Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? 

Thanks for the talk , enjoyed listening to it all . 🇬🇧

I came home from school during these days, threw down [my books and sat down with my grandparents who raised me. Grandma said "don't leave. You're watching history taking place." I was mesmerized, as i had been around that time and earlier, watching what happened to Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife and also a velvet revolution. I had become just so curious, nearly obsessed. And finally when I was ready, I started to travel to former Soviet Bloc countries. It was the people, .of course who kept me going back. I ended up marrying a Czech Native. Our greatest, most anticipated journey was to Russia in 2019. Alas, I am very concerned that we shall never finish out the sojourn. I wish with all my heart that a peace comes soon. I hope for diplomacy. Because I surely love that part of the world and its peoples.

Thank you for uploading and sharing.

I love how we have so many professors and Drs in the comments of all these lectures..

really a relief to hear a speaker that is both so clearly intelligent and humble. many of the lecturers i've seen lately are very intelligent, very eloquent speakers, but when it comes to answering questions they can't resist treating the audience like they're beneath them. taubman seems like good and earnest person

Exposé formidable. Merci pour la diffusion !

You can't have a meaningful discussion about why Soviet Union collapsed without a through understanding of how Soviet economics functioned and how the Politburo & Republic governments interacted.

This is an amazing video, thank you. Living in Mexico in the late 80s it was such a bizarre period to watch the USSR just crumble in a matter of months

Great audio

Second law of thermodynamics in action! Great video. I will see it again and I will recommend it.

6:41 -- "Hardly anyone foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, maybe almost no one." I hear this so often from Western scholars. However, I made an extended visit to Bulgaria in 1981, where I was told again and again that the Soviet Union would collapse, and that it was just a matter of time. The reasons I was given were 1) that the system was profoundly inefficient and was steadily running itself into the ground, and 2) that nobody believed in the original communist vision. Everyone believed it was pure b.s.

Very interesting!

1:07:12 Effectively Gorbachev was not a social democrat, he was a socialist who wanted to reform socialism and not end it. Social democracy is based on capitalist economy that social democrats tax to provide extensive social services. Gorbachev was not trying to introduce capitalism.

Soviet Union did not collapse, it went bankrupt. It could not feed itself and became completely dependent on oil and gas prices. In 60x it was already clear it is falling behind, but high prices of oil and gas in 70x kept it afloat with out any changes and when they went down in late 70-80x it went bankrupt in 90x.

Nice lecture, thanks!

Did this guy seriously just ask why the USSR put a man on the moon 10 years before US? And no one in the room corrects him? At the end of the answer he says "they did it". (59:00) Holy shit.

It's been many years since I've seen a grown man have a Gorbasm. It must be true love.

Zdeněk Mlynář (pronounced Zdenyek Mlynahrzh) His son became a conservative (anti-communist ) politician in the 1990s in the Czech Republic.

An important reading.

Great lecture, thank you! A bit disappointed about the lack of the answer to the question in the title - "why?". I think this question was not really answered. The lecture rather was focused on Gorbachev and the question "how?", which is not "why". We all know how it was, especially those of us who lived through it inside collapsing USSR. How is not that interesting. Why is. I was hoping to hear some interesting thoughts on that "why" question.

14:09 Soviet economic problems were so severe that even if the Party poured most of the resources previously used by military into producing consumer goods, it wouldn't have helped. It would just produce more of the same poor goods. Collective farms would be just as unproductive. Factories would have see little improvement, because their machinery was mostly bought in the West for hard currency and that was extremely short. People would have no incentives to do a good job either. Etc., etc.

SKIP INTRO BUTTON: 4:00

great work!

Excellent!

I lived in communist Poland in 1980. Everyone there saw the coming collapse of the Soviet Union.

Could this guy possibly love Gorbachev more? He was a humble peasant; grandson of the most powerful man in his city. His grandfather was a wonderful man; describes him beating workers to produce. He got into university without trying; that's what powerful party members children get. His proximity to Gorbachev has clouded him from obvious truths.

