VISIT WEBSITE >>>>> http://gg.gg/y83ws?7630673 <<<<<<
In December , during a civil war between Finnish Reds and Whites, the Soviet government recognized the independence of Finland. Poland, reborn after World War I, fought a successful war with Soviet Russia from April to March over the location of the frontier between the two states. During its struggle for survival, the Soviet state placed great hopes on revolution's breaking out in the industrialized countries.
To coordinate the socialist movement under Soviet auspices, Lenin founded the Communist International Comintern in March Although no successful socialist revolutions occurred elsewhere immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Comintern provided the Communist leadership with the means through which they later controlled foreign communist parties.
By the end of , the Communists had clearly triumphed in the Civil War. The Allied governments, lacking support for intervention from their war-weary citizenry, withdrew most of their forces by The last foreign troops departed Siberia in , leaving the Soviet state unchallenged from abroad. Its battle-tested forces occupied most of postwar Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union won island holdings from Japan and further concessions from Finland which had joined in the German invasion in in addition to the territories the Soviet Union had seized as a consequence of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.
But these achievements had been bought at a high cost. An estimated 20 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished in the war, the heaviest loss of life of any of the combatant countries. Between November and December , a number of the coalition governments established in the Eastern European countries occupied by Soviet troops during the war transformed into Communist "People's Republics" with strong ties to the Soviet Union.
The United States and Britain considered this an abrogation of agreements made at the Yalta Conference. Anti-Soviet popular uprisings began in Budapest and spread throughout Hungary in the autumn of On November 4, Soviet forces moved into Hungary and suppressed the revolt. Soviet, Polish, East German, Bulgarian, and Hungarian troops invaded Czechoslovakia on 20 August , and deposed the reformist government of Alexander Dubcek, who had begun a program of economic and political liberalization the "Prague spring".
The Brezhnev Doctrine was the Soviet Union's declared policy to intervene in the internal affairs of another socialist state if the leading role of that state's communist party was threatened. It was formulated as justification for the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in August Faced with a deteriorating security situation, on 24 December , large numbers of Soviet airborne forces, joining thousands of Soviet troops already on the ground, began to land in Kabul under the pretext of a field exercise.
The Karmal regime, although backed by an expeditionary force that grew as large as , Soviet troops, was unable to establish authority outside Kabul.
Afghan freedom fighters mujahidin made it almost impossible for the regime to maintain a system of local government outside major urban centers. Poorly armed at first, by the mujahidin began receiving substantial assistance in the form of weapons and training from the US and other outside powers. Mikhail S. Gorbachev entered office in March determined to scrap old assumptions about Soviet foreign policy. He had drawn lessons from the return of Cold War tensions in the early s -- and they scared him.
The "old thinking" believed that the USSR would emerge victorious in the Cold War if it continued building up its arsenal and fostering "progressive" regimes in the Third World in places like Angola, Ethiopia, and especially Afghanistan. Gorbachev's "new thinking" sought to reorganize and revitalize the Soviet system; but to do so required a favorable international situation to relieve the material burden of arms competition with the West.
The first step in the end of the Cold War came when Mikhail S. Gorbachev implicitly abandoned the Brezhnev Doctrine. On 14 April , the Governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the United States and Soviet Union serving as guarantors, signed an agreement known as the Geneva accords.
This included five major documents, which, among other things, establishe a timetable that ensured full Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan by 15 February Gorbachev demanded that the retreat be orderly and dignified -- he didn't want television images reminiscent of the chaotic US pullout from Vietnam. The second act of the drama began in the fall of with peaceful revolutions in Eastern and Central Europe except Romania and the fall of the Soviet "outer empire.
By October, Hungary and Czechoslovakia followed Poland's example. As one historian noted, in Poland communism took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks, and in Czechoslovakia ten days to disappear. Later the same year, he drastically reduced Soviet troop strength in the Warsaw Pact nations. The wall prevented—often violently—dissatisfied East Germans from fleeing to freedom in the West.
Speaking in West Germany on June 12, , U. By October , Germany was fully reunified, signaling the coming collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist Eastern European regimes. The economic liberalization of perestroika and the political chaos of glasnost severely reduced military funding and strength.
Between and , the residual troop strength of the Soviet Military fell from over 5. During the same time period, more than , Soviet troops had been committed to the Afghanistan War. The ten-year quagmire that became the Afghan War left more than 15, Soviet troops dead and thousands more injured.
Another reason for the troop decline was the widespread resistance to the Soviet military draft that arose when the new freedoms of glasnost allowed conscripted soldiers to speak publicly about the abusive treatment they suffered. Between and , the now weakened Soviet military was unable to suppress anti-Soviet separatist movements in the republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania.
Finally, in August , Communist Party hardliners, who had always opposed perestroika and glasnost, led the military in an attempt to overthrow Gorbachev.
However, the three-day August Coup—possibly the last attempt by the hardline communists to save the Soviet empire—failed when the now-fragmented military sided with Gorbachev. Though Gorbachev remained in office, the coup further destabilized the USSR, thus contributing to its final dissolution on December 25, Blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union is often unfairly placed solely on the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email.
The final option consisted of lending conditional support to Gorbachev, leveraging aid and assistance in return for more rapid and radical political and economic reforms. Unsure about how much political capital Gorbachev retained, Bush combined elements of the second and third options.
The Soviet nuclear arsenal was vast, as were Soviet conventional forces, and further weakening of Gorbachev could derail further arms control negotiations. To balance U. Bush administration officials also, however, increased contact with Yeltsin. The unsuccessful August coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. He resigned his leadership as head of the Communist party shortly thereafter—separating the power of the party from that of the presidency of the Soviet Union.
The Central Committee was dissolved and Yeltsin banned party activities. A few days after the coup, Ukraine and Belarus declared their independence from the Soviet Union.
The Baltic States, which had earlier declared their independence, sought international recognition. Amidst quick, dramatic changes across the landscape of the Soviet Union, Bush administration officials prioritized the prevention of nuclear catastrophe, the curbing of ethnic violence, and the stable transition to new political orders.
The basic message was clear—if the new republics could follow these principles, they could expect cooperation and assistance from the United States. Baker met with Gorbachev and Yeltsin in an attempt to shore up the economic situation and develop some formula for economic cooperation between the republics and Russia, as well as to determine ways to allow political reforms to occur in a regulated and peaceful manner.
On December 25, , the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor.
Comentarii