Khrushchev's Thaw: The Failure Of Communism

While the situation was bad, and the Union was stagnating, it was balancing itself out between capitalistic policies to increase the standard of living and socialist policies to pursue capitalism. The system was damaged, but it might have still limped into the 21st century if not for Mikhail Gorbachev, who brought on the collapse of the CPSU. After Gorbachev took power in 1985, he began a series of political and economic reforms designed to tackle the problems piled on over the years. He had realized that past reforms, namely Khrushchev’s Thaw, had failed primarily because conservative elements were in majority within the Supreme Soviet and Central Committee due to the fact that members had to be approved by the CPSU, thus allowing conservative

After years of poor living conditions extending from the lack of economic growth and development in the Cold War, many satellite states in the Union had begun openly revolting. And, with loose media censorship, the independence and nationalism demonstrated by the satellites quickly became unmanageable for the central government. Add to that political dissidents freed from prison during Khrushchev’s Thaw, and the CPSU became pressured to maintain their power. In what is perhaps the greatest hasty blunder of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev proposed to create the Congress of People 's Deputies of the Soviet Union (CPD), the new highest state authority (replacing the Supreme Soviet). Despite one-third of the seats in the CPD being held by CPSU members to ensure central authority, all other members were freely elected in direct, democratic elections. This democratization brought in political dissidents, which forced the CPSU to give up the monopoly of political power that it had. From then on, the CPSU, and indeed the Union itself, collapsed from the lack of