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Hey folks,
This video is the last in a series of videos I did alongside Cypher, the Cynical Historian.
We’ve talked about periods where the entire world order was upended, and was never really
the same again.
This week we get to the most recent flipping of the geopolitical game board, the last time
the world map drastically changed in a such a short period.
I’m talking about the time when the Communist world that began in my last video, began to
fall apart.
It all began in a tumultuous period for the Communist world In the 1970s and early 1980s.
Even in the “good times” the economy was extremely unstable.
China had broken ties with Moscow and was now friends with the United States, Ronald
Reagan made the relatively peaceful period in the 70s between the United States and Soviet
Union tense up, and The USSR lost, not one, not two, but three leaders in as many years.
The Communist world was fiercely conservative, and filled with unmoving inefficient structures
that were leaving it further and further behind.
This is the world where Mikhail Gorbachev was handed the keys to the second most powerful
country in the world.
His attempts to bend and reform the communist world would result in its breaking, the creation
of 18 new countries, and the death of the great soviet experiment.
In 1986, when Gorbachev first took office, he had trouble even knowing where to begin
to move this immovable behemoth.
In his first year, he dismissed several of the most corrupt leaders, unexiled political
dissidents, and allowed the formation of Helsinki-86, the first openly anti-communist group in Soviet
history in Latvia.
The next year, he opened the Communist party to elections for the first time, sort of like
a bunch of primaries, with multiple candidates and secret ballots.
Political prisoners were freed, and people protested the soviet order without suppression.
Importantly, the secretary of Moscow Boris Yeltsin resigned his commission to be an anti-communist
activist, something no soviet leader had ever done before.
On the 48th anniversary of Stalin’s invasion of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia, they held vigils and sang songs about Stalin's victims.
The government denounced it, but did not interrupt.
In Armenia, 3000 people rose up against the environmental hazards such as nuclear and
chemical plants in their country.
Things really heated up though in 1988.
The Baltic republics pressed for independence, with large popular fronts taking over Estonia
and Latvia.
The Caucuses broke into civil war, with violence in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.
Moldova elected a democratic government, protests broke out in Ukraine, and Belarus was taken
over by a popular front of its own.
Gorbachev worried about the stability of the communist world, but seemed to think that
this was just the pains of his major reforms glasnost and Perestroika, or openness and
restructuring.
He passed a number of important reforms this year.
One key reform was the end of the jamming of foreign radio stations just 2 days after
I was born.
For the first time in decades, the Soviets could hear popular western music, news, and
for the first time really connected with the rest of the global community.
In 1989, The Soviet Union had its first elections since 1917.
Gorbachev began a television network that filmed the legislature uncensored for the
first time.
Between this, the radio, and the lack of suppression of protests, citizens were seeing the deep
cracks in their countries.
An experiment in democracy in Poland called the Polish Solidarity Union that existed in
some form since 1968, resulted in the toppling of the Communist government there that summer.
It would only be the first domino, however.
Over the next three years, all the pact countries, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East
Germany would all overthrow their Communist governments.
The Berlin wall would collapse in a matter of days.
It became more and more apparent that the people’s preference was to dump rather than
reform Communism.
In 1990, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union gave up its monopoly on political power,
and all 15 republics had their first competitive elections.
Reformers, and nationalists won many seats, even beating the Communist party in Lithuania,
Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, and Georgia.
Boris Yeltsin was elected the leader of Russia, beginning a struggle between the Soviet Union
governing body and the Russian one.
The Baltic states all declared independence, the fence along the border of Iran and Azerbaijan
was attacked, and by the end of what is called ‘Black January’ The USSR has effectively
lost Azerbaijan.
The Ukrainians made a 480 km Human chain between Kiev Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk to commemorate
the declaration of Ukraine’s independence in 1918.
And then, we have the coda of 1991.
A referendum to keep the Soviet Union together passes, but was boycotted in many of countries
that already declared their independence, as well as chechnya.
Gorbachev tried another round of reforms.
He restructured the USSR as a federation of independent states, with one president, foreign
policy, and military.
In the election for that presidency, he lost to Boris Yeltsin.
However, Yeltsin attempted a failed coup that put Gorbachev back in power, with much less
power.
By august he dissolved the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
basically dissolving the centralized authority in the union.
Between then and December, 10 republics declared independence, out of fear of another coup.
By September, Gorbachev’s power extended to the borders of the city of Moscow.
On December first, he got word that Ukraine voted 90% for independence, on Christmas day
1991, the red hammer and sickle flag went down over the Kremlin for the last time.
There are two main schools of thought as to why the Soviet Union collapsed.
Some say that this was the result of Gorbachev’s reforms, and Yeltsin’s activism.
The reforms were just too much too fast, and that was the reason why things fell apart.
Some, however, think that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of deep structural
problems in the Soviet government and economy.
Gorbachev’s reforms were like pushing over a house of cards.
I’d like to know what you think about that in comments, and if you saw any of these events
first hand, I really want to hear your story.
This video is the conclusion of a six video series where Cypher, the Cynical Historian
and I have been discussing world revolutions.
If you click on the i here in the corner, you can see the entire series from episode
1.
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