On December 23, 1991, Yeltsin and Gorbachev had an eight-hour in-depth conversation in the Kremlin. The next day, Gorbachev announced his resignation from his position, the Soviet Union regrettably collapsed, and the United States became the undisputed global superpower.
There are so many reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union that one wonders how all this happened.
Stalin, under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the people of the country, took the road to socialism, and this period is known as the most powerful era of the Soviet Union, where the people were proud and the country was strong.
However, in the face of the growing strength of the Soviet Union, countries such as the United States adopted a strategy of "peaceful evolution" in an attempt to divide or assimilate the Soviet Union.
In 1947, as the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan analyzed and pointed out that Western forces would use Western values such as freedom, democracy, and human rights to oppose communist ideas.
Reagan once emphasized that the penetration of ideas is subtle, and once eroded, it may be difficult to detect. When Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, the United States and Western countries began to resort to means to Westernize the Soviet Union.
They founded two major radio stations, "Radio Free Europe" and "Radio Libre", which disseminated major international events in six commonly used languages, with the intention of weakening the Soviet system and culture and influencing the ideology of the Soviet people.
They found that anything related to fashion and novelty would spread quickly among young people and become very popular. Allen Dulles, director of the US Intelligence Agency, said confidently
So Gorbachev embarked on a path of no turning back with the direction of Western-led reforms. In 1989, Gorbachev carried out a radical reform of the political system, which soon led to social unrest, ethnic conflicts, and economic chaos.
The reasons for the collapse of the former Soviet Union are not simple, and in addition to the fact that Yeltsin signed an agreement to prove the collapse of the Soviet Union, there are some deep-seated reasons.
First of all, the Soviet Union paid too much attention to heavy industry in the development of the economy, and neglected the development of people's livelihood and light industry, which led to an imbalance in the industrial structure.
Secondly, the USSR entered into a large-scale arms race with the United States, which consumed a lot of resources and energy. In the end, the USSR abandoned its own cultural beliefs, which also had a negative impact on the development of the country.
The Minister of Economy of the USSR, Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov, believed that people only saw the superficial phenomenon of the collapse of the USSR and ignored the root causes of its disintegration.
Bush** said that they hoped that the politically moderate Soviet Union would be more beneficial to the long-term interests of the United States by bringing the politically moderate Soviet Union into the Western framework, and that they did not want the Soviet Union to disintegrate. If the reforms in the USSR really succeeded, then the future development is beneficial to us.
Therefore, we should draw lessons from this, attach importance to the balanced development of the economic structure, adhere to cultural beliefs, and avoid endless arms races with other countries, so as to ensure the stability and development of the country.
The strategy adopted by the United States against the Soviet Union was to suppress and support the Soviet Union at the same time, and although support would be carried out cautiously, the Soviet Union was always in a precarious state.
The United States probably did not want the collapse of the Soviet Union, but wanted to control the Soviet mind so that it could be used by the United States.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a good thing for the United States, which broke the original bipolar pattern, made the United States a superpower, and realized its dream of world domination. During his election campaign, Bush said that the world cannot tolerate the existence of hegemonism.
Later, China gradually became stronger, advocated multilateralism and peaceful development, and became a country that could compete with the United States.