Global PersPectives
During the 1960s, some Soviet leaders saw
stagnation in the economic, technological,
and agricultural spheres. Internal critics of the
regime blamed the top- level po liti cal leadership,
which had become ossified. The policy of life-
long appointments to leading posts, a policy
that remained in effect until the mid-1980s,
meant that po liti cal appointees stayed in their
posts for 20 or more years, regardless of their
per for mance. There were few efforts to reform
and modernize the system, and younger people
had little opportunity to exercise po liti cal lead-
ership. These failures in leadership, exemplified
by the poor economy, led to widespread discon-
tent and resentment in all layers of the society.
Moreover, the Soviet Union was a very
ethnically diverse state, consisting of 15 major
republics, some of which also contained “auton-
omous” republics and regions, inhabited by
hundreds of ethnicities. Although the Soviet
Union had benefitted eco nom ically from
extracting resources found in the far reaches of
its territories, the costs of keeping the empire
together were high. Subsidies flowed to the
outer regions at the expense of the Soviet
state. With growing economic discontent and
the erosion of the ideology promoted by the
Communist Party, local nationalist movements
started to fill the ideological vacuum by the
late 1980s.The predominant viewpoint in the former
Soviet Union is that the explanation for the
end of the Cold War can be found in a very
long and complex chain of domestic develop-
ments in the Soviet Union itself. Po liti cal, eco-
nomic, and demographic factors led to what
seemed to be an abrupt disintegration of the
Soviet Union and hence the end of the Cold
War. International relations theorists did not
predict it; perhaps they were not looking at
domestic factors within the Soviet state itself
and did not have a sufficiently long historical
perspective.
The po liti cal dominance and authority of
the Communist Party, the main ideological
pillar of the Soviet Union, had significantly
eroded by the late 1980s. The revelation of
Joseph Stalin’s horrific crimes against the
Soviet people, especially ethnic minorities,
intensified animosity in the far- flung parts of
the Soviet empire. Many of the smaller repub-
lics and subnational regions bore a grudge
against the central government for forced
Russification, the resettlement of certain
minorities, and other atrocities such as
induced famines in Rus sia and Ukraine in the
early 1930s. Increasingly open discussion of
such events undermined the ideological fer-
vor of the common population and shook
their trust in the “ people’s government.”Many scholars of American diplomatic history attribute the end of the Cold War to poli-
cies the United States initiated: the buildup of a formidable military capable of winning
either a nuclear or conventional war against the Soviet Union and the development of
the strongest, most diversified economy the world has ever known. However, those within
the Soviet Union perceived the events leading to the end of the Cold War differently.Explaining the End of the Cold War:
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