The Dissolution of the USSR

ah hello comrades welcome back to another soviet video i'm gonna stop don't do a russian accent this is all about the dissolution of the ussr but it certainly doesn't mean that we're done with our soviet videos here on mega projects because they always do well let's jump in actually let's not jump in let's have a word from today's fantastic sponsor magellan tv take advantage of a month-long free trial of magellan tv and discover a new type of content experience with its binge-worthy documentaries and non-fiction series more on them in a bit [Music] it's christmas day 1991 a day the world changed the events that took place in moscow towards the end of this year have been building for some time around four years to be exact at 7 32 pm the red soviet flag with its gold hammer and sickle and gold bordered red star above was lowered from the roof of the kremlin for the final time moments later the russian trickler inched its way up the flagpole to replace it the collapse of the soviet union quite literally reorganized the geopolitical landscape independent countries emerged onto the world stage and the 45-year conflict which wasn't really a direct conflict known as the cold war finally came to a close it's difficult to overstate just how seismic these changes were for a world that had grown wearily accustomed to the tempestuous relationship between the ussr and the united states an entire generation had known nothing but mistrust and propaganda slung from one side or the other and the fall of the soviet union saw a tectonic shift that affected nations and people all around the world but as i said this was a change that'd been four years in the making even longer depending on how far back you really want to go and included widespread unrest within the soviet republics and warsaw pact countries a failed last-minute coup and what was perhaps one of the most symbolic days in history as the berlin wall finally came down the soviet union was a grand experiment in communism and perhaps one of the largest social movements the world has ever seen born out of genuine anger at the ruling elite it was an experiment that rollercoastered wildly before the spectacular events that began in the late 1980s now of course no good story can really begin at the end the events that took place in 1991 may have misshaped the world but they were the final moments of a quite extraordinary 69 year undertaking to begin this story we have to start back on the 7th of november all the way in 1917. at this point in history russia had been involved in the bruising first world war for almost three and a half years russia like most of the other countries involved in the great war did so mostly to satisfy imperial rivalries and rampant nationalism but unlike countries to the west russia was far from a nation equipped to fight a prolonged expensive and bloody war by 1917 the russian state was a shattered carcass with widespread hunger across the country as the cyrus ruler attempted to squeeze every last drop out of the country somewhere between 2.2 and 2.7 million russians died during world war one figures only matched by germany anger began boiling over with the existing autocracy and this led to not one but two revolutions in 1917. the first began in february when factory workers in petrograd nelson petersburg began striking and by the 10th of march virtually every factory in the entire city was closed the tsar ordered the military to quell the uprising but well exactly the opposite happened as the troops themselves began to revolt many officers were shot or went into hiding as the military machine collapsed with few options the tsar abdicated the throne on the 15th of march elation swept the country but the truth was that with so many competing factions with radically different political ideals it was a pretty uneasy piece now these factions include the constitutional democratic party a center-left group composed of left-leaning intellectuals and professionals who favored a form of western constitutional monarchy and this group formed the bulk of a provisional government put in place after the abdication of the tsar but four days before the provisional government had been named a rival group the petrograd soviets was formed and the two groups went on to compete for the heart of mother russia the petrograd soviets also known as the bolsheviks led by the enigmatic vladimir lenin acted as the official opposition to the new government and well things got pretty sour pretty quickly like the government before it the provisional government proved fairly inept when it came to fighting the germans and anger among the workers and peasant class it quickly rose in october 1917 russia once again descended into revolution and new elections were held on the 25th of november 1917. once it became clear that the bolsheviks had little support outside the main industrial cities and with just 25 percent of the vote they dissolved the constituent assembly in january 1918 and the country descended into a five-year civil war between the soviet red army and a loose confederation of liberal and monarchist forces known as the white army an estimated 8 million russians died during the chaotic civil war as the red army gradually inched its way across the country and by 1922 the last holdout had been suppressed and the country emerged from the war under the dominant rule of the bolsheviks on the 28th of december 1922 the treaty of the creation of the ussr was agreed at a conference attended by various socialist delegations including the russian soviet federative socialist republic the trans-caucasian socialist federative soviet republic the ukrainian soviet socialist republic and the balear-russian soviet socialist republic god that's a massive mouthful which was followed by the declaration of the creation of the ussr which effectively formed the soviet