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“(I)f you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization,
come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate …
tear down this wall.”
-US President Ronald Reagan,
Speaking at the Berlin Wall, June 12, 1987
East vs. West - NATO - The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact -
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
NATO’s Challenge - The East Falls Behind NATO - Falklands,
Grenada, and Libya - The Afghan Quagmire Mikhail Gorbachev, Glasnost,
and Perestroika - The Fall of the Warsaw Pact
The Collapse of the Soviet Union - Who Ended Soviet Communism?
- Works Cited
In the early years of the 20th Century, the Soviet Union rose
from a backwards nation on the fringes of European civilization,
and became the largest empire in history within half a century.
Established to protect a global communist crusade, both its mission
and its rapid growth were unprecedented in world history. Competing
against the courage and vision of those who dared to seek greater
freedom and security, this empire would last less than a century
before being erased from the world stage in an unusual chain
of events.
East vs. West: A Continent Divided
The Cold War began as the Second World War ended and left
post-war Europe divided between Western democracies and Soviet
Army-occupied nations of Eastern Europe. In the middle lay Germany,
divided and occupied by the four post-war Allied powers, the
United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union (LaFeber
75).
Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, seeking to consolidate communist
rule in Eastern Europe, demanded the Western allies withdraw
from their occupation zones in the German capital of Berlin,
deep inside Soviet-occupied East Germany. Hoping to starve the
Allies out, Stalin ordered a blockade of West Berlin on June
28, 1948. US President Truman ordered a massive airlift of food
and supplies to West Berlin. Truman’s airlift paid off,
and the blockade ended by the summer of 1949 (LaFeber 79).
Unable to agree on terms for the reunification of Germany,
Western and Soviet leaders began planning to transform their
occupation zones into two Germanys, one aligned with the democratic
West, and the other integrated into the communist East (LaFeber
75). In August 1949, West Germany held elections for its parliament.
Conrad Adenauer, who advocated the reunification of Germany as
a Western democracy, became West Germany’s first Chancellor
(LaFeber 85).
NATO: The Alliance of the West
The Western alliance began in the early years of the 20th
Century. Britain, France, and the United States were key members
of the alliance that had won both World Wars. At the end of the
Second World War, they found themselves again the dominant powers
of Western Europe. On April 4, 1949, the Western Allies signed
the North American Treaty Organization treaty, a collective defense
agreement (NATO).
While NATO protected Western Europe, it did not protect its
member nations abroad. The British Empire lost most of its overseas
colonies, including India and Rhodesia. The French lost their
colonies of Algeria and Indochina, in the wake of costly and
unpopular wars (LaFeber 161). Many of the Western allies, led
by the US, fought the Chinese and North Korean communists to
a costly stalemate in Korea in the 1950s (LaFeber 113). In 1973,
a decade-long war in Vietnam ended with the withdrawal of US
forces (LaFeber 271). Six years later, the US was helpless as
Iranian militants stormed the US embassy in Tehran, holding the
staff hostage for over a year (Smith 18).
As the 1970’s came to a close, major changes in leadership
would soon revive the strength and prestige of the Western alliance
and pose new challenges to the communist rulers in the East.
The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact: The Empire of the East
During the Second World War, much of Central and Eastern Europe
was first conquered by Nazi Germany, and then by counter-attacking
Soviet forces, which installed communist regimes loyal to Moscow.
On May 1, 1955, the Warsaw Pact treaty bound the Eastern communist
dictatorships into a single political and military force, loyal
to the Soviet Union (Halsall).
During the 1950s and 60s, the Warsaw Pact faced widespread
unrest. Strikes in East Germany were brutally crushed by the
Red Army in 1953, as were strikes in Poland in October 1956 (LaFeber
149). The same month, a mass uprising in Hungary led to Hungary’s
withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union invaded, killing
25,000 Hungarians, and forced Hungary back into line (Zickel).
In 1961, seeking to stop a flood of East Germans escaping into
West Berlin, the East German government began construction of
the Berlin Wall. Soon, concrete and barbed wire barriers ringed
West Berlin and cut off escape for East Germans (Buffett). In
the spring of 1965, Warsaw Pact forces brutally crushed an uprising
in Czechoslovakia (Lohbeck 271).
