What conditions led to the end of the Cold War and the breaking up of the USSR?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWER:
Both economics and politics played a major role in ending the Cold War. Government inefficiency and lack of flexibility in the planned economy limited competitiveness. The global arms race also diverted resources from modernization of the Soviet economy. Soviet discontent from internal suppression of dissidents and the protests against the war in Afghanistan added to the effects of the declining economy. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev instituted major reforms, including a policy of openness called glasnost. His economic plan, perestroika, moved the Soviet economy toward a free enterprise system. At the same time, protest movements in Soviet-dominated eastern Europe spawned widespread opposition to the communist government. By 1989, communist governments in eastern Europe had fallen; their collapse was illustrated most vividly by the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Declarations of independence by Soviet republics, including Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, brought the crisis to a boil. The president of the Russian republic, Boris Yeltsin, led popular resistance in Russia. The remaining Soviet republics subsequently declared their independence as well. In September 1991 the central legislature of the USSR, the Congress of People's Deputies, voted to officially dissolve the union.