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Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse Essay

800 Words4 Pages

Introduction
On 25th December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the USSR, resigned as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ President and dissolved the Communist Party’s Central Committee (Clines, 1991). Five days later, the Supreme Soviet finally ended its affection on the Soviet’s territory and the Soviet Union, therefore, officially collapsed. This research aims to discuss reasons for this historical event.
This study starts with political reasons and then, the Gorbachev’s reform which are the two leading factors of the Soviet Union collapse. Finally, it discusses some economic reasons.
Political reasons
The government’s dictatorship was the most important factor leading the Soviet Union to collapse. Constitutionally, The Soviet Union had three power hierarchies: Supreme Soviet was the legislature, the Council of Ministers represented the government and the Communist party of Soviet Union (CPSU) was the exclusive party in the country (Sakwa, 1998). Moreover, to protect the totalitarianism, the CSPU used the system of appointments requiring that there was always a party …show more content…

In explanation, the central-planned economy was a type of economic system where the Government owned the means of production, the industrial asset, the collective farming and the centralized planning or in short, the Government controlled all the economy (Hanson, 2003). These powers were implemented throughout a series of Five-year Plans setting goals of development for the whole country to achieve. However, beside some success in the first few plans, this kind of economy revealed its weakness as Mullock (2016) argued: Substantial disadvantages associated with centrally-planned economic system include inefficiencies associated with resource distribution, lack of economic stability and lack of motivation for quality improvement due to the absence of competition. (para.

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