This five page undergraduate paper examines the fall of the Soviet Union. The author notes that the Soviet Union collapsed because its own people had suffered for too long, and had grown tired of living in poverty and hopelessness while the Kremlin spent what rubles there were competing with the United States in a nuclear and conventional arms race. When they rose against the hard-line coup leaders in 1991, hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers were sent into the capital but the army units refused to intervene against the massive popular demonstrations.
