What was it like internationally when the Soviet Union fell?

[rousseau]

For those who were old enough to be aware of it happening, I'm curious how people in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and Western Europe reacted when it happened?

Was it considered something of a big event, and widely talked about? Or was it largely ignored and unnoticed by most people?

 

[spikepipsqueak]

The demolition of the Berlin wall got a lot of TV coverage, for days on end, because it was such a visual thing. Some local celebrations.

I don't remember finding out until much later how the USSR got divided up (if indeed I know now) because I was otherwise engaged with a very new baby.

The next related memory I have is the opening of the orphanages in Romania. That put the politics of it out of mind.

 

[skepticalbip]

It was a very big deal for world politics. Me personally, I was shocked. I understood the USSR was having serious internal problems but obviously didn't understand the extent of those problems.

For a comparison, how big an event and how much would people talk about it if the U.S. broke up into fifty independent countries?

 

[Keith&Co.]

I had the watch.
My sub was on patrol, doing us a deterrent, when the enemy dissolved.
We joked about spending the day lining thru USSR in all the targeting books, writing in "TBA" (to be announced). Our commands framed it as a victory, that we had proven out superior, but it felt more like a midseason cancellation. Like Firefly or Brimstone. How were we supposed to know we won if we never got to see the final episode?

 

[bilby]

It was the end of history.

For my entire life it had been obvious that the Cold War was the defining political reality that underpinned everything that happened. Every political question was couched in terms of its effect on the Cold War - if a cabinet minister had a mistress, he had to resign because otherwise the Soviets could blackmail him. Same if he was homosexual. Or had any other secrets he wouldn't want to be made public.

It was an obvious and unquestioned certainty that the Cold War would keep going, essentially forever. The only way that this could possibly NOT occur would be a Hot War, which would have been an extinction level event for Homo Sapiens.

The Soviets were inscrutable; Masters of strategy and deception, for whom chess was a major spectator sport. All kinds of weird rumours came out of Moscow, but anything other than totalitarian crackdowns on dissidents, and the steadfast opposing of any and all Western activity, was always a ruse.

So Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (reconstruction) were just Gorbachev's way of unsettling the status quo to flush out his enemies, and to deceive the NATO powers into letting down their guard.

And then, overnight, it fell apart. And it took a few weeks to even consider the possibility that it wasn't all a big strategic play to flush out the remaining anti-Communists so that they could drive tanks over them.

It's impossible to overstate the impact on everything of this event. Living in the UK at the time, it was like winning a World War, that most of us barely knew we had even been fighting until it suddenly wasn't there anymore.

Jesus Jones sums up the mood perfectly:
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MznHdJReoeo[/YOUTUBE]

A woman on the radio talked about revolution
when it's already passed her by
Bob Dylan didn't have this to sing about
you know it feels good to be alive

I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now
there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
watching the world wake up from history

I saw the decade in, when it seemed
the world could change at the blink of an eye
And if anything
then there's your sign of the times...

In hindsight thirty years on, it seems almost obvious - the last of the Stalin era statesmen were exhausted in quick succession, and putting Gorbachev in charge changed everything, because he was a First Secretary who wasn't shitting his pants about upsetting Uncle Joe's memory. Stalin's influence lasted long after his death. It finally broke down in 1989, and the Soviet Union couldn't live without it.

Gorbachev could have simply crushed the Polish 'Solidarity' movement with tanks - as had been done in Prague, and would not long after be done in Beijing - but he didn't want to kill a bunch of people in the streets, just for not loving his regime. Which frankly was a huge shock to everyone, because since before Stalin, that was just how it was done behind the Iron Curtain (and as the Chinese discovered, it was still the way it was done in China).

The West German autobahns were littered with Trabants - they were driven west until they ran out of fuel. Not gasoline; the West German service stations were happy to supply gasoline. But the Trabbie had a two stroke engine, and West German two stroke oil stocks were sufficient for a few lawnmowers - not an invading army of ersatz cars.

Trabants were prized possessions in East Germany before the wall came down. There was a waiting list of many years. In West Germany, they were literally garbage. They didn't even have enough steel in them to have value as scrap metal. So when they ran out of oil, people just walked away from them.

