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The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. Mikhail Gorbachev should always get
by quantified 5y ago
The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. Mikhail Gorbachev should always get great credit for attempting to make it honest and productive. Problem was, making it honest and open allowed all to see, and say out loud, how screwed up and repressive it really was, and it fell apart because it was held together by unwanted force.
- panick21_ 5y ago> The Cold War ended when the USSR couldn’t fight it anymore. It was expensive for both sides, an expensive war of attrition. That is just flat out false, as many people have pointed out. Yes it was expensive, but there is no inherent reason Soviet Union had to collapse based on that expense. Gorbachev in order to do the reforms he wanted had to overcome the party opposition, and he did that by basically destroying the power of the party. This then allowed the republics to assert the power. But those things were not exclusive. Gorbachev could have done a lot of his foreign policy without some of the domestic program that eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet union.
- quantified 5y agoBut he did do the domestic program. Which did cause it to fall apart. You can lose a war through your own actions, without any activity on your enemy’s part. And it’s not like the loser of the Cold War had to start paying tribute to, or got occupied by, the winner.
- panick21_ 5y agoBut my point is that those are not linked. The Soviet Union didn't collapse because they ended the Cold War.
- quantified 5y agoBut they did, in fact, both lose the Cold War and collapse. Unless somehow either the West decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and called it a draw, but that would be highly revisionist.