Thursday, April 23, 2009

Chapter 31 Outline

CHAPTER 31
Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges: 1985 to the Present
Instructional Objectives
After reading and studying this chapter, students should be able to explain how the rise of Solidarity in Poland and Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1985 accession to power in the Soviet Union began the unraveling of the Soviet Empire. They should be able to summarize the stages of Gorbachev’s reforms, their motivations, and the process by which they spiraled out of Gorbachev’s control. They ought to be able to define “shock therapy” in the post-Soviet context and know where it has succeeded and where it failed. They should also be able to outline and understand the importance of the three “Balkan wars” of the 1990s. Finally, they should be able to discuss the new challenges facing Europe in the twenty-first century and the split in the West created by the Iraq war.
Chapter Outline
I. The Decline of Communism in Eastern Europe
A. The Soviet Union to 1985
1. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia showed Soviet leaders were ready to use force to maintain the Soviet Empire.
2. At the same time, rising living standards and relatively low levels of outright terror kept the Soviet domestic situation stable.
3. Russian nationalism was also a key stabilizing factor in Brezhnev’s U.S.S.R.
4. Revolutionary social changes were underway in Russia, however.
a) Urbanization continued.
b) The number of highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists increased four times between 1960 and 1985.
c) Education and freedom for experts to explore their specializations led to the growth of “public opinion” in Russia.
B. Solidarity in Poland
1. In 1956 the Soviets had to back off from collectivization in Poland after riots.
2. In 1970 worker unrest led Polish communist leaders to borrow massively from the West.
3. The “oil shock” of 1973 created a severe recession in Poland.
4. In 1978 the Pole Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope.
5. In 1980 massive strikes by Polish workers forced Polish authorities to legalize noncommunist trade unions.
6. The new trade union, “Solidarity,” became a nation-wide organization.
7. In December 1981, communist leader Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law and arrested Solidarity leaders.
8. Solidarity survived underground and the regime never imposed full-scale terror.
C. Gorbachev’s Reforms in the Soviet Union
1. When he became head of the Soviet Communist party in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev realized the U.S.S.R. was falling behind Western capitalism and technology. He aimed to revitalize Soviet communism.
2. Gorbachev began his tenure with attacks on alcoholism and bureaucratic corruption.
3. He moved on to economic decentralization (lifting some price controls, legalizing cooperatives), encouragement of limited criticism of government, and eventually free elections.
4. Democratization produced demands for independence by non-Russian minorities.
5. In foreign affairs, Gorbachev withdrew troops from Afghanistan and aimed to end the arms race with the United States.
II. The Revolutions of 1989
A. The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
1. In 1989 Solidarity forced Polish leaders to run free elections to a plurality of the seats in the parliament.
2. In the subsequent election the Communists lost control of the parliament. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa became president of Poland.
3. The new government applied “shock therapy” to the economy, ending state planning and price controls.
4. Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia followed Poland out of the Communist orbit in late 1989.
5. In Romania, dictator Nicolae Ceausescu resisted revolution and was captured and executed.
B. The Disintegration of the Soviet Union
1. In February 1990 the Communist party lost local elections all over the U.S.S.R.
2. In August 1991 hardline communist leaders opposed to change attempted a coup against Gorbachev. Russian Federation president Boris Yeltsin rallied the Moscow populace and some of the armed forces successfully against the coup.
3. An anti-communist revolution swept the Soviet Union as the constituent republics, including Russia, declared independence. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 25, 1991.
C. German Unification and the End of the Cold War
1. In the summer of 1990, German reunification was negotiated.
2. Arms cuts in Europe, the U.S., and the Soviet Union followed.
3. In 1991 Soviet loss of confidence and superpower status enabled the U.S. to fight and defeat Iraq following Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait.
III. Building a New Europe in the 1990s
A. Common Patterns and Problems
1. Most European leaders in the 1990s accepted the neoliberal vision of capitalist development.
2. In doing so, Europeans followed the lead of the “victorious” United States (victorious in the Cold War) and the new rules of the global economy.
3. The computer and electronics revolution helped motivate the move to a global economy.
4. Defenders of the achievements of Western welfare states resisted these changes, especially in France and Germany, where socialist parties and labor unions remained strong.
5. Nearly all European countries undertook truly competitive elections and guaranteed basic civil liberties.
6. American scholar Francis Fukuyama claimed that “the end of history” had arrived. Liberal democracy had bested Nazism and then communism.
7. Nationalist resurgence led to tragedy and bloodshed, as in Yugoslavia.
B. Recasting Russia
1. In January 1992, the Yeltsin government followed Poland in undertaking “shock therapy” for the economy, ending price controls and rapidly privatizing industry.
