4Learning - Secondary - Resources4Learning - Secondary - Resources - History - History in Action: Heroes or Villains

Siberia
A vast region of Eastern and Central Russia, much of it extremely hostile in geography and climate. It became synonymous with Stalin's terror, as millions of people were sent there and disappeared into prison labour camps forever. They included one of Mikhail Gorbachev's grandfathers. Sometimes a person's 'crime' was to appear to belong to the 'wrong' class in society, and the peasants bore the brunt of Stalin's atrocities.

General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party
The most powerful position in the Soviet Union. No one could succeed in the system without being a member of the Party, which decided and implemented policy through the local and national Party organization.

Politburo
Inner committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Introduced in 1919, it decided the big issues of politics, economics and international relations. It became the powerhouse of the Soviet system.

Perestroika
The major reconstruction of the Soviet state promised by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Glasnost
The policy of openness, to tell the previously uninformed or misinformed Soviet people what was happening.

Solidarity
An independent, and illegal, trade union, set up by Lech Walesa in Poland in 1980. It was the first effective opposition to a Communist state, and gradually forced reform in Poland, despite the persecution of its leaders. In 1989 it won huge success in elections, which marked the beginning of the breakdown of the Soviet system. In 1990 Lech Walesa became president of Poland.

Berlin Wall
The wall built through the centre of Berlin in 1961 to stop Germans from the communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) fleeing to the Federal Republic (West Germany). After the rise of discontent in eastern Europe against communist regimes, East Germany revolted and the wall was taken down in 1989. Many feel this event was the symbol of the end of the Soviet system and the Cold War. A year later, Germany was reunited.

USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Officially, 15 independent republics, but in effect and in practice a bloc of communist states dominated by the Soviet Union. In the wake of the collapse of communist power in eastern Europe and Gorbachev's policies, the USSR broke up in 1991.

Background Information

From 1945 to 1953 Soviet leader Josef Stalin concentrated on repairing the damage which the USSR suffered during the war. Stalin saw Eastern Europe as one of the key resources for the reconstruction of the USSR after the enormous damage of the Second World War. The economies, resources and industries of the countries of Eastern Europe were geared towards rebuilding the Soviet Union.

When Stalin died in March 1953 the people of Russia and of Eastern Europe wondered what lay in store for them. Would there be more freedom? They had to wait until 1955 before a new leader, Nikita Khrushchev, emerged. When he finally did, the signs looked promising. Khrushchev talked of peaceful coexistence with the west. He made plans to reduce expenditure on arms and made encouraging statements about improving the living standards for ordinary Soviet citizens and those of Eastern Europe. In 1956 he made an astonishing attack on Stalin. He denounced him as a wicked tyrant who was an enemy of the people. Gorbachev�s political career began in this atmosphere of gradual openness and increasingly free thought and action. It is not difficult to see where the seeds of his later policies of Perestroika (Reform) and Glasnost (Openness) were born.

As Gorbachev built his career in the Communist Party there was great rivalry between the superpowers and rivalry within the Communist Party as well. In 1963 Khrushchev was ousted from power by several of his colleagues in the Politburo. A new leader, Leonid Brezhnev emerged. He was much more of a traditionalist than Khrushchev had been, and the USSR and Eastern Europe�s openness was curtailed. Nevertheless, Brezhnev knew talent when he saw it and promoted the rising star Mikhail Gorbachev.

Eastern Europe continued to overshadow events in the USSR. In 1956 demonstrations against Communist rule had been crushed by Soviet tanks and troops. The same happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the meantime, the Berlin Wall had been built by the Communist authorities in East Germany, preventing East Berliners escaping to the West.

For much of the 1970s traditional hard-line Communists dominated Eastern Europe and the USSR. There was little freedom at home, and relations with the West were based on suspicion and hostility. Both sides built up their arsenals of nuclear weapons. By the early 1980s there were small signs of the changes which were to come. By the late 1970s workers in Poland began to look at workers in the West and the rights which they enjoyed. In the summer of 1980 strikes broke out all over Poland. Over 10 million workers joined a new free trade union called Solidarity. The upsurge of protest forced the government to resign and the military took over Poland under General Jaruzelski.

By December 1981 the Soviet Leader Brezhnev had had enough - he was not prepared to see a Communist government being defied by a non-Communist trade union. Brezhnev ordered the Red Army to carry out 'training manoeuvres' on the Polish border. Inside Poland General Jaruzelski declared martial law, banned Solidarity and put Lech Walesa in jail. In some ways, rather like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Walesa and Solidarity became a symbol of resistance to the government, the USSR and communism in general. Solidarity had made a crack in the wall of communism not just in Poland but in Eastern Europe as a whole.

The USSR was changing. By the early 1980s d�tente (the spirit of military co-operation which developed in the early 1970s) had virtually collapsed with the arrival of an aggressive new American President Ronald Reagan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had damaged superpower relations and involved the USSR in its own Vietnam. During this turbulent period Brezhnev died, but no strong leader succeeded him. A succession of very old, sick Communist leaders came and went in a period of two and a half years. The real crisis came with the virtual collapse of the Soviet economy, when it finally became clear that the USSR could not compete with the USA in spending on nuclear weapons.

By 1985 the situation called for urgent action. The man to take such action was Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev introduced radical new policies. The general direction came to be known as perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). He brought market forces into the Soviet economy but more importantly he began to cut spending on defence. After almost fifty years on a war footing the Red Army began to shrink. At the same time, Gorbachev brought a new attitude to the USSR's relations with the wider world. Gorbachev was popular but he soon had enormous problems to deal with. The Soviet economy could not be modernised as quickly as people wanted and some of the republics which made up the USSR began to demand separation and independence.

By 1989 the Soviet leader had his hands full dealing with his own country. However, his reforms had created a demand for freedom across all of the Communist world. Gorbachev admitted that his reforms were in trouble and made it clear to the Communist leaders in Eastern Europe that they would no longer be propped up by the Red Army - they would have to listen to their people. The following months saw an extraordinary turnaround in Eastern Europe. In Hungary, the Communist Party changed its name to the Socialist Party. More importantly, Hungary created a huge hole in the iron curtain by allowing free passage across the border between Hungary and non-Communist Austria. In Poland free elections were held for the first time since the Second World War and Eastern Europe got its first ever non-Communist leader in Lech Walesa.

There followed a true 'domino effect' in Eastern Europe. Huge demonstrations led to the collapse of Communism in Czechoslavakia and the Czech nationalist leader and writer Vaclav Havel became the new president. In Rumania there was a short but very bloody revolution which ended with the execution of the Communist dictator Nikolai Ceausescu. The new Socialist Party in Hungary declared that free elections would be held in 1990. The final Eastern bloc country to fall was Bulgaria, again as the result of huge popular demonstrations against the Communists.

Within five years the USSR itself had collapsed and the countries of Eastern Europe began discussing entry into the European Union. The Cold War was over and the Red Empire was well and truly at an end. Mikhail Gorbachev had played a critical role in undermining the Soviet empire. He also sowed the seeds of his own destruction.