Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of Communism

People praised Mikhail's youth, and he became the youngest Soviet leader at age 54. In choosing Mikhail people supported the mild reform of the Soviet Union. Mikhail also made up new ideas of his own instead of following other leaders like Stalin. Past leaders had encouraged totalitarianism, and rewarded silence and opposed people from acting on their own. Although, Mikhail did not want this. So he announced a policy called Glasnost, which was an openness that allowed citizens to discuss ways to improve their country and society. He also introduced perestroika, which was economic restructuring. Both these policies made a path to the collapse of communism,because it gave the citizens a voice.

The Collapse of Communism

Communism is a social structure and political ideology in which property is commonly controlled. The causes of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe were that it had no popular support, political downfall, and economic problems.The fact that the USSR had gained all of its money from the Eastern European states after world war 2, Stalin's paranoia of the West forced him to put all that money into defensive arms and therefore none of that money was being processed into the country. People teared down the Berlin Wall because they wanted to unify Germany because Germany had fell apart Joseph Stalin's poor decision making, led the USSR to collapse. The Soviet Union collapsed due to the fact that there was no money. Socialism and many competitions also led the Soviet Union to collapse. The Collapse of Communism did change the world because numerous countries changed in to Capitalists quickly.