Good doc

Taubman onstage from 4:04 - you're welcome ⚒️

The economic independence demand of Estonia which led to political autonomy which led to republics declaring independence; collapsed from within and west failed to rescue USSR because economically sound open USSR is a direct challenge to Western power.

Taubman's presentation gave a good summary of the theories that try to explain why the Soviet Union was the way it was and offered some explanation why it eventually failed. He seems to have a bias that the Reagan Administration should not get credit for its demise. His main explanation for the demise of the USSR is Gorbachev. He makes the point that by introducing "Glasnost" and other reforms that Gorbachev opened to the door to forces that undermined the communist regime and eventually led to its and destruction. Professor Taubman did a great job of presenting the facts. One can see why he has succeeded as a professor of political science specializing in Russian affairs. Being a biographer of both Khrushchev and Gorbachev he probably has imbibed a bit too much of the "great man theory of history" . To be more precise that history is moved more by great individual actors than by forces in a particular society. The weakness of Professor's Taubman's presentation lies in his inability to recognize or an unwillingness to admit that societal forces, namely the stagnating economy, created the conditions that demanded a reformer of the Gorbachev type. Gorbachev is not a Vaclav Havel who was a dissident with a program who was able to come to power and implement his reform program. Gorbachev was an honest apparatchik who wanted to make the communist system work. He never really understood that a totalitarian system cannot be reformed. They can only be abolished or maintained. Professor Taubman during the questioning period concedes that Reagan's policy of colluding with the Saudis to lower the price of oil was devastating to Gorbachev in his attempt to enact economic reform. In essence the lower price drastically cut the Soviet central budget. This contradicts his earlier comment that Reagan had little to do with the implosion of the USSR. Professor Taubman did not address how Reagan's increase of military spending and the launch of the Star Wars Program affected the Gorbachev regime. It must have had an effect on military strategy and allocation of resources that had to have a strong negative economic impact. Most telling was Professor Taubman's critique that during Bush I there were doubters in his administration about the sincerity of Gorbachev and an unwillingness on the part of the West to give Gorbachev the financial resources to preserve a reformed confederation of sovereign states . He takes it for granted that it was somehow in the interests of the West in general and the USA in particular to have a revamped Soviet Union. Given the fact that the USSR broke up peacefully that case seems hard to make. Dr. Taubman did concede that had Gorbachev not tried his reforms then it is likely that the USSR would have limped along and eventually had an explosive collapse similar to Yugoslavia. In conclusion, the Taubman lecture was quite useful and he offered interesting insights and asides to the many factors that contributed to the demise of what Ronald Reagan called "The Evil Empire" My main disagreement in the good professor's analysis is that it's rather obvious that many factors played a role in the demise of the USSR just as there were many factors that played a role in the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Having been a student and later in the 1990s an executive for an American Fortune 500 company in Russia it was rather obvious that a multiplicity of factors created the conditions for a reformer like Gorbachev to be chosen to try and save a sinking ship. One cannot discount the enormous efforts and investment in blood and treasure that the West made from the Truman Administration in 1947 up and through the Reagan-Bush administrations first to contain the USSR and then to bring it down. Reagan upped the ante to Gorbachev by increasing his military spend hoping to bankrupt the Soviets and by using its power to deny the Soviets badly needed revenue by getting the Saudis to over produce oil and drop the price. In addition, the Reagan Admin had invested much money and effort to undermine the Soviets in Poland. Thus, while Gorbachev certainly played the key role he did not destroy the USSR all on his own. Professor Taubman, along with many other professors of a liberal bent in the USA, seem to regret that the USSR was not saved albeit in a reformed and social democratic manner. If that is really his regret then he needs to make the case how American and European security would have been enhanced by that. Moreover, that desire ignores the legitimate desire of the non-Russian population of the old USSR to realize their self-determination. Certainly from the position of the USSR's former vassals in Central and Eastern Europe the fall of the USSR was nothing to regret. In conclusion, the Taubman talk is excellent and deserves the investment in time to listen to it. He is very engaging and quite well informed.

