To What Extent Has the Collapse of Soviet Style Communism Led to Positive Outcomes for the People?

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To what extent has the collapse of Soviet style communism led to positive outcomes for the people? The collapse of Soviet style communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s and 1990 marked the end of the Cold War. The collapse of Soviet style communist rule in the late 1980’s was followed by declarations of independence by many of the countries in the Eastern Bloc and the break-up of the Soviet Union. The collapse of Soviet style communism had positive and negative outcomes for the people. The emergence of new political, economic and social freedoms indicates that the collapse led to positive outcomes for the people. However, the negative implications of the collapse of Soviet style Communism outweigh the positives as economic difficulties characterised by high unemployment levels, inflation rates and high production costs have longer lasting outcomes. The emergence of nationalism which caused ethnic violence and in civil wars in some countries also indicates that the negative outcomes of the collapse of Soviet style communism outweigh the positives. The collapse of Soviet style communism has negatively impacted the people to a significant extent as many east European countries experienced economic difficulties that were characterised by high unemployment levels, inflation rates and high production costs. Most Eastern European states experienced economic crisis because the previous centralised Soviet economy had failed. As historian Mark Kramer states the “collapse of communism especially for Russia was the greatest catastrophe of the century” because the rebuilding of the economy through capitalist reforms left millions throughout the former Soviet Union unemployed. An example is people who had previously worked in the arms factories lost their jobs because the Soviet Union was no longer trying to keep up with America’s
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