How Did The Collapse Of The Soviet Union

Immediately after World War II, the USSR put high emphasis on determining its allies and enemies in the colonial world (at that time, most of the Third World was under European domination). The beginning of the Cold War (1947-1991), a state of neither war nor peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (Robert Service, 2015), the USSR attempted to export the Marxist-Leninist model in the Third World. In this context, the U.S. started shoring up governments which appeared willing to resist the spread of communism. At the same time, the U.S. and its Western allies began establishing development institutions to further “fight” the expansion of communism.

The Soviet Union used the United Nations (UN) and its agencies as a means to gain allies,

and its allies launched several initiatives and programs and established a set of institutions in order to win the hearts and minds in the developing world. The first key initiative was the Marshall Plan. By the end of World War II, most of Europe was devastated, along with its economy. In June 1947, the U.S. announced the European Recovery Program known as the Marshall Plan which provided $13 billion in the U.S assistance for the economic recovery of war-torn Europe. Underlying the program was the belief that the economic recovery of war-torn Europe would insulate the peoples of the continent against the appeal of international communism. It should be highlighted that the Marshall Plan was opened to the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states, Soviet leaders viewed the offer as a devious capitalist plot and refused to participate. The Marshall Plan allocated amounts that varied between 10.3 and 13.6 billion dollars. The Marshall Plan aid was allocated mostly to the United Kingdom (25 percent), France (21 percent), West Germany (11 percent), Italy (12 percent) and the Netherlands (8 percent). In terms of the accomplishments of the Marshall Plan, industrial production of the participating countries by the end of 1951 was 64 percent higher than four years earlier while the agricultural production increased with 24 percent. This four-year plan impacted even the GNP which increased 25

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), (now known as the World Bank) as its name indicates, was set up to finance reconstruction after World War II, mainly infrastructure projects, complementing the goals of the Marshall Plan. France became the first recipient of an IBRD loan in 1947. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) purpose was to promote the global economic growth through international trade and financial stability. IMF’s mission was twofold: first a fund available to countries having balance-of-payments difficulties. Second an agreement by the participating countries to behave circumspectly in handling such difficulties. Both the IBRD and IMF were set up at a meeting of 43 countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA in July 1944. The Soviet Union participated in the conference, but it decided not to join the fund. The Bretton Woods institutions became virtual arms of U.S. foreign policy and played a major role in the strategy of the Cold War waged by the Soviet Union and