Did the former USSR/Soviet Union collapse without the use of civilian guns and rebellions?

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It is absolutely Amazing that Americans think a few one liners from Reagan brought down the soviet union.

The TRUTH of the matter is.......it had WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more to do with the efforts of Pope John Paul ll, and the rebellions going on across Poland and Europe........and the Whole "Solidarity" movement, that John Paul ll quietly and agressively pursued.

Reagan was the president sitting in the chair when the Pope's efforts finally paid off.

All across Europe.......the POPE is the first , (and often only) named mentioned, when talking about the TRUE causes of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Reagan was a bystander, at best....Show more

The collapse was a very strange thing. The USSR collapsed not due to rebellions, uprisings or demonstrations - it collapsed mostly due to economic and political reasons.

The USSR collapsed for economic, social and political reasons.

Economic:
The economy had been stagnating throughout the 1970s, as Western economies moved into new technologies, the Soviets economy was based on Karl Marx's analysis of the British economy in the mid 19th Century. The Soviets focused on heavy industry - coal, iron and steel production, to the detriment of consumer goods. Soviet made consumer goods were rare, expensive and very poorly made. Soviet agriculture was always inefficient, and these inefficiencies meant that the Soviets had to import grain from the US & Canada several times in the 1970s - hitting their export / import balance sheet.

Social:
The Soviet Union faced two huge problems in the 1970s & 1980s.
1) The rise of Samizdat literature and dissident activity. Many writers began to "self-publish", using new, cheap, office photocopiers and mimeographs. On their own this was not to much of a problem, but as these works were circulated, so the idea that there were alternatives to the Soviet way began to make ground across the USSR.
2) Jewish refuseniks. Jews were, and are, allowed to move to Israel. The USSR refused exit visa to thousands of Jews who wanted to leave - this led to embarrassingly long queues at Israeli missions - these were shown on Soviet TV. The problem was "why would anyone want to leave the "workers' paradise"?". Once people began to question why the Jews wanted to leave, then they too began to question what alternatives to the Soviet way there might be. This led to a rise in nationalist sentiment in many of the Soviet Republics.

Political:
Brezhnev, and his co-ruler Kosygin, thought that all Khrushchev achieved was chaos, they wanted to stabilise the country and to reverse nearly all the reforms of Khrushchev. Probably the worst thing, for the Soviet Union, that they did was the policy of "stability of cadres". This policy was a response to Khrushchev's policy of moving bureaucrats around and promoting and demoting people. It had the effect of creating an ageing political class, who sought only to maintain their position. By the late 1970s the country was a gerontocracy - a country ruled by the elderly.
This exasperated the conservative communist government's hostility towards the youth, which, in turn, meant that when the regime was tottering they could not rely on the idealism of the young.


See:
Khrushchev Remembers - NS Khrushchev
The Soviet Union 1917 - 1991 - Martin McCauley
The Revolution from Above by David M Kotz and Fred Weir
http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1985perestroika&Year=1985
http://www.historyorb.com/russia/intro.shtml

BTW - Pope John Paul II had almost nothing to do with it, Reagan was much more than a bystander....Show more

It collapsed under the sheer weight of its bureaucracy, its inability to manage its own economy, the Afghan war, and its failure to substantially improve the lives of its citizens.

It was also under a crushing debt that was made worse by Ronald Reagan's massive military buildup - the USSR simply couldn't keep up. There were also younger, reform-minded politicians like Gorbachev that were gaining power. And then there was Poland, Lech Walesa, and the Solidarity union movement. And, as Weasel said, Pope John Paul was agitating pretty effectively.

The whole house of cards imploded from internal pressures, dissatisfaction in satellite countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania and others, pressure from the Pope, and NATO, constant shortages of basic needs like food that pushed over Lenin's rickety apple cart.

Ronald Reagan was credited by many people as having singlehandedly "defeating Communism," which is a pile of kaka.

Mahatma Gandhi proved that you don't need to bust out the guns and bullets to effect real social change....Show more

Basically the Reagan Administration turned the "Cold War" against the Soviet Union by putting forth a great deal of effort in deceiving the Soviets into believing we had far superior technology and the Soviets got into economic trouble trying to do the same and couldn't keep up.
Once their failed communist/socialist economic model collapsed, their "Union" of satellite nations reject living in squalor just to please those who dominated them and the masses could no longer be kept in line. They saw what Could be their future and rejected those who dominated their lives.
Then the West failed to help them in their pursuit of Liberty.
Today, with Obama displaying such incompetence, they are now being subjected to Soviet Style tyranny once again.
Yes, Obama is proving once again that Massive Government Bureaucracies can collapse a Nation. This time it is the USA....Show more

Their economy could no longer support their large military and without military power they could not hold the empire together...Show more