The collapse of the Soviet Union marked the
end of Soviet-style communism and the beginning of a new world order. It marked the end of the cold war and created
over a dozen new democracies in Europe and Asiaā¦ and yet today this event is taught
very little in schools. I asked friends from Russia, Slovakia, and
Romania but none of them learned anything about it despite being born in former Soviet-alligned
countries. Not even my parents, who saw it unfold on
TV, could give anything more than the bare minimum. Well mom, today thatās going to change. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a large
and complicated affair involving dozens of different countries, regions, and peoples. Therefore, in this longer-than-usual video
I will cover the ENTIRE dissolution of the Soviet Union. I will cover the events and trends leading
up to it, I will cover the revolutions in the Warsaw-pact countries, and I will analyse
the actual dissolution of the Soviet Union. To explain why the Soviet Union collapsed
we first need to talk about what the Soviet Union was. In its simplest form, the Soviet Union represented
a dream. A dream of a communist utopia where EVERY
person works towards the greater good. A dream in which people would live at an unprecedented
level of prosperity. A dream of peace and freedom... But it never even came close to that dream. When measured against these lofty ideals the
Soviet Union set for itself, it was an utter failure: it was an incredibly inefficient
system smothered by a vaaast bureaucracy. A nation which butchered 10 million of its
own citizens in its name. And created one of the most repressive and
ruthless police states the world had ever seen. It started in 1917, in the Russian Empire. Czar Nicholas II was overthrown in the Russian
Revolution by a group known as the 'Bolsheviks'. The Bolshaviks were far-left revolutionaries. They were willing to try out a new ideology,
an ideology called Marxism. This ideology was based on removing the class
system by controlling the wealth of a nation collectively, where society as a whole controls
the means of production, thus removing the lower-, middle-, and upper classes in society. And this new Marxist country was officially
founded in 1922... but rather than turning towards the communist dream, it instead turned
towards dictatorship. Under the rule of Vladimir Lennin and Joseph
Stalin, the Soviet Union was slowly turned into a ruthless police state where anyone
suspected of disloyalty could be sent to forced-labour camps... as well as random people regardless
of their loyalty. The leaders who would reign over the Soviet
Union during its collapse were also the ones who grew up in Stalin's Soviet Union and experienced
the cruelty of the regime firsthand. In the 1940s the Soviet Union found itself
at war with Germanyā¦ Last time I showed this map a lot of people
from Finland got angry that I included their country among the Axis powers. So to avoid any controversy this time, Iāll
just remove Finland. During this war, the Soviet Union conquered
much of Eastern Europe during world war 2. Some parts it annexed for itself and other
parts became satellite countries. These satellite countries were indirectly
controlled through the warsaw pact. This pact was an agreement between the countries
of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romaniaā¦ and for a
short time Albania. The Warsaw pact was a complicated agreement
between the countries, but in simple terms, this agreement guaranteed military support
from the other nations in case of war, economic integration of the member states, and used
the threat of invasion to make sure that all its member countries remained communist and
loyal to the Soviet Union. After the Second World War, the Soviet Union
and United States of America became embroiled in a cold war. This basically divided the world between the
capitalist United States and its allies versus the communist Soviet Union and its allies. This division was personified in the Iron
Curtain, a series of border walls and fences dividing Europe in two. When Stalin died in 1953, the new soviet leaders
decided to lift many of the most repressive policies. There were several reasons for this. The first was the moral argument: most people
thought that a system of forced labour camps, constant fear, and abuse of power was morally
wrong. The second argument was pragmatic: a system
based on corruption, oppression, and loyalty was a lot less efficient. And so the Soviet Union released prisoners,
removed many systems of oppression, and even renamed many places bearing the name of Stalin
or Lenin. Under this process people's lives became a
bit better: their living standards improved, they were allowed to say and do more, and
the economy became more efficientā¦ But to many it didnāt go far enough. The USSR, which is short for the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics which was the official name of the Soviet Union. The USSR was doing relatively well in terms
of economic growth in the 1950ās and 60ās. But by the 70s and 80s it was lagging behind. Itās economy grew slowly, the leadership