The end of the Czech uprising led to over a decade of peace
within the Warsaw Pact. However, the 1980s brought new challenges
from the West and new problems at home that would pose new problems
for Soviet and Warsaw Pact leaders.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: Partnership in the West
Thatcher and Reagan’s first met in 1975, when Reagan
had just retired from serving two terms as Governor of California,
and Thatcher was the newly elected Leader of the Opposition in
the British Parliament. Believers in free-market democracy and
the need to challenge socialism at home and communism abroad,
the two became close friends (Smith 1).
Frustrated by economic stagnation and out-of-control labor
unions, British voters swept Thatcher’s Conservative Party
into power on May 3, 1979 (Smith 11). Reagan hailed Thatcher’s
election on his weekly radio program:
“If anyone can remind England of the greatness it knew
during those dangerous days of World War Two when alone and unafraid
her people fought the Battle of Britain, it will be the Prime
Minister the English press has already nicknamed ‘Maggie’”
(Smith 19).
In her first official visit to the United States, Thatcher
declared her support for the US in the Iranian hostage crisis.
Thatcher told President Carter and the American press, “you
would expect nothing less and you would get nothing less than
our full support” (Smith 18).
Frustrated with President Carter’s poor handling of a
dismal economy at home and foreign policy crises abroad, US voters
ousted Carter in November 1980, electing Reagan the next Presidenct
of the United States (Smith 23).
Reagan and Thatcher moved swiftly to revitalize their economies.
Thatcher began to privatize a number of nationalized companies,
including British Telecom and Rolls Royce, while Reagan enacted
sweeping economic deregulation. They responded swiftly to stop
crippling labor strikes. Both also enacted broad income tax reductions.
By the end of their first terms, the economies of both nations
were thriving (Smith 181).
During the Argentinean invasion of the British Falkland Islands,
Reagan was credited for providing a considerable amount of covert
assistance to the British in their efforts to retake the islands
(Smith 97). This would be remembered when Thatcher defied popular
British opinion to support the United States by allowing air
strikes against Libya to be launched from bases on British soil
(Smith 196).
NATO’s Challenge: Defending Western Europe
For years, Western military leaders voiced concerns with the
state of Western defenses. In October 1950, “Can Western
Europe be Defended?”, written by retired German General
Heinz Guerdian, one of the pioneers of German “blitzkrieg”
tank warfare, raised serious questions about NATOs ability to
resist an invasion. A year later, Guerdian wrote “This cannot
be the Right Way”, in which he predicted the Western allies
would exhaust themselves fighting conflicts in the Far East,
at the expense of their obligations to European security (Macksey
208).
Another call to strengthen NATO came in 1978 from British
General Sir John Hackett, retired Commander in Chief of the British
Army of the Rhine. In his best-selling book, “The Third
World War”, Hackett warned the West of the dangers it faced:
“Those who argue for the reduction of defence expenditure
in the countries of the West not only seem to live in a land
of total make-believe, but refuse to give the Marxist-Leninists
… any credit either for meaning what they say or for knowing
what they are doing.” (Hackett 359)
NATO nations began to experiment with new concepts in operations
and equipment. The first significant innovation was REFORGER
(REturn of FORces to GERmany), in which United States-based personnel
were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to meet up with stockpiled
equipment in Western Europe (Sanders). REFORGER became a key
part of NATO’s “defense-in-depth” plans, in which
NATO forces would fight a delaying action based upon maneuver
and tactical retreats while US and British reinforcements were
rushed in to reverse any setbacks (Stoltenberg).
As the US war in Vietnam ended, the reorganization and reinforcement
of NATO forces in Europe began. The chain of command for US forces
in Europe was simplified and elements of the US 2nd Armored and
4th Infantry Divisions were transferred to Europe. At the same
time, NATO command operations were centralized, and the 4th Allied
Tactical Air Force was created (Sanders).
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978 awakened President
Carter to the need to rebuild the US military. Carter withdrew
the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty from the US Senate,
stopped US grain sales to the Soviet Union, reinstated draft
registration, and called for an increase in US military spending
(LaFeber 298).
President Reagan continued the increase in US military spending.
