What is the Soviet Union ?
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – Is a socialist federalism state that draws all member nations and nationalities work together in order to build a communism. The USSR was formed in 1992 and ceased its existence in 1991. After the end of the Second World War, USSR became one of the major superpowers, as well as the dominant socialism country in the world. It’s communism social order was established by the Great October Revolution in 1917.
Countries that were in the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union consisted of fifteen states: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Russia.
What is Communism ?
Karl Marx and Frederich Engels are used to be known as the “Fathers of Communism”. They had studied the history of the world’s economies, and as a result wrote the “Communist Manifesto” in 1847, which defined the way that power, industry and finance were controlled. In Marxist theory, Communism is a method of production, or the ultimate form of political economy in a classes society in which the ruling class disappears, as each person works maximally, according to their ability, receiving the results of collective labour in accordance with need.
What was the ideology of the Soviet Union ?
In order to understand the ideology behind the Soviet Union, it is necessary to understand the theory of Marx and Engels. Their theory defines certain stages in developing:
• Primitive Communism – means that the society was not developed enough in a way that everything would be shared among the group of people.
• Feudalism – means that one becomes the ruler of all the people. However, privileges are generally distributed between those who rule the people for him. As trade develops, some people will get richer.
• Capitalism – means creation of huge working class of people who would eventually become furious because of the way they are treated by the business owners. Capitalism is an economic system, form of political economy, or mode of production that emphasises money, market-orientated trade, capital investment for further production, and a set of values or culture legitimating investment and market-orientated behaviours.
• Socialism – means that workers are producing good for everyone in accordance to needs, people are focusing more on health and education, because money are not so important anymore.
• Communism – means that all the people in the country have everything they need. People work for benefit of each other.
However, Soviet Union was not really a true communism country, it was a socialist state that was trying to achieve communism, but unfortunately this goal was never reached.
Why did the Soviet Union Split?
When did it happened?
On the 8th of December 1991 the heads of three republics – Boris Yeltsin (Russian Federation), Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine) and Stanislav Shushkevich (Byelorussia) signed an agreement on the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States. This symbolised complete disintegration of the USSR . Officially, the USSR ceased to exist on Dec. 26, 1991.
What are the reasons?
There were many reasons for the Soviet Union split, such as:
– Nationalism. Because Soviet Union was a multinational state, every nationality wanted to establish their own culture
– Authoritarianism of Soviet society. Various persecutions by the government, such as religious persecution, dissident’s persecution, domination of one ideology, prohibited communication with foreign countries, as well as censorship created a massive discontent from the side of the Soviet Union citizens.
– Shortages of food and necessary goods, low living standards compared to the Western Countries
– Economical crisis. In 1960-1970, in order to deal with unavoidable shortage of consumer goods, USSR has chosen the quantitive plan, which implied massive production of low quality goods, therefore in 1980’s, the term “Produced in USSR” was synonymous with “low quality” what resulted in overall loss of confidence to the whole economic system.
However, the main reason of the disintegration of USSR was that the Soviet community had different social layers, what indicate that people from different social layers, had absolutely different ways of living. This goes against Karl Marx theory. By the end of the Brezhnev period, social layers diversity reached a high level. The possibility for people to reach higher levels of living was almost impossible. Members of higher social class layers had various benefits and opportunities to have a better standard of living compared to the people from the lower social classes. Comparing the life in Soviet Union, where deflect was taking place, to the life in the West, people no longer wanted to stay in the Soviet Union because they started to think that the reason of a better life in the West is capitalism.
In the postwar years, the population of the Soviet Union increased by approximately one hundred million people, standards of living also increased. As well as people’s needs increased. It was not about items necessary for living, but the technology, machinery, infrastructure, etc. As a result, country was doing enormous amount of work in order to sustain fairly high level established. In the postwar years, USSR’s number of enterprises, institutions, organisations increased with enormous speed.
How Did the Soviet Union Split?
How territory was divided?
USSR constitution assumed that every member country had a right to secede from the union.
Thus, Soviet Union consisted of a variety of administrative and territorial division, which were better known as a Socialist Republics.
