You can't have a meaningful discussion about why Soviet Union collapsed without a through understanding of how Soviet economics functioned and how the Politburo & Republic governments interacted.

I came home from school during these days, threw down [my books and sat down with my grandparents who raised me. Grandma said "don't leave. You're watching history taking place." I was mesmerized, as i had been around that time and earlier, watching what happened to Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife and also a velvet revolution. I had become just so curious, nearly obsessed. And finally when I was ready, I started to travel to former Soviet Bloc countries. It was the people, .of course who kept me going back. I ended up marrying a Czech Native. Our greatest, most anticipated journey was to Russia in 2019. Alas, I am very concerned that we shall never finish out the sojourn. I wish with all my heart that a peace comes soon. I hope for diplomacy. Because I surely love that part of the world and its peoples.

Thanks for the talk , enjoyed listening to it all . 🇬🇧

I love how we have so many professors and Drs in the comments of all these lectures..

6:41 -- "Hardly anyone foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, maybe almost no one." I hear this so often from Western scholars. However, I made an extended visit to Bulgaria in 1981, where I was told again and again that the Soviet Union would collapse, and that it was just a matter of time. The reasons I was given were 1) that the system was profoundly inefficient and was steadily running itself into the ground, and 2) that nobody believed in the original communist vision. Everyone believed it was pure b.s.

Soviet Union did not collapse, it went bankrupt. It could not feed itself and became completely dependent on oil and gas prices. In 60x it was already clear it is falling behind, but high prices of oil and gas in 70x kept it afloat with out any changes and when they went down in late 70-80x it went bankrupt in 90x.

Thank you for uploading and sharing.

I lived in communist Poland in 1980. Everyone there saw the coming collapse of the Soviet Union.

Exposé formidable. Merci pour la diffusion !

really a relief to hear a speaker that is both so clearly intelligent and humble. many of the lecturers i've seen lately are very intelligent, very eloquent speakers, but when it comes to answering questions they can't resist treating the audience like they're beneath them. taubman seems like good and earnest person

This is an amazing video, thank you. Living in Mexico in the late 80s it was such a bizarre period to watch the USSR just crumble in a matter of months

Because Gorbachev tried to change the political system before the economic system. China learned from this.

It's been many years since I've seen a grown man have a Gorbasm. It must be true love.

When visiting a farm in Canada in the early eighties an impressed Gorbachev (who was I believe the top agricultural man in the USSR at the time) asked the farmer "who gets you up in the morning?". When he saw the well maintained farm machinery he asked "do they trust you with this equipment?"

1:07:12 Effectively Gorbachev was not a social democrat, he was a socialist who wanted to reform socialism and not end it. Social democracy is based on capitalist economy that social democrats tax to provide extensive social services. Gorbachev was not trying to introduce capitalism.

Did this guy seriously just ask why the USSR put a man on the moon 10 years before US? And no one in the room corrects him? At the end of the answer he says "they did it". (59:00) Holy shit.

Could this guy possibly love Gorbachev more? He was a humble peasant; grandson of the most powerful man in his city. His grandfather was a wonderful man; describes him beating workers to produce. He got into university without trying; that's what powerful party members children get. His proximity to Gorbachev has clouded him from obvious truths.

Great lecture, thank you! A bit disappointed about the lack of the answer to the question in the title - "why?". I think this question was not really answered. The lecture rather was focused on Gorbachev and the question "how?", which is not "why". We all know how it was, especially those of us who lived through it inside collapsing USSR. How is not that interesting. Why is. I was hoping to hear some interesting thoughts on that "why" question.

Second law of thermodynamics in action! Great video. I will see it again and I will recommend it.

Zdeněk Mlynář (pronounced Zdenyek Mlynahrzh) His son became a conservative (anti-communist ) politician in the 1990s in the Czech Republic.

Great audio

14:09 Soviet economic problems were so severe that even if the Party poured most of the resources previously used by military into producing consumer goods, it wouldn't have helped. It would just produce more of the same poor goods. Collective farms would be just as unproductive. Factories would have see little improvement, because their machinery was mostly bought in the West for hard currency and that was extremely short. People would have no incentives to do a good job either. Etc., etc.

