1995, p. 675 MP: This was particularly prevalent among the young of the privileged elite whose interest in Western rock music (access to forbidden goods was via black market) was far greater than the Communist partys propaganda.

corruption was the cynicism and skepticism towards the professed ascetic moral values of the Communists among the public, which was extended into a rejection of the Communist system. By and large, the intelligentsia rejected the values of the Party and frequently turned to the West for inspiration or to national or religious traditions. On the whole, Andropov became popular, which was not hard after Brezhnevs period in office. Andropov conceived of social development as a small reform of the superstructure, cleansing it from filth, since the unsanitary conditions had reached an appalling level. This position suited the majority of the party and state apparatus, since it gave them chance to survive. Finally, Chernenko was that signal that the system had became disaster. It was an exact reflection of the absurdity of a government that relied on physical and ideological coercion. Civilization and life itself rose up against the Soviet system, as T.H. Rigby notes, people gradually found they could get away with a great deal in the way of unorthodox opinions and behaviour in private4.

To rectify the deep social polarization between the Soviet masses and the ruling elite, the post-Stalinist leadership stressed economic growth and the rise of living standards as a prerequisite for a secure basis for popular legitimacy in the region. A consequence of these efforts, the Soviet Union was transformed in the decades after Stalins death. From a largely peasant society, the Soviet Union was, by the Eighties, only just behind the United States in urbanization of the population.5 The population became increasingly well-educated which resulted in a populace considerably less easy to indoctrinate. Moreover, the decline of communal living ensured that the individuals could criticize aspects of the Communist system in the privacy and relative safety of the kitchen, away from potential police informers. As a result of industrialization, the sociography of the Soviet Union radically altered, with the growth of the Soviet middle class rapidly expanding in the postwar years. The number of specialists the so-called

intelligentsia grew from some 2 million before World War II to over 30 million in the

4 5

Ibid., p. 676 John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1993, p.4

1980s.6 This broadly middle-class force within the society was the strongest force behind the political and economic liberalization of the Soviet polity and emergence of an embryonic civil society autonomous from the Party-state totality. Thus is can be argued that the industrialization, urbanization and growing specialization of the economy had profound influences on the values and attitudes of large segments of the population.

What made the Soviet polity unique from other authoritarian one-party regimes was the liquidation of all manifestations of private property, ownership and commerce. The Bolsheviks attempted to manage the Soviet Union through Five-Year Plans, with each economic enterprise expected to produce the necessary quota ordered by GOSPLAN, the central planning agency.7 During the Stalinist era, despite the massive squandering of human and material resources, progress was made in the construction of a modern industrial state. However, soviet economic growth in real terms had come to a complete halt during the year 1978-1985,8 and this not only alarmed the Soviet elite in relation to the Cold War enemy the United States, but provoked growing dissatisfaction with the planning system. During the Sixties and Seventies, the Soviet command-administration economy failed to adapt to the more intensive, specialized, refined and hi-tech methods of the emerging post-industrial economy that was emerging in Silicon Valley, which had important national security implications on the Soviet leadership. Unfortunately for Kremlin, the technological gap between the Soviet Union and the West was growing9 and this would cause even greater pressure on the Soviet economy. As Martin Malia argues, this precluded any kind of economic revival10. However, it can be argued that this militaristic political economy would have sustained itself, if it was not for the technological challenge posed by Reagans arms build-up during the early Eighties. Although the Star Wars program was militarily unfeasible, SDI posed a technological and economic challenge the Soviets could neither ignore nor match11 and this was the
6 7

Alexander Dallin & Gail W Lapidise, The Soviet System, From Crisis to Collapse, 1995, p.682 Marin McCauley, Bandits, Gagsters and Mafia, 2001, p.32 8 John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1993, p.4 9 Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, 1994, p. 364 10 Ibid., p. 372 11 Ibid., p. 415

crucial catalyst for the Andropovite-Gorbachevian economic restructuring agenda. Hence, according to Martin McCauley, the military-industrial complex was the most powerful political interest group in the Soviet Union and these powerful forces recognized the urgent need for economic reform to provide the necessary incentives to stimulate growth.12 Thus in the final analysis the militaristic geared forces within the Soviet empire used their immense power to force through changes brought through their exposure by the international rivalry with the capitalist world.