Excellent presentation of Gorbachov.

DID it collapse or did it just change its name to avoid lawsuits?

When visiting a farm in Canada in the early eighties an impressed Gorbachev (who was I believe the top agricultural man in the USSR at the time) asked the farmer "who gets you up in the morning?". When he saw the well maintained farm machinery he asked "do they trust you with this equipment?"

Missing most important concepts…. But i guess this is the best lecture one can give in a western university without getting fired from the university. 😮

I enjoyed the mention of the whole, "the SU went against human nature" argument. Western societies simply incentivize human greed and then regulate that to (hopefully) mitigate harmful and wreckless business. The SU tried to regulate everything so it goes perfectly. It's easier to try and control whats already there (greed) rather than centralising all power and controlling everything with absolute strength.

Ah classic academia. Never forget to roast your visiting lecturer's discipline while introducing him.

Odd at the center of so many wonderful things, there's a brood of self-chosen.

Taubman seems very sad that the US did not prop up the Soviet Union at the end. I wish that Professor Marshall Goldman was still around to give a more clear headed explanation of what happened.

Thank you ! More please !

Because Gorbachev tried to change the political system before the economic system. China learned from this.

This is a very instructive and enjoyable presentation. Professor Taubman has, of course, written the definitive biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he interviewed eight times in the space of a decade. So, he has obtained his perspective with a deep engagement with the central player in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. I also enjoy Werner Hertzog's recently released documentary on Gorbachev, which was very moving. It poses the question of whether Mr Gorbachev is one of history's most tragic figures.

I’m afraid that he’s not going to mention the collapse of oil prices. But still very interesting presentation so far.

I really enjoyed this lecture. Are there anymore similar to this one?

There is such television in the west that if it had been held in the USSR at one time, there would be no perestroika.

USSR dependend on stable foreign currency all the time, but in the end of USSR it had to recredit in foreign banks. As soon as baltic states proclaimed independence, foreign banks stopped their credit lines, since USSR was no longer single entity.

Gorbachev ignored the lessons of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of Lenin whereby capitalism was largely re-introduced to revive a collapsing economy wrought by doctrinaire socialism (nationalizing the means of production). The economy revived and the NEP had to be scrapped. The only thing preventing the Soviet Union from turning into Venezuela was the tolerance of a black market economy and the system of allowing farmers their own small private plots of land.

The how and why vodka, played such an instrumental role in Russian politics

I tuned out after five minutes. Seems so simplistic and self evident. Like a high school lecture. Geo-politics and sociology are much more complex.

I can summarize the cause of the fall of The Soviet Union.... The Soviet Union collapsed due to isolation from the western countries, especially economic isolation.. You have to keep in mind that the west is not only the U.S., it's mainly the U.S. and western Europe... Let me put in another way, if the U.S. and Europe would have traded with Russia the way they have done with China, than Russia would have become an economic power house... but the truth of the matter is that The west did not trust Russia and wanted to isolate them until their eventual demise, which eventually happened. Just think about it this way: Why do you think that China, ( A large communist country, like the USSR was), has become an economic power house? The simple answer is that the U.S. and western Europe let it be by dealing with them economically and technologically.... People erroneously think that China is a threat to the U.S. and that China became an economic power house by themselves.. This is not true at all... If the U.S. saw China as a threat they would eventually cut off China from the economic game from the west and the U.S. would choose another country or countries to deal with economically... The argument would be about the debt we have with China, the answer is that we would pay it off eventually....China would suffer more from the economic isolation and it would throw them back to their economic levels of the 1960s & 1970s when 90% of their people were living below the poverty level and even in starvation...

If Gorbachev had succeeded in doing what this guy wanted it would not have been better.

Why is the audio so jickey in so many of these videos?

I was watching RU1. When I saw Ludmilla Tourischeva crying, I knew it was over.

8:00 The list of reasons "Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?"

Good for insight into Gorbachev. That's all.

