PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Who?
The countries involved in the USSR breakup was Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
What?
According to coldwar.org, In December of 1991, as the whole world watched in astonishment, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. The Soviet Unions collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its formidable enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers since the end of World War II. The breakup of the Soviet Union transformed the whole world political situation, leading to a complete reconstruction of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe.
When?
The dissolution of the Soviet Union lasted from March 11, 1985 – December 25, 1991
Where?
The collapse of the Soviet Union had no central place of occurrence, but was rather a historical change with many different locations. In the USSR itself, the late 1980s saw the major reform movements, known as glasnost and perestroika. These reforms, combined with the Soviet failure in Afghanistan, increasing military expenditures, economic stagnation, and influx of Western information lead to unrest in the Warsaw Pact. The first major changes happened in the Soviet satellite states, primarily East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. In these states, democratic movements had sprung up and challenged the communist stranglehold on power. As the parties could no longer main control, the USSR refused to use military intervention as they had before. Subsequently, the regimes rapidly collapsed in these countries from the period of 1989-1991. Later, the collapse began to spread to the Baltic states, Belorussia, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia itself. By 1993, all of these countries had become independent, along with the Central Asian states, where the collapse occurred last.
Why?
The three Baltic republics (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) had already declared their independence from the Soviet Union, only one of its 15 republics, Georgia, remained. The once-mighty Soviet Union had fallen, largely due to the great number of radical reforms that Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR.
How?
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was essentially Russia under communist rule from 1917 to the 1990's, with the addition of some smaller states. Post WW2 Russia dominated Eastern Europe with the Warsaw Pact countries. All of the other countries except Georgia and Russia that was a part of the USSR, didn't want to be involved wit the Soviet Union any longer.