DID it collapse or did it just change its name to avoid lawsuits?

The Soviet Union was a country run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I can summarize the cause of the fall of The Soviet Union.... The Soviet Union collapsed due to isolation from the western countries, especially economic isolation.. You have to keep in mind that the west is not only the U.S., it's mainly the U.S. and western Europe... Let me put in another way, if the U.S. and Europe would have traded with Russia the way they have done with China, than Russia would have become an economic power house... but the truth of the matter is that The west did not trust Russia and wanted to isolate them until their eventual demise, which eventually happened. Just think about it this way: Why do you think that China, ( A large communist country, like the USSR was), has become an economic power house? The simple answer is that the U.S. and western Europe let it be by dealing with them economically and technologically.... People erroneously think that China is a threat to the U.S. and that China became an economic power house by themselves.. This is not true at all... If the U.S. saw China as a threat they would eventually cut off China from the economic game from the west and the U.S. would choose another country or countries to deal with economically... The argument would be about the debt we have with China, the answer is that we would pay it off eventually....China would suffer more from the economic isolation and it would throw them back to their economic levels of the 1960s & 1970s when 90% of their people were living below the poverty level and even in starvation...

Taubman's presentation gave a good summary of the theories that try to explain why the Soviet Union was the way it was and offered some explanation why it eventually failed. He seems to have a bias that the Reagan Administration should not get credit for its demise. His main explanation for the demise of the USSR is Gorbachev. He makes the point that by introducing "Glasnost" and other reforms that Gorbachev opened to the door to forces that undermined the communist regime and eventually led to its and destruction. Professor Taubman did a great job of presenting the facts. One can see why he has succeeded as a professor of political science specializing in Russian affairs. Being a biographer of both Khrushchev and Gorbachev he probably has imbibed a bit too much of the "great man theory of history" . To be more precise that history is moved more by great individual actors than by forces in a particular society. The weakness of Professor's Taubman's presentation lies in his inability to recognize or an unwillingness to admit that societal forces, namely the stagnating economy, created the conditions that demanded a reformer of the Gorbachev type. Gorbachev is not a Vaclav Havel who was a dissident with a program who was able to come to power and implement his reform program. Gorbachev was an honest apparatchik who wanted to make the communist system work. He never really understood that a totalitarian system cannot be reformed. They can only be abolished or maintained. Professor Taubman during the questioning period concedes that Reagan's policy of colluding with the Saudis to lower the price of oil was devastating to Gorbachev in his attempt to enact economic reform. In essence the lower price drastically cut the Soviet central budget. This contradicts his earlier comment that Reagan had little to do with the implosion of the USSR. Professor Taubman did not address how Reagan's increase of military spending and the launch of the Star Wars Program affected the Gorbachev regime. It must have had an effect on military strategy and allocation of resources that had to have a strong negative economic impact. Most telling was Professor Taubman's critique that during Bush I there were doubters in his administration about the sincerity of Gorbachev and an unwillingness on the part of the West to give Gorbachev the financial resources to preserve a reformed confederation of sovereign states . He takes it for granted that it was somehow in the interests of the West in general and the USA in particular to have a revamped Soviet Union. Given the fact that the USSR broke up peacefully that case seems hard to make. Dr. Taubman did concede that had Gorbachev not tried his reforms then it is likely that the USSR would have limped along and eventually had an explosive collapse similar to Yugoslavia. In conclusion, the Taubman lecture was quite useful and he offered interesting insights and asides to the many factors that contributed to the demise of what Ronald Reagan called "The Evil Empire" My main disagreement in the good professor's analysis is that it's rather obvious that many factors played a role in the demise of the USSR just as there were many factors that played a role in the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Having been a student and later in the 1990s an executive for an American Fortune 500 company in Russia it was rather obvious that a multiplicity of factors created the conditions for a reformer like Gorbachev to be chosen to try and save a sinking ship. One cannot discount the enormous efforts and investment in blood and treasure that the West made from the Truman Administration in 1947 up and through the Reagan-Bush administrations first to contain the USSR and then to bring it down. Reagan upped the ante to Gorbachev by increasing his military spend hoping to bankrupt the Soviets and by using its power to deny the Soviets badly needed revenue by getting the Saudis to over produce oil and drop the price. In addition, the Reagan Admin had invested much money and effort to undermine the Soviets in Poland. Thus, while Gorbachev certainly played the key role he did not destroy the USSR all on his own. Professor Taubman, along with many other professors of a liberal bent in the USA, seem to regret that the USSR was not saved albeit in a reformed and social democratic manner. If that is really his regret then he needs to make the case how American and European security would have been enhanced by that. Moreover, that desire ignores the legitimate desire of the non-Russian population of the old USSR to realize their self-determination. Certainly from the position of the USSR's former vassals in Central and Eastern Europe the fall of the USSR was nothing to regret. In conclusion, the Taubman talk is excellent and deserves the investment in time to listen to it. He is very engaging and quite well informed.