In March of 1991, at a reception in Moscow, Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale, spoke with Professor Vadim Zagladin, first deputy director international department of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee & asked, “When did you (the ruling elite) conclude that the Soviet Union was unsustainable? Zagladin replied, “1978”. Did you ever meet and/or communicate with Zagladin.

Soviet Union was modeled on Tsar Empire. Absolute theological monarchy was replaced with Collegial theological secretarialism. Tzar was replaced with General Secretary, Orthodoxy with Communism and people with working people. They end up rebuilding same thing only using different methods and materials.

This guy clearly regrets that the USSR fell, and talks as though Gorbo wanted to see the end of the USSR, even though he described how Gorbo tried to keep it together as late as he could, as it was spinning apart. The guy describes Gorbo as an elite who lived a life full of lies. Based on this talk, Gorbo whispered how the system was full of lies to his Czeck freind in college, and wrote and talked openly how he was devoted to it from his childhood on. A guy full of lies all his life, in a system so full of lies, corruption, and threatened State violence that it simply tore apart due to all of its incredible, monstrous basic aspects. The guy said at the start of his talk, that some think the system simply fell apart once the threat of State violence was taken away. Then the guy says that such an explanation was too simple. Um - no - it seems spot on, based on the talk he gave right after he said it was too simple. Oy!

Very interesting topic. I really wish I could be in the meeting and raised some questions for discussing, especially for the comparing of the cases of USSR and PRC. In this case some important internal factors could not be comparable. China didn't swallow any countries but lost Out Mongolia after the 2nd world war.

The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse long before Gorbachev took charge. The arms race, and a flawed economy based on forced labour with unrealistic targets led to the economy tanking. He tried to radically change the way the world saw the USSR, but the ball was in motion and eventually the collapse happened, unavoidable because of years of bad decisions and the corruption and mismanagement by the politburo

Great talk and Q&As but the number one immediate reason for the break-up of the Soviet Union is missed. The state overly depended on the fear of state violence to keep the edifice in tact. And this is linked the first theory posited - that communism runs against human nature. It was Gorbachev's unwillingness to use violence which allowed the state to disintegrate.

my father always said ussr would" collapse from within" .he said the people wont stand for it. .that was about 1975

Only someone at a place like Wellesley, would say Gorbachev is thought of as a "Hero" in the United States.

The EU..... "But the USSR was not a real superstate".....

Rocky Balboa ended the Cold War when he defeated Ivan Drago in 1988. He showed that if he could change, and the audience could change....then EVERYONE could change.

When everyone is entitled to everything, no one is responsible for anything.

With reference to my earlier comments ( 5 days ago), I may add that another reason the collaps was not foreseen by the western world is that thinking and reasoning within a totalitarian regime is completely different. When your contacts with the SU consists of people like Arbatov and Burlatsky it is logic that you have no clue about what really is happening in the SU. Burlatsky for instance was considered to be a reformer while he was everything except a reformer. In the 1988 - 1991 period there were specific moments that contributed to the collaps of the SU. As the professor mentioned there was a shortage of basic products,, especially food products were systematically in short supply. To address this major problem that could also effect stability, it was decided that a meeting of the Central Committee be organized in March 1989. It would be the first time in the history of the SU that the most powerful organization of the country would come only together to plan and make fundamental decisions concerning the future of the agrocomplex. This Central Committee meeting took place in the period 12 to 17 March 1989. The progressive groups aimed for a decision about private farming but realized that a decision about this sensitive subject might be one bridge to far and therefore pushed the idea that a fast track to stimulate food production was to extent the liberties of dacha farming. Already a large portion of horticultural and agricultural products were already produced in dacha’s and even hard core communists were interested in the idea to stimulate the production in Dacha’s to a give a fast boost to overcome the food shortages. They thought that for instance doubling the dacha acreage would double the dacha production. The Central Committee indeed decided that dacha (private) farming should be stimulated. The following week in the Supreme Sovjet fundamental questions were asked about private farming related to for instance specific financing, specific machinery, storage facilities , and more important one start asking questions about land ownership . A discussion that was impossible (subversive) before the CC meeting and another nail in the coffin of the communistic system. On the opening day of this Central Committee meeting (12 March 1989) an editorial concerning the meeting was printed on the front page of Izvestia. It was the first time for this government paper to have an editorial directly related to a sensitive political subject written and signed by a foreign diplomate. It surprised me that non of the so-called Sovjet watchers took notice of my contribution that also got the blessing of the government.

