15.5 The Cold War Ends

Read the following section and answer the questions that follow.                                                                                            

The End of the Cold War

The global Cold War between two armed camps led by the United States and the Soviet Union lasted almost half a century. In the years around 1990, however, the struggle finally ended. The much-
feared nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers never came about, but the end was as clear as any military victory.

The Soviet Union Declines

Western fears of growing Soviet power did not come true. In fact, Soviet communism was doomed. Signs of the weakness of the Soviet system had in fact been visible from the beginning. 

A Hollow Victory 
Stalin’s Soviet Union emerged from World War II as a superpower with an Eastern European sphere of influence stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans. Victory, however, brought few rewards to the Soviet people. Stalin continued to fill forced labor camps with “enemies of the state.”

Reforms Give Way to Repression 
Under Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, Soviets enjoyed greater freedom of speech.
Some government critics were freed from prisons and labor camps. Khrushchev oversaw a shift in economic priorities away from heavy industry and toward the production of consumer goods. But
Khrushchev remained firmly committed to a command economy.
The thaw in Moscow inspired some East Europeans to move toward greater independence. However, Khrushchev himself remained a determined cold warrior. When Hungarians tried to
break free of Soviet control in 1956, Khrushchev sent tanks in to enforce obedience, and his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, did the same thing when Czechs challenged the Soviets in the “Prague spring” of 1968.

The Command Economy Stagnates 
The Soviet Union rebuilt its shattered industries after World War II, using equipment stripped from
Germany. The government poured resources into science and technology, launching Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite, in 1957. 
Yet the Soviet economy faced severe problems. Collectivized agriculture remained so unproductive that Russia, a grain exporter in tsarist times, had to import grain to feed its people. The Soviet command economy could not match Western market economies in producing consumer goods. Soviet shoes and television sets were far inferior, while such luxuries as clothes washers or automobiles remained rare.
Central economic planning led to inefficiency and waste. A huge bureaucracy decided what and how much to produce. Government planners in Moscow, however, knew little about local needs. They chose to produce many unneeded goods. Consumers’ needs often were not met. Although workers were paid low wages, lifetime job security gave them little incentive to produce better-quality goods.
Unlike the economies of Western Europe and the United States, which experienced booms during the Cold War, the economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union stagnated. People saw little improvement in their standards of living and envied the prosperity of the West. Soviet
economic inferiority made it impossible for the Soviet Union to keep up with the United States in the arms race and in military preparedness.

Cracking Under the Burden of Military Commitments 
As you have read, Soviet-American relations swung between confrontation and détente during the Cold War. Meanwhile, both sides maintained large military budgets and built expensive nuclear weapons.
The arms race put a particular strain on the inefficient Soviet command economy. And when U.S. President Ronald Reagan launched a new round of missile development, it was clear that the Soviet economy could not afford to match it.

Soviets Have Their Own “Vietnam”
 in Afghanistan In 1979, the Soviet Union became involved in a long war in Afghanistan, an Islamic
country just south of the Soviet Union. A Soviet-supported Afghan government had tried to modernize the nation. Its policies included social reforms and land redistribution that would reduce the power of regional landlords. Afghan landlords—who commanded armed men as warlords—
and Muslim conservatives charged that both policies threatened Islamic tradition. When these warlords took up arms against the government,Soviet troops moved in.
Battling mujahedin (moo jah heh DEEN), or Muslim religious warriors, in the mountains of Afghanistan, however, proved as difficult as fighting guerrillas in the jungles of Vietnam had been for Americans. By the mid-1980s, the American government began to smuggle modern weaponry to the mujahedin. The Soviets had years of heavy casualties, high costs, and few successes. Like America’s Vietnam War, the struggle in Afghanistan provoked a crisis in morale for the Soviets at home.

Gorbachev Tries Reform
 In 1985, an energetic new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev (GAWR buh chawf), came to power in the Soviet Union. With the economy in bad shape and the war dragging on in Afghanistan, Gorbachev was eager to bring about reforms. The changes he urged, however, soon spiraled out of control.
Gorbachev sought to avoid Cold-War confrontations. He signed arms control treaties with the
United States and pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.
At home, he called for glasnost, or openness. He ended censorship and encouraged people to
discuss the country’s problems openly. He also urged perestroika (pehr uh STROY kuh), or restructuring, of the government and economy. To improve efficiency, he reduced the size of the
bureaucracy and backed limited private enterprise. His reforms made factory managers rather
than central planners responsible for decisions. They also allowed farmers to sell produce on the
free market.

