Why the USSR collapsed.

When Mikhail Gorbachcev was elected the leader of the Communist Party in March 1985 it marked the true beginning of the end of Soviet Union. Gorbachev was set out to help the crashing economy and to widen his hated regimes popularity. Mikhail’s answer to these problems was his two-tiered policy of reform. Part of this reform was initiating a policy of glasnost or freedom of speech.  Gorbachev did not realize was that giving people complete freedom of expression that he was also unleashing emotions and political feelings that had been held in for decades. The soviet people used their freedom of speech to criticize the failing government and nationalistic rebellions began in spring up across east Europe.  These rebellions spread like wildfire burning up in the Soviet Union’s satellite states. These states includes East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and beyond. They all demanded democratic reform. In 1989 the East German regime fell to a revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 to separate East Germany (communism) from West Germany (capitalism)and reigned over as the symbol for communism. Despite the USSR politically falling it also faced many economic issues that led to their downfall. The economy of the USSR was a command economy. This means that the government has total control of all production and chose what was to be produced and how much was to be made. Eventually overtime the command economy imploded and caused the USSR to collapse. The cold war was also to blame for making the economy worse. The cold war was the tense relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. One of the main problems of the economy which was caused by the Cold War was that the USSR would focus on heavy industry over consumer goods which left people waiting on long lines and traveling up to 100 miles just to get meat. Together these flaws ended the economy