On December 8, 1991, an agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States was signed in the Belarusian Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The USSR is gone. The heart of a great country that did not last a year before its seventieth birthday was stopped.
Falling oil prices
One of the main "breadwinners" of the country in the 1970s-1980s was the Urals grade of Soviet oil: for example, in 1978 alone, oil exports gave $ 5.5 billion in convertible currency (all trade exports of the USSR - $ 13.2 billion) … Most Soviet people did not even suspect that Soviet oil had a name of its own. But all world traders and American politicians knew about it, who did everything to lower oil prices. The fact is that, in contrast to Arab and Norwegian Brent crude, the cost of producing Soviet oil was quite high - about $ 5, so the profitability of Urals sales was at least $ 10. In 1986, due to market manipulation, oil fell below $ 10, and the Soviet Union found itself in a tailspin.
Defeat in the information war
For 60 years of its existence, the USSR has failed to create a positive image for itself in the eyes of citizens of most Western states. The Soviet propaganda machine worked rather primitively and was more designed to brainwash its own citizens. The USSR did not manage to convince the majority of states that it was he who played the decisive role in the victory over fascism. So, in the Anglo-Saxon world, everyone was sure that the US and Great Britain won the war. But even where the image of the USSR was positive, Soviet propagandists failed to maintain a good position. For example, the Soviet Union was unable to oppose anything to the tough anti-communist (in fact, anti-Soviet) campaign that the American government launched in the late 1940s in the United States and some European countries. As a result, pro-Soviet governments in France, Italy and Greece resigned, which did not receive proper psychological support.
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Anti-alcohol campaign
By 1984, the level of alcohol consumption in the USSR exceeded 14 liters of pure alcohol per capita. This forced the Soviet leadership to take serious measures to prevent the country from getting drunk. In May 1985, an unprecedented anti-alcohol campaign was launched: the price of vodka almost doubled, unique vineyards were cut down, and the production of wine and vodka products was artificially reduced. The state voluntarily deprived itself of an important source of income, which has been the sale of alcohol since Stalin's times. But soon the prices for oil and gas, which accounted for almost 60% of all revenues in the Soviet budget, collapsed, and the “financial cushion” in the form of revenues from the sale of vodka on the domestic market was gone. The USSR fell into an economic collapse. But the main thing is that because of the anti-alcohol inquisition, the government lost the trust of its people,who returned the favor in 1991.
KGB autonomy
Since the mid-1970s, the KGB began to play the role of a state within a state. It actually became an uncontrolled economic structure, very powerful and influential. The KGB had interests all over the world, and these interests did not always coincide with state plans.
Gerontocracy
During the Great Patriotic War, the USSR lost the generation of 1920-1923. It was this generation that was to play a decisive role in governing the country in the 1980s. There has been a leap across the generations. The Politburo was getting old, the politicians of the new formation were too young to lead the state.
Entry of troops into Afghanistan
In 1979, the USSR, in order to prevent the development of a civil war in neighboring Afghanistan, introduced a limited military contingent there. This caused a violent reaction in the West: in particular, in protest, the United States and some other countries announced a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, which took place in 1980. Two decades later, when the Soviet Union was no longer on the world map, the American special services admitted that they played an important role in involving the USSR in the military conflict. For example, the former CIA director wrote in his memoirs that the Americans began to provide assistance to the Afghan mujahideen even before the introduction of Soviet troops, provoking the decision of the Soviet leadership. The situation was aggravated by the fall in oil prices. Every year the USSR spent about 2-3 billion US dollars on the Afghan conflict. The Soviet Union could afford it with the peak oil price,which took place in 1979-1980. However, in the period from November 1980 to June 1986, oil prices fell almost 6 times! Participation in the Afghan conflict has become an unreasonably heavy burden on the virtually bloodless economy.
Lack of allies
The Soviet Union spent many billions of dollars on its "allies". However, the struggle with the United States for influence on every "cell of the globe" ended in a fizz. Immediately after the USSR and then the Russian Federation stopped funding, the "revolutionary communist" movement in some states either curtailed altogether, or acquired far from non-communist forms. In fact, it turned out that the USSR had no real "friends". The Soviet government was forced to initiate negotiations with the Americans, as a result of which it had to make serious political concessions. However, even this could not save the state from death. On December 25, 1991, the first and last president of the USSR officially resigned. On the same day, US President George W. Bush issued a statement,which drew a line under the great confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States: “The United States welcomes the historic choice in favor of freedom made by the new states of the Commonwealth. Despite the potential for instability and chaos, these events are clearly in our interests.”