Why Did Cold War Ended?

As a resolving of its defeat of Nazi Ger many an(prenominal) in the Second World War, Soviet control was established in the wake of the advance of the inflamed Army over Eastern Europe. The Cold War then(prenominal) ensued, the armed services confrontation among East and West, during which Soviet military power and governmental, economic and ideological influence became a major(ip) factor in world affairs. Some liberalization of the regime in Russia occurred in the wake of the death of dictator Josef Stalin in 1953, especially during the early 1960s chthonian Nikita Khrushchev, but the Soviet organisation was largely in place within the Soviet Union and, to a modified extent, in the other Soviet bloc countries through the mid-80s.

In military terms, afterwards existence forced to retreat under the threat of a nuclear showdown with the United States in 1962 from its placement of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles in Cuba, the U.S.S.R. had through a massive rearmament program achieved go about parity with the United States. During the 1970s, Soviet power had been projected into many areas of the world. In much of the Third World, the West appeared to be on the defensive. All attempts by Eastern European peoples, in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, had been put down by force under the Brezhnev Doctrine which, loosely translated, meant that the Soviet Union would keep what it had and study what

The available evidence suggests that the Soviet frame fell primarily because of its inherent internal weaknesses. Brzezinski says that "Marxist-Leninist policies were derived from a basic misjudgment of history and a fatal misconception of compassionate nature" (242) and that "communism's historical performance as a system of social organization has involved a painful disproportion mingled with the massive human sacrifice forcibly extracted from the people and most of the undeniable socioeconomic benefits achieved" (236). Gorbachev's reforms, which were designed to enable the regime to survive, basically failed and unleashed pressures for further political and economic reforms which were inconsistent with the maintenance of a monolithic system of control.

As Spanier puts it, "the Soviet political system has become the greatest obstacle to economic modernization" (350). In other words, the system had grown so rigid after 80 years in power that it was incapable of reforming itself. by dint of the means of modern communication, especially television, the stark contrast amongst the failures of the communist system and the much greater degree of political freedom and economic progress in the West could not be kept from the Russian people. Economically, as Robert Heilbroner said, "the contest between capitalism and socialism: capitalism has won" (Muravchik 40). Gorbachev was forced to throw overboard independence to the Eastern satellites and to consent to the reunification of Germany in 1990, not because he wanted to but because domestic conditions and pressures for autonomy from the reason Soviet Republics such as in the Baltics left him no other option. After the failed coup by hardliners in 1991, Gorbachev's ambition of combining economic liberalization with the continuation of the communist enounce apparatus and party control proved to be unworkable.

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The distinguished Failure. New York: Charles

Gorbachev quickly realized that all was not well. close to alarming was the poor per
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