When did the USSR start to crumble and fail? What caused it to fail? how many years did it last for?

Question

When did the USSR start to crumble and fail? What caused it to fail? how many years did it last for?

Answer 1

In the late 1980's many of the soviet republics started to demand independence. Many had been independent before World War II and were under occupation. That and the Soviets started to run out of money. Many new countries appeared in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved (exact date was Christmas 1991, when the Soviet leader officially recognized it's collapse). Many Eastern Bloc countries also transitioned from communism to democracy during the 1990's, with countries like Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria transitioning from communism to democracy.

Answer 2

I believe it is because of their unproductive economy and the communism system which does not generate wealth.

Answer 3

USSR aka Union c**p of Soviet Socialist Republics lasted from 1922 til 1991 taking and ruining millions of  innocent peoples lives and s******g up half of the world.

basically..........  [..]  After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, transitional figures with deep roots in Brezhnevite tradition, beginning in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy (see Perestroika, Glasnost) and the party leadership. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship.

In the late 1980s, the constituent republics of the Soviet Union started legal moves towards or even declaration of sovereignty over their territories, citing Article 72 of the USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede.[8] On April 7, 1990 a law was passed, that a republic could secede, if more than two thirds of that republic's residents vote for it on a referendum.[9] Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as "The War of Laws". In 1989, the Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about half of the population) convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Congress. On June 12, 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued throughout 1991 as constituent republics slowly became de facto independent.



Boris Yeltsin (far left), the leader of the Russian Federation, stands on a Soviet tank amongst his supporters in defiance to the August Coup.A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on March 17, 1991, with the majority of the population voting for preservation of the Union in nine out of fifteen republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost, and, in the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty was designed and agreed upon by eight republics which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état against Gorbachev by hardline Marxist members of the government, who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin came out as a hero while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared restoration of full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example), while the other 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union.

On December 8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the Belavezha Accords to dissolve the Union, on December 21, 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia, including those republics that had signed the Belavezha Accords, signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dismemberment and consequential extinction of the USSR and restated the establishment of the CIS. The summit of Alma-Ata also agreed on several other practical measures consequential to the extinction of the Union. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev yielded to the inevitable and resigned as the president of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that until then were vested in the presidency over to Boris Yeltsin, president of Russia. The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, recognized the collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state. Many organizations such as the Soviet Army and police forces continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992 but were slowly phased out and either withdrawn from or absorbed by the newly independent states.

I copied because it's sooooo a long story that there have been hundreds of books written and it's not simple to understand all the turning points without knowing facts but you cant know the facts without knowing the whole history etc....

Also Ronald Reagan's work was totally significant in breaking down the evils empire therefore he's my favourite states president of all time.

update: not "many" were under occupation but all of the countries were under occupation and were free before the world war II or so. it's a huge difference. that's why I said- a huge part of the world was screwed up.