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WHY DID THE SOVIET UNION DISINTEGRATE? How did the second most powerful country in the world suddenly disintegrate? This is a question worth asking not just to understand the Soviet Union and the end of communism but also because it is not the first and may not be the last political system to collapse. While there are unique features of the Soviet collapse, there may be more general lessons to be drawn from this very important case. There is no doubt that the Internal weaknesses of Soviet political and economic institutions, which failed to meet the aspirations of the people, were responsible for the collapse of the system, Economic stagnation for many years led to severe consumer shortages and a large section of Soviet society began to doubt and question the system and to do so openly. Why did the system become so weak and why did the economy stagnate? The answer is partially clear. The Soviet economy used much of its resources in maintaining a nuclear and military arsenal and the dev...

GORBACHEV AND THE DISINTEGRATION Mikhail Gorbachev , who had become General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 , sought to reform this system. Reforms were necessary to keep the USSR abreast of the information and technological revolutions taking place in the West. However, Gorbachev's decision to normalize relations with the West and democratize and reform the Soviet Union had some other effects that neither he nor anyone else intended or anticipated. The people in the East European countries which were part of the Soviet bloc started to protest against their own governments and Soviet control. Unlike in the past, the Soviet Union, under Gorbachev, did not intervene when the disturbances occurred, and the communist regimes collapsed one after another. These developments were accompanied by a rapidly escalating crisis within the USSR that hastened its disintegration. Gorbachev initiated the policies of economic and political reform and democratization wit...

The End of Bipolarity - Overview -WHAT WAS THE SOVIET SYSTEM?  OVERVIEW - The End of Bipolarity The Berlin Wall, which had been built at the height of the Cold War and was its greatest symbol, was toppled by the people in 1989. This dramatic event was followed by an equally dramatic and historic chain of events that led to the collapse of the second world' and the end of the Cold War. Germany, divided after the Second World War , was unified. One after another, the eight East European countries that were part of the Soviet bloc replaced their communist governments in response to mass demonstrations, The Soviet Union stood by as the Cold War began to end, not by military means but as a result of mass actions by ordinary men and women. Eventually the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. In this chapter, we discuss the meaning, the causes and the consequences of the disintegration of the second world'. We also discuss what happened to that part of the world after the collapse of co...

ARMS CONTROL TREATIES LIMITED TEST BAN TREATY (LTBT) Banned nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and und Signed by the US, UK and USSR in Moscow on 5 August 1963. Entered into force on 10 October 1963. NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY (NPT) Allows only the nuclear weapon states to have nuclear we ons and stops others from aquiring them. For the purposes of the NPT a nuclear weapon state is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967. So there are five nuclear weapon states: US, USSR (later Russia), Britain, France and China. Signed in Washington, London, and Moscow on 1 July 1968. Entered into force on 5 March 1970. Extended indefinitely in 1995 STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATION TALKSI (SALT-1) The first round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began in November 1969. The Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the US President Richard Nixon signed the following in Moscow on 26 May 1972-0) Treaty on the limi...

INDIA AND THE COLD WAR As a leader of NAM, India's response to the ongoing Cold War was two-fold: At one level, it took particular care in staying away from the two alliances. Second, it raised its voice against the newly decolonised countries becoming part of these alliances. India's policy was neither negative nor passive. As Nehru reminded the world, non- alignment was not a policy of "fleeing away". On the contrary. India was in favour of actively intervening in world affairs to soften Cold War rivalries. India tried to reduce the differences between the alliances and thereby prevent differences from escalating into a full-scale war. Indian diplomats and leaders were often used to communicate and mediate between Cold War rivals such as in the Korean War in the early 1950s. It is important to remember that India chose to involve other members of the non-aligned group  in this mission. During the Cold War. India repeatedly tried to activate those regional and intern...

CHALLENGE TO BIPOLARITY We have already seen how the Cold War tended to divide the world into two rival alliances. It was in this context that nonalignment offered the newly decolonized countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America a third option-not to join either alliance. The roots of NAM went back to the friendship between three leaders - Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. India's Jawaharlal Nehru, and Egypt's leader Gamal Abdel Nasser - who held a meeting in 1956. Indonesia's Sukarno and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported them. These five leaders came to be known as the five founders of NAM. The first non-aligned summit was held in Belgrade in 1961.  This was the culmination of at least three factors: (1) cooperation among these five countries. (2) growing Cold War tensions and its widening arenas, and (3) the dramatic entry of many newly decolonized African countries into the inter- national arena. By 1960, there were 16 new African members in the UN . The firs...

OVERVIEW :- Cold war era - overview what is cold war This chapter provides a backdrop to the entire book. The end of the Cold War is usually seen as the beginning of the contemporary era in world politics which is the subject matter of this book. It is, therefore, appropriate that we begin the story with a discussion of the Cold War. The chapter shows how the dominance of two superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, was central to the Cold War. It tracks the various arenas of the Cold War in different parts of the world. What is the NAM? The chapter views the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) as a challenge to the dominance of the two superpowers and describes the attempts by the non-aligned countries to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO) as a means of attaining economic development and political independence.  It concludes with an assessment of India's role in NAM and asks how successful the policy of non-alignment has bee...