Fall of the USSR

Fall of the Soviet Union: Internal Causes Were to Blame, Not External

In December of 1991, as the world watched in sheer perplexity and wonder, the mighty Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate smaller countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a convincing victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the final proof of superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its sworn enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the unprecedented Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers like a thunderhead since the end of World War II. In fact, the end of the Soviet Union transformed the entire world political situation, leading to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe, not to mention spurred a whole new set of political-economic theories.

What were the causes of this monumental historical event? The answer is a very complex one, of course, and can only be arrived at with an understanding of the peculiar composition and history of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union as we knew it was constructed on approximately the same territory as the Russian Empire which it succeeded. After the historic Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the newly-formed government developed a philosophy of socialism with the eventual and gradual transition to hard-line Communism.

The state which the Bolsheviks created was intended to overcome national differences, and rather to create one monolithic state based on a centralized economical and political system. This state, which was built on a Communist ideology, was eventually transformed into a totalitarian state, in which the Communist leadership had complete and authoritarian control over the entire country, including those areas that were not as culturally or historically linked to Moscow.

However, this project of creating a unified, centralized socialist state proved problematic for several critical reasons. First, the Soviets underestimated the degree to which the non-Russian ethnic groups in the country (which comprised more than fifty percent of the total population of the Soviet Union) would resist forced and assumed assimilation into a Russianized State.

Second, their economic planning failed to meet the needs of the State, which was caught up in a vicious and unprecedented arms race with the United States. This led to gradual economic decline, eventually necessitating the need for serious reform.

Finally, the ideology of Communism, which the Soviet Government worked to instill in the hearts and minds of its population, never took firm root, especially in the outlying states, and eventually lost whatever influence it had originally carried.

By the time of the 1985 rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader, the country was in a situation of severe stagnation in every way, with deep economic and political problems which sorely needed to be addressed and overcome. Recognizing this, Gorbachev introduced a two-tiered policy of policy reform.

On one much publicized level, Gorbachev initiated a policy of glasnost, or freedom of speech. On the other level, he began a program of severe economic reform known as perestroika, or rebuilding. What Gorbachev did not realize was that by giving people complete freedom of expression, he was unwittingly unleashing emotions and political feelings that had been pent up for several decades, and which proved to be extremely powerful when brought out into open debate in the Kremlin and outside of it.

Moreover, Gorbachev's policy of economic reform did not have close to the immediate results he had hoped for and had publicly predicted. The Soviet people consequently used their newly allotted freedom of speech to criticize Gorbachev heavily and consistently for his failure to improve the economy.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union began on the peripheries, in the non-Russian areas, as intimated above. As we have discussed, these were the states that were least tied to Moscow in a cultural or historical manner. The first region to produce mass, organized dissent was the Baltic region, where, in 1987, the government of Estonia demanded absolute autonomy from the Soviet Union.

Estonia's move was later followed by similar moves in Lithuania and Latvia, the other two Baltic republics. The nationalist movements in the Baltics constituted a strong challenge to Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. He did not want to crack down too severely on the participants in these movements, yet at the same time, it became increasingly evident that allowing them to run their course would spell eventually disaster for the Soviet Union, which would completely collapse if all of the periphery republics were to demand independence.

After the initiative from Estonia, similar movements sprang up all over the former Soviet Union. In the Transcaucasus region (in the South of the Soviet Union), a movement developed inside the heavily Armenian-populated autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabagh, in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population of this region demanded that they be granted the right to secede and join the Republic of Armenia, with whose population they were ethnically linked, unlike with the Soviet Union.

Massive demonstrations were held in Armenia in solidarity with the secessionists in Nagorno-Karabagh as well. The Gorbachev government refused to permit the population of Nagorno-Karabagh to secede, and the situation developed into a violent territorial dispute, eventually degenerating into an all-out war which continues unabated until the present day.

