Aim: What were the causes and effects of the fall of the Soviet Union?
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Transcript of Aim: What were the causes and effects of the fall of the Soviet Union?
Aim: What were the causes and effects of the fall of the Soviet
Union?
Mikhael Gorbachev’s attempts to solve the problems of the Soviet Union
• Pulls out of Afghanistan and reduces military spending
• Gives up military control of Eastern Europe• Announces “Perestroika” and “Glasnost”
– Perestroika – encouraging a free market, not a command, economy
– Glasnost – openness and political freedom; non-communist political parties allowed
Eastern European nations turn West
• Communist governments resign, usually peacefully
• Eastern European nations leave the Warsaw Bloc, open borders with Western Europe
• Berlin Wall falls, Germany re-united
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4434331027793809225&q=berlin+wall+video&ei=-bg4SAuU-OICi87U4gM&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-181898405138602708&q=berlin%20wall%20video&hl=en
Soviet Union splits up; Communist government collapses
• Dissension within Communist Party about Gorbachev’s path leads to attempted coup
• Soviet government falls• Soviet Union splits into many different
nations, by nationality group
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8953962851459266994&q=soviet+union+leaders&ei=HLs4SNfZKpm05AKXgqXfAw
Break-up of the Soviet Union
Break-up of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Bloc’s demise
• Most Eastern European nations (including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) join NATO and the European Union
• Central Asian states – “stans” – stay allied to Russia - “Commonwealth of Independent States” - but also look east and south
• Which way to turn? Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia
Expansion of NATO
Ukraine, Georgia
seek NATO membership
Russian ethnicity in former Soviet states (Pink)
Oil and Gas Pipelines in Eurasia
Central Asia - China Pipeline
Proposed Russia - China pipeline
Boris Yeltsin and the Fall of Russia
• 1990s: Privatization of the “means of production”: State property handed over to those with political connections
• Boris Yeltsin presided over a decade of
– democratization
– economic collapse
– removal of communist “safety net”
Vladimir Putin and the Rise of Russia
• Vladimir Putin: President 2000-08– Stability for Russian economy w/ help from
high oil prices– Return of authoritarian government, Russian
nationalism– Attempts to recreate sphere of influence in
Commonwealth of Independent States (the “stans”)
– Disputes with Ukraine and Georgia when they “look West”
How does Putin’s Russia compare with Czarist Russia?