became averse to change, and some of the freedoms given were reversed. This meant that while the lives of people
in capitalist societies were improving, such as Japan, West-Germany, and the United States,
the lives of the people in the Soviet Union and its allies remained at similar levels
as the 60s. And in this moment of stagnation, in 1985,
a new leader was elected to lead the Soviet Union. His name is Michael Gorbachev. He was from a new generation of soviet leaders,
being the first and last Soviet leader to be born in the Soviet Union. And by the time he took office it was clear
that the Soviet Union had become stagnant for far too longā¦ something needed to change
or else the entire system would slowly collapse. The first thing was itās economy. The USSRās economy was a so-called ācommand
economyā. In this system many economic activities were
planned centrally by the government. And the government prioritised the creation
of machinery and large projects, while giving consumer goods, innovativeness, and quality
a much lower priority. At the same time the Soviet economy was also
incredibly inefficient. What would happen was that the government
would set itself a goal and then throw as many resources as was needed at the issue
until they had the desired resultā¦ This meant that if a system was inefficient,
it would receive more resources from the government to get the desired results. So basically, the less efficient a system,
the more resources would be spent on it. On top of this inefficiency, the government
also spent a lot of money on weapons to compete with the United States for the prestige of
being a superpower, and sent money to the various Soviet client states to prop up their
economies with the aim of showing the world how great communism was as an ideology. And this latter part cannot be ignored. The Soviet leadership took policy not out
of a pragmatic point of view of what worked or not, but instead created policy based on
ideology regardless of whether it worked or not. And this blatant disregard of reality caused
the Soviet Union to implement policies which simply didnāt work. As a result, the level of healthcare was notoriously
bad, housing was shoddy, and peopleās diet was far less variedā¦ all the while espousing
how much better off the Soviet citizens were doing compared to the rest of the world. The last leader of the Soviet Union explained
the Soviet economy quite well: āThere is plenty of everything: land, oil and gas, other
natural riches, and God gave us lots of intelligence and talent, yet we lived much worse than developed
countries and kept falling behind them more and more. The reason could already be seen: the society
was suffocating in the vise of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear
the terrible burden of the arms race.ā This is in stark opposition to capitalism. Under a capitalist economy there are many
different independent production lines, leaderships, and policies. Each business, each organisation, each entrepreneur
had to constantly compete with all the other ones in order to survive. If a company falls too far behind their competitor,
they will eventually go bankrupt and thus remove the least efficient actors from the
economy... As long as a healthy capitalist economy is
maintained. Gorbachev realized the state the Soviet Union
was in and felt it was in drastic need of reform. He wanted the Soviet Union to finally realize
that old communist dream, the dream of working towards the greater good, of prosperity, of
freedom and peace. He felt that after Stalin, the Soviet Union
should have given far more rights to the people and created a healthy communist system. Gorbachev wanted to end the secret police
spying on people, feeling it was both immoral and a waste of resources. He wanted to give freedom of speech and freedom
of the press, believing that criticising the government would help the government to improve. And he wanted to end the tight grip on power
at the top, instead letting local leaders solve local issues which they can do more
efficiently than a central government in Moscow. As Gorbachevās foreign minister said it
best in 1984: āEverything is rotten. It has to be changed.ā But the new leadership did not believe that
the communist system as a whole was a bad system. They thought that the system the Soviet Union
used was a bastardization of communism, a bloated bureaucracy unable to serve the people
it governed. And therefore wanted a communist government
not based on fear and suppression, but a communist government based on serving the people. āI am not ashamed to say that I am a Communist
and adhere to the Communist ideaā But change isnāt easy and there are always
those who oppose it. So the first thing Gorbachev did to make change
happen was to remove many government department heads from their position and replace them
with people more open to change. Many of those open to change were of the new
generation like Gorbachev, well educated, and were just as frustrated with the lack
of reforms from the previous Soviet leaderships as he was. Some of those names you might even recognize,
