Title: Consequences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union | Norwich University Online
Headings: Consequences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Consequences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union
The Fall of the Soviet Union
Eastern European Economy, Economic Collapse, and Foreign Trade
Crime, Cultural Changes and Social Upheavals
US Power
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Content: The Soviet government’s hope was to gain an understanding of Western management and marketing processes and learn new manufacturing skills. That same year, the Soviet Union signed a normalization agreement with the European Economic Community. Gorbachev’s economic policies of Soviet expansion and cooperation with the Western world changed the attitude of the country from one that regarded foreign trade as a means to compensate for short-term scarcities to one that considered imports to be long-term alternatives to domestic production. This helped open the door to Soviet expansion into the world market, bolstering relations with not only former Soviet bloc nations, but also Western powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom. In the mid-1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed trade agreements designed to make it easier for U.S. citizens to conduct business in Russia. In 1997, for the first time, Russia participated in economic discussions at the G7 summit in Denver, Colorado. The following year, Russia was integrated as a full member, and the G7 became the G8. By the early 2000s, Russian President Vladimir Putin was working to create a free-trade zone in Russia, and the country eventually joined the World Trade Organization in 2012. Crime, Cultural Changes and Social Upheavals
The Soviet Union’s collapse not only threw economic systems and trade relations throughout Eastern Europe into a tailspin, it also produced the upheaval in many Eastern European countries and led to increased crime rates and corruption within the Russian government. When the Soviet government fell, the Russian mafia, which had struggled to survive during the height of communism, stepped in to fill the power void.