How important were developments in Eastern Europe to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

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Ching Ann Jie

 How important were developments in Eastern Europe to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

This essay will explore the relation between the key developments that happened in Eastern Europe from 1988 and the stability of the Soviet Union. Where these developments intergral to the collapse of the Soviet Union? If not, then Eastern Europe is not very important – but did it quicken the pace towards the collapse of the Soviet Union? How did the developments interplay with the other factors causing the collapse of the SU?

Before evaluating the impact of the developments in Eastern Europe, it is important first to establish that which happened in the Soviet sphere of influence, commonly called the Soviet Union’s external empire. Gorbachev introduced the Sinatran Doctrine, in line with his political and economic reforms, paving the path for greater liberalisation, with the Soviet Union eventually taking a passive role in the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. In August 1988 Solidarity had organised large-scale strikes against the communist government, and in June the next year had won the Polish elections. This was the first post-communist administration of Eastern Europe in the post-Stalin era. T he Hungarian Communist Party in February 1989 renounced its power monopoly and legalised a multi-party system. Later in May, the Hungarian government dismantled its part of the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the East German government resigned. Germany was reunited early 1990. By late 1989, communism had collapsed in virtually all the Eastern Europe states, and the Cold War had thawed much: a NATO declaration proclaimed the end of the Cold War. Also, the USSR had completely withdrawn all its troops from Afghanistan, a center of Cold War tensions. Domestically, however, Gorbachev was losing public support – it was at an all time low of 21%. The Soviet Union too faced pent-up economic problems in the implementation of perestroika as glasnost swept the federation. A year after the NATO declaration in 1990, the Soviet Union, United States, and almost all other European nations signed the Charter of Paris. The Soviet Union and the United States joined forces militarily during the Gulf War, signifying a new era of Soviet Union – United States relations. However, the speedy resolution of the Iraq conflict caused oil prices to plunge further, exacerbating the economic problems that the SU faced during the Western recession of 1990.

The Soviet Union was not overthrown by people’s power in terms of a revolution, not by strikes, large-scale anti-government demonstrations, unlike in the Baltic states, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. It was instead the buildup of a series of events which punched blows into the Soviet Union’s survival, such as the failed coup of 1991, Alma-Ata Protocol, Yeltsin banning the CPSU in Russia, the Ukraine referendum, declaration of the Commonwealth of Independent States, resignation of Gorbachev, followed by the Supreme Soviet. This was the official end of the Soviet Union.

The demise of the Cold War played a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and though developments in Eastern Europe affected the Cold War there is also a direct link between the Soviet Union’s domestic affairs and the developments in Eastern Europe. This link will be explored primarily in this essay.

First, the Communist collapse in Eastern Europe provided an inspiration to the Soviet Republics of the USSR. The peoples of these republics now hoped that the central government in Russia would grant them the same ‘decolonising treatment’ it had given to the Soviet Union’s external empire. Every part of the Soviet Union bordering on Eastern Europe was in the midst of nationalist upheaval (Pearson, 1997) – Nationalistic movements arose across the inner empire of the Soviet Union, notably in Lithuania, Moldavia, and the Ukraine. The Sajudis organisation, influenced by the June elections in neighbouring Poland, was reawakened in 1989, stepping up public pressure on the Soviets to grant independence to Lithuania. Once Romania’s Ceausescu was overthrown, the Moldavian Popular Front stepped up the efforts to be aligned with the new Romania as the disincentive to be independent under Securitate-ridden old Romania no longer existed. Rukh, a popular front organisation, was founded in the Ukraine in September 1989. The founding of the Rukh is compared to crossing a point of no return (Raymond, 1997) as this was a breakthrough in Ukrainian politics, previously devoid of life. Ukraine was the second largest union republic, and the key non-Russian republic for the future of the Soviet Union. As noted in the introduction, the Ukrainian referendum held late 1990 had tremendous impact on the signing of the CIS treaty. Thus the founding of the Rukh in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe was crucial in the collapse of the Soviet Union later, along with the rise of nationalist movements in the other republics.

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How much of this rise in nationalist tendencies is due to Eastern Europe than it is to Gorbachev’s glasnost, however, can be challenged. In November 1988, the Estonian Parliament had declared Independence after the Popular Front for Perestroika was set up in April that year. Autonomist movements had sprung in Moldavia January 1989, along with huge demonstrations of green nationalism early 1988 in Latvia. These uprisings and movements had already been happening from 1987, in a more subdued form, after the implementation of glasnost. Citizens in the Soviet republics were only then able to make known their nationalist views ...

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