There are so many factors that would make predicting revolutions inherently difficult and it consists a multitude of factors, including political, economic, social, and the changing of international relationships as any one of these can rapidly shift and disintegrate public sentiment and political stability. But my opinion of Soviet’s collapse falls under three main categories. The first being Soviet Union’s arms race under Khrushchev with the U.S. that significantly drained internal resources and shifted many of the manufacturing of what could have went to making daily necessities for its citizenry to better perfect their quality of life, went to heavy industries of making missiles, thus causing an internal famine, that got so bad to a point that Soviet people had to line up just for a loaf of bread. Also, during one of Nixon’s visit to the Soviet Union, the then-leader, general secretary Khrushchev bragged to Nixon telling him that Soviet Union was capable of producing ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) that were far enough to hit targets in the U.S faster than they could produce sausages and bread which stunned and shocked Nixon. So upon his return, he told Congress of what Khrushchev told him, and thus igniting this never-ending arms race, further weakening Soviet’s economy and drastically weakened their position and foothold on Eastern Central European countries that led to massive anti communist protests and eventually its inability to impose military intervention under Gorbachev. Another turn of event that took place that could not have been predicted happened after Khrushchev stepped down as general secretary and his passing of the throne to Brezhnev. In 1982 when Brezhnev died, the Soviet Union went into a huge internal power struggle, and eventually leading to the passing of the throne to his successor Andropov, that died shortly after he took throne, in 1984. Despite this, they still have not learned the lesson and have chosen to passed it on to another puppet leader, Chernenko, which also died just a year later in 1985. The constant power struggles within Soviet Union destabilized the ruling legitimacy, and shortly after Chernenko’s death in 1985, it was finally passed to a younger person, that is, Gorbachev, which sealed their imminent and inevitable fate of Soviet collapse. Now, under Gorbachev’s rule, he implemented policies of what is known as “glasnost” and “perestroika” that aimed at reforming the political system ahead of economic reforms that inspired transparency in the Soviet Union, but that plan inadvertently went out of control, exposing the misdeeds of Stalin and the Soviet Union under his leadership, thus losing the support of the Soviet people, and eventually, leading to the infamous collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, just merely two years following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Responses to the professor or other students:

That’s a interesting perspective on Gorbachev’s policies. How I see it is that Gorbachev had a really hard time “containing” or in other words, appease to those older Soviet leaders under Stalin, whom laid out a path for Soviet Union that they unequivocally and absolutely obeyed and followed to the teeth. In fact, those policies that were implemented under Stalin gave these leadership fame, recognition and wealth, so there is really no reason for them to shift away from Stalinist policies and embrace social, political and economic changes that Gorbachev proposed. So with that mentality, they heavily constrained what Gorbachev could do, and Gorbachev was unlike the other previous Soviet leaders before him and simply be a puppet to their accord. So he fought back rejecting Stalinist policies by opening up some of the dark secrets of the Soviet Union under Stalin’s leadership, in an effort to reject Stalin completely and shift towards more of an open political system that embrace criticisms from dissenters. But what he did not realize is that by doing this, that is, rejecting Stalin, he also inadvertently rejected the ruling legitimacy of the Soviet Union that promised to bring the Soviet people peace, stability, and renewed prosperous society. Also, by exposing what Stalin did and what the Soviet Union did under his leadership with his transparency, he also opened the pandora’s box of questioning wrongfully policies, thus leading to Soviet people’s loss of trust; and therefore, Soviet Union collapsed.