USSR dependend on stable foreign currency all the time, but in the end of USSR it had to recredit in foreign banks. As soon as baltic states proclaimed independence, foreign banks stopped their credit lines, since USSR was no longer single entity.

Ah classic academia. Never forget to roast your visiting lecturer's discipline while introducing him.

SKIP INTRO BUTTON: 4:00

The economic independence demand of Estonia which led to political autonomy which led to republics declaring independence; collapsed from within and west failed to rescue USSR because economically sound open USSR is a direct challenge to Western power.

Missing most important concepts…. But i guess this is the best lecture one can give in a western university without getting fired from the university. 😮

Taubman seems very sad that the US did not prop up the Soviet Union at the end. I wish that Professor Marshall Goldman was still around to give a more clear headed explanation of what happened.

If Gorbachev had succeeded in doing what this guy wanted it would not have been better.

There is such television in the west that if it had been held in the USSR at one time, there would be no perestroika.

Excellent presentation of Gorbachov.

The how and why vodka, played such an instrumental role in Russian politics

I’m afraid that he’s not going to mention the collapse of oil prices. But still very interesting presentation so far.

Nice lecture, thanks!

Very interesting!

Taubman onstage from 4:04 - you're welcome ⚒️

Gorbachev ignored the lessons of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of Lenin whereby capitalism was largely re-introduced to revive a collapsing economy wrought by doctrinaire socialism (nationalizing the means of production). The economy revived and the NEP had to be scrapped. The only thing preventing the Soviet Union from turning into Venezuela was the tolerance of a black market economy and the system of allowing farmers their own small private plots of land.

I enjoyed the mention of the whole, "the SU went against human nature" argument. Western societies simply incentivize human greed and then regulate that to (hopefully) mitigate harmful and wreckless business. The SU tried to regulate everything so it goes perfectly. It's easier to try and control whats already there (greed) rather than centralising all power and controlling everything with absolute strength.

The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse long before Gorbachev took charge. The arms race, and a flawed economy based on forced labour with unrealistic targets led to the economy tanking. He tried to radically change the way the world saw the USSR, but the ball was in motion and eventually the collapse happened, unavoidable because of years of bad decisions and the corruption and mismanagement by the politburo

Excellent!

"Evil Empire" is the best description of USSR anybody ever came up with!

Odd at the center of so many wonderful things, there's a brood of self-chosen.

I was watching RU1. When I saw Ludmilla Tourischeva crying, I knew it was over.

Soviet Union was modeled on Tsar Empire. Absolute theological monarchy was replaced with Collegial theological secretarialism. Tzar was replaced with General Secretary, Orthodoxy with Communism and people with working people. They end up rebuilding same thing only using different methods and materials.

my father always said ussr would" collapse from within" .he said the people wont stand for it. .that was about 1975

"The first time I met President Reagan I told him this story. I felt free to tell him everything. I told him of the brilliant day when we learned about his Evil Empire speech from an article in Pravda or Izvestia that found its way into the prison. When I said that our whole block burst out into a kind of loud celebration and that the world was about to change, well, then the president, this great tall man, just lit up like a schoolboy. His face lit up and beamed." -Natan Sharansky ........Leftists hate the fact that Reagan helped end the Soviet Empire

The EU..... "But the USSR was not a real superstate".....