Once this "Pandora's box" had been opened, nationalist movements emerged in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Byelorussia, and the Central Asian republics as well. The power of the Central Government was considerably weakened by these movements; Gorbachev could no longer rely on the cooperation of Government figures in the republics.

Finally, the tenuous situation came to a head in August of 1991. In a last-ditch effort to save the Soviet Union, which was floundering under the impact of the political movements which had emerged since the implementation of Gorbachev's glasnost, a group of "hard-line" Communists organized a storybook coup d'etat.

The hard-liners kidnapped Gorbachev, and then, on August 19 of 1991, they announced on state television that Gorbachev was very ill and would no longer be able to govern. The country went into an absolute uproar. Massive protests were staged in Moscow, Leningrad, and many of the other major cities of the Soviet Union, and in the soon-to-be breakaway republics. When the coup organizers tried to bring in their military to quell the protestors, the soldiers themselves rebelled, saying that they could not fire on their fellow countrymen. After three days of massive protest, the coup organizers surrendered, realizing that without the cooperation of the military, they did not of course have the power to overcome the power of the entire population of the country.

After the failed coup attempt, it was only a few months until the Soviet Union completely and utterly collapsed. Both the government and the people realized that there was no way to turn back the clock; the massive demonstrations of the "August days" had demonstrated that the population would accept nothing less than the freedom democracy. Gorbachev conceded power, realizing that he could no longer contain the power or will of the population. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned.

By January of 1992, by popular demand, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In its place, a completely new entity was formed. It was called the "Commonwealth of Independent Republics," and was composed of most of the independent countries of the former Soviet Union. While the member countries had complete political independence, they were linked to other Commonwealth countries by economic, and, in some cases, military ties as well.

Now that the Soviet Union, with its centralized political and economic system, as we knew it has ceased to exist, the fifteen newly formed independent countries which emerged in its aftermath are faced with an overwhelming task on every level. They must develop their frail economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes. A number of dire wars have developed on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the entire region is suffering a period of severe economic depression. However, despite the many hardships facing the region, bold steps are being taken toward democratization, reorganization, and rebuilding in most of the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union.

The Root Cause

Contrary to popular belief, the cause of the Soviet Union's breakup and collapse was actually its own construction.

The Soviet Union was, in all practical terms, an ethnofederation. This means that it was made up of extremely fractious (both geographically and ethnically) states that really had very little in common with one another.

Ethnofederations endure, political scientists tell us, in at least one of two ways. First, and most obviously, leaders can hold ethnofederations together by sheer force. However, there is another way. Some ethnofederations contain a virtual harmony of interests that requires little if any coercion at all. Such harmonies of interest are not always obvious to the actual states or republics involved, of course, so in order to base a union primarily on consent rather than coercion, leaders must often engage in a complicated process of developing institutions, incentives or even identities such that each republic concludes that continued integration into the overarching union is in its own best interests.

Because this process of trust-building in an ethnofederation is so delicate, state leaders quite often rely on the threat of force to hold the entities together.

As we know, the Soviet Union won most of its republics by conquest over the years; dating back to the days of the Russian Empire. The individual conquered states never had the opportunity to decide their own fates with regard to the Soviet Union.

And what was the nature of the makeup of this awkward ethnofederation? During most of the 20th century, the vast territory between the Caspian Sea in the west and China in the east was part of the great Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. There were a few old archaic monarchic states in this region (Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand); all three were conquered or dominated by imperial Russian power and formally incorporated into the U.S.S.R. during the early 1920s.

The states which existed in the region were not nation-states but the typical multi-ethnic feudal monarchies. Each state was based on control by a ruling group (dynasty) over a certain oasis or a group of oases surrounded on all sides by desert or mountains or other geographical factor. The population of each oasis was usually ethnically very mixed, as proximity to water was more of a determining migratory factor than the ethnicity of the ruler who actually controlled it. Local people did not have a notion of belonging to a nation at all; rather, "oasis thinking" served as a basis for their identity -- a local and territorial identity rather than any sort of ethnic, economic or cultural one.

