Answer to Question #270895 in History for Jejdjdickkckx

Question

1.    What were glasnost and perestroika and how did they contribute to change in the Soviet Union

2.    How did the example of Yugoslavia demonstrate the harm that can come from nationalism?

3.    According to Mikhail Gorbachev, what challenges were at the time facing the Soviet Union, and how does he propose fixing the USSR’s problems?

Answer 1

1. What were glasnost and perestroika and how did they contribute to change in the Soviet Union

Economic development was facilitated by Glasnost, whilst political disarray was facilitated by Perestroika. Glasnost sparked uprisings in Soviet republics, but perestroika wreaked havoc on the country's economy. Although military commanders were imprisoned during the Glasnost period, political freedom was achieved during the Perestroika period.

2.  How did the example of Yugoslavia demonstrate the harm that can come from nationalism?

The death of Yugoslavia's leader, Josip Broz Tito, in 1980 created an atmosphere of instability that exacerbated racial animosities. In the conflictual and violent split of Yugoslavia that lasted throughout the 1990s, these tensions reached a boiling point. Its component republics declared independence as a result of unresolved racial conflicts amongst ethnic minorities in the new nations, which fuelled the wars in their own countries. The vast majority of conflicts were brought to a close by peace treaties, which resulted in full international recognition of new governments, but at a tremendous human and economic cost to the area. After all, is said and done, the author concludes that nationalist ideology contributed to the violence in the former Yugoslavia by politicizing nationality and ethnicity and thereby providing the moral, political, and military impetus to ethnically cleanse areas of contested territories in order to create an ethnically "fit" between the nation and the ethnic groups in the region.

3.    According to Mikhail Gorbachev, what challenges were at the time facing the Soviet Union, and how does he propose fixing the USSR’s problems?

Perhaps most troubling of all, consumer tastes in the Soviet Union had grown for foreign items such as Levi jeans produced in the United States, despite the fact that equivalent Soviet Union-made clothing was available at cheaper rates. It didn't matter if the jeans were smuggled into the country and sold at exorbitant rates. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev's decision to allow elections under a multi-party system and to establish a presidential system marked the beginning of a long and arduous process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.