Download The End of the Cold War - The-Historic

The End of the Cold War
Why did Communism in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union
collapse?
Essential questions
• What provokes Public Opinion to go
against the government? (Authoritarian
Ger + Japan)
• Why did Communism in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union collapse?
Why wasn’t the Communist
System working?
-Internal reasons
(i) Inherent flaw in Communism
(ii) Ineffective government
-External reasons
How did Gorbachev try to get
The system to work?
-Policy of Perestroika
-Policy of Glasnost
End of the Cold War
What effect did Gorbachev’s
changes have on Eastern
Europe?
-Communist governments in
Many Eastern European
Countries lost power.
Why did the Soviet Union
Break up?
-Failure to solve problems
-Rise of nationalism
-August 1991 coup
Read pages 234-239
• Which problems/flaws are *inherent to
Communism?
• *inherent: part of the nature of
• Inherent flaws in Communism
(flawed theory) vs. Inefficiency of
government (Man)
• So if you think that a theory is flawed, no
matter how good man/govt is, it will still
fail, because the SYSTEM is flawed.
Example of flaw in theory of
Communism p. 204 + p. 235 textbook
1) Principle of equality removes incentive to work.
• Communism holds that all man should be paid
not according to their works, but according to
their needs, and this meant that there were
people who could and did take advantage of this
assurance to slack, since they continued to
receive the same benefits, regardless of the
amount of work put in.
• Results in lack of incentive to work and poor
work ethic.
• Vs. Singapore’s “reward for work and work for
reward”
Example of flaw in theory of
Communism p. 204 + p. 234-5 textbook
2) Principle of centrally-planned command economy led to
inflexibility in response, leading to entrenched economic
inefficiency.
• Planning from the centre meant that very often the
decision makers at the top were unaware of all the
intricate problems at the bottom/in society, and thus
came up with one-size fits all policies that were
unsuitable to be implemented.
• Moreover, the fact that every decision was controlled
from the centre meant that decision making took a long
time to loop around (from individual factory up the
communist bureaucracy) before it finally got back to the
individual factory, resulting in a time-lag that ultimately
crippled the system.
Example of flaw in theory of
Communism p. 204 + p. 237 textbook
• Principle of vanguard of the revolution being the
Communist party meant that feedback mechanism was
only functioning within the party, but the vast majority of
the people did not have an avenue to voice out their
grievances.
• This made people apathetic about politics and meant
that people who were genuinely interested in improving
the system were unable to do so as Communist Party
membership was exclusive.
• The lack of an effective feedback mechanism meant that
the state did not know the needs of the people and were
thus unable to provide for them.
Inefficient government
• No quality control
-Emphasized quantity at the expense of quality
• Incorrect allocation of resources.
-Focused too much on military at the expense of consumer goods.
50% of government spending was on the military.
• Lack of foresight
-Did not build factories near to sources of raw material
• Corrupt (Did not follow the principle of meritocracy. No genuine
equality? Contradicts the essence of Communism?)
-Did not choose good on the basis of ability or talent leaders, but
was influenced by nepotism.
-Did not care about the people? Leaders and high ranking
communist party officials should spend time with the people to
understand their needs? Even though decisions are planned
from the centre, it did not mean that the leaders could not leave
their offices and spend time with the people, but these corrupt
politicians were only interested in fattening themselves.
External factors?: Desire to maintain its role as
superpower drained USSR of its resources.
• External factors did not cause the downfall of Communism, but
helped to accelerate its decline.
- E.g. Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ Programme further highlighted the
weakness of the USSR’s economy, and further exposed its
inability to keep up with the cost of a new arms race.
• USSR was over-stretching its overseas commitment.
Resources were even more stretched when the USSR invaded
Afghanistan in 1979.
-USSR ended up spending more than it collected in taxes, as it
gave about US$3billion to its satellite states through the
COMECON, and was heavily in debt.
• Anti-soviet feeling in republics necessitated the strong presence
of Soviet troops
- The maintenance of a large army to deter anti-Soviet
demonstrations meant that a lot of money was diverted to the
upkeep of these troops.
Was the failure of the communist
system largely due to the
inefficient government? Discuss.
EYA.
Is this a factor or perspective
question?
“The failure of the Communist
experiment was due more to
human inefficiency than to the
inherent flaws in Communism.
Do you agree? EYA
Conclusion
• Ultimately people make the system?
• If it had been an inefficient system, it was the responsibility of
the government to change it, and not to be curtailed by it.
• Flaws in Communism could have been circumvented by good
leaders, and it is overly deterministic to say that it was the
inherent flaws in Communism that led to its downfall.
• Over emphasis on the inherent flaws of Communism seems like
a copout – to absolve the then leaders of their responsibilities.
• Although there were certain problems that were the result of
principles/beliefs held by Communism, I agree with the
statement that human inefficiency as evinced in the corrupt,
inefficient and inert government that failed to correct the
problems in the system, ultimately led to the failure of the
Communist experiment in the USSR.