union so a large scale reorganization of the economy had already began back in 1917 with one of its major aspects being the goro plan which called for the entire country to be electrified over a 10 to 15 year period and this could be considered the prototype for the subsequent soviet five-year plans now look today we've got quite a bit to cover so we're not going to go into detail of the 13 5-year plans but if you're interested we've done a video on the first plan in its entirety it actually did do very well so we didn't do any of the other 12 plans but hopefully at some point it'll pick up and then we've got a nice excuse to do those as well because they're truly fascinating gaucher is support for that original video now just before we get into the rest of the story of the soviet union and i promise eventually it's collapse i want to tell you about today's sponsor magellan tv magellan tv is a new documentary streaming service founded by filmmakers who love history their mission is to tell the great stories that have defined the human experience and with more than 3 000 excellent programs available on magellan it's hard to stop watching once you start they've got everything from the greeks to the great war plus modern histories biographic scientific profiles true crime and a whole lot more more content is being added every week and what's one thing you love about paid streaming services of course there are no adverts just lots and lots of excellent facts now if you're enjoying today's video want to go hunting or magellan for more cold war content they've certainly got plenty of titles to wet your appetite today i recommend nadia kamenetz the gymnast and the dictator a look at the famous olympians forced relationship with dictator nikolai chauschesku it's wild right now you guys can get a one month free trial of magellan by clicking the link in the description below it's content for days and days so let magellan hook you up you'll be glad you did and let's get back to communism now to try and cram 69 years worth of events into a single video would be pushing it and after all we're focusing here on the dissolution of the ussr so we're just gonna barrel through quite a lot rather quickly here the 1930s saw some brutal modernization tactics across the soviet union resulting in plenty of death but also in a new era of industry during the second world war the country signed a non-aggression pact with nazi germany but then it was invaded by nazi germany and came within a hare's breadth of complete collapse finally they shook themselves awake and stormed across the continent finally raising the soviet flag above the german reichstag building in berlin on the 2nd of may 1945. any hopes that its leader joseph stalin would pull his forces back to the pre-war borders quickly evaporated and the iron curtain which would divide europe for the next 45 years or so went up and the cold war quickly began while many assume that the soviet union had spread all the way to checkpoint charlie in berlin that wasn't actually quite the case the countries that lay between the berlin wall and the official border of the ussr technically remained independent nations and by independent we mean ruled by communist regimes collard and firmly under the control of the kremlin in 1955 albania bulgaria czechoslovakia east germany hungary poland and romania signed the warsaw pact along with the soviet union a collective defense treaty aimed at countering nato the irony of the 45-year cold war between the soviet union and the united states was that they never actually fought each other with the exception of air combat in the skies above korea when soviet pilots were called in because of the lack of suitable korean or chinese alternatives also during the korean war american jets attacked the soviet tsakaya rekha airfield in the far east mistaking it for a north korean airfield seven soviet jets were damaged on the ground ironically all belle p-63 king cobra fighters given to the ussr by the united states during world war ii apart from these small-scale incidents the two superpowers never fully locked horns there were several points where the world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war between the two countries but things were always de-escalated just in time you probably knew that the 1960s saw tensions reached their peak particularly with the cuban missile crisis between the 16th and the 26th of october 1962. the 1970s and 80s saw relations begin to thaw albeit incredibly slowly with a series of arms treaties that began to give the world the impression that it might not in fact be incinerated within a massive nuclear mushroom cloud at any moment [Music] it's difficult to pinpoint where the grand adventure and socialism began to unravel but most would probably agree that by the mid-1960s things were certainly beginning to flatten out in the ussr an uprising in czechoslovakia in 1968 was brutally put down but the seeds of change were starting to emerge but this was in contrast to official soviet dogma between the 1960s and mid-1980s where a series of leaders presided over a period that was famously coined the era of stagnation by mikhail gorbachev more on him a little bit later before this period nikita khrushchev had made tentative steps at distancing the soviet union from the more brutal practices seen during the time of joseph stall in a process that came to be known as destalinization predominantly this involved trying to inch the soviet union away from the cult of personality that had painted stalin as a loving father figure and heroic socialist wonder god instead of the tyrannical narcissist responsible for millions of deaths he also attempted to close many of the gulags the soviet union's prisons and released many of the political prisoners inside but hardline soviets began to think that creature had gone soft and he was eventually