Who was most responsible for the end of communism?

[HFishbine]

Poll question: Who was most responsible for the end of communism?

Who was most responsible for the peaceful fall of communism in the USSR and eastern Europe?

on edit: based on early comments, I have to acknowledge that it is an overly-simplified question, but excluding structural factors, which person was most responsible for a peaceful end to what the world long feared would come to a conclusion by war?

[Endangered Specie]

1. most responsible for the fall of communism?: its own weight.

[baldguy]

9. "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

But the 'pukes always forget, Gorbachev didn't tear down the wall. Neither did Reagan. The leadership in the USSR and USA didn't make that decision. They felt a united Germany would be a destabilizing influence in Europe.

The people in Berlin decided for themselves to tear down the wall. The border guards decided not to stop them. The governments in East & West Germany decided to talk instead of fight.

They decided to reject BOTH Gorbachev and Reagan.

[Don_G]

2. The USSR Itself

With all the x-year plans and the bureaucrats lying to get ahead, they were working with flawed economic data to begin with. Besides, since when is a bureaucrat qualified to run a K-Mart?

[prodigal_green]

7. wait, are you talking about

the old Soviet system or our current chimpministration?

[Don_G]

20. The Old Soviet Model

Our turn is coming unless we get some fairly honest Democrats to run the country.

Sales of American-labeled products overseas are already down because of Chimpy and his FU policies.

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Lech Walesa was brave enough to take a stand when no one else was...

I think he gets a little credit too.

[grannyb]

4. most responsible?

Money, the spent themselves into oblivion. The same path we are on with the money we are spending on defense.

[Redhead488]

8. As a percentage of GDP or as a percentage of basic outlays

we are not spending nearly as much on Defense as we have in several past eras:

http://www.taxfoundation.org/2004budgetperspective.html

[trotsky]

19. Yet Soviet military spending thru the 80s was flat.

They didn't bother trying to keep up with our out-of-control spending.

[Redhead488]

21. They couldn't

[trotsky]

27. The truth is,

their military was never the threat that fearmongers made it out to be. The "Evil Empire" was crumbling from within, and had been for years, by the time Reagan appeared on the stage.

[Redhead488]

30. The Soviets were not 10 feet tall

that is true, but the Warsaw Pact was still a formidable opponent. Modern weapons, lots of them, plus nukes. They were indeed a threat.

[trotsky]

35. A threat worth paying $600 for a toilet seat?

As Marc Perkel said on Bartcop.com, we may have different opinions of Reagan, but there's one thing all Americans can agree on:

America will be forever in his debt.

[Redhead488]

36. Nice non-sequiter

The abuses of the military procurement system, which have existed ever since there WAS a military, have nothing to do with the threat, or lack thereof, posed by the Soviet military.

[trotsky]

40. It follows perfectly well.

Reagan's out-of-control spending helped enable the worst excesses. The Pentagon was awash in money - more money than they knew what to do with, and so they spent it!

Meanwhile, people starved and went homeless and died of AIDS right here in this country because of Reagan's budget priorities.

We are paying the price for this inattention to our social well-being. The biggest threat to Americans was always right here at home.

[Cheswick2.0]

5. The communists themselves

they were/are clueless about why their system sucks and will never work in the long run.

[IrateCitizen]

23. Your base premise is correct, but not your supporting reasons...

Yes, the communists themselves were responsible for the downfall of their system. However, to follow up with something like, "they were/are clueless about why their system sucks and will never work in the long run," only serves to diminish your astute claim under a faulty, simplistic assumption.

Communitarian tendencies, with regards to smaller-scale social entities (particularly family structure) have a long history in Russia that stretches well back into the Tsarist era. That is one reason why communism was able to take hold in Russia.

However, the Soviet system became rife with contradictions and cronyism over its seventy years of existence. Actually, these contradictions were pretty well cemented by the 1970's, and the downfall had become pretty much inevitable.

Perhaps the most tragic element in the downfall of communism in Russia was the way in which it happened. I truly believe that if Gorbachev would have been able to remain in power, and transform the Soviet system into a hybrid socialist/market system best suited to Russian cultural sensibilities over time, Russia would be a lot better off today than it is now. As it was, the transition was done by "shock therapy" designed by American economists (perhaps as a role in the attempted dismantling of Russia in order to cement US hegemony as propsed by Zbigniew Brzezinski) that was particularly painful for Russia, and from which it is just starting to recover.

