end of soviet union

• Era of Stalinism


  • Emphasis on building an industrial base
  • Collectivizing agriculture
• Stalinism in Eastern Europe


  • Sztálinváros ('Stalin City'), Hungary
  • Savica, Zagreb
  • 'Panelák', Prague
  • 'New Belgrade', Yugoslavia
  • Nowa Huta ('The New Steel Mill'), Poland
• Katherine Lebow: 'Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56'
• Soviet Leadership


  • Stalin - until 1953 (Terror)
  • Nikita Khruschchev – 1953-1964 (Thaw)
  • Leonid Brezhnev – 1964 onwards (Stagnation, Détente)
• When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism


  It becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries
• Václav Havel: 'The Power of the Powerless, Published 1978, Extorted his fellow citizens to 'live in truth''
• The Soviet Union 1980's: An Empire with Clay Feet?
• Soviet War in Afghanistan, 1979-1989, 'The Bear Trap'
• The Soviet Gerontocracy


  • Leonid Brezhnev – 1906-1982
  • Yury Andropov 1914-1984
  • Konstantin Chernenko 1911-1984
• Eastern European Gerontocracy


  • Janos Kadar, in power in Hungary since 1956
  • Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania, 1967
  • Gustav Husak, Czechoslovakia, 1969
  • Erich Honecker, GDR, since 1971
  • Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria 1954
• Mikhail Gorbachev


  First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (from 1985)
• Chernobyl Disaster 1986
• Pattern of Communist Revolutions in Europe: Velvet Revolutions

  • Non-Violent
  • Grass-roots, popular movements
  • Negotiations, 'round tables', between Communists and opposition groups
  • No Soviet intervention
• Velvet Revolution: Prague, November, December 1989
• Fall of the Berlin Wall November 9 1989