such as Boris Yeltsin, who would become the first president of the Russia we know today. One of the first things this new Soviet leadership
did was to improve diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. This strategy had 3 goals in mind. The first was to attract foreign investors. The Soviet Union had mostly been relying on
its own resources, but as the Soviet economy lagged behind developed countries, they saw
opening up as a great way to get foreign resources into the country to grow the economy. Secondly, if the USSR could openly trade with
the rest of the world, it could export its own products and resources to the outside
world, which would improve the economy. And lastly, the Soviet Union wanted to improve
diplomatic relations with their long-time rival the United States of America and its
allies to end the cold war. This way, the Soviet Union could stop the
expensive arms race and spend those resources on building up the country instead of building
up arsenals. While the USA announced to increase military
spending to fight the āEvil Empireā that was the Soviet Union, the USSR announced it
would stop participating in the arms race, was going to withdraw its troops from foreign
wars such as in afghanistan, and that it would reduce its military presence in its Eastern
European client states. The second major policy was to reform the
Soviet economy. This reform was called āPerestroikaā. This is a russian word which means ārestructuringā. What is often overlooked is that this ārestructuringā
wasnāt a single policy, rather, it was an overarching term for various complex economic
policies undertaken from 1985 to 1991. But all these economic policies had one goal
in mind: to increase the economic growth of the Soviet Union so its economy would become
up to par with the Western economies. At first it only included minor changes such
as trying to bring foreign investments to the USSR. But by 1987 a policy was implemented to overhaul
the Soviet economy. The plan was to transform the Union from a
command economy to a mixed economy. What this meant was that rather than controlling
all aspects of the economy from Moscow, some parts of the economy could be planned by local
officials and by businesses themselves. These changes included letting people own
a portion of the businesses privately, instead of fully owned by the state; businesses could
set their own production targets based on demand. While they would still need to produce a minimum
amount set by the government, they were allowed to produce more and sell those products for
a profit; businesses were allowed to determine their own prices, instead of mandated prices
by the government; businesses became self-financing, meaning that they had to pay for their own
wages, supplies, etc. The government was no longer going to prop
up failing businesses; And businesses would be owned by the workers instead of the government,
giving employees of a business a stake in the operation of said business; and lastly,
the government was no longer going to formulate detailed production plans for businesses,
instead it would only set general guidelines and investment policies, and businesses were
free to figure out the best way to run their production. But this was a mixed economy, not a fully
capitalist economy. In the case of this new Soviet model, this
meant that the so-called āmeans of productionā, such as machinery, was still owned by the
government. But the transition didn't go as smoothly as
was hoped. This is because the Soviet economy relied
on the central government too much and it would take time to transition to the mixed
economy. During this transition the economy would perform
a lot worseā¦ But this transition wasnāt expected to last
too long and that people would notice the improved economic conditions in just a few
years. But that didnāt happen and there are many
reasons why. The first is that the Soviet government didnāt
know how deeply mismanaged their economy actually was. In fact, the state planning commission didnāt
even have a model of how the economy functioned. It turned out that by no longer subsidising
so many failing businesses, even fewer products were available to people as those businesses
now needed to rethink how they were going to keep functioning. This led to shortages, so the government had
to ration resources, which meant that there were the long queues at stores that are often
popularised in relation to communist economies. The second reason was that the government
now earned less in tax revenue as the economy was slumping, while increasing spending on
things such as pensions. This caused the government to have a huge
budget deficit, spending 12% more than they earned in taxes. Resulting in a government that was nearing
bankruptcy. None of this would have been an issue if the
USSR transitioned its economy fast enough. That way, it could have created a far more
efficient economy that would produce enough products and become highly competitive. That economy would then allow the government
