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Text|White. At the beginning of August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the supreme leader of the former Soviet Union, was on vacation, and some people reported to him that the Soviet army had been moving unusually recently, and some soldiers were plotting to overthrow him, hoping to attract Gorbachev's attention.
Hearing the news, Gorbachev did not care, and went on vacation as usual, and on August 19, the Soviet state ** suddenly announced that Gorbachev was unwell and could not continue to serve as the leader of the country.
In December, the collapse of the USSR was announced!
This great change shocked the whole world, and some commentators said that the United States was the happiest in the collapse of the Soviet UnionHow did the Americans react when they heard about the collapse of the USSR?
That history from 30 years ago
In 1985, Gorbachev announced at a meeting of the Soviet Union that to reform the country's economy, first of all, the issue of military spending.
During the Brezhnev period, the Soviet Union focused on building a military industry and engaged in an arms race with the United States, which led to higher and higher military spending.
After the death of Brezhnev, the military policy he left behind completely dragged down the Soviet economy.
After Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet agricultural department reported to him that the Soviet Union's grain output had been in a state of failure for 10 years, and in the past few years, in the face of the problem of feeding the people at home, the Soviet Union had been importing grain from the West for many years, and the common people who lacked food at home had deposited their money in the bank.
The common people are unwilling to spend money, the country's consumption cannot rise, the economy cannot be invigorated, and growth has stagnated.
The report of the Soviet oil department told Gorbachev that in order to make up for the shortcomings of economic growth, in recent years, the Soviet Union began to exchange a large amount of foreign oil for foreign exchange, but oil is not renewable energy, so it is difficult to sell it one day.
These feedbacks made Gorbachev realize that the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in an arms race that did not outweigh the losses.
After all, the economic base of the Soviet Union was inferior to that of the United States, and it could not hold up at all.
Realizing that the troops had to be withdrawn first, Gorbachev told Defense Minister Yazov that the USSR must immediately withdraw its troops from Hungary and Afghanistan, the sooner the better!
Yazov told Gorbachev that if the troops were withdrawn from these places, it would take four to five years, and because of the excessive investment in the early stage, the withdrawal of troops would have to be carried out little by little, but Gorbachev did not approve, and he believed that the Soviet Union must withdraw its troops as quickly as possible in the short term. The withdrawal plan should ideally be realized within one year.
Withdraw all Soviet troops abroad within 1 year
In addition, many republics of the Soviet Union reported to Gorbachev that the treatment of the military within their own territory needed to be changed, and many servicemen wanted to improve their lives.
Economic problems, military problems, waiting for Gorbachev to solve, these have long been known by the United States, as the two world's leading powers at that time, seeing so many problems in the Soviet Union, US leader Bush openly expressed the hope that the Soviet Union can achieve freedom of speech, open the book ban, respect the voice of the people, and give them more freedom.
This was supposed to be a conspiracy of the Americans, but Gorbachev liked it very much, and he started his own road of perestroika from which there is no return.
Chaos plus nothingness
Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union should seriously sum up the existence of the past and boldly deny all kinds of worship in the past, in response to which he explained that the Soviet Union was engaged in humane democratic socialism, and also openly said that we should learn from American democracy and realize pluralism Xi of interests, opinions, and politics.
Not only that, Gorbachev wanted to abandon the unitary status of the CPSU and implement the separation of powers and pluralistic leadership.
First of all, he announced the abolition of the leadership of the CPSU and the implementation of the ** system, and with his public denial of the past national history, various doubts and discussions began to appear in society, such as "Lenin was a German spy", "Stalin was a demon who killed people without blinking", and such remarks began to circulate in society.
These phenomena made the elders of the Soviet state deeply dissatisfied, and Gorbachev wanted to bring down the Soviet UnionHe is almost totally repudiating the founding history and prominent figures of the Soviet Union.
However, Gorbachev did not dare to solve the problems and contradictions existing in the country, and Yazov repeatedly told him that he should forcefully suppress those local armed forces that appeared in the union republics, and could not allow them to grow.
But Gorbachev turned a deaf ear, which made many people in the Soviet military circles dissatisfied, and the country did not have a stable and strong military guarantee, and other reforms were almost impossible to talk about.
On August 19, 1991, several high-ranking Soviet military officers staged a coup d'état, abruptly announcing Gorbachev**, and in December the Soviet Union announced its dissolution.
The Soviet Union disappeared, and the polar opposites of the United States were very happy, and the United States praised Gorbachev as a man of courage, praised him as a "man of peace", and the West awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gorbachev's "peace" allowed the USSR to collapse, so did people have a better time?
Days in Russia
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia became independent, and Yeltsin led Russia to the West, but from 1991 to 1999, Russia's economic growth continued to decline, and Russia's GDP fell from $550 billion in 1990 to $300 billion in 2000.
Russia's economy has declined by 40% in 10 years.
The economic downturn led to an increase in the number of unemployed people in Russia from 1.4 million in 1990 to 8 million in 1998.
In order to revitalize the economy, Yeltsin issued 10,000 rubles of state-owned enterprise asset bonds to individuals and allowed them to be bought and sold freely, but before this bond fell into the hands of the common people, it was plundered by the directors or managers of state-owned enterprises in the former Soviet Union at a low price, and these people quickly became rich and became the new upstart of Russia.
In the face of such a blatant plundering of national assets, the United States, which advocates personal struggle to obtain wealth, is shocked.
Russia is learning Xi from the United States, but what it does is what the United States sees as "plundering in golden velvet gloves," and this plundering is not allowed even in the United States.
In 1999, Yeltsin reluctantly announced his resignation, and Putin became the new leader of Russia, and in the face of the crisis, he chose to take a strong lead to revitalize the Russian economy, and to embrace the various currents of thought that have circulated in society since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and strive to unify them and contribute to Russia's development.
Today, Russia's total economic output is only 7% of that of the United States, and the United States evaluates that Russia has been reduced to a third-class country, even so, the United States has not stopped sanctioning and weakening Russia in the slightest, and they see all kinds of changes in Russia's proximity to the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the United States certainly knows about Russia's desire to be friendly with it.
But history is playing a joke with Russia, and no matter how much Russia wants to get close to the United States, in the eyes of the United States, maintaining its hegemony will always come first.
The United States can no longer allow a strong Russia to compete with it.
References:
1: Zhao Yan. Opposing Historical Nihilism with Historical Confidence: A Review of the Historical Reasons for the Disintegration of the Soviet UnionJournal of Xinzhou Normal University. School of Marxism, Shanghai University. 2023.03.
2: Cao Changsheng. The collapse of the Soviet Union is a warning: a great scourge of right and wrong. People's Daily Online.
3: Lu Zheng. Investigations and comments before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Journal of Hainan University (Humanities and Social Sciences).2022.09.
4: Lu Nanquan. A Brief History of Soviet Economic Development and Its Enlightenment: From the Brezhnev Period to the Gorbachev Period. Journal of China Executive Leadership College Pudong. 2023.02.