An Empire Crumbles 
Gorbachev’s reforms, however, brought economic turmoil. Shortages grew worse and prices soared. Factories that could not survive without government help closed, leading to high unemployment. Those whose jobs were threatened denounced the reforms.Other critics demanded even more radical changes.
Gorbachev’s policies also fed unrest across the Soviet empire. Eastern European countries from Poland to Bulgaria broke out of the Soviet orbit beginning in 1989. The Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—which the Soviet Union had seized in 1940, regained full independence in
1991. Russia’s postwar empire seemed to many to be collapsing. Soviet hard-liners tried to overthrow Gorbachev that year and restore the old order. Their attempted coup failed, but it further weakened Gorbachev, who soon resigned as president.
At the end of 1991, the remaining Soviet republics separated to form 12 independent nations, in addition to the three Baltic States. The largest of these was Russia, which had most of the population and territory of the former Soviet Union. The next largest were Kazakhstan and
Ukraine. Maps of Europe and Asia had to be redrawn to reflect the new political boundaries. After 69 years, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.

Changes Transform Eastern Europe

The Soviet Union had maintained control over its Eastern European satellites by force. When Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europeans began to seek greater freedom intheir own countries. As the Soviet Union crumbled, Eastern Europeans
demanded an end to Soviet domination. This time they got it. Demands for Freedom Increase As you have read, unrest had long simmered across the Soviet bloc. Many Eastern Europeans opposed com-
munist rule. Nationalists resented Russian domination. Revolts had erupted in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, demands for change mounted once again.


Hungary Quietly Reforms
In 1968, when Czechoslovakia’s defiance of Soviet control led to a Soviet invasion, Hungary quietly introduced modest economic reforms. Because Hungary remained loyal to the Warsaw Pact and maintained communist political control, it was allowed to go ahead with these reforms, which included elements of a market economy. During the 1970s, Hungary expanded its market economy. During the late 1980s, under the spirit of glasnost, Hungarians began to criticize the communist government more openly. Economic troubles led to greater discontent. Finally, in 1988 and 1989, under public pressure, the communist government allowed greater freedoms. New political parties
were allowed to form, and the western border with Austria was opened.

Poland Embraces Solidarity 
Poland led the way in the new surge of resistance that shattered the Soviet satellite empire. In 1980, economic hardships ignited strikes by shipyard workers. Led by Lech Walesa (lek vah WEN suh), they organized Solidarity, an independent labor union. It won millions of members and demanded political as well as economic change.
Under pressure from the Soviet Union, the Polish government outlawed the union and arrested its leaders, including Walesa. Still, unrest continued. Walesa became a national hero, and the Polish government eventually released him from prison. Pope John Paul II visited Poland, met with Solidarity leaders, and criticized communist policies. The pope was the former Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of the Polish city of Cracow.

 East Germans Demand Change
 Unlike Poland or Hungary, East Germany resisted Gorbachev’s calls for change. In 1988, the rigidly communist East German government banned Soviet publications, because it considered glasnost subversive. East Germany’s communists blocked moves toward a market economy or greater political freedom. However, East Germans could watch television broadcasts from West Germany.
They were thus intensely aware how much more prosperity and political freedom existed on the other side of the Berlin Wall. When Hungary opened its border with Austria in 1989, thousands of East Germans fled through Hungary and Austria to West Germany. Thousands more held demonstrations across East Germany demanding change.

Communist Governments 
Fall In the late 1980s, Gorbachev declared that he would not interfere with Eastern European reforms. Poland legalized Solidarity and, in 1989, held the first free elections in 50 years. A year later, Lech Walesa was elected president of Poland. The new government began a difficult, but peaceful, transition from a command economy to a market economy.
A flowering of opposition and reform movements spread across the Eastern European countries. By late 1989, a powerful democracy movement was sweeping throughout the region. Everywhere, people took to the streets, demanding reform. One by one, communist governments fell. In Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel (VAHTS lahv HAH vul), a dissident writer and human rights activist, was elected president. In East Germany, the gates of the Berlin Wall were opened, and the country started down the road to reunification with West Germany. Most changes came peacefully, but when Nicolae Ceausescu (chow SHES koo), Romania’s longtime dictator, refused to step down, he was overthrown and executed. For the first time since 1939, Eastern European countries were free.
They dissolved the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and requested that Russian troops leave. By then, the Soviet Union itself had crumbled.

