Why did the USSR collapse?

Question

Which were the main reasons?

Answer 1

Chernoble,

The people lost trust in the guys at the top and began a slow revolt nation by nation  

Answer 2

When Ronald Reagan announced the Star Wars Project, the Soviets deployd their own equivalent project (I do not remember the name).

But here is the secret : Neither USA or USSR could actually afford the cost of something so big.

While USA was pretending they were working towards that, USSR was actually working on it.

As a result, within a few years the Soviet economy collapsed leading their people to massive poverty and the end of Soviet Union (and the creation of many new countries that parted the Union until that time).

It doesnt always a war to make an enemy collapse.

Answer 3

Shoddy workmanship (haha)

Answer 4

Read this, too much to write to answer this question: http://www.essortment.com/all/fallofthes...

Answer 5

easy what happens to a business that doesn,t work it goes bankrupt . same thing

Answer 6

Market System

Government lies

slow development everywhere except military

Answer 7

There are many speculations on this..

Mostly it's because people had enough of the "workers paradise"

.. the poor living conditions and almost no freedoms..

States like Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania had been wealthy states before the Soviet occupation and of course were struggling to break away from the empire just when there was a chance..

Some say it's because oil prices were low at those times(main income of USSR export) so that was the final nail in the coffin..

Answer 8

Long-term strains of the planned economy were showing by the 80s.  The USSR had concentrated on military and industrial manufacturing, while neglecting consumer goods, which was hurting the Communist regime.

Secondly, Gorbachev.  He basically opened the doors for the people to start advocating for change. He thought that he could commit to reforms while still retaining the basic economic-power structure, but he was wrong. As soon as it was clear that Gorbachev was not interested in shooting and arresting people who spoke out, the floodgates were opened.

People credit Reagan with somehow single-handedly defeating the USSR, but that is not the case.  The seeds were sown long before and it was really Gorbachev that did it.  

Answer 9

There are a whole host of reasons. The four most important ones in my opinion were:

Defence spending. The US was spending about 13 to 15% on defence. The Soviet Union up to 35%. This created problems across industry, as investment in industry fell - so they couldn't buy new machinery or invest in more efficient methods of production.

This also exacerbated the lack of consumer goods - Soviet industry had always favoured Heavy Industry, but by the 1970s everyone wanted wahing machines, vacuum cleaners and a car - soviet industry could not keep up with demand and the lack of investment meant waiting lists for these products kept on growing.

Agricultural failures - a series of bad harvests had led to the USSR having to import grain from the US.

The war in Afghanistan was turning into a meat grinder -sucking in men and materiel for no material gain - and it lost them international influence & prestige.

Space Defense Initiative - SDI. This USSR had to compete, and it was costing billions of Roubles - again bleeding the economy white.

Further to that: televisions became popular in the 1970s - this meant that people could now see the gulf between the West and the USSR and that it was growing, not contracting as official ideology stated it must do.

Sources: Stalinism and After; Alec Nove. Post-Communism, Leslie Holmes Understanding Russian Politics Stephen White et al. and. Russian Politics & Society, RIchard Sakwa