Gorbachev did great work going by his heart!

As for the beginning guy he was talking about..I just call him Nikita...

its been a long time but i have to say he wins. So much talk so little to offer

"Evil Empire" is the best description of USSR anybody ever came up with!

I was following things then as they happened. More than anything, the people in charge of the Soviet Union just became demoralized and couldn't morally justify their reign. That and the security forces refused to shoot their own people.

Don't understand why the speaker dismisses Reagan and Star Wars as playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union when he later cites the arms race with the US as one important cause of said collapse.

The Soviet Union was a country run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

During the 19th Century there was a lot of technological progress and people fell in love with the idea of "Science". Everything had to be "Scientific". Socially you had a number of Utopian Societies that were created on the basis of someones ideas with Marxism being one of the most successful at gaining adherents. Talk of "Dialectical Materialism" being "Thesis opposed by Anti-thesis and yielding Synthesis" which became the new Thesis - sounded impressive to a lot of ignorant people. The growth of large factories with legions of poorly paid, over worked - workers - led to a lot of resentment on the part of the have not's who were open to ideas about how they would "seize the means of production". Under the leadership of the Communist Party they would form a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that of course would run things in a benevolent manner until they achieved True Communism - "From each according to their ability. To each according to their need". Lenin created the means for political control where in you had a Central Committee below which were such as Regional Committees and Local Party Representatives. According to Democratic Centralism information would flow up from the Local and Regional Party Members to the Central Committee who would make a decision - then the decision would flow down to the Regional and Local levels where it would be implemented. During the first phase - there was freedom of opinion to some degree but once a decision was made - it was to be implemented without further discussion. Five Year Plans were popular where it was decided what the nation would do - but - these plans were to inflexible and thus didn't work. The problem was that a Centrally Planned Economy just wasn't flexible enough to handled the constantly changing economics of the real world. The other thing was that people who no longer owned anything had no incentive to work on the collectives but - they were allowed small plots they could grow crops on themselves. These small plots became where much of the food was grown - and - led to a black market in things the State Economy failed to provide. An example of central planning was if they were going to make 500 cars - they would make 500 sets of wind shield wipers - not anticipating that they would wear out. Thus, you had car owners who routinely took their wind shield wipers off every time they parked their car and locked them up - because if they didn't - they wouldn't be there when they got back. Those in the west could see that this type of Centrally Planned Economy was doomed to failure and felt that all the needed to do was Contain the spread of Communism until if fell of it's own weight. Another factor in this was that while the first generation revolutionaries were true believers - as each generation passed, people believed less and less in the ideology until not even the party members believed it. Gorbachev tried to reform things but since the system itself was basically flawed - there was no fixing it. When the Communists went away - the Black Market - which had become the Real Economy as opposed to the State Run Economy - came out into the open - but it was being run by people who had been criminals under the old regime and still were criminals. Russia became a Kleptocracy, a nation of thieves run by thieves and that is where things are today. It's all vastly more complicated than that and this is a simplistic version but - it is in general what happened. .

Lecture starts at sharp 5:30

The Economist proved that the a command economy like the Soviet Union was impossible because there wasn't time to make that many decisions. They proved that the system had to fail.

one word to answer this question, CORRUPTION!