forced out and replaced by the da leonid brezhnev a man with far more traditional socialist values the new leader had early success in stabilizing an economy that had begun to see saw but also instigated a period of social decline perhaps the best example of this was the sannyavsky daniel trial in 1966 in which writers andrei sinyabski yuli daniel were charged with anti-soviet agitation and propaganda for publishing their satirical writings on soviet life unusually for the soviet kangaroo trials both defendants pled not guilty but were sentenced to five and seven years hard labor for their troubles but this also led to the first public demonstration in the soviet union since world war ii known as the glasnost meeting where 50 protesters gathered in pushkin square in moscow on the 5th of december 1965. the kgb quickly broke up the protest and several of the organizers were suddenly deemed insane and spent a month in a psychiatric facility and we know that 50 protesters might sound microscopic but this was the soviet union and protests of this kind were absolutely unheard of the glasnost meeting was not only an act of extraordinary bravery it is widely seen as the first movement for civil rights in the soviet union as i mentioned leonard brezhnev saw early success with the economy but it did not last while it would be a stretch to say it began to decline it certainly stagnated and was made all the starker by the astonishing economic growth seen in the united states in fact by the mid-1980s the u.s economy had grown to twice the size of the soviet union's economic problems came down to several factors but were heavily influenced by the fact that prices were fixed by the central government which could raise and lower them whenever it wanted in theory the system aimed to balance the total output of the economy with the total input which again theoretically allowed for the most equitable distribution of resources and eliminated waste this rarely worked not least because corruption was absolutely rampant throughout the soviet union an issue that brezhnev was more than happy to turn a blind eye to i wonder why to exacerbate this problem further during the 1980s the reagan administration in the united states managed to convince the saudis to lower their oil prices which dragged the global price of oil down and meant that the soviets couldn't make a profit selling theirs this in turn led to the depletion of the country's hard currency reserves but also the soviet union fought a disastrous war in afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 which they not only didn't win but helped to drain their economic lifeblood even further all of this led to general and widespread stagnation and eventually decline of living standards across the soviet union however the ussr had absolutely no problem in spending exorbitant amounts of money trying to keep up with the americans in the arms and space races at this point the ussr still had the second largest economy in the world but it was beginning to creak alarmingly [Music] when mikhail gorbachev came to power in 1985 he set about enacting a series of reforms that he hoped would stimulate a sluggish economy and promote greater openness within the soviet union the last point came with the radical idea of allowing non-communists to run for office a notion that would have been unheard of just a couple of years before gorbachev hoped that these kinds of reforms would kick-start a new era the soviet union 2.0 if you will but the roots of corruption ineptitude and just plain well they ran incredibly deep just a year into his term the soviet union was rocked by a disaster that almost certainly sped up the demise of the ussr on the 26th of april 1986 a massive explosion blew a gaping hole in reactor number four at the chernobyl nuclear power station now this was bad enough but the catastrophic response by soviet authorities and the bungled cover-up lifted the curtain to reveal an astonishing level of soviet incompetence and deception the fact that the soviet people were not informed of the disaster for two weeks showed its citizens that those at the top were willing to keep even the most atrocious disasters from them for the sake of preserving the already tatted image of the glorious soviet union public opinion in their soviet leaders which in truth had never been that high began to tank throughout its lifetime soviet leaders had ranged from the psychopathic to the utterly inept but thankfully for most involved the man at the helm when it really mattered mikhail gorbachev came across as level-headed and dare i said a fairly decent soviet leader on the 25th of october 1989 foreign ministry spokesman gennady garasimov said we now have the frank sinatra doctrine he has a song i did it my way so every country decides on its own which road to take a little cryptic i know but essentially the sinatra doctrine signaled that moscow would no longer interfere in the internal affairs of countries under the soviet umbrella and well that changed everything with the smell of freedom in the air change swept through eastern europe the first to go was poland with three elections announced on the 4th of april after sustained protests across the country hungary was next with huge protests on the country's national day the 15th of march forcing the government to begin negotiations over elections which were concluded on the 18th of september also in hungary the first sections of the iron curtain began to calm down as the country started removing its border barrier with austria in east germany the government was hanging on for dear life gorbachev visited in october 1989 to mark the 40th anniversary of the gdr but also to urge reform on its leaders towards the end of the month the number of protesters in leipzig had swelled to over 300 000 as the screw tightened in november 1989 the world watch transfixed as