The economic causes of the collapse of the USSR

The economic causes of collapse of the Soviet Empire are one of the actual and controversial topics of the modern economics. Over the last 20 years there were made a lot of works and researches in this subject. The purpose of this thesis is detection and learning the main economic reasons of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We develop our analysis in the three main directions. The first direction describes the work of Soviet economic policies, which was based on the administrative- command type of economic system. The main economic policies of the USSR were War Communism, New Economic Policy and Democratic Centralism. Each of these economic policies has its own characteristics. The second direction is related to the analysis of the Soviet economy, which encompassed the period from Stalin to Brezjnev epoch. This long-lasted period will be inspected based on the analysis of the soviet industrial, agricultural, financial and transport system. In this part we will concentrated on such economic reforms as industrialization and collectivization, reforms of Khrushchev, Kosygin's reforms and the process of intensification. The paper has recognized that the problems pertained to the Soviet economy is tensely connected with the agricultural sector, the shortage of Scientific Technical Progress in economy, super-industrialization and militarization of the economy and etc. The third part of the thesis examines the main economic causes of collapse of the USSR. During the research we found the four main factors of breakdown. Firstly, the Cold War characterizes the enormous defense expenditures of the Soviet economy, which adversely affected development of the other spheres of the economy. The second factor was the oil crisis of 1985 year which swiped by the budget and incomes of the Soviet government and led to the deep budget deficit and hard currency shortage in the country. The third factor is repressed inflation which gave push to such problems as shortage of goods, savings, input hoarding, supply diversion and hyperinflation. The last factor of the breakdown was Gorbachev's Perestroika (Restructuring). It was a series of laws aimed for the shifting of the economy to the market socialism. However these reforms were failed. All these factors forced the USSR in a deep economic, social and political crisis, from which it was unable to exit. Key Words: dissolution of the USSR, economic policies, analysis of the Soviet economy, the main factors of breakdown