Posted on 08/30/2022 9:41:24 PM PDT by zeestephen
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whose rise to power in the Soviet Union set in motion a series of revolutionary changes that transformed the map of Europe and ended the Cold War that had threatened the world with nuclear annihilation, has died in Moscow. [A classic New York Times eulogy. VERY long, but an excellent political history of the USSR from the 1930s to the late 1990s. No NYT pay wall. MSN.com publishes all of it.]
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
It is my understanding that the CCCP started to fall apart when Lithuania declared independence and Ukraine declared it was going to run Ukraine from Kiev.
The breakup was from the bottom up.
The ball got rolling with Solidarity in Poland. Encouraged by the Polish Pope, Reagan and Thatcher, that bit of freedom was like acid that rapidly started eating away the totalitarian state
True - but, only because Gorbachev did not make a Top-Down violent response to stop it.
Chernobyl undermined Soviet elites opinion of themselves as the vanguard of an infallible system.
When Russia missed that 1984 window, and then 1985 passed with still no attack, we knew that Reagan’s military build-up while overtaxing the Russian military and their economy, along with his diplomatic victories, alliances, and those mid-range missiles in Europe, Grenada, his ignoring the massive demonstrations in Europe, his activities in Afghanistan, and Africa, we knew we had a long period of no attack coming for at least a decade, we didn’t know the wall would come down in 1991.
He had very compelling incentives. The Soviet Union was broke and needed loans from the western governments to buy grain or they would starve. These loans came with strings attached.
https://tamilnation.org/intframe/070419collapse_of_soviet_union.pdf
>When the situation in the Soviet Union is examined from financial and hard currency perspectives, Gorbachev’s policies at the time are much easier to comprehend (see figure 6). Government-to-government loans were bound to come with a number of rigid conditions. For instance, if the Soviet military crushed Solidarity Party demonstrations in Warsaw, the Soviet Union would not have received the desperately needed $100 billion from the West. The Socialist bloc was stable when the Soviet Union had the prerogative to
use as much force as necessary to reestablish control, as previously demonstrated in Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. But in 1989 the Polish elites understood that Soviet tanks would not be used to defend the communist government.
>The only option left for the Soviet elites was to begin immediate negotiations about the conditions of surrender. Gorbachev did not have to inform President George H. W. Bush at the Malta Summit in 1989 that the threat of force to support the communist regimes in Eastern Europe would not be employed. This was already evident at the time. Six weeks after the talks, no communist regime in Eastern Europe remained
Latin America was a big deal back then also, with Reagan blocking Russian weapon deliveries and doing a lot of military stuff there, it was a time when many a patriotic American was serving as a merc in Africa or Latin America, I forget if guys were finding work in Afghanistan, Rhodesia and South Africa were popular destinations.
And the Devil have him.
Re: Government-to-government loans were bound to come with a number of rigid conditions.
Sorry, that is not serious.
The USA delivered Eastern Europe on a silver tray to Joe Stalin in 1945, AFTER the USA had funded almost 100% of the USSR logistical war effort from 1941-1945.
Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. Whether real or imagined, Reagan’s vision for a strategic shield to protect the United States from nuclear attack was enough to convince Gorbachev he could not compete neither technologically nor financially buidling such a system. It was a brilliant move by Reagan, and ultimately ended the Cold War, even though the very idea was derided by the intelligentsia.
The late 80s was the West of Reagan, H.W Bush and Thatcher. The issue was as simple as threatening to refuse government-backed loans.
the very idea was derided by the intelligentsia.
Funny how that word has come to have an opposite meaning. These are now the dumbest andcmost foolish. Any plumber or auto mechanic would make better decisions than these University trained eggheads.
I disagree.
In 2022, a nuclear armed cruise missile can still defeat every anti-missile system in the world, at least sometimes.
In the 1990s, the USSR could have destroyed NATO in a couple hours with a cruise missile nuclear attack.
The USSR collapsed because Gorbachev made a conscious decision to NOT maintain Soviet control by force of arms.
"He wanted to save communism and the world was so impressed with his failure they gave him a Nobel Prize."
What a time in history that was.
I met him and his daughter once in 2005. Of all places, Manhattan ……………..
………….Kansas.
One final Gorbasm for the NYT.
Started in Poznan in 1956, and Gdansk in 1970.
Actually the trigger for 1989 was Tiananmen Square, it provided inspiration to the people in the Captive Nations to rise up.
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