Going back to the system "rife with contradictions", couldn't a similar assessment be made about the current state of the American economy and state? Think about it....

[blm]

6. Ted Turner and the International News Network.

Made it more difficult for the governments of all countries to lie to their citizens.

At least until government operatives weaseled their way in (Steve Case).

[DinahMoeHum]

10. Which person? Your average, everyday citizen-diplomat. . .

the people in cities and towns adopting "sister-cities" in Eastern Europe; those involved in "people-to-people" exchanges, etc.

The advent of the fax machine and the popularity of "subversive" rock music.

IOW, the everyday people on both sides of the Iron Curtain.



:toast:

[Az]

11. The fallacy of thinking Reagan brought it to an end

As the right sees Communism as an unworkable means of governance then it is paradoxical to require an external force to bring it down. The premise that Reagan was required to bring it down presumes it was working.

[KevinBG]

12. Credit McDonald's...

... Elton John, Billy Joel and Levis. Good old consumerism.

[11 Bravo]

32. Welcome to DU!

You're going to love it here!

[newyawker99]

43. Hi KevinBG!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[SarahB]

13. Money

A nation cannot survive economically when too much of it's GNP is spent on military purposes for too long a time. Hmmmmm....kind of makes one think, huh?

[Jack Rabbit]

14. Leonid Brezhnev

For eighteen years, Brezhnev presided over a corrupt bureaucratic state that descended further into tyranny. The decay within Soviet society was reflected in the Soviet satellite states of eastern Europe. In what purported to be a workers' democracy, Communist Party officials had the privileges reserved for wealthy capitalists in the west. Said one real worker, "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."

The Soviet system imploded. Neither Reagan nor any other western leader had anything to do with it. Whatever virtues Gorbachev may have possessed that would have made him a great leader were of no use by the time he came to power.

It is Gorbachev, not Reagan, who will stand out heroically at the end of the Cold War. History too often honors conquerors. Gorbachev deserves to be honored because he managed the orderly collapse of a doomed empire.

[AntiCoup2K4]

15. Gorby put in the final shot, but I think his 2 predecessors helped a lot.

Andropov and the other guy whose name I can't even remember. And Brezhnev as well. With these three guys dropping dead all within a year or two, the Commies couldn't really get a lot done.

And then of course, there was Afghanistan. Their version of Vietnam. So you could credit Jimmy Carter, Osama Bin Laden, Zbignew Bryzinski, Poppy Bush, the CIA, and the Pakistani ISI for that part of it.

In any event, it wasn't any one person.

[Avonrepus]

26. Chernenko

Constantine Chernenko was the guy between Andropov and Gorbachev, pretty much dead when he got to power and a fine example of how the conservatives in Russia knew Gorbachev was going to threaten their cosy positions.

[oblivious]

37. Yes, I was going to say, the mujahideen and CIA.

and US Stinger missiles. At least, that's what Zbigniew Brzezinski claims. Saudi Arabia helped the US finance and organise the Great Jihad in Afghanistan, so they can take a large part of the credit. Bin Laden only started organising in 1988, so I don't think he can really take much credit.

[Zolok]

16. Neither...

it was Nancy Reagan who toppled communism.
Her ongoing transnational cat fight with Raisa Gorbachev reduced the cold war super power rivalry to the level of soap opera.
Once rendered comic, the whole rivalry could be quietly disposed via negotiations.
:)
I go on in this vein at:
www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

[jmowreader]

17. Neither

Miklos Nemeth, Chairman of the Hungarian Council of Ministers in 1989, is the person most responsible for the end of communism in eastern Europe. Lieutenant-General Yevgeny Shaposhnikov is the person most responsible for the end of communism in the Soviet Union.

In the summer of 1989, Miklos Nemeth decided the money his government was spending on border security would be better used elsewhere, so he disbanded his border command, pulled up the barbed wire along Hungary's borders with non-Communist states, and allowed his people free access to the west. He had no worries about mass defection; if his people could come and go as they wished, they would come back--their clothes were in Hungary, all their friends were in Hungary, their jobs were in Hungary and all they had was Hungarian money. He was vindicated; defections among Hungarians quickly dropped to nothing. Unfortunately for the other communist countries, defections through Hungary skyrocketed. To stop the flow of their citizens to the west, most of these countries quickly implemented democratic reforms. (Communists needed permission from their governments to travel to Hungary, but that was no problem for most people; Hungary was a popular vacation spot so lots of people already had this permission.) East Germany was the last nation to implement democratic reforms, and they had to run off Erich Honecker to do it.