to earn more in taxes and thus allow the Soviet Union to spend more money on improving the
living standards of its citizensā¦ But it didnāt. In his farewell address, Gorbachev explained
that āthe old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin workingā. And thirdly, aside from a shift in foreign
policy and a shift in the economy, the Soviet Union also implemented a large set of policies
giving people more freedoms. This was called āglasnostā. This is a russian word which means āopennessā
and ātransparencyā. These policies included lifting the travel
restrictions, meaning people could now travel to the west; previously-banned books and movies
were allowed to be published; removing the tight grip of the omnipresent secret police;
publishing secret documents about the Soviet Union concerning sensitive topics, such as
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster; and lifting restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom
of the press. These new policies caused a flood of new ideas,
ideologies, and political movements to form across the Soviet Union. It was an intellectual renaissance. Aside from personal freedoms, Glasnost also
included political reform. The new Soviet leadership wanted a democratic
Soviet Union. They did not believe that a communist country
cannot also be a democratic country. In fact, many believed that the two were complementary. Because if you need to answer to the will
of the people every few years, then leaders would be held accountable for their actions
to the same people they were ostensibly there to govern. It is important to remember that the people
of the Soviet Union and its communist allies were neither blind nor stupid. They were aware they were being lied to. They saw that the propaganda they were shown,
conflicted with the reality they saw with their own eyes. But what they did not know, was just how much
they were being lied toā¦ until now. Because as glasnost flourished, people became
more and more aware of the conditions in their country, while at the same time being allowed
to criticize the government more and more. It was hoped that glasnost would spark a renewal
in communist thinkingā¦ But instead, the combination of worsening
living standards and greater freedom to criticise meant that people werenāt thinking about
improving communismā¦ they were thinking about leaving communism. And as happens so often with the fall of empires,
the troubles started at its fringes. Up until this point everything had seemed
relatively calm in the Soviet Union and their allies. People were gaining more freedoms, the government
was actively trying to improve the prosperity of its citizens, and it appeared that the
cold war might actually end soon. There was a general feeling of hopefulness
at the time. But then revolutions started popping up. The first was in Poland in 1988, when people
began protesting for workers rights, such as legalising trade unions. These trade unions then managed to bargain
with the government to get freer elections in Poland. And as non-communist parties were now allowed
to compete in elections, the trade unionists formed their own party, competed, and won
the election on August 19th, 1989. Giving Poland its first non-communist government
since WW2. The most important thing that the Soviet government
did during this Polish revolution, however, was nothing. This wasnāt the first time a Soviet satellite
state underwent a revolution. In 1953 the Soviets put down protests in East
Germany. In 1956 Hungaryās revolution was crushed
by Soviet forces. And in 1968 the Soviet Union, along with 4
other Warsaw Pact members, invaded Czechoslovakia because they were becoming too liberal, such
as giving freedom of speech. But nowā¦ now the Soviet Union didnāt send
in their troopsā¦ And this got people thinking... The next country to steer away from communism
was Hungary. This country had always been one of the most
liberal communist states. The Hungarians even had a saying for it: āHungary
is the happiest barrack, in the eastern blocā... which iām told sounds even better in Hungarian. Mass demonstrations on March 15th of 1989
persuaded the Hungarian government to start negotiating with the new political parties
that were forming in the country. These negotiations included an overhaul of
the legal code, establishment of a constitutional court, and allowing free electionsā¦ Ironically, many of the people who are eroding
Hungaryās democracy at the moment were part of those negotiations. General elections were held on March 24th
1990, with Soviet forces ending their occupation a year later on June 19th. Just as with Poland, the Soviet Union did
not take any overt action to stop Hungary. While in this process towards a freer society,
the Hungarian government removed their border fence with Austria, opening the communist
Hungarian border with the capitalist Austrian border. Thus creating an opening in the Iron Curtain. For the first time in decades, people could
now move relatively freely between the communist east and the capitalist west. Many people who lived in East-Germany at the