sections of the berlin wall came crashing down and germans began moving freely across a border that had not long before been one of the most well protected and dangerous anywhere in the world this was followed by the velvet revolution in czechoslovakia which saw eight hundred thousand people in letner square by the 25th of november and three days later the government announced it would relinquish power and dismantle the single-party state in romania communist dictator nikolai chaucesco was forced from power after the military revolted against his rule and he and his wife were executed by firing squad on christmas day 1989 after a failed helicopter escape and this wasn't just in europe across the world anti-socialist fury led to the toppling of governments or watering down of socialist ideology on every continent as the communist experiment began to implode unfortunately we don't have anywhere near enough time to tell you about every revolution that took place during this period but it was a truly historic few years as seismic as the changes were in eastern europe these only represented the puppet governments of nations that had fallen under the warsaw pact the soviet union itself still remained intact and vehemently communist but not for long nationalistic sentiments spurred on by the events in eastern europe meant that change had been set in motion on the 1st of july 1991 the warsaw pact was officially dissolved and soviet troops began withdrawing lithuania estonia latvia and armenia were the first to formally declare independence but in a blind act of stubbornness soviet authorities denounced the declarations and even ordered soviet troops into lithuania a last-ditch referendum was held across the soviet union on the 17th of march 1991 asking whether the union should stay or not many boycotted the vote which was assumed to be rigged and almost 80 voted that the soviet union should remain discussions were held to allow greater flexibility and freedom for individual countries within the ussr but like a runaway train there was no stopping the colossal collapse there was however one final belligerent stand in august 1991 an attempted coup led by hardline communists and high-ranking kgb officials began on the 18th of august when gorbachev's summer home in crimea had its communications cut rouge officials then entered the dhaka and demanded the soviet leader either declare a state of emergency or resign and name one of them as the provisional leader gorbachev refused outright in the following day military operations began in moscow as 4 000 soldiers 350 tanks 300 armored personnel carriers and 420 trucks taking part in the coup began moving through moscow their immediate target was the white house not that one but russia's parliament building however co-leaders had badly misjudged the level of resistance they would face both from the politicians and the russian public on the morning of the 19th of august loyal politicians began arriving at the white house these included boris yelts and the recently elected president of the russian republic whose star would soar on the back of his actions during the coup members of the public now aware of the uprising began arriving at the white house and formed a defensive shield around the building yeltsin famously stood on a tank outside and delivered a rousing speech that included the line we appealed to citizens of russia to give a fitting rebirth to the puchists and demand a return of the country to normal constitutional development small clashes took place around the white house but after two days the disorganized coup attempt had stalled and with a potential tiananmen square incident on their hands the military began to back away their leaders were later arrested with one committing suicide before he could be taken into custody the events had shocked the nation and added further impetus to the unraveling of the ussr the final four months of the soviet union saw a torrent of change successive republics began breaking away and the final nail in the coffin came on the 1st of december 1991 when ukraine the largest republic formally declared its independence on the 21st of december the almorata protocols were signed by all the newly independent nations which effectively ended the soviet union four days later gorbachev both resigned from his post and also made it extinct after 69 years the ussr was no more and that brings us to the end of the mammoth story of the rise and fall of the soviet union an economic and military coalition that created the largest country the world has ever seen at 22 million four hundred and two thousand two hundred square kilometers which is about eight point six million square miles and spanned eleven time zones this was of course the largest ever experiment in communism and it's fair to say that it didn't quite work the collapse of the soviet union fundamentally changed the world since then we've steamed headlong into unbridled capitalism how much of a good thing that is i'll leave it up to you but it also led to greater geopolitical connectivity than ever before after 45 years of the suffocating cold war the world seemed to breathe a little easier at least for the time being the united states emerged as the sole global superpower and the european union slowly bulged in size as countries to the east broke away from the yoke of russian influence in terms of dramatic change that affected the entire world we may never see something quite like the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s ever again so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did smash that like button below don't forget to check out our glorious sponsor magellan tv and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

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Id: Qao3sZC8okE

Length: 22min 50sec (1370 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021