This included many new weapons systems, including the B-1 bomber,
an in-the-field multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), the Patriot
air defense system, the M1A1 Abrams tank, the M2 and M3 series
of infantry and cavalry fighting vehicles, the UH-60 Blackhawk
helicopter, the AH-64A Apache scout helicopter. Even new and
improved field rations were introduced (Sanders). These new weapons
systems enhanced NATO advantages in mobility, quality of weapons
systems, and skilled personnel (Stoltenberg).
After years of decline, NATO nations had begun to revitalize
their defenses. This new direction would pose new challenges
to communist forces and protect the West as a beacon of hope
and freedom for the peoples of the Warsaw Pact nations.
The East Falls Behind NATO
Keeping up with the Western military buildup posed a tremendous
problem for the Warsaw Pact nations, who long relied on numerical
advantages in manpower and equipment to overcome NATO’s
advantages in mobility and quality of its forces and weapons
systems. NATO’s drive to expand and modernize their forces
threatened to neutralize the communist alliance’s long-held
numerical advantages (Zickel).
The Warsaw Pact’s 1984 “Shield” exercises in
Czechoslovakia included first-ever training in responding to
a NATO counterattack. Another major change in Eastern military
doctrine was the recognition of the need to overcome NATO’s
“defense in depth” strategy. A joint statement released
in 1987 by Soviet Chief of General Staff, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeev,
and the Soviet Minister of Defense, Marshal Dmitri T. Iazov,
acknowledged Soviet military doctrine was being revised to meet
the challenges of the "new thinking" in Western military
policy (Zickel).
Early planning for the United States’ Strategic Defense
Initiative system of space-based anti-missile defenses and the
development of the US Patriot battlefield missile defense system
threatened the most dangerous component of communist arsenals:
tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Soviet/Warsaw Pact battle
plans often included the use of nuclear weapons, with a list
of targets to include:
· Nuclear installations and equipment;
· Air force and air defense installations;
· War command posts at the divisional level, and communications
facilities;
· Troops either in position or on the move; and
· Naval detachments and bases of the West German navy
(Stoltenberg).
The inability of Warsaw Pact nations to finance an arms race
with the West reduced prospects for battlefield victory over
the NATO democracies. Those who hoped to extinguish the flame
of the Western democracies by force of arms were running out
of options.
The First Tests: The Falklands, Grenada, and Libya
The first tests of the renewed military capabilities of the
West came in three locations far from the center of the East-West
conflict: The Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, Grenada
in the Caribbean, and Libya in the Mediterranean.
In the spring of 1982, the Argentine military government seized
the British Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. Working
with the United States, the islands were back in British hands
within weeks (Smith 94).
In October 1983, a US-led invasion ousted the Cuban-backed
government of Grenada in the wake of a bloody coup on the Caribbean
island. The coup forces, including hundreds of Cuban troops,
were swiftly rounded up and order restored to the island. Captured
evidence pointed to significant support of the coup leaders by
the Cuban government as part of a plan to use Grenada as a base
of Cuban-supported covert operations in the Caribbean region
(Cole 56).
In the mid-1980s, the United States faced mounting evidence
of Libyan involvement in attacks upon US civilians and military
personnel in Europe. On April 14th, 1986, F-111 aircraft launched
from bases in Great Britain bombed targets in Libya, fully backed
the Thatcher’s government in London (Smith 195).
All of these situations involved swift and decisive military
actions by NATO nations, including the unprecedented removal
of a Soviet-backed Marxist government by US forces, without provoking
any kind of Soviet or Warsaw Pact response. While these interventions
were small, the West had, for the first time in decades, proven
itself willing and able to take the military initiative in a
swift and decisive manner.
The Afghan Quagmire
When Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev overruled objections by military
experts and ordered the Soviet Red Army into Afghanistan to oust
Afghan President Amin on Christmas Day of 1979, the lightly equipped
and untrained Islamic Afghan rebels seemed like easy prey (LaFeber
297). However, with humanitarian and material assistance from
the United States and several Arab nations, the Afghan rebels
were able to hold on (Lohbeck 16).
As in Vietnam, the Western media used television to bring
the shocking images of the Afghan war home to global audiences.
CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather was smuggled into Afghanistan
to cover the conflict (Lohbeck xi). Correspondents brought shocking
proof of Soviet atrocities, including aerial napalm bombings
of civilian populations and toys rigged to explode when played
with by Afghan children. This footage first aired on US evening
news programs alongside coverage of the first summit between
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (Lohbeck 159).
The Soviet forces were ill prepared to fight in Afghanistan.
Poor sanitation, harsh mountain climates, drug abuse, and alcoholism
took a heavy toll. Nearly 470,000 of the 620,000 Soviet Army
soldiers sent to Afghanistan were hospitalized, yet only eleven
percent of those hospitalized suffered combat wounds. (Grau and
Jorgenson).
The Afghan war sparked a first-ever anti-war movement in the
Soviet Union, leading to the arrests of dissidents, including
Nobel Prize-winning Andrei Sakharov, as well as the deaths of
college student protestors. A State Department report speculated
that the widespread unpopularity of the Afghan war had shown
a:
“(D)omestic crisis within the Soviet system … It
may be that the thermodynamic law of entropy has finally and
fully caught up with the Soviet system, which now seems to expend
more energy simply on maintaining its equilibrium than on improving
itself” (LaFeber 298).
During the Christmas season of 1987, a failed Soviet effort
to relieve the besieged city of Khost was covered extensively
by Western media. Declared a “battle the Soviets must win”,
the fighting to reopen the road for Khost was the beginning of
the end of the Afghan war (Lohbeck 227). The next year, in return
for an end to US aid for the Afghan rebels, the Soviets agreed
to leave Afghanistan (Lohbeck 229).
On a snowy day on February 15, 1989, Soviet General Boris
Gromov marched across the bridge over the Oxus River, out of
Afghanistan and into the Soviet Union. The last Soviet soldier
to leave Afghanistan, Gromov did not look back (Lohbeck 270).
A Pope and an Electrician: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland
Pope John Paul was born to a farming family in Poland on May
18, 1920 (Kwitny 25). Growing up in a nation that was first overrun
by Nazi Germany, then by the Soviet Union, John Paul cautiously
advanced in the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, until he ascended
to the Papacy of the Roman Church on October 26, 1978 (Kwitny
295).
Upon becoming Pope, John Paul informed Polish officials he
was no longer a Polish cardinal, and was no longer subject to
their censorship. In his first Sunday prayer service from Rome,
he attacked the Polish government, and soon thereafter ordered
that Polish-language Mass be broadcast into Poland every Sunday
(Kwitny 308).
In 1976, a Polish electrician, Lech Walesa, challenged the
leadership of the government-sponsored labor union of his shipyard.
Though management swiftly fired him, he soon became a leading
figure of a growing movement of laborers and political dissidents
known as Solidarity, who were challenging the corrupt Polish
communist dictatorship (Kwitny 282). In August 1980, Walesa led
the Solidarity strike at the Gdansk shipyards, becoming the leader
of the Solidarity movement (Nobel).
Solidarity soon gained worldwide attention and support. The
American AFL-CIO labor union, led by George Meany, who had battled
socialists inside the American labor movement, began supporting
Solidarity with American union dollars, aided by the Roman Catholic
Church (Kwitny 378). On a visit to Rome in January 1981, Pope
John Paul in met with Walesa privately (Kwitny 379).
Moscow was determined to see Walesa and Solidarity shut down
before it upset communist control of Poland. Threatened with
a Soviet invasion, Polish Defense Minister Jaruzelski seized
control of Poland, and declared martial law on December 13, 1981.
Thousands were arrested, Solidarity was banned, and several Solidarity
leaders and Catholic clergy were murdered. Walesa was placed
under house arrest, and most of the rest of Solidarity’s
leadership were either imprisoned, or forced to go underground
in order to escape arrest (Pryce-Jones 198).
On May 13, 1981, Turkish assassin Mehmet Ali Agca shot Pope
John Paul in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. John Paul survived
the shooting and Agca was sentenced to life. While Agca implicated
members of the Bulgarian secret police in the assassination plot,
connections between the communist Bulgarian government and the
Soviet Union in the plot remain unconfirmed (Kwitny 463).
