Causes of the Fall of the Soviet Union

(Follow Gorbachev's career)

so fifty cent caused the fall of the USSR?!?

It could have been used. It would have responded, if asked. The effect would have been as powerful as the later crushing of the revolt in Tienamen Square in China. So, why didn't it happen that way?

Case closed.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000001FR3.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

From Wikipedia:

Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, Àëåêñàíäð Íèêîëàåâè÷ ßêîâëåâ (December 2, 1923 – October 18, 2005) was a Russian economist who was a Soviet governmental official in the 1980s and a member of the Politburo from 1987 to 1990. He was called the "godfather of glasnost"[1] as he is considered to be the intellectual force behind Mikhail Gorbachev reform program of glasnost and perestroika.

Early career
Yakovlev was born in Yaroslavl. He served in the Red Army during World War II and became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1944. Beginning in 1958, he was an exchange student at Columbia University for one year.

Yakovlev served as editor of several party publications and rose to the key position of head of the CPSU's Department of Ideology and Propaganda from 1969 to 1973. In 1972 he took a bold stand by publishing an article critical of Russian chauvinism and Soviet anti-Semitism. As a result he was removed from his position and appointed as ambassador to Canada remaining at that post for a decade.

During this time, he and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became close friends. Trudeau's second son, Alexandre Trudeau, was given the Russian nickname "Sacha" after Yakovlev's.

In the early 1980s Yakovlev accompanied Mikhail Gorbachev, who at the time was the Soviet official in charge of agriculture on his tour of Canada. The purpose of the visit was to tour Canadian farms and agricultural institutions in the hopes of taking lessons that could be applied in the Soviet Union, however, the two renewed their earlier friendship and, tentatively at first, began to discuss the need for liberalisation in the Soviet Union.

In an interview years later, Yakovlev recalled:

At first we kind of sniffed around each other and our conversations didn't touch on serious issues. And then, verily, history plays tricks on one, we had a lot of time together as guests of then Liberal Minister of Agriculture Eugene Whelan in Canada who, himself, was too late for the reception because he was stuck with some striking farmers somewhere. So we took a long walk on that Minister's farm and, as it often happens, both of us suddenly were just kind of flooded and let go. I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs, especially about those SS-20 missiles that were being stationed in Europe and a lot of other things. And he did the same thing. We were completely frank. He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia. He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and absence of freedom, the country would simply perish. So it was at that time, during our three-hour conversation, almost as if our heads were knocked together, that we poured it all out and during that three-hour conversation we actually came to agreement on all our main points. [2]
Two weeks after the visit, as a result of Gorbachev's interventions, Yakovlev was recalled from Canada and appointed to head the Academy of Sciences Institute of International Relations and the World Economy in Moscow.

http://www.russiaprofile.org/politics/2005/10/19/252.wbp

-- Super Cub (messag...), February 19th, 2006.

haha, i like this one the best. reagan spent the ussr to death.

also the muj beat the SU -- so in a way the cia and pakistani intelligence were material too.

A guess: Maybe it's a "satirical" way of referring to GWB?

also the goddamn kulaks.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71BX7Su2OjL._SY342_.jpg

tremendous book is this. It's quite shocking even by today's decadent late capitalist standards of bad politicians, how absolutely incompetent, vain and utterly stupid Gorbachev was. Deng's son: "my dad thinks Gorbachov's policies are extremely dumb" Deng otm.

still at the part before his arrest etc with Yeltsin literally staggering more than swaggering in opposition. Yeltsin get's found by cops lying semi-conscious in a Brook under a bridge with a bouquet of flowers clenched in his hand> First he tells them not to report it, then invents a story about how a gang of thugs attacked him and threw him off the bridge!

I have this on my "to read" shelf, must get round to it. FWIW Perry "Mr History" Anderson says that Zubok is up there with Piketty as a historian of modern times.

ah right.. I kept seeing shitposting comrades raving about this book. Whose opinions on History profs are equally as valid as PA's imo!

I’m not sure I can pinpoint the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can pin a lot of our present situation on the Total Balalaika show put on by the Leningrad cowboys in 1993