227 Fall of the Soviet Union
37.2: Fall of the Soviet Union
37.2.1: The Soviet Union’s Aging Leadership
The aging Soviet leadership of the 1980s was ill-equipped to deal with ongoing economic stagnation and worsening foreign conflicts such as the Soviet-Afghan War.
Learning Objective
Describe the leadership problem facing the Soviet Union in the 1980s
Key Points
- The transition period that separated the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras resembled the former much more than the latter, although hints of reform emerged as early as 1983.
- Andropov maneuvered his way into power both through his KGB connections and by gaining the support of the military by promising not to cut defense spending, despite the heavy toll it exacted on the ailing Soviet economy.
- Andropov began a thorough house-cleaning throughout the party and state bureaucracy, but his ability to reshape the top leadership was constrained by his own advanced age and poor health as well as the influence of his rival, Konstantin Chernenko.
- Andropov’s domestic policy leaned heavily towards restoring discipline and order to Soviet society. He eschewed radical political and economic reforms, promoting instead a degree of candor in politics and mild economic experiments.
- In foreign affairs, Andropov continued Brezhnev’s policies, causing US-Soviet relations to deteriorate rapidly.
- Chernenko succeeded Andropov in 1984, bringing about a number of significant policy changes, including more investment in consumer goods and services and in agriculture. Chernenko also called for a reduction in the Communist Party’s micromanagement of the economy. However, KGB repression of Soviet dissidents increased and personnel changes and investigations into corruption undertaken under Andropov came to an end.
- During this period of Soviet leadership, fighting in the Soviet-Afghan War intensified, compounding Soviet economic stagnation and further entangling the USSR in a war it didn’t seem they could successfully win.
Examples
Key Term
- Goulash Communism
- The variety of communism as practiced in the Hungarian People’s Republic from the 1960s until the Central European collapse of communism in 1989. With elements of free market economics and an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet deviation from the Soviet principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade. The name is a semi-humorous metaphor derived from the popular Hungarian dish. Goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, representing how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and no longer strictly adhered to Marxist-Leninist interpretations as in the past.
By 1982, the stagnation of the Soviet economy was evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union had been importing grain from the U.S. throughout the 1970s. However, the conditions that led to economic stagnation, primarily the huge rate of defense spending that consumed the budget, were so firmly entrenched within the economic system that any real turnaround seemed