FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION

PRESIDENT REAGAN

• President Reagan was elected in 1980.
• He began a military build up and a new arms race.
• He gave military aid to African rebels.
• He did this to maintain a war in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union couldnt win.
• The Cold War was further intensified when Reagan was elected president.

LEONID BREZHNEV (POLICIES)

• Replaced Nikita Khrushchev as leader of the Soviet Union.
• Was determined to keep Eastern Europe in Communist hands.
• Was uninterested in reform.
• Insisted on the Soviet Union to intervene if Communism was threatened.
• He allowed more access to Western styles of music, dress, and art.

LEONId BREZHNEV (PROBLEMS FACED)

• The Soviet Union was roughly equal to the U.S in nuclear arms.
• The governments central planning led to a huge complex bureaucracy.
• Collective farmers has no incentive to work hard.
• The Communist ruling class in the Soviet Union had been complacent and corrupt.
• Many preferred working their own small private plots to laboring in collective work bridges.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV(COLD WAR)

• Mikhail's accession to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 eventually brought a dramatic end to the Cold War.
• He encouraged glasnost, a policy of openness in discussions of public policy.
• He made an agreement with the U.S in 1987 to eliminate intermediate range nuclear weapons.
• Berlin Wall fell during his time.
• He stopped giving Soviet miltiary support to Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

PERESTROKIA (MIKHAIL GORGACHEV)

• Perestrokia means restructuring.
• It first meant restructuring economic party.
• Gorbachev wanted to start a market economy where consumer influence whats produced.
• He realized that an attempt to reform the economy without political reform would be doomed.
• He strengthened his power by creating a new state presidency.

THE END

• One of Gorbachev's most serious problems was the multiethnic nature of the Soviet Union
• It included 92 ethnic groups and 112 different language.
• On August 9, 1991, a group of conservative leaders arrested, and seized power on him.
• A week after the first Soviet republics moved for independence, it was said Soviet Union "ceased to exit"
• He resigned in December in 1991. By the end of 1991, one of the largest empires had come to an end.

BORIS YELTSIN

• President of the Russian Republic.
• Was commited to introducing a free market as quickly as possible.
• Used brutal force to keep the province of Chechnya in Russia.
• Opposed NATO's proposed expansion.
• Resigned at the end of 1999

VLADIMIR PUTIN

• Elected president in 2000.
• Vowed to adopt a more assertive international role & bring the breakaway atate under control.
• Launched reforms including the purchase of land and free sale.
• Guerrilla attacks occured in Moscow and in Chechnuya during 2003.
• Made efforts to join the World Trade Organization.

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