"‘Star Wars’ and the Soviet Collapse" Topic

"According to Oxford don Robert Service's exhaustive study of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decapitation of world communism, the architect of these events, Ronald Reagan, came to the presidency in 1981 with three objectives in mind: to restore the confidence of the American nation after the debacle of the Vietnam War; to re-establish the political, moral and military pre-eminence of the United States throughout the world; and to make a third world war impossible through the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Reagan proposed to abandon the doctrine of mutually assured destruction that had deterred nuclear apocalypse since the Eisenhower presidency, while reconsidering the seminal U.S. Cold War policy of containment. His goal: "to reverse the expansion of Soviet influence around the world" by breaking the deeply—and as it turned out, fatally—troubled Soviet economy. The new administration, in the words of Mr. Service, would "increase the American military budget and put the USSR's finances under the strain of an arms race."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I hate to detract from President Reagan's great legacy by one jot, but the fundamental reason for the Soviet collapse was the sustained fall in energy prices in the early-mid 1980's…

I guess we have discussed it a zillion times even on these boards. Star Wars was one of the reasons, but by far not the most important.

- oil prices
-Chernobyl
-Afghanistan
-anti-alcohol campaign
-"glasnost" that went out of CPSU control
- general mistakes in economy

are more important.
SU as in many other cases looked for asymmetric warfare. Cluster munitions for space that didn't require a direct hit was an easy answer developed at that time. They would make all surrounding space unoperational for years, but when you're facing annihilation it is a small price to pay…

Really, all of them could almost be pulled into a general heading of 'Economy'. Glasnost and the anti-alcohol campaign were both attempts to reverse the Soviet economic collapse. The combination of Afghanistan, Chernobyl, bad central planning and planning for dealing with the Reagan military buildup and Star Wars all pretty much doomed the USSR. I suspect they could have survived two or even three of those factors, but the weight of all of them at once was pretty much unbeatable.

Luke Skywalker and the 'Force' was the most dominant and telling reason :)

There was one other factor – communism just doesn't work!

Another factor was the coming of the Information Age. The USSR just couldn't keep up to the west unless it kept up with personal computers. But the dissemination of information was contrary to everything the CPSU stood for. Gorbachev was able to keep the balancing act up for a short time, but eventually the whole system collapsed.

'There was one other factor – communism just doesn't work!'

Very true.

well we never had communism. A popular joke was that instead of communism we had Olympics of 80s ;)
In 1991 when I've got my first job in formerly closed design institute we had PC there…one was Bulgarian 86 and another one was US 286 I think…prices were ridiculous at that time though – think this 286 was 25 000 USD.
One important failure was that all propaganda could not create a proper "new man" who was an important part of communism buid-up. Even that we were more friendlier, helpful and altruistic back then it wasn't enough, and morale was pretty low even on the top.

I'm with Barin1!

Amicalement
Armand

Ronnie's military spending spree, and technological advances certainly had a lot to do with it.

The Soviets couldn't keep up, so folded.

He was an economist, and his strategy won the Cold War.