Why is the audio so jickey in so many of these videos?

I tuned out after five minutes. Seems so simplistic and self evident. Like a high school lecture. Geo-politics and sociology are much more complex.

This is a very instructive and enjoyable presentation. Professor Taubman has, of course, written the definitive biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he interviewed eight times in the space of a decade. So, he has obtained his perspective with a deep engagement with the central player in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. I also enjoy Werner Hertzog's recently released documentary on Gorbachev, which was very moving. It poses the question of whether Mr Gorbachev is one of history's most tragic figures.

An important reading.

dear introducers, please keep introductoins to 30-60 seconds, not 4 minutes.

A Wellesley lecturer on the fall of communism? How humorous.

8:00 The list of reasons "Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?"

Don't understand why the speaker dismisses Reagan and Star Wars as playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union when he later cites the arms race with the US as one important cause of said collapse.

Rocky Balboa ended the Cold War when he defeated Ivan Drago in 1988. He showed that if he could change, and the audience could change....then EVERYONE could change.

Only someone at a place like Wellesley, would say Gorbachev is thought of as a "Hero" in the United States.

This guy clearly regrets that the USSR fell, and talks as though Gorbo wanted to see the end of the USSR, even though he described how Gorbo tried to keep it together as late as he could, as it was spinning apart. The guy describes Gorbo as an elite who lived a life full of lies. Based on this talk, Gorbo whispered how the system was full of lies to his Czeck freind in college, and wrote and talked openly how he was devoted to it from his childhood on. A guy full of lies all his life, in a system so full of lies, corruption, and threatened State violence that it simply tore apart due to all of its incredible, monstrous basic aspects. The guy said at the start of his talk, that some think the system simply fell apart once the threat of State violence was taken away. Then the guy says that such an explanation was too simple. Um - no - it seems spot on, based on the talk he gave right after he said it was too simple. Oy!

Lecture starts at sharp 5:30

You can't have a meaningful conversation about the collapse of the Soviet Union without asking: Who are you?! And what are you doing here?!

one word to answer this question, CORRUPTION!

This bloke has kept Reagan's contributions and foresight far from consideration. Other authors have carefully described the sweet, daring and complex forces bearing upon the Soviet Union, and Reagan is right there, squeezing the pressure points at his appointed time in history. Reagan's "national security decision directives" were timely, opportunistic and decisive. Gorbachev and Reagan were ready for each other.

I really enjoyed this lecture. Are there anymore similar to this one?

Good doc

When everyone is entitled to everything, no one is responsible for anything.

During the 19th Century there was a lot of technological progress and people fell in love with the idea of "Science". Everything had to be "Scientific". Socially you had a number of Utopian Societies that were created on the basis of someones ideas with Marxism being one of the most successful at gaining adherents. Talk of "Dialectical Materialism" being "Thesis opposed by Anti-thesis and yielding Synthesis" which became the new Thesis - sounded impressive to a lot of ignorant people. The growth of large factories with legions of poorly paid, over worked - workers - led to a lot of resentment on the part of the have not's who were open to ideas about how they would "seize the means of production". Under the leadership of the Communist Party they would form a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that of course would run things in a benevolent manner until they achieved True Communism - "From each according to their ability. To each according to their need". Lenin created the means for political control where in you had a Central Committee below which were such as Regional Committees and Local Party Representatives. According to Democratic Centralism information would flow up from the Local and Regional Party Members to the Central Committee who would make a decision - then the decision would flow down to the Regional and Local levels where it would be implemented. During the first phase - there was freedom of opinion to some degree but once a decision was made - it was to be implemented without further discussion. Five Year Plans were popular where it was decided what the nation would do - but - these plans were to inflexible and thus didn't work. The problem was that a Centrally Planned Economy just wasn't flexible enough to handled the constantly changing economics of the real world. The other thing was that people who no longer owned anything had no incentive to work on the collectives but - they were allowed small plots they could grow crops on themselves. These small plots became where much of the food was grown - and - led to a black market in things the State Economy failed to provide. An example of central planning was if they were going to make 500 cars - they would make 500 sets of wind shield wipers - not anticipating that they would wear out. Thus, you had car owners who routinely took their wind shield wipers off every time they parked their car and locked them up - because if they didn't - they wouldn't be there when they got back. Those in the west could see that this type of Centrally Planned Economy was doomed to failure and felt that all the needed to do was Contain the spread of Communism until if fell of it's own weight. Another factor in this was that while the first generation revolutionaries were true believers - as each generation passed, people believed less and less in the ideology until not even the party members believed it. Gorbachev tried to reform things but since the system itself was basically flawed - there was no fixing it. When the Communists went away - the Black Market - which had become the Real Economy as opposed to the State Run Economy - came out into the open - but it was being run by people who had been criminals under the old regime and still were criminals. Russia became a Kleptocracy, a nation of thieves run by thieves and that is where things are today. It's all vastly more complicated than that and this is a simplistic version but - it is in general what happened. .