time took this opportunity and decided to cross the border to Austria and continue on
to West-Germany where they were treated as full citizensā¦ East-Germany, which had the official name
of the German Democratic Republic, or simply GDR, found these recent events in Hungary
very troubling. In the 50ās 3.5 million people fled to West-Germany. In response the GDR built the Berlin wall
around West-Berlin, which was controlled by West-Germany. But with this opening, many people tried to
use it to flee to the west. And so the GDR closed its borders with fellow
communist countries, leading to nationwide protests. Unlike in Hungary and Poland, these protesters
were arrested and beaten by their own government. As more people were being abused, more people
showed up to protestā¦ The GDR was counting on Soviet troops coming
to support their government, but they never came. And so, eventually, to appease protestors
the borders were opened again and the GDR decided to let people travel to West-Berlin
directly... in a few months. But at the press conference where they wanted
to tell people about this new policy, the press secretary mistakenly told reporters
that the border would open immediatelyā¦ But the words were spoken, the people had
listened, and crowds gathered at the border checkpoints. As you can imagine, the border guards were
more than a little confused when thousands of people showed up asking to pass through
their checkpoint. With no instructions from their superiors,
the guards relented and opened the gates to west Berlin. So many people wanted to travel back and forth
that citizens took up chisel and hammer to open the wall themselves. And so the Germans themselves were the ones
who tore down that wall. {SAY IT LIKE REAGAN SAID IT}. With the fall of the Wall, the process of
German reunification was about to start when both governments decided that GERMANY. WILL. BE. UNITED! Free elections were held in January 1990 with
German reunification occuring on October 3rd of that same year. If you want more information about the German
reunification process then you can watch my video on that topic by clicking on it at the
end of this video. Next came Czechoslovakia with the Velvet Revolution. Czechoslovakia was the country which became
the Czech Republic and Slovakia we know today. It started as a student protest on november
17th 1989. This was suppressed by riot policeā¦ but
as usual; when the police beat down protesters, more protesters arrive. So too here. After 1 day the protesters swelled to 200.000,
after 2 days they were half a million. After a week, on November 24th the communist
leadership resigned. And on November 28th the government announced
that free elections would be held and the barbed wire would be removed from its borders. In just 11 days the communist regime had effectively
fallen, in June 1990 it held democratic elections, and in June 1991 the soviet troops withdrew
from the country. Bulgaria was late to the revolutionary parties
that erupted around them. Demonstrations started in October and November
but were suppressed by their government... but the Bulgarian leadership had seen in which
direction the tide of history was flowing. Rather than waiting for the people to stage
massive protests like elsewhere, the Bulgarian politburo decided to oust their leader just
a day after the Berlin Wall fell. He was replaced with a more liberal communist
and repealed restrictions on free speech and assembly. But rather than preventing more protests,
it led to the first mass demonstration on November 17th of 1989 and the formation of
various anti-communist movements. These movements demanded even more freedoms,
such as allowing multiple parties into the government. Negotiations were held in 1990 with elections
in June that same year. The ruling communist party abandoned Marxist-Leninism,
renamed itself the Bulgarian Socialist Party, and won the next election. And lastly came Romaniaā¦ and unlike the
other socialist states, the leader of Romania, a man named Nicolae CeauÅescu, did not want
to give up power. He appeared to want to wait until the anti-communist
uprisings were over and he could continue ruling Romania. But in Romania too, communism wouldnāt hold
out. As with many protests, it started over something
relatively small: a Hungarian Calvanist minister was arrested by the Romanian secret police
on December 16th 1989, because his sermons offended the regime. This caused rioting and nation-wide civil
unrest. CeauÅescu was in Iran at the time and when
he returned he ordered a mass rally in his support on December the 21st. Here he addressed a crowd of 100.000 people
where he espoused the achievements of the socialist revolutionā¦ but only 2 minutes
into his speech people started chanting the name of the city in which this Hungarian minister
was arrested. CeauÅescu raised his right hand to silence
the crowd, a tactic which had worked during his entire reignā¦ but not this time. The people kept chanting. This right here, his stunned expression, this
is the face of someone realizing that a revolution was unfolding against him, right in front
