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Death of Leonid Ilich Brézhnev
He left behind an aged, stagnant political leadership. The final Brezhnev years had been marked by the frequent absences of its leader, who was ill and weakened and seemed increasingly to rely on his protégé Konstantin Chernenko; most insiders felt that Chernenko would be the successor to Brezhnev. However, Andropov somehow managed to outmanoeuver him. -
Yuri Andropov Part 2
He tried to remove Brezhnev’s and Chernenko’s supporters and replace them with a new group of nomenklatura* loyal to Andropov and more likely to promote changes needed in the stagnant Soviet system.
*Political elites in Soviet society who held positions of power. -
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Yuri Andropov
Andropov did have some ideas for change. He made public the facts of economic stagnation and proposed a solution: "people needed to work harder and increase individual productivity". He tried to put into place policies according to which those “illegally absent” from work would be arrested. In 1983, he shut down much of the Soviet space program in an attempt to save money and slow the accelerating foreign debt. -
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Konstantin Chernenko
Upon his death in 1984, Andropov was succeeded by Chernenko. There were very few changes in the Chernenko period. Domestic and foreign policies remained the same, as the gerontocracy* spent its last days in charge of the USSR. It was his death in March 1985 that marked the real changes in the Soviet regime and signified the end of the Brezhnev era.
*A form of rule in which the leadership of a country is significantly older than the majority of the adult population. -
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Demokratizatsiya was a slogan calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union
In the period of perestroika, glasnost, and demokratizatsiya (“democratization”) reform policies; fundamental changes took place in the political system and government structures of the Soviet Union that altered the nature of the Soviet federal state. In 1988 the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies was created. For the first time, elections to these bodies presented voters with a choice of candidates, including non-communists, though the Communist Party continued to dominate the system. -
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Mikhail Gorbachev
He was hoping to revitalize the Communist Party and maintain a socialist system of governance in the Soviet Union through economic reform and political openness designed to modernize the state and satisfy the population. Unfortunately for him, his reforms were a Pandora’s box for communism, and once these dual policies were implemented, the drive for democracy followed and ultimately led to the collapse of the regime. -
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Foreign Policies Part 2
As the US noticed a change in Soviet attitudes, meetings between R. Reagan and M. Gorbachev became more usual. Talks on arms reductions began anew, with US determination to continue nuclear testing and to construct a defense shield angering the Soviet leadership. After the Chernobyl disaster, limiting nuclear arms testing and development was a priority for the Soviet regime. -
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Foreign Policies Part 3
In December 1987, Gorbachev went to Washington to discuss the reduction on their stockpile of nuclear arms—the Soviet Union by 25 per cent and the United States by 15 per cent.
When Gorbachev began his tenure as leader of the USSR, he was received enthusiastically at home and with cautious trepidation abroad. By the end of 1988 the situation was reversed in which Gorbachev had become more popular in the United States than he was at home; an uncomfortable position for him until 1991. -
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Foreign Policies Part 1
Throughout the 1980s, Gorbachev sought to distance the USSR from the satellite states in Eastern Europe. He mentioned that the USSR would engage in a policy of non-intervention in the Warsaw Pact countries, a complete negation of the Brezhnev Doctrine.
The Soviets determined that it was necessary to withdraw from Afghanistan; intervention was costly, made the USSR unpopular internationally and was extremely unpopular at home. -
Glasnost
Glasnost is a Russian word that can be translated as "openness," it refers to the Soviet policy of open discussion of political and social issues of previous Soviet Practices. The policy was instituted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1985 (until the beginning of the 1990s) and began the democratization of the Soviet Union. As you can see in the image, this was something really important to the Soviets and to the world. -
Perestroika
It was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. The translation for perestroika is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system. This policy permitted wider economic freedoms, including entrepreneurship and private enterprise, while still remaining in the framework of the Soviet planned economy. -
The Chernobyl disaster
A test on one of the reactors cooling systems began at 1 a.m. Almost immediately, the emergency shutdown failed and the reactor exploded. Firefighters responded to the explosion, unaware that it had released toxic levels of radiation into the air. Also some villager that lived nearby were not notified of the radiation.
This accident took place at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, part of the Soviet territory at that time (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic). -
Dissolution of the Soviet Union (S.U) *December 1991
The S.U had fallen,largely due to the great number of radical reforms that Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR. However,Gorbachev was disappointed in the dissolution of his nation and resigned from his job on*
The S.U disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Also its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.
