HIST 410N WEEK 6: THE END OF THE COLD WAR DISCUSSION

HIST 410N WEEK 6: THE END OF THE COLD WAR DISCUSSION – What impact did Mikhail Gorbachev’s ideas of glasnost (openness), perestroika (restructuring) and demokratizatsiia (democratization) have on Communist society? Were these principles compatible with collectivization and a command economy? Did Communist leaders favor these principles or did they feel that their hand were tied once they were introduced into Communist society?

Class, to kick off our discussion this week, let me just state that it’s clear that the series of events led by Gobachev, and later Yelstin, paved the way for the collapse of communism. But was this all inevitable? Could communism have prevailed with a different series of events, or with different leadership? Why or why not?

HIST 410N WEEK 6: THE END OF THE COLD WAR DISCUSSION SAMPLE

The very nature of communism is unlikely to be one embraced by the individuals of a community or country, if given free-will and decision. Despite ideology and intention of good for the masses, and a well-being granted to the majority, it is often at the cost of individualism at many levels, including property, resources of the country, voice and decision making.

The people and countries of the Soviet Union were primed for change….

So ‘on Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time. A few days earlier, representatives from 11 Soviet republics (Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) met in the Kazakh city of Alma-Ata and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union” (Fall of the Soviet Union, History.com). Under the leadership and ideas of glasnost, perestroika and demokratizatsiia proposed and sought after for the people of Soviet Union, by President Mikhail Gorbachev, the once might USSR fell. The great number of reforms proposed and backed by Gorbachev ultimately caused the unstable and unpopular regimen of communism to fall for hope of establishment of Independent States within a Commonwealth structure.