Reagan's Solidarity

The final stage of the Cold War began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and President Reagan’s reference to the Soviet Union as “that evil empire”. Then, at the end of the 1980’s, the USSR started to lose control of its satellite countries due to factors such as Solidarity in Poland, where they wanted greater freedom. The strikes brought the country to a halt and even Gorbachev was encouraging greater freedoms in the USSR and satellite countries. By nineteen ninety one, the USSR had disintegrated and the Cold War suddenly ended. Reagan played an influential part of the Soviet Union’s deterioration, increasing the USA defence spending and challenging the already crumbling USSR to do the same. This worsened the USSR’s situation because not only was their military substantially weakened; their economy was virtually corrupt as well. Solidarity was the most important reason for the
Their economy was not as good as the USA’s, so therefore they could not develop such sophisticated weaponry as cruise missiles, Star Wars or neutron bombs. They simply did not have the strength in their armies to regain control of the satellite countries and had lost faith in their “weak” leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. As a result of not having the strength to combat these countries who they desperately wanted to control to spread their communist regime, the fact that they could not compete with USA in an economy battle had reduced importance: the war was always deteriorating after their mistake in Poland. They lost control in subsequent countries, after giving them belief that freedom was possible. Reagan did not give them this newly found belief – Solidarity did. Increased spending of the USA on defence just made the USA feel more important and the USSR not so. It did not directly affect the satellite countries in the same way that Solidarity