Great talk and Q&As but the number one immediate reason for the break-up of the Soviet Union is missed. The state overly depended on the fear of state violence to keep the edifice in tact. And this is linked the first theory posited - that communism runs against human nature. It was Gorbachev's unwillingness to use violence which allowed the state to disintegrate.

Gorbachev did great work going by his heart!

Mikhail "Superpower Slayer" Gorbachev. He was a nerd who earnestly and honestly rose to power with naive ideals. His ideals destroyed his Nation largely peacefully and bloodlessly. He wasn't a genius politician, but he successfully served his role in the Destiny of Humanity, even if he himself didn't plan to do that. He lost his power in August. And he lost his life in August.

It was the elimination of the idiotic tax and regulatory dictates concerning the oil industry during the Reagan administration that brought down the price of crude oil and natural gas that finished the Soviet Union - oil and gas were the only hard cash exports they had . Those same de-regulatory actions wiped out the economys of Oklahoma ,Texas and Louisiana and triggered the banking crisis of the late eighties and early ninetys. I traveled to east Germany in 1990 visiting the town of Bernburg, Anhalt where was stationed a Soviet armored brigade - who were without all their tanks - Gorbachev had sold them all to Saddam Hussein.

great work!

You can’t have a meaningful discussion about why the Soviet Union collapsed if you don’t analyse the question of Empire

its been a long time but i have to say he wins. So much talk so little to offer

With reference to my earlier comments ( 5 days ago), I may add that another reason the collaps was not foreseen by the western world is that thinking and reasoning within a totalitarian regime is completely different. When your contacts with the SU consists of people like Arbatov and Burlatsky it is logic that you have no clue about what really is happening in the SU. Burlatsky for instance was considered to be a reformer while he was everything except a reformer. In the 1988 - 1991 period there were specific moments that contributed to the collaps of the SU. As the professor mentioned there was a shortage of basic products,, especially food products were systematically in short supply. To address this major problem that could also effect stability, it was decided that a meeting of the Central Committee be organized in March 1989. It would be the first time in the history of the SU that the most powerful organization of the country would come only together to plan and make fundamental decisions concerning the future of the agrocomplex. This Central Committee meeting took place in the period 12 to 17 March 1989. The progressive groups aimed for a decision about private farming but realized that a decision about this sensitive subject might be one bridge to far and therefore pushed the idea that a fast track to stimulate food production was to extent the liberties of dacha farming. Already a large portion of horticultural and agricultural products were already produced in dacha’s and even hard core communists were interested in the idea to stimulate the production in Dacha’s to a give a fast boost to overcome the food shortages. They thought that for instance doubling the dacha acreage would double the dacha production. The Central Committee indeed decided that dacha (private) farming should be stimulated. The following week in the Supreme Sovjet fundamental questions were asked about private farming related to for instance specific financing, specific machinery, storage facilities , and more important one start asking questions about land ownership . A discussion that was impossible (subversive) before the CC meeting and another nail in the coffin of the communistic system. On the opening day of this Central Committee meeting (12 March 1989) an editorial concerning the meeting was printed on the front page of Izvestia. It was the first time for this government paper to have an editorial directly related to a sensitive political subject written and signed by a foreign diplomate. It surprised me that non of the so-called Sovjet watchers took notice of my contribution that also got the blessing of the government.

