Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War: An Analysis
This ten page undergraduate paper examines how the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. Because the people of the USSR had suffered for too long, and had grown tired of living in poverty and hopelessness while the Kremlin spent what rubles there were competing with the United States in a nuclear and conventional arms race, the collapse of communism was inevitable. When the people of Moscow rose up against the hard-line coup leaders in 1991, hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers were sent into the capital but the army units refused to intervene against the massive popular demonstrations.
