Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse

“It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.” Vladimir Lenin said this, he was the founder of the Soviet Union, a command economy that collapsed in 1991. This quote summarizes the type of control that he believed was required to create a utopian country. In a command economy, the government makes all decisions on jobs, land, and production, which leads to many social and political ramifications. This fact, along with a multitude of other factors, led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. In general, there is scarcely a command economy in history that has had success, this due to the fact that the negatives of a centrally controlled economy far outweigh the positives. The elements that led to the failure of
In the Soviet Union, the government had a quota for workers to reach, there was not a limit on how well the products had to be made. Due to the lack of competition for consumer purchase, as their products would be moved through the economy anyway, workers produced subpar products that often didn’t work correctly. This led to the government distributing poorly made products for citizens to purchase, because there wasn't a way for the government to monitor the quality of goods being made. This lack of competition led to a lower quality of living for all of the citizens in the Soviet
10 Possible Reasons”). For example, when Joseph Stalin was in power he mainly focused on building up the military forces and completely disregarded agriculture as a crucial area. This led to massive food shortages that caused starvation rates to rise and many families to die. Due to this seeming blindness to the quality of citizen lives, the Soviet Union would not have long before it’s eventual decline and collapse. In addition, the set prices of goods and wages shut the Soviet Union out of national trade, because they made only enough goods for their own county. In turn, this led to shortages in all areas of