Czechoslovakia Splits 
Czechoslovakia was a relatively new nation, formed in 1918 at the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before 1918, the country’s Czech and Slovak ethnic groups—each with its own language and traditions—had lived separately. After Czechoslovakia’s founding, Czechs dominated the country’s government. During World War II, Czechoslovakia was conquered and partitioned, or divided, by
Nazi Germany. Czechoslovakia was reunified under communist control after the war. When the communists lost power in 1989, some Slovaks began to call for independence. In 1992, the Slovaks and Czechs peacefully agreed to divide Czechoslovakia into the new nations of Slovakia
and the Czech Republic.

Communism Declines Around the World

The collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc affected communist countries from China to Castro’s Cuba. Many were already suffering economic decline by the 1980s as their command economies stagnated. Although political dictatorships still prevailed, rigid, government-run economies
sometimes gave way to freer, more productive economic systems. 

China Builds on Deng’s Reforms 
Gorbachev had urged the leaders of other communist states to consider both political and economic changes. China’s leaders, building on Deng Xiaoping’s 1980s economic reforms, generated an
amazing economic boom in the 1990s. China became a major producer of consumer goods
and achieved double-digit growth rates. China’s government undertook no major political reforms. However, as the global economic crisis that began in 2008 led to factory closings, protests by unem-
ployed workers increased. China’s government responded with a $600 billion stimulus package to retrain workers and improve productivity.

Vietnam and North Korea Differ
Communist Vietnam established diplomatic relations with the United States in the 1990s. Vietnam also began to change economically, encouraging tourism and becoming a leading exporter of coffee.
North Korea, on the other hand, hunkered down in grim isolation, rejecting all reforms. Its rigidly totalitarian regime often proved unable to feed its own people, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. A 2007 agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for U.S. aid seemed to founder as the decade drew to a close.



Cuba Declines 
Cuba’s economy, deprived of Soviet support and still crippled by American sanctions, deteriorated. Many felt that communism in Cuba would not outlive its leader, Fidel Castro. In 2006, the ailing
Castro surrendered control of the government to his younger brother Raúl, who allowed some market reforms.

The United States as Sole Superpower

With the collapse of its great rival, the United States was widely recognized as the only remaining superpower. After years of thin budgets, Russia’s armed forces seemed weak and ineffective. Only the United States could project its power around the world.
The United States thus emerged as the world’s leading military power. From time to time, the United States exercised this power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States staged several military missions around the world. You will learn more about these in upcoming chapters.
Americans seemed unsure of their proper role in the world. Some objected to the risk and expense of being “the world’s policeman.” Others, however, believed that the United States should play an even more aggressive part in world affairs.
America’s unrivaled power produced mixed reactions around the world. When the Soviet threat had loomed, American power had been seen as a valuable counterweight. Some continued to see the United States as a protector of freedom. With no rival threat in sight, however,
people in many parts of the world were less pleased to see any single nation as powerful as the United States had become.

( define ) mujahedin

( define ) Mikhail Gorbachev

( define ) glasnost

( define ) perestroika

( define ) Lech Walesa

( define ) Solidarity

( define ) Václav Havel

( define ) Nicolae Ceausescu

( checkpoint ) How did Gorbachev’s policies lead to a new map of Europe and Asia?

( checkpoint ) How did glasnost in the Soviet Union lead to the end of communism in Eastern Europe?

( checkpoint ) How did communist countries react differently to the collapse of the Soviet bloc?

( checkpoint ) Why did America’s position as the sole superpower produce mixed reactions?

( assessment ) Why was the Soviet Union unable to keep up with the market economies of the West?

( assessment ) How did Gorbachev’s reforms lead to the breakup of the Soviet empire?

( assessment ) Why were Eastern Europeans able to break free of communist governments and Soviet domination in the late 1980s?

( assessment ) How did the collapse of the Soviet Union affect the power of other countries around the
world?

( objectives ) Understand how the Soviet Union declined.

( objectives )  Analyze the changes that transformed Eastern Europe.

( objectives ) Explain how communism declined worldwide and the United States became the sole
superpower.

) focus question ) What were the causes and effects of the end of the Cold War?