 

[Tammuz]

I was way too young to remember, but from what I have heard, it was a big thing, followed by optimism that lasted throughout the 90s, roughly to 9/11. Now there would be liberal democracies everywhere, a massive increase in wealth and prosperity around the world.

While I of course think it was a good thing that the Soviet Union collapsed, we know now that things didn't turn out as rosy afterwards. Not all of the former East Bloc countries became liberal democracies, Russia is revanschist even though it is in long-term decline, China is a strong, formidable anti-democratic country, we now have issues with terrorism and looming climate change.

 

[Tharmas]

Now there would be liberal democracies everywhere, a massive increase in wealth and prosperity around the world.

Yes, we talked of a "peace dividend" now that we no longer needed a defense budget. Ha!

 

[barbos]

USSR fell in 1991, not in 1989.

 

[bilby]

USSR fell in 1991, not in 1989.

Gorbachev made the decision not to intervene militarily to defend communism in the Warsaw Pact nations in 1989, breaking with almost seven decades of Stalinism. Once the Berlin wall fell, it was all over for the Cold War - the final break up of the USSR a couple of years later was far less significant in the immediate term, from a western European perspective.

 

[Politesse]

I grew up in the western United States, and this is the first political event I have a conscious memory of. Obviously I was too young to understand the implications at the time aside from "everyone is very happy that a wall fell down", but I do remember the era of optimism that followed; us 90's kids were raised with this feeling that the old world was on its way out, that we were headed toward a new globalized reality in which many long-standing problems - ecosystemic collapse, warfare between major powers, racism, terrorism - might perhaps be tackled by some chirpy PSAs and storybooks with moral lessons at the end. We were going to be richer than our parents, more caring than our parents, we would create technological wonderlands. Well, best two out of three I guess! People in my generation often blame 9/11 for the collapse of all that optimism, but I think the slowly deteriorating economy had as much to do with it. There were political battles, but at least if you were white and middle class and hadn't yet realized yet that you were gay *cough*, they all seemed pretty low-stakes compared to the trauma and quiet anxiety our parents had clearly been raised under. I remember my parents (ardent Democrats in the middle a mostly Republican county) being not just horrified, but kind of disgusted, offended by the Gulf War. This was exactly the kind of violent foreign adventuring that was supposed to end now that we no longer had the USSR to pin our garland wars on. Little did they know...

 

[steve_bank]

There was a deep fear of nuclear war. For me it was like a dark cloud dissipating. It was unbelievable.

Over here watching people tear down the Berlin Wall with hands was spellbinding. SAC eventually stood down from constant nuclear alert.

 

[Tammuz]

I grew up in the western United States, and this is the first political event I have a conscious memory of. Obviously I was too young to understand the implications at the time aside from "everyone is very happy that a wall fell down", but I do remember the era of optimism that followed; us 90's kids were raised with this feeling that the old world was on its way out, that we were headed toward a new globalized reality in which many long-standing problems - ecosystemic collapse, warfare between major powers, racism, terrorism - might perhaps be tackled by some chirpy PSAs and storybooks with moral lessons at the end. We were going to be richer than our parents, more caring than our parents, we would create technological wonderlands. Well, best two out of three I guess! People in my generation often blame 9/11 for the collapse of all that optimism, but I think the slowly deteriorating economy had as much to do with it. There were political battles, but at least if you were white and middle class and hadn't yet realized yet that you were gay *cough*, they all seemed pretty low-stakes compared to the trauma and quiet anxiety our parents had clearly been raised under. I remember my parents (ardent Democrats in the middle a mostly Republican county) being not just horrified, but kind of disgusted, offended by the Gulf War. This was exactly the kind of violent foreign adventuring that was supposed to end now that we no longer had the USSR to pin our garland wars on. Little did they know...

I don't really understand why the Gulf War was so disliked. Iraq annexed another country, in clear violation of international law, and I don't know of any data that the Kuwaitis wanted to live under Saddam's thumb.

