The Soviet Union - rise and fall

What a feared name it was two decades ago! The Soviet Union...The country which became a military power and an economical power by force... The country which brought the communism into the history of mankind.

These days, this name became history. This mutant state fell apart in 1991. This fact brought about the appearance of 15 new states on the map of Europe and Asia. First, let's see how the Soviet Union appeared in history.

All started in 1917. On October the 25th/ November the 7th a Communist revolution took place. The Revolution was led, among others, by V.I. Lenin, I.V. Stalin and Trotski. The purpose of this Revolution was to overthrow the czarist regime in order to create a new society...a society which would assure equal rights for all and an equal division of the fortunes. This society was only utopical. It couldn't be real...At least, not in our days...

After the Revolution's victory, V.I. Lenin took the lead of the Bolshevik Party (future Communist Party). He also took the lead of the country. The Mensheviks (the ones who fought for the czar) were defeated. The country's army became the Red Army.During the Revolution, there were two armies in the country: The Red Army (it fought for the communists) and The White Army (it fought for the czar). The former won and became the only army of the country.

Lenin died in 1924, 7 years after the victory. The leadership of the Party was taken by I.V. Stalin, a cruel leader, who built the power of his country on terror. The industrialization of the country cost the Soviet peoples millions of lives. He had a rival, Trotski, his old "comrade" from the Revolution. He left the country for Mexico, being assasinated by Stalin's men. 

In 1939, Stalin made a pact with Hitler, the ruler of Germany. They obliged themselves not to attack each other. They also divided the Continent into "spheres of influence". This agreement was called The Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact, after the names of the two foreign ministers. The signing of the pact took place on August the 23rd 1939.

On September the 1st 1939 Germany attacked Poland...That's the way World War II started. England and France entered the war on Poland's side on the 3rd and 4th of September 1939. The Soviet Union entered Poland on the 17th of September 1939. The country was divided between Hitler and Stalin and the Polish Government exiled itself to London. The country's thesaurus was transported to Romania and then sent to Switzerland. In 1940, Stalin occupied the three Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. He also ocuppied Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina, old Romanian lands. 

On the 22nd of June 1941, Germany started the Barbarossa Plan, the great war against U.S.S.R., despite the agreement between them. The two powers didn't trust each other. That was the weak point of the alliance. Of course, the story is known... The Soviet Union, allied with Great Britain and the United States of America won this war...The war was over on the 2nd of September 1945, after six years and one day. In Europe, everything was over on the 9th of May 1945, when Germany surrendered. 

After the war, we see the Soviet Union imposing the Communist regime to the Eastern Europe's states, among which we can find Romania. So the Cold War started...The Cold War against the capitalist regime, led by the United States. The two Superpowers got along pretty well in the sixties, when they were ruled by Nikita Hrusciov (whose son Serghey lives in Boston, being an American citizen) and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After this moment, the tension started again.

The United States won "The Race for Space". Even if the Soviets sent the first man in Space, Yuri Gagarin, and the first living thing in space, a dog named Laika, the Americans sent the first men on the Moon on the 21st of July 1969. The words of Neil Armstrong: "A small step for me, a big step for the mankind!" and "Houston, Houston, we have a problem!" became famous all over the world.

  The decline of the Union continued in the seventies. They couldn't keep up with the performances of the capitalist system. They had a non-performant industry, which consumed a lot and produced low quality products. In the eighties, in 1985 more precise, the leadership of the Party was taken by Michail Gorbatchev, a reformist leader, who imposed the policy of  "perestroika", which means reform and "glaznost" which means defrost. This was the beginning of the end of the Communist regime. A few problems, well hidden so far, appeared: the problems of the human rights, the ethnic problems, etc. That's how the Soviet Communism fell in 1991. The start was in August after those fights in Moscow. It was two years after the fall of the East-European communist regimes. In December 1991, on Christmas Day, Michail Gorbatchev resigned the Soviet presidency, thus ending the 74 years of Soviet communism. All the republics which composed the Union became independent in 1991.

This was the end of a giant...Of the feared Red Giant...Why did it end that way? Because everything that is built by force has the same fate...It just can't last...That's why the U.S. is so strong...Because it was built methodically...Because is a well-thought democratic structure...Even if it is affected by crisis, it will survive...What do you think?