It was the elimination of the idiotic tax and regulatory dictates concerning the oil industry during the Reagan administration that brought down the price of crude oil and natural gas that finished the Soviet Union - oil and gas were the only hard cash exports they had . Those same de-regulatory actions wiped out the economys of Oklahoma ,Texas and Louisiana and triggered the banking crisis of the late eighties and early ninetys. I traveled to east Germany in 1990 visiting the town of Bernburg, Anhalt where was stationed a Soviet armored brigade - who were without all their tanks - Gorbachev had sold them all to Saddam Hussein.

I recommend the book The Last Empire , by Plokhy

He sure loves Gorbachev

Seems like too much government, no matter what kind of government it is, ALWAYS gets in the way of social mobility and progress.

Ludwig von Mises predicted it as well.

Hélène Carrère-d'Encausse and Emmaluel Todd, both in France, also predicted the dissolution of the USSR. Let us not reduce the world to the anglosphere !

You can't have a meaningful conversation about the collapse of the Soviet Union without asking: Who are you?! And what are you doing here?!

A Wellesley lecturer on the fall of communism? How humorous.

Well, that wasn't insightful.. No real explanation or analysis at all. Just a description of events and personalities.

I think Gorbachev was arguably the most amazing figure of the 20th century - I can’t think of many examples in the history of civilization where so much power was given up by someone so powerful. I’m not sure he was particularly naive, as this professor clams - democracy could only be achieved by giving up power after all - but ironically I think the speaker appears a bit naive in his discussion on US/Soviet relations. Gorbachev may well have been the best guy for the Americans to deal with if they were actually interested in helping him build a stable, rich , democratic nation ….but of course, they weren’t! That wouldn’t help the US - or at least the business interests that run it. Yeltsin was 100% Americas man - he let in the foreign capital and the neo-liberal economics, which was the most important thing for the US - it’s not democracy they’re interested in, but profits! This helped create Putin - he is a reaction to the intended foreign exploitation of Russia . He is popular with Russians because he protects them from this and the Americans love him to as he helps keep the perpetual war machine and the military-industrial complex running … Why on earth would we want Russia, or for that matter China, to turn into Sweden!?!

Vladimir Zubok is also interesting to listen to...

Note: the soviet union would call liberals right, because they would be seen as right of their leftist stance. Liberals, traditionally were middle of the road!!

Leon Trotsky also foresaw it.

Interesting lecture. I've studied the decline and break-up of the soviet union from an economic perspective and could probably deliver a lecture about half as good and interesting as Taubman, but I'd argue that economic causes fed into and amplified the political ones. It would make for an interesting debate, but Taubman referred to distorted economic performance, and this is but one facet of the overall soviet economic model. He also mentioned Korolev, a brilliant rocket scientist whose talent was wasted whilst imprisoned by a jealous and untalented colleague called Aleksandr Yakovlev (not Gorbachev's mate, a former ambassador to Canada). Do this enough, and this stifles ambition, creativity, and rewards political loyalty and reliability. Repression also erodes trust, which Taubman refers to indirectly.

That was really good!

Maybe because centralization of power will end up with your liberty at the mercy of whoever is ruthless enough to seize power

Taubam has gotten to a point where he is too pleased with himself and his view of the world. This lecture gives a great view of how Taubam thinks the world should work, plenty of criticism of those with whom he does not agree but a dearth of serious analysis.

idk, seems to me it went through it's 4th turning. (there's no reason to believe every country is on the same generational time line)

Re: the question at 1:24:00 the Soviets did not put a man on the moon ten years before we did.

This bloke has kept Reagan's contributions and foresight far from consideration. Other authors have carefully described the sweet, daring and complex forces bearing upon the Soviet Union, and Reagan is right there, squeezing the pressure points at his appointed time in history. Reagan's "national security decision directives" were timely, opportunistic and decisive. Gorbachev and Reagan were ready for each other.

I visited the Soviet Union for three weeks. The stores were almost empty of consumer goods. I went to Gum in Moscow, which was the equivalent of Macy's. There consumer goods were of very very poor quality. The Russian workers got paid no matter how well they worked.

wonderful lecture

dear introducers, please keep introductoins to 30-60 seconds, not 4 minutes.