 

[bilby]

I grew up in the western United States, and this is the first political event I have a conscious memory of. Obviously I was too young to understand the implications at the time aside from "everyone is very happy that a wall fell down", but I do remember the era of optimism that followed; us 90's kids were raised with this feeling that the old world was on its way out, that we were headed toward a new globalized reality in which many long-standing problems - ecosystemic collapse, warfare between major powers, racism, terrorism - might perhaps be tackled by some chirpy PSAs and storybooks with moral lessons at the end. We were going to be richer than our parents, more caring than our parents, we would create technological wonderlands. Well, best two out of three I guess! People in my generation often blame 9/11 for the collapse of all that optimism, but I think the slowly deteriorating economy had as much to do with it. There were political battles, but at least if you were white and middle class and hadn't yet realized yet that you were gay *cough*, they all seemed pretty low-stakes compared to the trauma and quiet anxiety our parents had clearly been raised under. I remember my parents (ardent Democrats in the middle a mostly Republican county) being not just horrified, but kind of disgusted, offended by the Gulf War. This was exactly the kind of violent foreign adventuring that was supposed to end now that we no longer had the USSR to pin our garland wars on. Little did they know...

I don't really understand why the Gulf War was so disliked. Iraq annexed another country, in clear violation of international law, and I don't know of any data that the Kuwaitis wanted to live under Saddam's thumb.

Saddam Hussein was led to believe by American diplomats that the US wouldn't intervene if he annexed Kuwait. He thought the Americans were on his side, having supported him in his long war against Iran. And the Americans were unnecessarily vague about their opinion of his 'recovering' the territory he felt was stolen from Iraq by Kuwait.

The invasion and subsequent war could easily have been averted by a clear and unequivocal statement by the US, warning Iraq not to invade.

And once he invaded, there wasn't any particular reason why the US should have done anything about it - as long as the oil kept flowing, the US had no reason to get involved in this local war.

It's not like America has intervened in all the other places where territory has been invaded or annexed, or in every other local conflict around the world. Sure, there was a moral argument to act; but the Americans have turned a blind eye to plenty of those, before and since.

The US went to war because they wanted to. They weren't harmed, or even threatened; they were just showing off.

It was an opportunity to show the world that they were the only remaining superpower, and that if they said 'jump', everyone was expected to say 'how high?'. Shock and awe wasn't for the edification of the Iraqis. It was supposed to shock and awe the entire world.

 

[Tammuz]

It wasn't only the US, it was an international coalition that expelled the Iraqi army. And Iraq was clearly violating international law by annexing another country.

Do you think the rest of the world has no reason to care that Russia has annexed Crimea, and should not have put sanctions on Russia in response?

 

[bilby]

It wasn't only the US, it was an international coalition that expelled the Iraqi army. And Iraq was clearly violating international law by annexing another country.

Do you think the rest of the world has no reason to care that Russia has annexed Crimea, and should not have put sanctions on Russia in response?

I do not. But did they invade Crimea and throw Russia out?

No?

Then apparently there are differing levels of 'violating international law', depending on how much of a pushover the Americans think the offenders will be.

 

[Angry Floof]

For those who were old enough to be aware of it happening, I'm curious how people in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and Western Europe reacted when it happened?

Was it considered something of a big event, and widely talked about? Or was it largely ignored and unnoticed by most people?

It was a huge deal in the U.S. Everyone knew about it and watched. Looking back, I think it was the biggest news by far for some time.

 

[Politesse]

It wasn't only the US, it was an international coalition that expelled the Iraqi army. And Iraq was clearly violating international law by annexing another country.

Do you think the rest of the world has no reason to care that Russia has annexed Crimea, and should not have put sanctions on Russia in response?

I do not. But did they invade Crimea and throw Russia out?

No?

Then apparently there are differing levels of 'violating international law', depending on how much of a pushover the Americans think the offenders will be.

Oh no, I re-ignited a political debate!

 

[Tharmas]

There seems to be a conflation of the TWO Gulf Wars.

 

[bilby]

There seems to be a conflation of the TWO Gulf Wars.

They are directly related. It's perfectly reasonable to consider them one war, with an intermission.