In the 1930s, the Soviet Bolsheviks, seemingly inspired by the Wilsonian idea of "self-determination of nations" and a desire to win support from the indigenous local populations, created five Union Republics in the region. They were based on the principal of ethnicity: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. These newly created Union Republics were part of what was called the Soviet Union, though formally they had a right to leave the U.S.S.R. And become independent states. Indeed, as we know, after the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, all five republics suddenly became independent states.

Largely inexperienced in the ways of politicking, they immediately entered the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Created in the wake of the former Soviet Union, CIS was merely a loose international organization rather than a state-like confederation of the former Soviet republics. In 1992, four states of the former Soviet Middle Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan), together with Russia signed the "Treaty of Tashkent," which provided a formal basis for deployment of Russian troops on their own soil. Turkmenistan did not join this treaty. It declared neutrality (recognized by the United Nations) and opened its frontiers to its neighbors, dissolving its border-guard troops entirely.

This picture gives us an excellent view into the complexities facing the Soviet Union with regard to the various ethnicities in the ethnofederation. If it took such a complicated process after the collapse, obviously keeping the forces together was even more challenging.

As for the actual collapse, the territories around the mountains of the Caucasus, among the last to be incorporated inside the Russian Empire, had always had a strong separatist tradition. Having different language, culture and very often also religion in comparison to the rest of the nation, the populations that live the lands between the Black sea and the Caspian Sea had already gotten a certain amount of autonomy under the Soviet regime, but the cohabitation with the Russians and even among the same Caucasian population often tied up to traditional almost tribal enmities had not always been easy at all. The incorporation of the transcaucasian region happened in 1817, when the czar got, after a new war against the Ottoman sultan, dominion over these provinces rich of raw materials, but difficult to govern. The contrasts were nearly immediate and very obvious: General Ermolev.

Ermolev immediately understood that it would have been difficult to govern that people and, in fact, he gave this idea of it to the czar who, however, didn't respect his opinion, starting with methodicalness the repression of the rebels that would have cost to the Russian army in the following 50 years more than 70.000 dead, while the civil losses are not known. Also in the second half of 19th century, the Russian occupation was always in sight and therefore, the national feeling of the Caucasian people never died.

Set at the crossroad between the Russian Empire and the Turkish one, the region was upset by World War 1, transformed in battleground from the troops of the czar in struggle against the army of Istanbul. With the Russian revolution and then the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus fell under a short and deleterious British protectorate that had as only consequence the transfer of the Armenian Nagorno Karabach to the Azerbaigian. This was considered an effective way to subtract a source of raw materials to a population thought too much unstable after the Turkish deportation happened in the first world conflict, but it would also have been the origin of many of the actual contrasts. After the strengthening of Turkey of Kemal and the consequent loss of thousand of square kilometers of territory returned to the Turkish sovereignty, the republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaigian were united first in a Caucasian Confederation for then to enter as federal Republics in the Soviet Union of Stalin. He was aboriginal of the zone, been born by Georgian father and mother of the Ossetia. This detail was, however, not favorable evolving in a true adversity during the World War 2.

With the German invasion of the Cecenia and the neighboring provinces, in the vain attempt to deprive USSR of the rich oil wells of Baku, there were episodes of collaborationism that were harshly punished after the leaving of the Nazi threat. Although what happened it was not more serious than what was already verified in Ukraine, where the repression was surely less hard, in the Caucasus during 1944 a million persons among tartars of Crimea, Ingushi, Checens and Calmuks were deported in the Asian republics of Kazakistan and Kirghizistan with the official excuse of protect them from the enemy, when the German troops had been already repealed up to Poland and Hungarian border. Stalin had taken advantage of this favorable moment to complete an ethnic cleaning that allowed him of free the Caucasus from that warlike stock of mountaineers. Even still in 1994, few of the deported had gotten the permission to reenter in their own land.

