I thought the Soviet Union was just going to let go its eastern satellites after Hungary and Poland and the wall fall happened. I expected/hoped for a very gradual movement away from authoritarianistic communism. So yes, I was surprised to suddenly have the USSR dissolve, quickly and with relatively little violence.
The Russians appeared to be still trying to subvert Australian politics in the second half of the 1980’s. By 1991, I was fighting my own demons, but in 1987 I no more thought they would step back from Poland than I thought they would step back from Australia – changes represented tactics, not intent.
I was of the same opinion as Qadgop. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the loss of satellite nations I could see the Soviet Union changing but I didn’t expect it’s complete dissolution with so little violence.
I was a Russian history major in 1989.
Around 1988 I thought there would be a chaotic civil war between Reds and Whites throughout the Soviet Union, as there had been in the Russian Empire.
In March 1990, when Lithuania declared independence, I thought, “It’s all over now. Gorbachev will send in the tanks.”
In 1991, I really didn’t expect for the USSR to break apart into 15 new states exactly coinciding with the former republics. I thought Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus would stay together, at the very least.
I’ve learned that studying history doesn’t make your crystal ball any clearer.
“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”
In 1970, Andrei Amalrik published Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984, which postulated that the Soviet Union would collapse. It was mostly a lucky guess (Amalrick died in 1980), but did point to potential flaws in the system.
But most people (even those who read Amalrik didn’t really believe his argument) figures the USSR would remain.
Norman Spinrad even published Russian Spring, which postulated that the Soviet Union would surpass the US. It came out in 1991, after it was clear he was wrong.
Wasn’t too surprised that former European nations that had been occupied by Russia broke away - I think that Russia simply could not afford to prop up those regimes and economies.
However, for the former Soviet states such as Ukraine, Belarus and the Balkan states I really didn’t expect those to leave the Soviet - not at all.
I think any sense of enormous shock in the West was tempered by the brief existence of the CIS which most Americans (wrongly) equated with a federation like that of the USA. There was more of a sense that the USSR was just evolving democratically rather than just flat out dissolving. USSR and Russia were synonymous for most Americans through the Cold War and as long as there was still a Russia it was hard to accept that a superpower had just ceased to exist overnight.
I remember reading multiple science fiction stories that assumed (generally as background info, sometimes as part of the main plot) that tens or hundreds of years after the 20th century the USA and the USSR would still be major powers, and usually still major rivals.
I’ll offer a (West) German perspective. The fall of the wall on that magic day of November 9th 1989 was an event nobody in Germany, East or West, had ever anticipated in spite of the incidents that lead to it (open Hungary borders, Monday demostrations in Leipzig and elsewhere in the GDR, the ousting of Honecker, the release of East German refugees from the West German ambassy in Prague and much more). It had been absolutely unthinkable before. But after that led to a German unification a mere eleven month later, with the USSR agreeing to withdraw all their troops from Germany, let the NVA merge into the Bundeswehr and let the unified Germany join/stay in the Nato, and all this for an “Appel und ein Ei”, meaning for peanuts, made it clear for me that this wasn’t the USSR I had known and feared to some extent my whole life. The fall of their empire and the dissolution didn’t surprise me much after those German reunification events.
It was a surprise to everyone that it happened that quickly. Absolutely a universal shock.
Things were clearly CHANGING, but that the USSR itself would suddenly, mostly peacefully just say “oh well, screw it” was a shock.
I was stationed in Germany at the time and this was my feeling as well.
Pretty much this.
BTW, the fall of the Berlin Wall was on my birthday, Kristallnacht was also on my birthday. I like to think they’re “bookends” for German 20th c. history.
Through some weird cosmic coincidence, November 9th is “Der Schicksalstag der Deutschen”, “The Day of the Germans’ Destiny” (my translation). I don’t know what it is with this date, the only other thing I noticed at that day is the fact that usually the weather is really shitty.
I didn’t see the fall of the wall coming. But when it did, with the DDR being the most hard-core Warsaw-pact member, it was clear a fundamental shift had taken place. So I, and many with me, went from believing nuclear war was still distinctly possible, to thinking that threat was gone.
The complete collapse and subsequent disintegration of the USSR, though, was a shocker.
That must have been interesting times for you! Did you have major directive changes every three days :D? Those really were turbulent times, almost anarchistic days for a period in Germany. The hangover sure came later.
I did my time in the Bundeswehr (15 months of draft service) only a few months before, 87-88, and I think like every soldier stationed in Germany, East and West, became soon aware that we would have blown each other up first in Germany in case of WWIII, and only then the rest. I did service in technical staff where I was monitoring the technical readiness of an air defense battalion with four sites in a 50 km radius. It was the Nike anti aircraft rocket system, 60s stuff that was horribly outdated. Even for me as a mere second grade private doing time, it was obvious that you’d have a better aim with pellet guns against appearing Mig’s, especially after my sergeant gave me a proud tour of the command post pointing to the new fangled analog X-Y-chart recorder for flight control. Pens plotting on paper. In 1987.
No one in a position authority/influence anticipated the fall. What I remember the most was after the fall the widespread criticism, mostly of the CIA, of the utter lack of warning in the west. It was a complete surprise. Of course there are many people who “predicted” the fall. What that means is that they were lucky enough to be the predictor at the time it actually happened. People predict such things every day. During the Cold War it was much more common to predict a war, not a victory, but the same thing is going on today.
This. Many of us were absolutely certain that the Soviet system was inferior and destined for the ash bin of history, but no one thought it would happen quickly or painlessly.
Personally, I thought a slow continual decline would go on for years, followed by unrest, crackdowns, border skirmishes with client states, etc. After all, dictatorial regimes are incredibly hard to kill. North Korea’s communist state is still standing. China was still rising. I basically figured that conditions would just continue to deteriorate until the misery level got to the point where the people were ready to stand up to the government.
What really changed my mind was the fall of the Berlin wall. The ‘old’ Soviet Union would never have allowed that to happen. Once the wall came down and German reunification began, I felt it was all over for the Soviet Union. The events of 1993 briefly made me question that, but it was the last gasp of the old power structure. Once the attempted coup failed, it was clear that nothing would be the same again.
The most surprising thing for me was a person - Gorbachev. He came from nowhere (from my perspective) and seemed to immediately begin to dismantle what had made the USSR the Evil Empire.
I didn’t feel this way. I could accept the possibility that the Soviet regime might give up power over its foreign empire. But it didn’t think the Soviet regime would give up power over the Soviet Union and dissolve itself.