Interesting lecture. I've studied the decline and break-up of the soviet union from an economic perspective and could probably deliver a lecture about half as good and interesting as Taubman, but I'd argue that economic causes fed into and amplified the political ones. It would make for an interesting debate, but Taubman referred to distorted economic performance, and this is but one facet of the overall soviet economic model. He also mentioned Korolev, a brilliant rocket scientist whose talent was wasted whilst imprisoned by a jealous and untalented colleague called Aleksandr Yakovlev (not Gorbachev's mate, a former ambassador to Canada). Do this enough, and this stifles ambition, creativity, and rewards political loyalty and reliability. Repression also erodes trust, which Taubman refers to indirectly.

As for the beginning guy he was talking about..I just call him Nikita...

Very interesting topic. I really wish I could be in the meeting and raised some questions for discussing, especially for the comparing of the cases of USSR and PRC. In this case some important internal factors could not be comparable. China didn't swallow any countries but lost Out Mongolia after the 2nd world war.

I visited the Soviet Union for three weeks. The stores were almost empty of consumer goods. I went to Gum in Moscow, which was the equivalent of Macy's. There consumer goods were of very very poor quality. The Russian workers got paid no matter how well they worked.

idk, seems to me it went through it's 4th turning. (there's no reason to believe every country is on the same generational time line)

In March of 1991, at a reception in Moscow, Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale, spoke with Professor Vadim Zagladin, first deputy director international department of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee & asked, “When did you (the ruling elite) conclude that the Soviet Union was unsustainable? Zagladin replied, “1978”. Did you ever meet and/or communicate with Zagladin.

Well, that wasn't insightful.. No real explanation or analysis at all. Just a description of events and personalities.

Maybe because centralization of power will end up with your liberty at the mercy of whoever is ruthless enough to seize power

Thank you ! More please !

The Economist proved that the a command economy like the Soviet Union was impossible because there wasn't time to make that many decisions. They proved that the system had to fail.

As a Russian citizen myself, I couldn't find a more accurate account on the late Soviet period than this lecture. My people are now in a precarious situation - we don't like our Soviet past, but we also don't like the Putin's present. We lost our meaning of life and the idea of bringing about western-like democracy seems utterly impossible and too dangerous (too many people got into Putin's prisons because of trying to achieve this noble goal). Well, at least we have internet access. For now. PS: You lucky Americans... just envy you.

Seems like too much government, no matter what kind of government it is, ALWAYS gets in the way of social mobility and progress.

The fourth mistake is the v ff.

He sure loves Gorbachev

Note: the soviet union would call liberals right, because they would be seen as right of their leftist stance. Liberals, traditionally were middle of the road!!

I pretend to work and you pretend to pay me.

Re: the question at 1:24:00 the Soviets did not put a man on the moon ten years before we did.

This is really enjoyable till the 56th minute.

Gorbachev was just a facilitator. He recognized the need for market type reforms in the soviet union and also that the reputation of communism was permanently damaged by the actions of it's past leaders . I don't believe the speaker understands how ideologically pure stalinism was. Stalinism was the embodiment of pure communism and every single soviet leader after Stalin has drifted apart and pushed the ideology more and more towards liberalization. Gorbachev was just one in a string of leaders and in his attempt to redeem communism in the face of history, he actually facilitated its collapse. It's fair to say that it's the only way to actually redeem communism, by eliminating it

A long, breathless, passionate love letter to Gorbachev. Gonna give this one the extreme privacy it deserves...

Gorbachev had the right ideas with Perestroika and Glasnost, but he was rushin' things.

I was following things then as they happened. More than anything, the people in charge of the Soviet Union just became demoralized and couldn't morally justify their reign. That and the security forces refused to shoot their own people.