The period between 1945 and 1991 was of relative calm, but with the breakup of the Soviet Union, all the present nationalities complained their own independence and they started to appear inside tensions for a long time calmed. Georgia, the nation with the culture nearest to the Russians, of which it was a protectorate since the dawns of the empire, had to his inside two important minorities, the abkhasian and the ossethian one. Both pretended to have a nation for itself, this provoked the spreading of a civil war that ended only with the intervention of the Russian forces as units of interposition between the parts in war. Shevarnadze, former minister of foreign affairs of Gorbacev's government, become president of the Georgian Republic in that years of crisis, had not only to face the separatists, but also his own supporters that didn't hide their racial depreciation for the rebels.

The clash between Armenia and Azerbaigian was almost immediate and as remembered in precedence it had distant in the time origins. The struggle of the Armenian inhabitants of the Nagorno Karabach to reunify with their homeland had its apex in 1994 and 1995 when there was a war between the two nations. Also after the cease-fire, the contrasts didn't finish at all. The Azerbaigian, strong of the strategic position in which was found (on its territory it passes the longest part of the southern section of the important Caucasian pipeline) imposed an energetic embargo on Armenia, whose capital Erevan was forced to survive with only 40 thousand of meters cubes of gas and oil, enough for few daily times of light. Running water became a mirage and the few times when it was available it was rigorously cold. This added to the complete lack of heating can help us to understand as the winter was feared in a state situated upon some of the highest mountains of the world.

The history of Cecenia has become by now a reissue of the Afghanistan for Russia. Proclaimed Independent in 1991 under the presidency of Dudayev, former officer of the Russian Air Force, it was immediately object of strong pressures from Moscow to reenter in the Federation. Grozny, the capital city of the new state, was also the most important center of oil refinement in whole Russia. Through its refineries 4 million tons of gasoline and gas-oil pass every year, a quantity comparable to that produced by Kuwait. The intervention of the Russian army was so inevitable as answer to the chechen indifference to the requests to recede from the intents of independence. The first chechen war started at the end of 1993 it lasted for several months, with the Russian advance up to the mountains of Cecenia, where welcomed by the local population of different race, but always hostile to the Russians, the chechen soldiers could withstand until the stipulation of the peace forced by the increasing popular protest in Russia, caused by the increasing popular worry for the high losses provoked by the chechen tactics of the guerrilla. The agreement recognizing as principle the independence of Cecenia, didn't set the bases for a lasting peace, avoiding to specify the terms of such independence, so much that the new war of this year cannot be said other than a prosecution of the preceding one, even if the motivations of the new president Putin are said well different.

Often, the reasons for a so difficult cohabitation in the Caucasus are found in the diffusion in these countries of the Moslem religion unlike Russia that it is Christian orthodox. If it is true that Azerbaigian has been influenced strongly from the Islam, so much that in the last times inside movements act for a return to the tradition of the Sha'ria (the Islamic law) and for the maintenance of the religious order in communion with that political, in Armenia and in Georgia the situation shows some notable differences. In Armenia a strong Christian community exits that has its own origins in ancient times, straight before the crusades, when the Armenians constituted a strong kingdom firstly vassal of the Byzantine empire and then autonomous and contrasted to the increasing Arabic and finally Turkish power, until the subjugation of the 16th century to the Ottoman sultan. Despite in more recent times the Islamic religion also gone spreading in the state of Erevan, Christian identity has not put in danger allowing Armenia to consider a small island in the Moslem sea. Religious difference has also allowed a different approach to the problems of the post-communism. Not having neighbors of the same religion as instead Azerbaigian has, Armenia has had to look to West, to the European union and the Balkan countries, tightening trade alliances that make up for the less commercial exchange with the countries of the COMECON. Georgia doesn't possess a memory so ancient of his own Christian religiousness, but having always maintained nearer relationships with the Russian world than the other republics, it has been notably influenced by it. Additionally, during the 1944 deportations, nearly 100.000 Moslems were deported in central Asia, creating a homogeneous concentration of orthodox population that still today is majoritarian.