During the high Stalinist era, Soviet society was totally cut of f from the outside world, with only extremely rare access to the West. Under the policy of dtente, this started to change, as academics, officials and other representatives of the Soviet elite started to travel and co-operate with their counterparts in the West. Alexander Dullin argues that the increasing acquaintance and fascination with foreign norms, styles and practices and goods would in their own way, further contributed to the erosion of commitments to official Soviet Orthodoxy13. While the broad cultural interest in the West was

amplified by the onset of dtente, the crucial role of dtente during the Seventies to the disintegration of the Soviet Union was among the intelligentsia. The exposure to the superior standard of living and political freedoms caused a profound crisis which would have direct importance as the Soviet Union was engulfed in deep economic crisis in the Eighties. As the historian Ben Fowkes claims, the disintegration of the USSR was preconditioned by the progressive lessoning of its isolation from the rest of the world14. The direct consequence of this development was the introduction of glasnost15 into the public sphere by Gorbachev. Thus the reformist Soviet leadership never wanted to see the total demolition of the ideological framework which had underpinned Soviet society. In practice, the process of glasnost in unveiling the hidden crimes of Stalin opened the risk of bringing the question of legitimacy of the regime itself.16 This was ignored by
12 13

Martin McCauley, Bandits, Gangsters and Mafia, 2001, p. 69 Alexander Dallin & Gail W. Lapidise, The Soviet System, From Crisis to Collapse, 1995, p.681 14 Ben Fowkes, The Disintegration of the USSR: A Study in the Rise and Triumph of Nationalism, 1997, p.194 15 Glasnost a policy of public openness 16 Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, 1994, p.422

Gorbachev and his fellow children-of-the-Sixties, who believed that the socialist system could be reformed and humanized. In reality, as Malia argues, this loss of legitimacy would prove fatal to the system; for its surreal structures were such that they could not survive exposure to the truth.17

It can be argued that a confluence of factors contributed to the particular nature of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The influence of these competing short-term features is still vigorously debated and to a certain extent unknowable, but the Afghan intervention, the role of Solidarity in Poland, the decline in world oil prices and last but not least, the nationalism of the disgruntled, minorities are contributed to the implosion of Soviet Russia. Major General Oleg Sarin and Colonel Lev Dvoretsky argue that the Soviet intervention to support the crumbling Communist administration in Afghanistan in 1979 had a major impact in the events in the USSR. According to authors, financially, the Afghan war laid a heavy burden on the Soviet economy and that more broadly the war shook the morale and faith of the armed forces and the masses in the Party leadership and Marxist-Leninist ideology.18 This is collaborated by William Watsons analysis of the USSR implosion, who argues that as a consequence of the Afghan war, the morale of the Soviet armed forces was the lowest in the history of the USSR.19 Moreover, a similar collapse in ideological faith and certainty was experienced among the lower echelons of the KGB as a consequence of the Afghan war20, thus suggesting that the core of the Soviet system, the coercive forces of state violence underwent a crisis of confidence during the Eighties. If the Soviet Union cannot depend upon the secret police, who can it depend upon? From a financial perspective, the Afghan war exasperated the already strained fiscal situation, where the balance-of-trade had turned against the Soviet Union and the end of high oil prices were a crucial factor in pushing the USSR into extreme fiscal crisis.21
17 18

This meant that the leadership had to export more natural

Ibid., p.435 Major General Oleg Sarin and Colonel Lev Dvoretsky, The Afghan Syndrome, the Soviet Vietnam , 1993, p.145 19 William E. Watson, The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, 1998, p.33 20 Martin McCauley, Bandits, Gangsters and Mafia, 2001, p. 86 21 Ibid., p. 68

resources to secure the essential grain and technological supplies from the West. Finally, the role of Solidarity in Poland in subverting the Communist system showed to the Soviet bloc how fragile the Communist monolith was and encouraged the growing dissent throughout the internal and external empire. The most important of these was

nationalism, where glasnost acted as a crucial catalyst for an expression of national grievances and aspirations which developed into unilateral declarations of independence among the republics; the process that directly resulted in the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Conclusively, the factors usually claimed by commentators Reagans input, the Afghan resistance, the role of Solidarity to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union do not fully paint the complex reality behind the implosion. As Malia argues, none of the Soviet Unions external problems from Solidarity to Afghanistan would be capable of shaking the system unless there was a crisis at home22. The perfect storm of deepening economic crisis forced the Soviet leadership to face the deepening systemic crisis enveloping the system and attempt to reform through the unleashing of societal forces. The result of glasnost was to unleash social and political forces which destroyed the Soviet Union and with the long-term structural collapse of faith in Marxism-Leninism among the Soviet nomeclatura, the middle to lower strata failed to support the attempted counter-revolutionary August coup, thus delivering the final blow to a morally, financially and politically bankrupt system.

22

Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, 1994, p.401

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander Dallin and Gail W. Lapidise, The Soviet System, from Crisis to Collapse, Westview Press, 1995. Ann White, Democratization in Russia under Gorbachev, 1985-91: the Birth of a Voluntary Sector, Macmillan Press Ltd., 1999. Ben Fowkes, The Disintegration of the USSR: a Study in the Rise and Triumph of Nationalism, Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997. John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and Fall of the Soviet Empire, Princeton University Press, 1993. Major General Oleg Sarin and Colonel Lev Dvoretsky, The Afghan Syndrome, the Soviet Vietnam, Presidio Press, 1993. Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, Free Press, 1994. Martin McCauley, Bandits, Gangsters and Mafia , Pearson Education, 2001. Vera Tolz and Iain Elliot, The Demise of the USSR, from Communism to Independence, Macmillan Press Ltd., 1995. William E. Watson, The Collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, Greenwood Press, 1998.