In October 1982, Walesa was released and returned to his job
at the Gdansk shipyards. Martial law in Poland was lifted in
the spring of 1983. In October 1983, Walesa was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. In awarding Walesa the Nobel Prize, the nominating
committee wrote:
“The electrician from Gdansk, the carpenter's son from
the Vistula valley has managed to lift the banner of freedom
and humanity so high that the whole world can once again see
it. His actions have become a chapter in the history of international
labour, and the future will recognise his name among those who
contributed to humanity's legacy of freedom.” (Nobel)
Two Poles from simple backgrounds, Pope John Paul and Lech
Walesa, had accomplished what many others had failed to do. They
defied communism, and lived to become international heroes whose
courageous acts inspired even greater resistance to communism.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Glasnost, and Perestroika
Since its founding, the Soviet Union had been ruled by an aging
group of Communist party veterans of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Long-time Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev died in November 1982,
and was succeeded by two ailing and elderly KGB officials: first,
by Yuri Andropov, who died in February 1984, then Constantin
Chernenko, who died in March 1985 (Smith 146).
Mikhail Gorbachev, who succeeded Chernenko, was the first
Soviet leader from the post-Soviet Revolution generation (Pryce-Jones
4). He was confronted with deep-rooted and widespread problems
across the Soviet Union. Corruption in the Soviet system was
rampant, and even considered normal in many places (Pryce-Jones
53). Crime, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as environmental
pollution had gotten so bad that the statistics regarding them
were no longer published (Pryce-Jones 58).
Food shortages and foreign debt for a failed industrial modernization
drive in the 1970s left the Soviets deep in debt and dependent
on Western aid (LaFeber 304). While the Soviet Union led the
United States in production of such commodities as steel, coal,
and oil, and was even the world’s largest oil producer,
twenty-five percent of its Gross Domestic Product went to support
its military (LaFeber 315).
As part of a younger generation of communist officials, Gorbachev
was as educated in Western culture as in Soviet communism, and
found it easy to reach out to Western leaders in an effort to
defuse Western fears of the Soviet Union (LaFeber 319). Gorbachev
built a working relationship with Thatcher, who he found a reliable
“bridge” in dealing with the United States (Smith 267).
Eager to bail out the collapsing Soviet economy, which had
reduced the per capita income to a mere tenth of the US per capita
income of $19,780 by 1990, Gorbachev invited Western businesses
into the Soviet Union. Soon, McDonald’s and Pepsi were selling
food in Moscow, General Motors was investing in the Soviet automotive
industry, and Chevron was seeking oil in Siberia. However, these
reforms failed, and industrial output fell 25 percent from 1986
and 1991 (Pryce-Jones 101).
Challenges from the West continued to confront Gorbachev.
A number of Soviet dissidents, including the writer Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, painted a dark picture of life in the Soviet Union
for Western audiences, and inspired continued agitation by Soviet
reform leaders (Pryce-Jones 39). Reagan continued to challenge
Gorbachev’s commitment to reforms, continuing his support
for resistance groups in communist nations, including the Afghans
and Solidarity (Lohbeck 16). On June 12, 1987, Reagan stood at
the Berlin Wall, calling for Gorbachev to show his commitment
to reform by challenging him to “open this gate … tear
down this wall” (Buffett).
Eager to present a more democratic face to the West, Gorbachev
allowed elections in the Soviet Republics. These would backfire,
as non-communist parties won major victories in the 1990 elections,
placing anti-Gorbachev reformers in charge of several Soviet
Republics (LaFeber 319).
The Fall of the Warsaw Pact
In May of 1989, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Gorbachev told Kohl the Soviets
would not block democratic reforms in Warsaw Pact nations, ending
the long-standing Brezhnev Doctrine, which barred any communist
nation from rejecting communism (Buffett).
Democratic forces in the Warsaw Pact wasted little time in
testing Gorbachev. In Poland, Solidarity rose from the underground
and demanded power in the Polish government. When Gorbachev refused
to intervene, Polish communist officials backed down, holding
elections that swept Solidarity into power (LaFeber 335).
Following Poland’s lead, Hungary set elections for 1990,
and opened its borders to thousands of East Germans seeking to
flee to the West in September 1989. Abandoned by Moscow, the
East German government gave in and opened the Berlin Wall on
November 9, 1989, which was demolished by mobs from East and
West Berlin (LaFeber 335).