This means that all the member countries of the Soviet Union, would retain the territories they had before the establishment of the Soviet Union, in case of a sudden disintegration.
However, the collapse of the Soviet Union created uncertain boundaries between the former Soviet republics. The process of delimitation of borders stretched up to 2000’s. Delimitation of the Russian-Kazakh border carried out only on 2005, by the time of entry into European union, Estonian-Latvian border remained undefined. By December 2007, number of new independent states borders were not delimited. Lack of delimited border between Russian and Ukraine in the Kerch Strait led to the conflict over Tuzla Island. Disagreement over the territorial boundaries led to territorial claims from Estonia and Latvia to Russia. However, in 2007, the treaty between Latvia and Russia was signed in order to resolve all sensitive boundaries issues.
What happened to people?
During the crisis period, when the political form of government was changing. Instability of the legislative framework of the newly formed states economic crisis and power struggles resulted in establishment of banditry, corruption, inflation and unemployment. Everyone were surviving as they could. Immediately after the collapse of the USSR, impoverishment of people began. Mortality rate increased dramatically.
What Were the Consequences for the World?
– Eastern Europe countries turned to democracy, however this new system of government was unknown for them, so they did not possess all of the required skills for establishment of the successful democracies.
– The transfer from a socialist economy to a free market economy resulted in unemployment, inflation and poverty.
– All of the post-Soviet countries faced an economic depression.
– Many Soviet people faced difficulties in adapting to capitalism, they eventually decided that their lives under the communism regime were much better.
– Some of the post- Soviet countries had no experience in living by their own. Countries like Kazakhstan, never been a separate republic before.
– Establishment of fifteen undeveloped states.
What Were the Consequences for the People Who lived in Soviet Union?
Advantages:
– Religion.
– Freedom of speech and actions.
– Deficit problem gone.
– The ability to travel.
– Career possibility appeared.
Disadvantages:
– Guaranteed job, housing, education and free medical service were gone.
– After the disintegration, people didn’t know what to do next with their life.
– Unemployment
– Alcoholism, poverty, mortality increased.
What Happened With the Formed Countries After?
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, several international organisations were established in the region
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania have not acceded to any of those organisations, their main course was only to integrate in the Wester world.
Commonwealth of Independent States
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – an intergovernmental association created to promote cooperation in political, economic, humanitarian, cultural and other fields. This includes all former Soviet republics except the Baltic states. Turkmenistan and Ukraine are “associate members” of the CIS and Georgia, having declared its withdrawal from the CIS countries after the war in South Ossetia, ceased to be a member of the CIS August 18, 2009.
Organisation of the Collective Security Treaty
The CSTO comprises Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Uzbekistan. The task of the CSTO – the coordination and joint efforts in combating international terrorism and extremism, illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances.
Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development
In the Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development – GUAM at the present time includes four members: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
GUAM is regarded by many as an organisation created to counterbalance the dominance of Russia in the region. GUAM member-states do not fit into any of the other created by the former Soviet Union organisation, with the exception of the CIS.
The Eurasian Economic Community
Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) was created by Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on the basis of the CIS Customs Union. Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine have observer status in this community. Uzbekistan has agreed to join the organisation in October 2005, when a process of unification of the Central Asian Cooperation Organisation and Eurasian Economic Community. Uzbekistan’s accession to the organisation as a full member occurred on Jan. 25, 2006.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The organisation was founded in 2001 on the basis of a prior organisation called the Shanghai Five, and has existed since 1996 of the organisation is mainly concerned with matters of security.
Conclusion.
Was it a good decision?
It is impossible to define whether the break up of the Soviet Union was a good or bad decision, as it is impossible to predict what would happened in Soviet Union would still exist. However, one can say that the Soviet Union could not escape it’s split due to poor economy, and inability of the government to give Soviet people what they wanted.Due to the poor economy, lower class people were unable to move up in the social hierarchy. Upper class people, also wanted to keep moving, but they were unable to do so, because of the deficit in the Soviet Union. This made people to compare their life in the USSR to the Western life, and think that capitalist life on the West would be better than communist life in USSR.