How Did the Soviet Empire Really Crumble? Part 2

The 1980’s saw an even greater rise against the system and even the Soviet Union, with all its harshness and restrictions, was no longer safe from the rise of direct criticism from its own citizens. In hopes that more openness would lead to more general satisfaction with the government policies, then-President Mikhail Gorbachev instituted glasnost and prestorika reforms to allow more limited freedom. This move is widely considered to be the first blow that signaled the beginning of the end.

With the Soviet Union now flirting with liberal reforms, the people in the satellite states saw a grand opportunity to seek reforms and it was perhaps moves by the Hungarian government that especially paved the way for the ultimate end of communism in Eastern Europe. In 1988, the Hungarian government lifted all restrictions on foreign travel and a few months later, in a scene that would be played out in the news everywhere, Hungarian troops removed the barbed-wire fence and all checkpoints from its border with Austria.

Soon thereafter, East Germans began arriving in Hungary by the thousands, using the country’s now open border to travel to West Berlin to see relatives they had not seen since the Berlin Wall was erected 28 years earlier. A few months later came perhaps the deadliest blow of all to communism in Eastern Europe – the destruction of the Berlin Wall. And like a domino effect, the communist regimes in all of Eastern Europe fell and by the end of 1989, Eastern Europe was declared a communist-free zone.

And this happened without any prodding by the United States.

But the Soviet Empire’s destruction was far from complete. Two years later, in the summer of 1991, while much of the world’s attention was still focused on tension in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, Lithuania saw the perfect opportunity to become the first Soviet Republic to declare independence. Moscow immediately sent troops in to try to squash Lithuania’s independence but it was perhaps fear of incurring fierce worldwide condemnation that kept Moscow from acting overly aggressive and soon gave up its attempt to regain Lithuania.

Lithuania’s relatively bloodless divorce from the Kremlin inspired the other republics to seek independence. It took only a few months. The Russian Federation held its first democratic election ever, installing Boris Yeltsin as president. Other republics followed suit, holding their own elections and declaring that their own laws took precedence over all laws coming from Moscow. An August coup by hard-line communists failed to stop the inevitable.

As a Christmas present to the rest of the world, on Dec. 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of a country that was now no more. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had ceased as a country.

And it had ceased without any interference or meddling by the United States. The Soviet Empire destroyed itself. It was an empire that had been hastily put together by greed and force and fear. Such an empire never lasts. The United States just so happened to be in the right place at the right time.

And even with the Soviet Union no more, the Russian Federation, widely considered to be the torch-carrier from the Soviet Union since it inherited almost everything left over from the Soviet Union’s disintegration, continues to hold a considerable amount of influence in the region, especially where the former Soviet republics are concerned. Despite independence, many of them remain wary of making any foreign policy decision that could earn them the ire of the Kremlin. And the landlocked former republics in Central Asia still depend heavily on trade and economic ties with Russia to survive.

So, in a manner of speaking, the Soviet Empire is not dead. It just has a new name and new system.