Shaposhnikov was the commander of the Soviet Air Force's Moscow Military District. In 1991 there was a coup in the Soviet Union; hardline communists who didn't like Gorbachev's tentative steps toward democracy put him under house arrest and attempted to capture Boris Yeltsin. Finally, Lieutenant General Shaposhnikov had had enough; he picked up the phone, telephoned the coup leadership, and informed them that he, Lieutenant-General Shaposhnikov, had ordered a bomb to be loaded onto a Tu-160 bomber. If the coup was not concluded within the hour, continued Shaposhnikov, he would order the Tu-160 crew to drop the bomb on the Kremlin. The coup ended immediately. Within a month, Lieutenant General Shaposhnikov was Marshal Shaposhnikov; IIRC he was a colonel general for three days and an army general for five. They broke up the Soviet Union shortly after that; unfortunately, Shaposhnikov never got the chance to wear the stars of a Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Of the people on the initial poll, it was definitely Gorbachev. His "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring) campaigns were a nice start, but it took a "Soviet Pearl Harbor," to use PNAC phraseology, to really change things. That's where Nemeth and Shaposhnikov come in.

[Liberal Classic]

18. I think it goes all the way back to

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, historical dialectic not withstanding.

[TreasonousBastard]

22. If I have tpo pick one of the two...

Gorby.

But here's my favorite article of the day about this, which I've already posted in a couple of other Reagan and the Cold War threads:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/060704.html

[MessiahRp]

24. Though "70 percent of Russians regret the end of Communism"

I found that number telling in this Washington Post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20764-2004Jun6.html

I am going to be going to school to become a History teacher, one thing I plan to do is reverse how our schools teach Communism in the curriculum. I'd teach of the financial system setups and differences but remind people that Authoritarianism is what created the brutal dictator-led environment that made the Russians similar to the Nazis. It's a massive misconception by Americans who believe that the Communist system itself is supposed to abuse it's people, rather than just be a different class and wealth structure system than the capitalist system Americans use.

Rp

[JI7]

25. HARRY TRUMAN

[LTR]

28. David Hasselhoff

Or at least that's who I picked in a similar poll on Saturday.

[Snellius]

29. John Lennon - Lech Walesa - the Pope

and blue jeans.

[KittyWampus]

31. BLM Got It Right, Ted Turner/CNN and MTV

[doubleplusgood]

33. Bill Gates

...and all of the other PC techno-nerds. Economically speaking, the invention of the PC gave the West a substantial productivity advantage over the Soviets in terms product design, engineering, project management, etc. The Soviets were faced with a dilemma: giving people access to PC's to improve productivity would also be like giving them printing presses & mass communications. This was a state that was so paranoid that, at least in one case that I heard of, a person had to fill out a request to make a copy of a document and, even at that, only 2 copies could be made.

[KansDem]

34. My dad, along with countless others...

My dad served on a US Naval ship off Korea. Like countless others before and after him, he did his duty to contain the spread of Communism.

If fact, whenever someone says Reagan stopped Communism, I say "Many people contributed to stop the spread of Communism, like my dad, who was serving on a US ship off the coast of Korea the same time Reagan was making "Bedtime for Bonzo..."

But credit for the peaceful fall of Communism goes to Gorbachev, who saw the folly of the Cold War and, I suspect, realized without an outside "enemy" the US would turn on itself and eventually dissolve to ruin...

[stavka]

38. ...but wait, I thought....

Aren't China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea all still in business?

Romania, Albania, and Yugoslavia had a peaceful fall from Communism?

Reagan was responsible for the end of Communism like my postman has put an end to my junk mail.

[dryan]

41. Many factors

I am not a historian or an economist, but I don't think that the Russian economy could withstand many more years of communism.

[Commendatori]

39. Not enough choices, but

given only the two I would have to go with Raygun. Gorby would have kept it for ever if possible. Letting girls wear jeans and tank tops isn't the end of communism.

[Bandit]

42. You left off Sears & Roebucks

That was the real cause for change not Reagan. A few Sears catalogs got distributed through-out Soviet Union and people wanted some of that type of existance. If anything Reagan delayed the changes not caused them.