Certain structural weaknesses in Soviet‐style communism are associated with the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. Centrally planned economies proved to be less effective than capitalist economies.
Because of the economic crisis, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell one by one.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev adopted certain policies: political openness and economic restructuring in the mid‐1980s to address the economic crisis.
In order for his reforms to take place, he needed to end the Cold War to lower defense spending.
Gorbachev thus announced that the satellite states should be free to choose their own government.
Communist regimes in these countries started to collapse.
The Soviet Union did not intervene as one after another communist regimes collapsed in 1989‐90.
The key external factors contributing to the collapse of communism were the policies of the US administration at that period and the advance of economic and cultural globalization that created demands for western‐style economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe.
The USA and the USSR agreed to disarm a whole category of nuclear weapons through Arms control process.
The dismantling of the Berlin Wall began on November 10, 1989. By mid‐1990, many of the Soviet republics had declared their independence.
On December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved
The Cold War thus ended with the demise of Soviet Union. With the disintegration of the USSR, Russia came out losing the status and position of a superpower.
The supremacy of the USA has been established making the world unipolar.
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