of his eyes. The crowd booed and jeered at the man who
only a week earlier controlled the country with an iron grip. Hundreds of protestors were shot. The next day the media reported that the defence
minister had comitted suicide, while this was actually correct, the military believed
he had been executed and the army switched sides. CeauÅescu was captured, put on a mock trial,
and was sentenced to death on Christmas Day, December 25th, 1989ā¦ only 9 days after the
first riots. It was the bloodiest of the revolutions, with
over 1.000 deaths. The youngest among them was only 1 month old. At the start of 1989 the Eastern European
countries were all considered stable socialist countriesā¦ by the beginning of 1990 all
Warsaw Pact nations had experienced a political revolutionā¦ except the Soviet Union. It had thus far remained relatively stable. But 1990 is the year where this would change. It started with the Soviet Union allowing
mostly free elections where people could vote for multiple parties, rather than only the
communist parties. This allowed the various republics, which
comprised the Soviet Union, to elect non-communist parties to their parliaments. Resulting in a wide range of new parties being
registered all over the Soviet Union. This was supposed to revitalize Soviet politics,
believing that competition would result in a more efficient political system that would
better represent the will of the peopleā¦ What happened instead was that most people
who were unhappy with the communist government voted en masse for independence movements. This was most prominent in Lithuania. A new political movement won most of the seats
in their parliament as part of the communist party. And thus they practically took over the party
in Lithuania and Lithuaniaās governance. A day after the elections the new Lithuanian
assembly declared itself independent from the USSR. As a result, the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics lost the Lithuanian Republic... but rather than sending in the Soviet army
like so many countries do, the USSR decided to implement an economic embargo on Lithuania. The Soviet troops already present in Lithuania
didn't intervene, but they didn't leave either. In those same elections many other parts of
the USSR also voted out the communist leaderships, such as Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia,
and Moldova. Georgia declared independence on 9 April 1991. But the other four werenāt declaring independence
juuust yet. But by now people saw clearly that the Soviet
Union REALLY wasn't interfering. Not only did they let satellite countries
erupt in protests... even within the regions of the Soviet borders there werenāt a lot
of crackdowns. Neither Lithuania, nor the other 5 non-communist
governments faced any military reprisal from the USSR. And as more people noticed that rebellions
passed without a major backlash, more and more people started a rebellion of their own. One region after the other erupted in rebellion. Such as Azerbaijan, where the people destroyed
fences and watchtowers along the border with Iran and overthrew the government in one town. Although here the Soviet army did violently
crack down on protesters, which alienated the local communists, and led them to unsuccessfully
declare their own independence. Ukraine erupted in peaceful protests at the
beginning of 1990. While the government did oblige the local
population, such as decriminalising certain religious practises. In their elections people voted for new democratic
parties. Tensions slowly rose with the Soviet leadership
as Ukraine recalled all its soldiers fighting in Soviet conflicts, declared its economic
sovereignty, and declared its goal for independence, among many other things. While not officially independent, they were
clearly on track to do so. In Tajikistan protests turned violent as people
torched government buildings, shops, and businesses amidst a call for economic and political reform. In Kyrgyzstan ethnic nationalist groups clashed
with each other over the division of land from former collective farms, which were now
being privatised. 300 people died. With the fringes of the Soviet Union becoming
less unified, the USSR desperately tried to keep the country together. To speed up the economic growth of the union,
they launched the ā500 days programā which sought to reinvigorate the Soviet Union, to
show the people and governments of the Union that the USSR was worth keeping around. This plan was meant to create the groundwork
for transitioning the economy to become more competitive. They would create a competitive market economy,
similar to capitalism; with mass privatization of business, stop controlling the prices of
products, join the global economy, and to transfer even more power away from the centralised
government and towards the local republics. A second initiative was to wholly transform
the Soviet Union away from centralisation and oppression and towards a federation where
every region was given equal rights and equal say in the affairs of the country and where
