USSR was a world power which made its own ideology, culture and traditions. It had powerful government, patriotic armed forces, qualified machinery, and diversified education. The entire world was afraid of the might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics especially the military potential of the country was frightening. Western countries mostly were afraid of spreading the soviet communist`s ideology which was differ from the classical ideology which had been described by Marx and Engels in their works all over the world. One of such countries which tried to resist it was USA which played a great but not the main role in the USSR collapse. So who is to blame in the dissolution of a state?
One of the ideas of this huge country was to build communism. However, the only way to make people believe in it was to make a revolution and to get rid of old customs and old way of life. At the beginning of a new era in Russian history which began in 1917, people didn`t realize in which way the events were going to develop and as a result for a long period of time they truly believed that they were on the right way. But after half of the century the number of the people who realized what was really going on in the country started to grow with increased speed. Moreover, it was forbidden to go abroad for ordinary citizens. Though, there were some people who had a chance to visit some western countries (diplomats, artists, sportsmen). They saw that the social standards of live are much higher there and understood that Soviet government pays much more attention to the armed forces neglecting their citizen's level of life.
Lots of people tend towards blaming USA in USSR collapse. Though, America just speed up this process but never was the main reason. Soviet republics were doomed to fall apart. The principal reasons were: the so-called democracy given after the long period of totalitarian prohibitions given by Gorbachev, and national controversy between the centre (Moscow) and the regions which situated far away from the capital. The major problem of all the Union was the division of all it` s parts on the principle of nationalities. The most politically dissatisfied were Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and GDR. Also a great number of protests and national meetings were held in Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan. People were tired of poverty, hunger and indifference of the government to its nation. Furthermore, the economics of the country was in such a tragic situation that it was practically impossible to cope with the problems of all the citizens and to provide each region of the Soviet Union with the necessary volume of goods and products.
The U.S. were not fighting against USSR, they were fighting against communism. The stagnation of the economical, social and some other spheres of life affected not only Soviet republics, but also all the world community. So Americans took several actions to break one of the most powerful countries down. First of all, they tried to spread the real information about the life outside the USSR among the ordinary soviet citizens, secondly, used the forbidden Russian literature, music etc. against USSR itself, thirdly, managed to reduced the price for gas and oil which was the main source of income in USSR. And one more important thing was the everlasting military struggle between two countries. Americans knew that Soviet Government didn`t want to lose the armament drive and for the sake of victory would invest there much more money than in social development. So they placed ballistic rockets on the territories of FRG, UK, Italy, Belgium and Denmark, began manufacturing nuclear weapons, and also started developing the program of anti-missile defense which mass media named 'Star wars'.
And the last thing which worth to be mentioned considering the reasons of USSR collapse is the lack of self-confidence of its leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It the end when it turned out that the most part of population was against him he became frightened and just left his post. During his administration of the country he was trying to do the best for people to get away from the stagnation (perestroika, glasnost), but he couldn`t estimate everything in a right way and manage all the set goals.
Thereby, there was more than one cause of disintegration of the Soviet Union. The first was the increasing nation`s displeasure which worsen every day. The second was the wrong political direction of the Soviet Government. Moreover, USA thought out a lot of ways to break down the enemy's resistance and fight with its communist regime and the only Communist party. And the last important reason was not self-confident person at the top of the government who didn`t want to listen to the people who tried to warn him.
