Was the fall of the USSR inevitable by the turn of 1991?

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Candidate Name: Gabriel Puliatti                Candidate Number: 000633-039

History Internal Assignment 2008

Was the fall of the USSR inevitable by the turn of 1991?

Candidate Name: Gabriel Puliatti

Candidate Number: 000633-039

Supervisor: Peter Kvietok

Session: November 2008

Centre: Markham College, Lima, Peru

Word Count: 2000



Contents

 

A Plan of investigation        

D  Analysis        

E  Conclusion        


A Plan of investigation

  1. (i) Subject of the Investigation

Was the fall of the USSR inevitable by the turn of 1991?

  1. (ii) Scope of Investigation:

The aim of this investigation is to identify whether the fall of the USSR was inevitable by 1991, or could have lasted for longer had leaders not met at Belavezha.  

(iii) Method:

  • Research for primary and secondary sources the fall of the USSR, identify the main arguments surrounding its break-up.  
  • Summarise the evidence.
  • Evaluate two useful sources for their origin, purpose, value and limitations: Catherine & Ward’s “Perestroika: The Historical Perspective” and Martin Walker’s “The Cold War”.
  • Analyse the extent of the separation of the Soviet Union by 1991 and different interpretations.
  • Write a logical, balanced conclusion.
  • Write an annotated bibliography

  1.  

(138 words)


B Summary of evidence

Mikhael Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in 1985, to try to empower the faltering Soviet economy and grim social outlook. This position, due to “favourable changes at the top” would bring “the introduction of complex reforms affecting most major aspects of the life of the Soviet people” which Donald Maclean, British socialist defector would predict in 1984.

Growth was slowing down, statistics showing that the Soviet economy had grown 62% in the 1970s, lower than previous decades. Each percentage of GDP growth required an increase in 1.4% of national investment, as well as a 1.2% in raw material output. Due to this, Gorbachev declared that “profound transformations must be carried out in the economy” to ensure a higher quality of life for the people.

To modernise the economy, Gorbachev slowly liberalised it and tried to raise the quality of production with the founding of Gospriemka. Gorbachev, in 1987, had written that the need “full cost accounting is quite clear on the Soviet leadership”. The monopoly on foreign trade was cut, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade stopped managing foreign trade. However, “high economic as well as political costs, forced the government to cut back”. Farms and businesses were also slowly opened to co-operative ownership. However, by early 1990, these only employed 3 million workers, or about 3% of the total GDP.  

As early as 1987, a “small number of constituencies witnessed contested elections”, which, in a society where single-candidate elections had been the rule for 70 years, showed a divergence from the norm. The creation of the Congress of People’s Deputies, removed from power of the party apparat, it returning “to the elected institutions which, in theory, had held power under all Soviet constitutions since 1918”. This happened, as “despite pressure from above, electors refused to elect powerful party bosses” in many of the elections for the Congress of People’s Deputies.  

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This democratisation helped with the increase of nationalism in the republics. Each one, some even the support of the local communist party, “began to support local independence movements, and insist on the autonomy of the republican governments”. By mid-1990, even the two most influential Republics, the Russian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR had “proclaimed their sovereignty”. The age-old bans on the national flags was lifted, and people “took advantage of the freedom to demonstrate by assembling crowds to listen to speeches and wave the […] national flags” in the Baltic republics. Even in the Soviet strongholds of Leningrad and Moscow, the ...

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