every person, regardless of ethnicity or creed, were given equal rights. It was hoped that people would no longer protest
for independence as a federation would allow each part to govern mostly independently. And to make sure that people felt that they
had a say in this matter, the Soviet Union decided to ask its people if this is what
they wanted. They held a nation-wide referendum on March
17 1991. The referendum asked people: "Do you consider
it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation
of equal sovereign republics, which will fully guarantee the rights and freedoms of all nationalitiesā. While the referendum was boycotted in some
regions, almost 150 million people showed up to vote. In total, over 75% of people voted in favour
of turning the Soviet Union into a federation. This wasnāt the only referendum taking place
on that day, with various regions adding questions on whether they should become independent. Russia, for example, added the question about
whether they wanted to have a president representing the Russian part of the soviet Union. The Russian people agreed and in June of 1991
Boris Yeltsin became the first President of Russia. By now the Soviet Union was facing separatism
across the nation and was ready to hand over power to the various regions of the USSR. And this was going to go into effect on August
the 20th, with the signing of the New Union Treaty which would turn the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics into the Union of Sovereign States. This would hopefully keep the nation together. But there were many in the government who
didnāt like this idea at all, from the defence minister to the vice president to the head
of the Soviet secret policy. And so they tried to take over the government
in a coup, to bring back the unity of the USSR. Their goals were to remove Gorbachev from
power, return centralised power back to Moscow, and to use military force to keep the Soviet
Union together. Gorbachev was on holiday so the rebellious
army put him under (holiday)house arrest, they announced the end of free press, and
sent the army to take over government buildings. The coup organizers expected massive popular
support from the people, expecting to be hailed as saviors of the USSRā¦ and people did come
out in droves. But rather than supporting the coup, they
tried to stop it. When tanks drove towards the Russian parliament
building, people far braver than I surrounded the tanks creating a human barricade until
the tanks could no longer move without crushing the very people whose support they needed. President Boris Yeltsin raced to the parliament
building where he met the pro-reform protestors, climbed atop the tank, and held a speech condemning
the revolution. By August 21st, 2 days later, the revolution
had clearly failedā¦ but so had the attempt at turning the USSR into a federation. With the coup, many people across the USSR
felt that Moscow wasnāt capable of governing them anymore and were no longer interested
in preserving the Soviet Union in any form. From this moment forward, one region after
the other would declare their independence from the Soviet Union. This was the last proverbial drop in the bucket,
that made the house of cards crumble. The first was Estonia who declared their independence
on the second day of the coup, on August the 20th. Then came Latvia a day later. Then Ukraine on the 24th
Belarus declared independence on the 25th Moldova the 27th
Kyrgyzstan on the 31st Uzbekistan on September the 1st
Tajikistan on the 9th Armenia on the 21st
Azerbaijan on October the 18 Turkmenistan on October the 27th
Russia on December the 12th And Kazakhstan on December the 16thā¦ These countries, along with several regions
which today are incorporated into other countries, declared their independence until there was
almost nothing left of the Soviet Union. And so, with every part of the Soviet Union
declaring their independence, it was decided that the USSR was going to be dissolved. The Soviet Union was officially declared dead
on December the 26th, 1991, at the age of 69. There were no grand ceremonies, no paradesā¦
Gorbachev held a short speech expressing sorrow over the fall of the union, frustrations of
past mistakes, and hope for a better and freer people. After that speech General Secretary Gorbachev
resigned from his post. He possessed a quality lacking in most world
leaders: He knew when to quit. Later opinion polls showed that the Soviet
people felt it was time for him to move on. Not because they thought he failed, but because
he had served his purpose: Under his leadership the yoke of totalitarian dictatorship had
been liftedā¦ Even if in many of those countries that yoke
would return just a few years later. And so ended the Soviet Union. If you liked this video and want to help me
reach more people then please like, comment, and subscribe. If you want to help me out financially then
you can do so at my Patreon account, the link is in the description. This was comrade Avery from History Scope,
thank you for watching.
Finland was part of the Russian empire not the soviet union.
Nobody's going to watch this
TL;DW: