Soviet Collapse

6 Pages 1471 Words

Momentous events in history are often looked in hindsight as having been inevitable. An example of this is the collapse of the Soviet empire in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This event, utterly unimaginable just a few years earlier, was immediately greeted with a flood of literature arguing that it was obviously preordained. In fact, it was recently written that “The end of the Soviet Union was predetermined when Khrushchev began a process of de-Stalinization.” This statement, while very concise, makes enormous assertions about the very nature of the Soviet political structure. If we are to accept this statement, we must also implicitly accept that the system was not able to sustain itself without a constant use of power and that it was so very rigid that it was destined to collapse if any reforms at all were implemented without the use of deadly force. This is completely untrue.
During its relatively short post-Stalinist history, the Soviet system underwent an impressive amount of political, economic, and social transformation quite successfully. None of these changes threatened the viability of the system in any way. Since de-Stalinization is a multidimensional phenomenon, it is now necessary to examine the reforms implemented by Krushchev and attempt to pinpoint their effects on the system as a whole.
Upon coming into power in 1953, Khrushchev proceeded to dismantle Stalin’s personality cult. He denounced Stalin’s crimes against his own people and proceeded to undo some of their effects. He also implemented tremendous economic changes which fundamentally altered the relationship between the state and its citizens.
The end of the Stalin era was a complex event with enormous repercussions. Had Stalin been a dictator who took power by rallying military support and staging a coup d’etat, his death would have certainly meant the beginning of the end for the system which he had created. However, this ...