| Rath said: The Soviet collapse was entirely inwards, their economy simply wasn't able to sustain itself and they were no longer ruled by an iron fist so the Union just broke apart. Indeed I would say the final ruler of the Soviet Union was responsible for its break up. Gorbachev I think it is? |
That's an overly simplistic view of what actually happened. While the ultimate responsibility might lie with Gorbachev, he doesn't get the entire blame. As starcraft has pointed out, the Soviet Union strained itself in an arms race with the US that it couldn't sustain. The arms race wasn't an option, either. If they decided not to spend so much money on their military, they would have lost power. Additionally, Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was responsible for further economic strain as well as loss of prestige.
Now, none of this would have been possible without the stupidity of Brezhnev and Gorbachev, but their stupidity alone wasn't enough to down one of the world's two superpowers. It took a combination of factors to do it.
