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Entry 233 of 240Collapse

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

1991 CE/Eurasia/Soviet Union
Today The Soviet Union (Moscow)Span Soviet Union · 1922–1991

A superpower that had seemed permanent dissolved almost overnight, its command economy exhausted and its guiding ideology believed by almost no one, including its own rulers — and it ended, remarkably, largely without the bloodbath such collapses usually bring. The story that justified the whole edifice simply ran out of credibility.

◆ Worth knowingThe USSR was so certain of its own permanence that its collapse blindsided the CIA, the Soviet leadership, and even the dissidents — almost no one, anywhere, predicted the year it would fall.
◆ The mechanismLegitimating-narrative collapse

The story that justifies an order (divine right, mandate, ideology) loses credibility; the order it propped up follows.

Also: Institutional sclerosis · Ideological movement

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