The History of~The Soviet Union (Part 5: Falling Behind)

One of the most complex nations in modern human history; the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (or **USSR**) has gone from a modest communist regime to one of the most vile opponents of the west (namely the United States) until it fell on Christmas in 1991.

This is Part 5 of The History of The Soviet Union. In this part we will talk about how the Soviet union will start to fall behind the west (namely it's biggest opponent; The United States).

## Falling Behind

The Union of The Soviet Socialist Republics have been a stubborn rival to the west ever since the end of World War 2 and even brought the entire world into Nuclear Pandemonium. It is now the mid 1960s and things seems fine. Though, things will begin to downward spiral for the Soviet Union. But first, let's talk a bit about another form of compeition that it was in with the United States; the Space Race.

### Space Race

The Space Race began in the 1950s when the USSR launched "Sputnik 1" into outer space which panicked the USA enough to get into compeition with the USSR, but the Sovoets would claim another victory by launching the first man into outerspace; "Yuri Gagarin" in 1961 and the USA answered back by sending "Alan Shepard" into space despite Shepard never achieving orbit, the Americans tried again with "John Glenn" has he orbited the Earth 3 times. The Soviets claimed another achievement by sending "Alexei Leonov" as he conducted a walk in space for 12 minutes.

Despite the space race being back and forth (Like when Inpsector Gadget was in Dr. Claw's elevator trap) the biggest prize was yet to be claimed; putting a man on the Moon. The USA and the USSR were in hot pursuit of this achievement, but beginning in the late 1960s, the Sovoets begin to fall behind as a series of failures (like the failure of their test space rocket, the N1) they would eventually lose the race as the USA would reach the Moon on July 16, 1969.

The Americans landing on the Moon was the beginning of the end of the Space Race, but it wouldn't \*officially\* end until July 15, 1975 when 2 spacecrafts from both nations would meet each other in space, creating a new cooperative attitude on both sides.

### A Different Political stance

But it wasn't just losing the space race is where things in the Soviet Union would begin to snowball. Corruption from within the government as well as Stalin's old policies not being totally done with would begin to backfire on the USSR.

Beginning in the 1970s, the USSR then took on a more "conservative" stance, where members of the Soviet Politburo would enjoy "high living", as in living in fancy homes, riding on fancy cars, eating at fancy restaurants, going on vacation to exotic locales and the like, whereas the middle class would struggle to make ends meet, and in some cases (such as the poor) people had no choice but to starve to death.

Well, it looks like that the USSR become the very thing it sowre to destroy, meaning it had become like the Romanov Tars.

Anyway, moving on.

One problem was that the Red Army got the majority of the national budget as well as development of Nuclear weapons, and not the people, and the people also didn't have "freedom of speech" like us Americans, now the pentalties weren't as extensive as like during Stalin's time, but you can still find yourself in jail if you were to speak out against the single party government of the USSR. Though, it's still speculative at this point, but the Russian Mafia could also have a stake in why the USSR began to fell behind (and why members of the Politburo were living the high life).

As with the Cold War, even the Soviet Union realizes that the pointless rivalry it had with the United States wasn't worth destroying the entire world over, so sometime in the 70s, the Soviet Preimer "Leonid Breshnev" along with US President "Richard Nixon" agreed to the "Strategic Arms Limitation Talks" (Or "SALT") which both the USA and the USSR would not just limit their military training, but also limit their testing of nukes. But the first SALT agreement didn't relieve any tensions the Soviet Union had with the west. It wasn't until the late 1970s with the "Euro-Missile Crisis" where both the USA and the USSR agreeing to another SALT agreement where things regarding to spending on the military and nukes would be relieved \*kinda\* as both the USA and the USSR had to do something to protect their respective economies.

It also didn't help that the Soviets were going through a "bad break up" so to say with China with the "Sino-Soviet Split" as China believed that the USSR became "too soft" for the communist world, despite that China was going through problems itself with the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution". Nevertheless, the USSR would lose an ally. But this is only the beginning.

Change was actually coming, but it wasn't until the death of Breshnev and several other people who took power also died, and another leader named "Mikhail Gorbechev" wanted to bring \*real\* change.

That'll do it for this part. In the final part, we will talk about Gorbachev and how he wanted to reform the Soviet Union, and how it was too late to save the Soviet Union and how it fell. Until next time, this is JohnnyOTGS signing out.