The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991 spans the period from the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's death until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, and complex systemic problems in the command economy, Soviet output stagnated. Failed attempts at reform, a standstill economy, and the success of the proxies of the United States against the Soviet Union's forces in the war in Afghanistan led to a general feeling of discontent, especially in the Soviet-occupied Baltic countries and Eastern Europe.
Glasnost is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissibility of hushing up problems. It has been used in Russian to mean "openness and transparency" since at least the end of the 18th century.
Perestroika was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated with CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "reconstruction", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system, in an attempt to end the Era of Stagnation.
The Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Union Republics were national-based administrative units of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 by a treaty between the Soviet republics of Byelorussia, Russia, Transcaucasia, and Ukraine, by which they became its constituent republics.
Yegor Kuzmich Ligachyov was a Soviet and Russian politician who was a high-ranking official in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and who continued an active political career in post-Soviet Russia. Originally an ally of Mikhail Gorbachev, Ligachyov became a challenger to his leadership.
State Supplies of the USSR, known as the Gossnab of USSR was active from 1948 to 1953, and 1965 to 1991. It was the state committee for material technical supply in the Soviet Union. It was charged with the primary responsibility for the allocation of producer goods to enterprises, a critical state function in the absence of markets.
Demokratizatsiya was a slogan introduced by Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in January 1987 calling for the infusion of "democratic" elements into the Soviet Union's single-party government. Gorbachev's Demokratizatsiya meant the introduction of multi-candidate—though not multiparty—elections for local Communist Party (CPSU) officials and Soviets. In this way, he hoped to rejuvenate the party with progressive personnel who would carry out his institutional and policy reforms. The CPSU would retain sole custody of the ballot box.
Uskorenie was a slogan and a policy announced by Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on 20 April 1985 at a Soviet Party Plenum, aimed at the acceleration of political, social and economic development of the Soviet Union. It was the first slogan of a set of reforms that also included perestroika (restructuring), glasnost (transparency), new political thinking, and demokratizatsiia (democratization).
Sofiya Vasilyevna Kalistratova, also known as Sofia Kallistratova was a public defense lawyer in the Soviet Union. She defended various Soviet dissidents and from 1977 was a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), distributing information about human rights violations in the Soviet Union.
The agrarian reforms in Cuba sought to break up large landholdings and redistribute land to those peasants who worked it, to cooperatives, and the state. Laws relating to land reform were implemented in a series of laws passed between 1959 and 1963 after the Cuban Revolution. The Institutio Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA)—an agency of the Cuban government responsible to implement the first and second Agrarian Reforms. The agency adapted the Soviet model of organisation—small collectives and large(er) state farms.
On the eve of the 1921 revolution, Mongolia had an underdeveloped, stagnant economy based on nomadic animal husbandry. Farming and industry were almost nonexistent; transportation and communications were primitive; banking, services, and trade were almost exclusively in the hands of Chinese or other foreigners. Most of the people were illiterate nomadic herders, and a large part of the male labour force lived in the monasteries, contributing little to the economy. Property in the form of livestock was owned primarily by aristocrats and monasteries; ownership of the remaining sectors of the economy was dominated by Chinese or other foreigners. Mongolia's new rulers thus were faced with a daunting task in building a modern, socialist economy.
Qahhor Mahkamov was a Tajik politician who served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan from 1985 to 1991 and was the first President of Tajikistan from November 1990 until his fall in the August 1991 coup.
Enterprises in the Soviet Union were legal entities engaged in some kind of economic activity, such as production, distribution, the provision of services, or any other economic operation. An enterprise was the general equivalent of "company", which was the legal entity prominent outside of the Eastern-bloc economies. Enterprises and production units engaged in activities that are generally undertaken by business-enterprises in capitalist systems, including the design, production, manufacture and distribution of producer and consumer goods and services. In contrast to business enterprises, enterprises and production associations did not engage in business-related activities such as marketing, buying-and-selling and financial decisions.
Khozraschet was an attempt to simulate the capitalist concepts of profit and profit center into the planned economy of the Soviet Union.
Vitaly Korotich is a Soviet, Ukrainian and Russian writer and journalist. Born in 1936 in Kyiv, he graduated from the Kyiv Medical University in 1959 and worked as a doctor between 1959 and 1966. Later, he became a full-time writer, and served as an officer of the Union of Soviet Writers.
The People's Control was a semi-civic, semi-governmental organisation in the Soviet Union with the purpose of putting under scrutiny the activities of government, local administrations and enterprises. It traces its roots back to Rabkrin, established in 1920.
Privatization in Russia describes the series of post-Soviet reforms that resulted in large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Most privatization took place in the early and mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin, who assumed the presidency following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1989, elections were held for the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. The main elections were held on 26 March and a second round on 9 April. They were the first partially free nationwide elections held in the Soviet Union, and would prove to be the final national elections held as the country dissolved in 1991. The elections were followed by regional elections in 1990, the last legislative elections to take place in the country.
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member-owners jointly engage in farming activities as a collective, and state farms, which are owned and directly run by a centralized government. The process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries, there have been both state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy and sovkhozy.
The economy of the Soviet Union was based on state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, and industrial manufacturing. An administrative-command system managed a distinctive form of central planning. The Soviet economy was characterized by state control of investment, a dependence on natural resources, shortages of many consumer goods, little foreign trade, public ownership of industrial assets, macroeconomic stability, negligible unemployment and high job security.
