Transcript Chapter 32 The End of the Bipolar World By Ximena Ramirez

THE END OF THE BIPOLAR
WORLD, 1989-1991 C.E.
Ximena Ramirez
Period 3
Mr. Marshall
AP World History
3/31/09
1)
("A Peep into the Soviet Union“
("Communists: Crisis Will Help Us Regain Power.“
1)
CRISIS IN THE SOVIET UNION
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Under U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union’s General Secretary Leonid
Brezhnev, the public speaking of the Cold War remained intense.
Massive new U.S. investments in artillery, including a space-based missile protection
system that never became operational, placed heavy burdens on the Soviet economy,
which was unable to absorb the cost of developing similar weapons. (Bulliet 858)
Soviet economic problems were general; shortages of food, consumer goods, and housing
were an ongoing part of Soviet life. (Spodek 795)
Obsolete industrial plants and centralized planning that stifled initiative and
responsiveness to market demand led to a declining standard of living relative to the
West. Society contrasted greatly than that of the West.
Despite the unpopularity of the war in Afghanistan and growing discontent, Brezhnev
refused to modify his rigid and unsuccessful policies.
The writer Alexander Solzhenitzyn punished the Soviet system and particularly the
Stalinist prison camps. He won a Nobel Prize in literature but was charged with treason
and expelled from the country in 1974. (Andrea 435)
The physicist Andrei Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner protested the nuclear arms
race and human rights violations and were condemned to banishment within the country.
Some Jewish dissidents spoke out against anti-Semitism. (Bulliet 858)
When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR in 1985, weariness with war in
Afghanistan, economic decay, and vocal protest had reached critical levels. Casting aside
Brezhnev’s hard line, Gorbachev authorized major reforms in an attempt to stave off total
collapse.
His policy of political openness (glasnost) permitted criticism of the government and the
Communist Party. His policy of perestroika (“restructuring”) was an attempt to address
long-suppressed economic problems by moving away from central state planning and
toward a more open economic system. (Armstrong 260)
In 1989 he ended the war in Afghanistan, which had cost many lives and much money.
("Freedom Agenda.“ 1)
THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST BLOC
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In 1980 protests by Polish shipyard workers in the city of Gdansk led to the formation of
Solidarity, a labor union that soon enrolled 9 million members. (Bulliet 859)
The Roman Catholic Church in Poland, strengthened by the elevation of a Pole, Karol
Wojtyla, to the papacy as John Paul II in 1978, gave strong moral support to the protest
movement.
As Gorbachev loosened political controls in the Soviet Union after 1985, communist leaders
elsewhere lost confidence in Soviet resolve, and critics and reformers in Poland and
throughout eastern Europe were emboldened. (Armstrong 272)
Beleaguered Warsaw Pact governments hesitated between relaxation of control and
suppression of dissent.
Just as the Catholic clergy in Poland had supported Solidarity, Protestant and Orthodox
religious leaders aided the rise of opposition groups elsewhere. This combination of
nationalism and religion provided a powerful base for opponents of the communist
regimes. (Spodek 765)
Threatened by these forces, communist governments sought to quiet opposition by seeking
solutions to their severe economic problems.
By the end of 1989 communist governments across eastern Europe had fallen. The
dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of a divided Europe and the bipolar world, vividly
represented this transformation. (Bulliet 859)
Leaders in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia reformed while in Romania the
dictator Nicolae Ceausescu refused and was executed.
The comprehensiveness of these changes became clear in 1990, when Solidarity leader Lech
Walesa was elected president in Poland.
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a tidal wave of patriotic enthusiasm swept aside the
once-formidable communist government of East Germany. In the chaotic months that
followed, East Germans crossed to West Germany in large numbers, and government services
in the eastern sector nearly disappeared. Some Europeans recalled German militarism
earlier in the century and worried about reunification. But there was little concrete
opposition, and in 1990 Germany was reunified. ("Freedom Agenda.“ 1)
THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST BLOC
(CONT.) &
THE PERSIAN GULF WAR
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(Grossman 1)
Soviet leaders looked on with dismay at the collapse of communism in the Warsaw Pact
countries.
The year 1990 brought declarations of independence by Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, three
small states on the Baltic Sea that the Soviet Union had annexed in 1939. Violent ethnic strife
soon erupted in the Caucasus region. Gorbachev tried to accommodate the rising pressures for
change, but the tide was running too fast. (Bulliet 859-860)
The end of the Soviet Union came suddenly in 1991. After communist hardliners failed a poorly
conceived rebellion against Gorbachev, disgust with communism boiled over.
Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic and longtime member of the Communist
Party, led popular resistance to the overthrow in Moscow and emerged as the most powerful
leader in the country.
Russia, the largest republic in the Soviet Union, was effectively taking the place of the
disintegrating USSR. (Armstrong 273)
In September 1991 the Congress of People’s Deputies—the central legislature of the USSR, long
subservient to the Communist Party—voted to dissolve the union. The Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), was created. The same month Mikhail Gorbachev resigned.
Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia also dismembered. The first significant conflict to occur after
the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was the Persian Gulf War. The
immediate causes were local and bilateral. (Spodek 764)
Iraq’s ruler, Saddam Husain, had borrowed a great deal of money from neighboring Kuwait and
sought unsuccessfully to get the size of this debt reduced. He was also eager to gain control of
Kuwait’s oil fields. Husain believed that the smaller and militarily weaker nation could be
quickly defeated, and he suspected that the United States would not react. The invasion came in
August 1990.
President George H. W. Bush ordered an attack in early 1991 because he thought that Saudi
Arabia, a major oil producer and U.S. ally, would be affected in the war. (Bulliet 860-862)
The missiles and bombs of the United States destroyed not only military targets but also
“relegated [Iraq] to a pre-industrial age,” the United Nations reported after the war, and
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Andrea. The Human Record: Sources of Global History. Vol. 1-2. NY: Houghton
Mifflin Co.
"A Peep into the Soviet Union." Yvonne Foong: Fighting Neurofibromatosis. 30
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Armstrong, Monty, David Daniel, Alexandra Freer, and Abby Kanarek.
Cracking the AP World History Exam.2008 Edition. New York: Random House,
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Bulliet. "Chapter 11: Peoples and Civilizations of the Americas, 600 – 1500
C.E.” The Earth and Its People. By Bulliet. Third ed.
"Communists: Crisis Will Help Us Regain Power." Javno. 29 Nov. 2008. 30
Mar. 2009 <http://www.javno.com/.../g2008 /m11/y188778861821302.jpg>.
"Freedom Agenda." Freedom Agenda. 30 Mar. 2009
<http://www.freedomagenda.com/images/1989-1109_People_freed_from_communist_East_Germany_for_first_time_in_40_years_
as_the_Berlin_Wall.jpg>.
Grossman, Mark. "The Persian Gulf War." Ebook PDF Download - Free Ebook
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<http://www.ebookpdf.net/screen/cover3/1122722345.jpg>.
Spodek, Howard. The World's History. 2nd ed. NJ: Prentice Hall. 383-84.