2. Prices increased rapidly and production fell, possibly by 50 percent.
3. The existence of de facto monopolies, popular perceptions of business as crime, and the “mafia” culture of the managerial elite undermined the reforms.
4. Much of the old communist elite perpetuated its power as new business owners and organized crime thrived.
5. Ordinary people lost their savings and life expectancy declined as living standards fell.
6. The new constitution approved in 1993 gave the president (Yeltsin) a great deal of power, but free elections took place in 1996 and 2000.
7. Russian military spending declined and Russia maintained good relations with foreign countries.
8. In 1994 Yeltsin tried to crush an independence movement in the autonomous republic of Chechnya, and failed. The war continues as of this writing.
C. Progress and Tragedy in Eastern Europe
1. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary economic and democratic reforms were relatively successful.
2. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
3. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1997.
4. Tragedy struck in Yugoslavia.
a) After Tito’s death in 1980, power devolved to the constituent republics of Yugoslavia.
b) Economic decline and revived memory of World War II massacres inspired by ethnic hatred caused more ethnic division.
c) In 1991, Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence and defended it from Serbia, led by President Slobodan Milosevic.
d) In 1992, civil war spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Serbs (30 percent of the population) refused to live under Bosnian Muslim rule.
e) The ensuing civil war involved rape, murder of civilians, and widespread use of concentration camps.
f) In 1995, intervention by NATO air forces against the Bosnian Serbs led to a negotiated settlement dividing Bosnia between Serbs and Bosnians.
g) Ethnic conflict broke out in Kosovo as Albanians strove for independence and Serbs began a campaign of intimidation and ethnic cleansing.
h) In March 1999, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, forcing the Serbs to withdraw from Kosovo (after expelling 750,000 Albanians).
i) In July 2001, Serbs voted Milosevic out of office and the new Serb government turned him over to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands.
D. Unity and Identity in Western Europe
1. In 1993, members of the European Community created a single market, to be known as the European Union.
2. In 1991, negotiators at Maastricht, in Holland, agreed on a plan for monetary unification of Europe by 1999.
3. Western European elites tended to support Maastricht because monetary unification would enable Europeans to solve difficult economic problems, and potential political unification would enable them to deal with the U.S. on equal terms.
4. Ordinary people often opposed monetary union, because it undermined popular sovereignty through national politics and required cuts in social benefits. Popular votes on joining the union were often close.
IV. New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century
A. The Prospect of Population Decline
1. European birthrates continue to drop.
2. If the decline continues, it could undermine the social welfare system and the economy.
3. Explanations for population decline vary, but changing gender roles are an important factor.
B. The Growth of Immigration
1. The influx of refugees and illegal immigrants into Europe raise new questions about European identity.
2. Until 1973, western Europe drew heavily on North Africa and Turkey for manual laborers. Rising unemployment motivated governments to stop the inflow at that time.
3. In the 1990s, European governments accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees from Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, and so on.
4. Illegal immigration also increased to perhaps 500,000 annually.
5. Russian organized crime smuggled many people into western Europe.
6. Immigration became a source of political conflict.
C. Promoting Human Rights
1. In the 1990s European intellectuals began to see promotion of human rights and peace in poorer lands as a new historic mission.
2. This would require more curbs on the sovereign rights of states.
3. This new mission meant interventions to stop civil wars and prevent tyrannical governments from slaughtering their own people.
4. Europeans condemned the death penalty in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, China, and other countries.
5. European socialist parties won elections throughout the European Union in 2001.
D. The Al-Qaeda Attack of September 11, 2001
1. In the aftermath of September 11, the United States led a military campaign to destroy the al-Qaeda network and the Taliban.
2. Civil war and terrorism have been linked throughout the twentieth century.
3. Beginning in the 1920s, many nationalist movements used terrorism.
4. In the Vietnam War era, far-left tried to use “revolutionary terror” to cripple the Western heartland.
5. The September 11 attacks were part of a third wave of terrorism, one linked to underlying political conflicts and civil war.
E. The West Divided and War in Iraq
1. Western unity dissolved in the face of U.S. efforts to build support for a war against Iraq.
2. President Bush and his advisers began considering the question of overthrowing Saddam Hussein as soon as they took office.
3. Many throughout the United States and Europe had grave doubts about the wisdom of attacking Iraq.
4. American fears of renewed terrorism fueled support for war.
5. Weapons inspectors found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and much of the world argued for continued inspections as an alternative to war.
