Was Gorbachev responsible for the end of the Cold War?

He was responsible for Russia surviving the CW.

Any proofs on that or just empty assumptions to sound kewl?

Our relationship is worst than it ever was since the end of the Cold War. There was never major sanctions placed on Russia until the last half decade. Russia's economy was affected deeply by it. Transparency is worst off. 90's were the best era of relationship as Russia was weak and could benefit from EU and US aid by co-operating. Now there seems to be a more intense power struggle between both sides.

>Was Gorbachev responsible for the end of the Cold War?

Let me put it this way. If he was a Putin or a Deng, the Soviet Union would still be around.

>if Andropov or Chernenko didn't kick the bucket within a year of assuming leadership the Soviet Union would still be around
ftfy

I don't think he wanted the Soviet Union to collapse but he simply lacked the cruelty required to keep it together.

Gorbachev was a fucking idiot who was responsible for the collapse of the Union.

but it needed to collapse...

Nah m8
Whether you love gommunism or hate it, almost all former communist nations are worse off now then they were under it. Except for thr Baltics states and maybe Poland, the collapse was a mistake.

whatever you say ivan

To what extent was Gorbachev responsible for bringing about the end of the Cold War?
Here's my introduction to essay

From reaching a peak in the late 1950s, the Soviet economy which had previously been experiencing unprecedented growth, began to stagnate throughout the 1960s. In the 1970’s the economy within the U.S.S.R began to fall, by 1980 the National Income Growth was less than 1 percent, compared to nearly 5 percent in the late 1960s. In 1985, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko, Mihail Gorbachev was elected to the position of General Secretary, bringing with him radical new ideas to reform the dwindling economy, namely glastnot and perestroika. These reforms did relatively little to restructure the economy, which could be argued to already be beyond repair, and to a large extent this long term decay of the economy was responsible for bringing about the end of the cold war, whilst to a significant extent Gorbachev’s attempts at restructuring the economy through glastnot and perestroika sped up the process of ending the cold war by highlighting the failures of the soviet centralized economic system. However whilst the long term economic issues to a large extent played a role in bringing about the cold war, newly introduced issues particularly pressures from the newly inaugurated President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, to a notable extent played a role in putting further tensions on the soviet economy which factored in to the end of the Cold War. But perhaps whilst the economic issues which plagued the Soviet Union at the time played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union, to a large extent Gorbachev and his removal of the Brezhnev doctrine was responsible for the end of the cold war, by easing tensions throughout Europe and the world and dissolving Soviet satellite states, eventually evoking change within the Soviet Union itself, becoming a democratic nation on the 25th of December 1991, symbolizing the end of the Cold War.

Only one nation for which this might be true are Ukrainians and thats only because they are in war with Russia.

lots of mistakes but your marxist professor probably won't care

I'm in high school, so no "Marxist professor" for me. And I highly doubt my teacher is a Marxist.
And what mistakes did I make, please I will correct them.
I have historian perspectives and evidence to back up everything I have said throughout that introduction.

I'm not being snide, I generally want to know where my flaw is within the introduction.

Actually I found one mistake, it is meant to be
"these reforms did relatively little to restore the economy"
Not
"these reforms did relatively little to restructure the economy".

>they are in war with Russia

Proof?

That is completely, and objectively false.
Every single country who was under the Soviet Union is currently much better developed in every way imaginable.

[citation needed]

The collapse is more on Brezhnev's hands than Gorbachev's imo

Why do you think this?
detente?
economic stagnation?

yes, Reagan was definitely a meme president.

>population growth = development and wealth
wow, I never knew India and Nigeria were such wonderful places to live

>india is a much better place to live in than it was during independence due to increased wealth, responsive civic services, low cost of living and substantially improved power output.
>Nigeria has oil bux.

So, yeah, They are objectively better places than they were half a century ago.

>inb4 why do indians migrate abroad
because of employment opportunities. The biggest group of indian migrants go to the middle east for a variety of purposes - not just slave labor but also as doctors, nurses and other skilled personnel.

The population of the Baltics dropped because Russians started to move to the Federation. The bigger dip probably corresponds to the aftermath of financial crisis in late 2008. This does not "prove" that the quality of life in the Baltics is worse than what it was in the USSR.

Ukraine is probably the only country with large parts objectively worse off after 1991. Corruption was rampant and Russia always threatened to shut off gas pipelines to Ukraine

The life expectancy chart also doesn't really mean much. The large dips were most likely a result of the way people reacted to the shock in Russia's post-communist economy. That chart seems to show that men are bouncing back and that women are better off now than in the USSR.

The GDP chart also shows that things have gotten better since the Soviet era. The capitalist shock to Russia's economy dealt a lot of damage, which wasn't made better by the 1998 crisis, but we can see now that their GDP is better than it was in Soviet times.

t. butthurt sovietcuck

Debateable for the Central Asian states, with the possible exception of Kazakhstan

My girlfriend is a academic historian and when I asked her about this a while ago, she said while Gorbachev had good intentions in reforming the country, he was literally an incompetent retard of epic proportions and his reforms were completely moronic.

I used to have a lot of respect for Gorbachev, at least for being one of the few Socialist leaders who actually seemed like he believed in the Socialist ideal, but then he appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial.

>Russia
>Democratic

kek. Like how they had to rig the elections in the 1996 so the Communist party couldn't assume power despite actually winning.

Supposedly the quote "Lenin saw things were horrible and wanted to bring about changes gradually but then things got out of control...and so did Gorbachev" is a popular in Russia.

yes. I''m not saying that Gorby made the situation better, he made it worse for that matter, but Brezhnev is the one I like to blame

he let us go in peace
all that matters