It was all about the US trying, in her usual unsubtle and inept way, to engage in gunboat diplomacy - sending a message to the world that as undisputed top dog, she can beat down any opponent with ease.

Similar conflicts during the Cold War just turned into long, bloody, and pointless slug-fests, as the two superpowers did everything possible to support whichever side the other hadn't picked, short of actual direct conflict between the superpowers militaries.

Nobody wanting to start WWIII didn't mean nobody wanting a war, it just meant they were fought by proxy.

Remember when the Mujahideen were on our side? They were the good guys, because they were fighting against the Soviet Union (they even helped James Bond to escape from a Soviet airbase in Afghanistan in the 1987 film The Living Daylights). Not at all like the evil Taliban, who are sworn enemies of the USA.

The fact that the Mujahideen and the Taliban are mostly the exact same individual people, still fighting for the exact same reason (to rid their country of interfering foreigners) seems to be lost on most people. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

The end of the Cold War meant that suddenly we had to pick our enemies for different and often more sensible reasons than their mere allegiance to the USSR. The crazy Islamic fighters in Afghanistan were never the natural friends of the West - but in the Cold War, the enemy of my enemy was always my friend.

Of course, nobody thought it really mattered too much - it was inevitable that sooner or later the war would turn hot - at which point we would all discover we had a few minutes to live. UK civil defence was a complete joke, based as it was on the expectation of just three minutes of warning of a nuclear strike. As we used to say in the '80s, at least that's just enough time to make a nice cup of tea.

An interesting demonstration of the different views of the Cold War between West Germany and the UK can be found in popular culture - specifically the song 99 Luftballons released by Nena in 1983 in Germany, and then released in English in 1984, as 99 Red Balloons.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4Dcd1aUcE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqrqfp6agug[/youtube]

Both tell the tale of a nuclear apocalypse, but in the German version, this is sparked by greedy politicians who believe that they can gain personal advantage from a war; while in the English version, the war is sparked by paranoia, with the military incorrectly believing that an attack was underway, and launching in retaliation.

It's an interesting diffence in perspective, and says a lot about what the two nations were most concerned about at the time.

In 1983, Stanislav Petrov singlehandedly saved the world, when he refused (against orders) to launch a retaliatory strike after his air defence system reported multiple ICBM launches from the continental US. It turned out that the Soviet satellite had in fact detected the rising sun reflecting off some scattered clouds. So this idea of an accidental global war was really not particularly far-fetched.

 

[steve_bank]

I grew up in the western United States, and this is the first political event I have a conscious memory of. Obviously I was too young to understand the implications at the time aside from "everyone is very happy that a wall fell down", but I do remember the era of optimism that followed; us 90's kids were raised with this feeling that the old world was on its way out, that we were headed toward a new globalized reality in which many long-standing problems - ecosystemic collapse, warfare between major powers, racism, terrorism - might perhaps be tackled by some chirpy PSAs and storybooks with moral lessons at the end. We were going to be richer than our parents, more caring than our parents, we would create technological wonderlands. Well, best two out of three I guess! People in my generation often blame 9/11 for the collapse of all that optimism, but I think the slowly deteriorating economy had as much to do with it. There were political battles, but at least if you were white and middle class and hadn't yet realized yet that you were gay *cough*, they all seemed pretty low-stakes compared to the trauma and quiet anxiety our parents had clearly been raised under. I remember my parents (ardent Democrats in the middle a mostly Republican county) being not just horrified, but kind of disgusted, offended by the Gulf War. This was exactly the kind of violent foreign adventuring that was supposed to end now that we no longer had the USSR to pin our garland wars on. Little did they know...

I don't really understand why the Gulf War was so disliked. Iraq annexed another country, in clear violation of international law, and I don't know of any data that the Kuwaitis wanted to live under Saddam's thumb.

Because the first war was about saving the Saudis who had long personal relations with the Bush family. It was about oil only, not about liberating Kuwait. Kuwait was a talking point for forming an Arab coalition.

SA was and is a brutal dictatorship. That is what we rescued. A stae at the time with a strong religious anti American ideology. It remains today.