This video talks about the day the Cold War officially ended. 2 superpowers met to finalize details of agreements that would revolutionize relations between them. When they got together, they both agreed to both have their strategically nuclear weapons and use them conventionally, reduce conventional forces in Europe, and destroy chemical weapons. President Bush also agrees to end curbs on Soviet Union trade with the U.S.
The end of the Cold War changed the economy because it created tension between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R (Soviet Union). The U.S. favored a democracy and a capitalism government while the U.S.S.R. favored communism and authoritarianism. The end of the Cold War started the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed because nationalism, economic and political mismanagement, and the security forces. The Soviet Union was an imperial project, containing a variety of nations conquered by Imperial Russia or itself during the first half of the 20th century, and supported by vassal states in Eastern Europe. Despite the supposedly "soviet" nature of the union it was really still a Russian imperial project, and resentment of Russian domination helped to tear the empire apart.
For a variety of reasons outside the scope of the question, by the mid-eighties the Soviet Union's economy had stalled, its political system was corrupt and sclerotic, and the USSR was increasingly unable to face the growing foreign challenge of a resurgent US and China, tacitly allied against them. This lead to growing dissatisfaction among the people in Russia, and the Union's authoritarian political structure offered a frustrated public no means of expressing that frustration.
The army, security forces, and the Politburo, especially Mikhail Gorbachev, were unwilling to engage in the kind of brutal crackdown that would have been necessary to quell the unrest that ultimately ended the Soviet Union. Stalin, in his over the top brutality, cured most of the leadership from wanting to go back to that method of rule, even for the cause of regime survival.
For a variety of reasons outside the scope of the question, by the mid-eighties the Soviet Union's economy had stalled, its political system was corrupt and sclerotic, and the USSR was increasingly unable to face the growing foreign challenge of a resurgent US and China, tacitly allied against them. This lead to growing dissatisfaction among the people in Russia, and the Union's authoritarian political structure offered a frustrated public no means of expressing that frustration.
The army, security forces, and the Politburo, especially Mikhail Gorbachev, were unwilling to engage in the kind of brutal crackdown that would have been necessary to quell the unrest that ultimately ended the Soviet Union. Stalin, in his over the top brutality, cured most of the leadership from wanting to go back to that method of rule, even for the cause of regime survival.