Key Leaders
Which Soviet leader introduced glasnost and perestroika?
Mikhail Gorbachev
What is glasnost?
This policy promoted greater openness and freedom of information in the USSR.
What is NATO?
This military alliance, led by the United States, opposed the Soviet bloc. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
In what year did the Soviet Union officially dissolve?
1991
Which nation emerged as the largest successor state to the USSR?
Russia
Which Russian politician became the first President of the Russian Federation in 1991? (after the collapse of the USSR)
Boris Yeltsin
What is perestroika?
This policy sought to restructure the Soviet economy.
What was the arms race?
An expensive competition to build up weapons (mainly nuclear) between the USSR and USA that strained Soviet resources throughout the Cold War.
By 1991, how many republics made up the area that the Soviet Union once occupied?
15
The collapse of the Soviet Union effectively ended which global conflict?
The Cold War
Which Soviet leader's policies of military expansion and economic stagnation contributed to problems in the 1980's>
Leonid Brezhnev
List 3 ways glasnost and perestroika unintentionally weakened Communist Party control?
1. Expansion Cultural Freedom
2. Increased public debate, criticism and nationalism
3. Decentralisation allowed more local decision-making and private ownership
What was the Berlin Wall and when did it fall?
The wall fell in 1989 and symbolised the collapse of communist control in Eastern Europe. The wall was originally build to separate East (USSR) and West (Allied) Berlin.
What was the August Coup Attempt?
A failed event in August 1991 made by hard-line Communist leaders to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and seize control of the Soviet Union. The coup accelerated the collapse of the USSR.
Historians debate whether the Soviet collapse was caused more by economic problems, political reforms, or what other growing force?
Nationalism
Which leader was responsible for the The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)?
President Ronald Reagan
Gorbachev's decision to allow greater openness after this event in 1986 demonstrated a significant change from the secrecy associated with the Soviet government of the past?
Chernobyl
What was the Soviet-Afghan War?
A conflict that involved the Soviet Union sending troops to Afghanistan from 1979-1989 to maintain a communist government there. It was considered a massive failure.
What were nationalist or independence movements?
Movements within areas of the Eastern Bloc such as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia that challenged Soviet authority.
The collapse of the Soviet Union transformed which Cold War military alliance, that had linked the USSR with its Eastern European allies until 1991?
The Warsaw Pact
Which leader stood on a tank outside the Russian parliament building and became a symbol to the 1991 coup?
Boris Yeltsin
What was the The Belovezha Accords?
An agreement that was signed in December 1991 between the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus that formally declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and established the Commonwealth of Independent States.
What were the two major Cold War events which occurred in 1961 that increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union?
The Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
List 1 Economic, Political, Social and International cause of the Soviet Unions Collapse
Miss Baldry to decide
What does the rise and success of Putin's authoritarianism in Russia say about the collapse of the USSR?
This post-Soviet development demonstrates that the collapse of the USSR did not simply produce a straightforward transition to democracy, with Russia later experiencing increasing authoritarianism and censorship.