Weeks of protests in Prague by hundreds of thousands forced
the fall of the Czech communist regime in November 1989, followed
by Bulgaria the same month and by Romania in December, where
long-time dictator Nicolae Ceausecu and his wife were executed
(LaFeber 335). The fall of the Warsaw Pact had taken less than
six months.
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
As the 1990s began, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe was
gone, the Soviet economy was collapsing, and reformers were beginning
to gain power inside the Soviet Union (Pryce-Jones 101). Boris
Yeltsin, a reform leader purged by Gorbachev from the Moscow
Communist Party leadership in 1987, was elected President of
the Russian Republic in 1990 (LaFeber 319).
In April 1991, Gorbachev convened a meeting of the Presidents
of the Republics of the Soviet Union to draft a new Constitution.
Gorbachev hoped this would help reduce the pressures from reformers.
Instead, Presidents of several Republics stayed home and some
of those who showed demanded independence (Pryce-Jones 405).
Rumors began to surface of old-guard military leaders plotting
to restore the Communist hard line, frustrated what they perceived
as growing threats to the Soviet Union, including the pending
ratification of the new Constitution (Pryce-Jones 407). In the
early hours of August 19th, Red Army tanks rolled into Moscow
and the Soviet people were informed Gorbachev was “ill”
and had abdicated (Pryce-Jones 409).
Awakened to reports of the coup, Boris Yeltsin donned a bulletproof
vest and rushed to the Russian “White House”. Live
worldwide television soon carried images of Yeltsin standing
on top of a tank among crowds of protestors, denouncing the coup
and rallying the Russian people to his cause. His bold gamble
worked, as the coup leaders folded and fled Moscow less than
48 hours later. Freed from his brief exile, Gorbachev returned
to Moscow, suspended the Communist Party’s Central Committee,
and allowed Yeltsin to begin organizing his own government (Pryce-Jones
430).
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania declared
their independence after Soviet forces withdrew following the
failed coup. On December 1st, Yeltsin met with Ukrainian President
Leonid Kravchuk and Belarussian President Stanislas Shushkevich,
where they signed a joint declaration of independence (Pryce-Jones
432).
On Christmas Day of 1991, faced with Yeltsin’s refusal
to pay the bills of the Soviet government, Gorbachev went on
Russian television and resigned, dissolving the Soviet Union.
Several hours’ later, Soviet flags over the Kremlin were
replaced with Russian tri-color national flags and Russian officials
moved into the Kremlin (LaFeber 346). With this simple act, the
Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Who Ended Soviet Communism?
Reagan and Thatcher’s efforts to revitalize Western military
forces and their hard-line towards Communist expansion protected
the West from Warsaw Pact forces. By revitalizing the Western
economies, they restored the West as a beacon of hope and opportunity
to the peoples of communist-ruled Warsaw Pact nations. While
many of the forces that brought down Soviet communism were beyond
their control, they boldly took advantage of the opportunities
given them by these forces to strengthen the hand of the West
in dealing with the communist nations.
Gorbachev’s refusal to continue the heavy-handed brutality
of his predecessors allowed the peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw
Pact and Soviet Union to take place. However, his “balancing
act” between reform and hard-line Communist forces within
the Soviet Union helped create a power vacuum which unleashed
forces that destroyed the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union from within.
Ultimately, Gorbachev’s failure to lead and inability to
act decisively brought about his own downfall.
Much of the credit for the downfall of Soviet communism must
go to many in communist-dominated nations, from Berlin to Afghanistan,
whose courage to resist communism was expressed in many ways,
both violent and non-violent. Unable to resist both forces from
within and Western opposition from the outside, the Soviet empire
was gradually stretched and tested at many points until it suddenly
imploded.
The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union ended
Soviet communism, allowed democracy a new start in Central and
Eastern Europe, and ended the threat of World War Three, which
may well have led to a global nuclear holocaust. While the future
of post-communist Europe remains uncertain, the collapse of Soviet
communism has given many in Europe new hope for a better future.
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[Source: http://cappsfamily.hypermart.net/cold_war.htm ] |