6. The U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003 and quickly overwhelmed the Iraqi army.
7. The confident assumption of a peaceful pro-American Iraq shared by administration officials was impaired by serious errors of American judgment.
8. In late June 2004, the United States and Britain proclaimed a “fully sovereign” Iraqi government, headed by an Iraqi exile with close ties to the CIA and the Pentagon.
9. The war split the West because the occupation had gone poorly and the legitimacy of the new government was in doubt.
Lecture Suggestions
1. “The Collapse of Communism.” Does the collapse of communism in Europe mean “the end of history” in the sense argued by Francis Fukuyama? Sources: Frances Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992); Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder (1992).
2. “The Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe in a Global Context.” Source: Daniel Chirot, ed., The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left: The Revolutions of 1989 (1992).
3. “The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and Balkan Wars of the 1990s.” Sources: Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 (2000); Sabrina Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the War for Kosovo (1999).
4. “Europe’s Role at Century’s End.” How has Europe’s role in the West changed since World War II? What impact has the Common Market had on Europe’s changing image and importance? Has a European parliament really strengthened Europe? What might Europe’s role in the West be in the twenty-first century? Sources: G.A. Craig, The Germans (1982); L. Barzine, The Europeans (1985); A. Sampson, The Changing Anatomy of Britain (1983).
Using Primary Sources
View the 1987 Soviet documentary Is It Easy to Be Young? (available from Facets Multimedia, Chicago, IL). Use the documentary as a basis for discussion of and/or essays about the contribution to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. of the invasion of Afghanistan, the penetration of Western consumer culture, and the general disillusionment of youth with official ideology.
Activities for Discovering the Past
I. Classroom Discussion Suggestions
A. Do the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 mean that the world now faces a prolonged conflict between “the West” and radical Islam analogous to the Cold War?
B. After viewing the documentary Is It Easy to Be Young? (see above, “Using Primary Sources”), discuss whether the Reagan-era arms buildup in the United States was crucial in causing the collapse of the Soviet Union.
C. To what extent are the problems of aging populations, mass immigration, and the high cost of the welfare state peculiar to Europe? To what extent are they global problems?
D. In what ways did the eastern European periphery of the Soviet empire serve as a laboratory for experimentation with new economic, and ultimately, political systems?
E. Why did “shock therapy” economic reforms work relatively well in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, and relatively poorly in the Russian Federation?
II. Doing History
A. If there are recent immigrants from Russia or eastern Europe in your area, contact organizations involved in aiding them (teaching English, for example). Locate immigrants willing to be interviewed about their experience of life during the transition from communism to capitalist democracy and in emigration. Have two to three students interview each immigrant, making sure to ask him or her the reasons for immigration. The students could then produce a transcript of the interview and/or a paper describing the person interviewed and his or her experiences.
B. Have students look through issues of Soviet Life from the late 1970s through the late 1980s and write papers describing how the magazine and its ideology changed during this period. How do these changes reflect the rapid changes in Soviet communism in this decade?
III. Cooperative Learning Activities
A. Ask students to play the role of politicians from a particular European Union member state and organize a mock debate on joining the European monetary union (that is, accepting or rejecting the Maastricht Treaty of 1991).
B. Have teams of students research and present oral reports on the paths to independence and subsequent developments in each of the various former republics of the Soviet Union: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Moldova.
Map Activity
1. Have students work with maps of Europe to the Ural Mountains in 1985 and 2001. The maps should have national borders, but no national labels. Ask students to identify the countries on each map and for each new country, to explain the events that led to its creation or independence.
Audiovisual Bibliography
1. Russian Women in Prison. (60 min. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
2. Brother. (96 min. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
3. Growing Old in Russia. (50 min. Color. Tatiana Homutova. Facets Multimedia.)
4. Report from the Edge. (50 min. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
5. Russia for Sale: The Rough Road to Capitalism. (58 min. Color. Facets Multimedia)
6. Window to Paris. (92 min. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
7. This is Warsaw. (30 mins. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
8. Kolya. (105 mins. Color. Facets Multimedia)
9. Jakub. (65 mins. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
10. Is it Easy to be Young? (90 mins. Color. Facets Multimedia.)
internet resources
1. Gorbachev (www.mikhailgorbachev.org)
2. The World Bank (www.worldbank.org)
3. The International Monetary Fund (www.imf.org)
4. The United Nations (www.un.org)
5. Nationmaster: Europe (www.nationmaster.com/region/EUR)
6. Frontline: The Gulf War (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/thome.html)
7. Frontline: Son of Al Qaeda (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/categories/1.html)
8. Frontline: Truth, War, and Consequences (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/categories/1.html)

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