15
The End of the Cold War
It was most fitting that Poland was the place where the Soviet controlled Eastern bloc began to unravel [Refer Box Item: Warsaw Uprising]. Ten million Polish trade union workers went on strike, forming a movement called Solidarity, using civil resistance to advance the cause of the workers. The movement was secretly funded by the CIA. The leaders of the movement were arrested but it was too late to stop Solidarity from spreading like wildfire across Eastern Europe. In June 1989, Poland held its first democratic election in 40 years and a non-communist government was elected. The world watched anxiously, expecting Russian tanks to roll into Poland to end this victory, but Gorbachev did not act. In November, the Berlin Wall, the single most compelling symbol of the Cold War was torn down in an amazing show of people power. The world again watched while people hacked at the wall, but Gorbachev still did not act. Like dominos, other Eastern communist regimes fell, and by Christmas the brutal dictatorships of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania were ousted.
Mikhail Gorbachev played a significant role in ending the Cold War, with his arms and troops reductions and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from its Eastern European satellites. Glasnost signalled a greater willingness by the Soviets to be receptive to Western ideas. In 1991, communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a country. The 15 states that made up the former Soviet Union, including the largest, Russia, became separate, independent countries.
Although Gorbachev’s economic, social, and political reforms were greatly praised around the world, even winning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, he was criticized by many in the Soviet Union, who believed his reforms were too grandiose and impractical. In any rate, the reforms failed to save the plummeting Soviet economy. I believe Gorbachev’s action, or more aptly, his inaction, stemmed from a bankrupt Russian economy and the failure of Socialism, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Iron Curtain which had remained in place for 46 years, from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991, was no more.