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unit 6: How secure was the USSR's control over eastern europe (poland…
unit 6: How secure was the USSR's control over eastern europe
Hungarian Uprising
People in Hungary started to take action, students pulled down a giant statue of stalin's head, they demanded to have a socialist government, they demanded that the soviet troops were removed from their country and that their country was removed from the warsaw pact. they also fought against the ussr when they invaded
the USSR's leader allowed changes but he could not allow then to leave the warsaw pact. Instead he sent 1000's of troops to hungary, after 2 weeks of fighting there were 3000 casualties and 200000 people fled to austria due to the violence. the leader of hungary imre nagy and other leader were imprisoned and executed.
Hungarians hated communist because they had no freedoms, the catholic church was banned, they feared the secret police, and they disliked that the soviet troops were living in their country. Their standard of living was declining, the USSR was taking their natural resources back to the soviet union.
hungary thought the US would help them fight against the USSR but they did not because the US did not want to risk a major scale war. france britain and the us were in another conflict.
Prague Spring
The USSR response was to argue with Dubcek to slow him down, the troops perfmored very public training exercise on the czech border, they also through about imposing economic sanctions, and the USSR tanks moved into czechoslovakia
the outcome was that there was little violent resistance, the Czech leader was removed from power because even through he said he was loyal to communism Brezhnev was worried that new ideas coming out of czechoslovakia would spread and other leaders were worried about people from their countries would want the same rights as the people in Czechoslovakia.
people in czechoslovakia opposed to the USSR because their leader wanted socialism with a human face, the czechs wanted less censorship and more freedom, also a reduction in activities of the secret police. Also because they only had one political party the communist party.
poland solid
they solidarity was important because they were an organized movement, so there were no riots or streets protests. The leader of the solidarity was seen as a leader, everyone all around of the world paid attention to poland.
the USSR placed tanks and troops in the border with poland, the USSR encouraged the leader of poland to declare martial law. 150,000 solidarity members were arrested.
the peoples solution was to set up trade unions who would organize strikes to make changes. the communist gov. shut them down. But they still issues their 21 demands to the gov. which were all accepted: more pay, endo censorship, workers benefits equal to communist party members, catholic church services, and election of factory managers
Even after it was declared illegal people still continued to protested against the gov. they continued to broadcast their radio program. lech walesa met with leaders of other nations and became the leader of poland in 1990.
the economy in poland was in bad shape, the prices of food had gone up but the wages of people were not going up overall economy was shrinking and poland's foreign debts was increasing.
berlin wall
with the huge amount of people leaving to western germany the USSR that it was a problem from them, they were losing people who were really useful like high skilled workers or well qualified managers, 1,000s of people leaving meant communism was inferior
khrushchev has a solution he insisted the us removed their troops from the city, on august 13 1961, east germany soldiers put up a wall with barbed wires all through the division of both sides of berlin stopping all movement from east to west. the only people allowed to cross was foreigners and allied soldiers.
the hungarian uprising showed that communism was impossible to fight, people started to leave east germany because of political and economic reasons. The standards of living were far below that of the west, the west had many more opportunities than the east.
us diplomats and troops crossed regularly to try and see the reaction of the soviets, the USSR's tanks pulled up to the charlie checkpoint and stopped any other access to the east. the US and USSR faced each other in an 18 hour standoff until everyone left one by one. the USSR's leader orders to avoid anything that would increase the tension
USSR collapses
the leader made some changes to the system only to make the situation better, created the glasnost which was when the media was more open to the public and reporters could now report news honestly.
he also created perestroika in which he implemented some elements of capitalism into communism to fix the economy. Gorbachev also cut down the number of soldiers he was paying, he removed troops from Afghanistan, and cut the spending in the arms race. Both leaders of the USSR and the USA held meetings and decided to remove nuclear missiles
this changes had effects in eastern Europe as well he announced that the countries part of the Warsaw pact were free to do whatever they wanted. He also removed the USSR troops from these countries, the countries started to declare their independence from the USSR. Now Russia elected Boris Yeltsin as the president the communist tried to overthrow him but were not successful. In December 25th Gorbachev declared the end of the USSR.
the leader wanted to change the USSR because their economy was very weak because of the overspending in the race, the money spent in the Afghanistan war, and their ideas on how to handle economy were very old fashioned. their living standards were really low in the USSR, the people did not trust the government, their life expectancy was decreasing, the corruption in the gov. was really bad regular people could not get the things the communist party members could.