Aim: What were the causes and effects of the fall of the Soviet

Union?

Mikhael Gorbachev’s attempts to solve the problems of the Soviet Union

• Pulls out of Afghanistan and reduces military spending

• Gives up military control of Eastern Europe• Announces “Perestroika” and “Glasnost”

– Perestroika – encouraging a free market, not a command, economy

– Glasnost – openness and political freedom; non-communist political parties allowed

Eastern European nations turn West

• Communist governments resign, usually peacefully

• Eastern European nations leave the Warsaw Bloc, open borders with Western Europe

• Berlin Wall falls, Germany re-united

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4434331027793809225&q=berlin+wall+video&ei=-bg4SAuU-OICi87U4gM&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-181898405138602708&q=berlin%20wall%20video&hl=en

Soviet Union splits up; Communist government collapses

• Dissension within Communist Party about Gorbachev’s path leads to attempted coup

• Soviet government falls• Soviet Union splits into many different

nations, by nationality group

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8953962851459266994&q=soviet+union+leaders&ei=HLs4SNfZKpm05AKXgqXfAw

Break-up of the Soviet Union

Break-up of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Bloc’s demise

• Most Eastern European nations (including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) join NATO and the European Union

• Central Asian states – “stans” – stay allied to Russia - “Commonwealth of Independent States” - but also look east and south

• Which way to turn? Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia

Expansion of NATO

Ukraine, Georgia

seek NATO membership

Russian ethnicity in former Soviet states (Pink)

Oil and Gas Pipelines in Eurasia

Central Asia - China Pipeline

Proposed Russia - China pipeline

Boris Yeltsin and the Fall of Russia

• 1990s: Privatization of the “means of production”: State property handed over to those with political connections

• Boris Yeltsin presided over a decade of

– democratization

– economic collapse

– removal of communist “safety net”

Vladimir Putin and the Rise of Russia

• Vladimir Putin: President 2000-08– Stability for Russian economy w/ help from

high oil prices– Return of authoritarian government, Russian

nationalism– Attempts to recreate sphere of influence in

Commonwealth of Independent States (the “stans”)

– Disputes with Ukraine and Georgia when they “look West”

How does Putin’s Russia compare with Czarist Russia?