Class 12 Political Science Chapter 1 The End of Bipolarity Important Questions with Answers in English

Q. When was the Berlin Wall built, and when was it broken?

Answer: It was built in 1961 to separate East Berlin from West Berlin, and it was finally broken by the people on 9 November 1989, after standing for 28 years.

Q. What was the Warsaw Pact?

Answer: The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance started by the USSR. It held together the group of countries called the Second World or the socialist bloc, of which the USSR was the leader.

Q. What do the terms perestroika and glasnost mean?

Answer: Perestroika means restructuring and glasnost means openness. They were the economic and political reform policies introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.

Q. How many republics made up the Soviet Union, and what was Russia’s place among them?

Answer: Fifteen republics together constituted the USSR. On paper Russia was only one of them, but in reality Russia dominated everything, and people from other regions felt neglected and often suppressed.

Q. What is the CIS, and when was it formed?

Answer: The CIS is the Commonwealth of Independent States, formed in December 1991 when Russia, Belarus and Ukraine decided to annul the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the USSR. The Central Asian republics, left out at first, were made founding members.

Q. In which year did the Soviet Union invade Afghanistan, and what effect did the chapter say it had?

Answer: In 1979. The chapter says the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 weakened the system even further.

Q. Which three republics declared that the Soviet Union was disbanded, and under whose leadership?

Answer: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, three major republics of the USSR, in December 1991, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin.

Q. What does the chapter mean by the ‘Second World’?

Answer: After the Second World War the east European countries that the Soviet army had liberated from the fascist forces came under the control of the USSR, and their political and economic systems were modelled after it. This group of countries was called the Second World or the socialist bloc.

Q. What did Russia inherit as the successor state of the Soviet Union?

Answer: Russia was accepted as the successor state of the Soviet Union. It inherited the Soviet seat in the UN Security Council, accepted all the international treaties and commitments of the Soviet Union, and took over as the only nuclear state of the post-Soviet space, carrying out some nuclear disarmament measures with the US.

Q. What was ‘the largest garage sale in history’?

Answer: It is what the chapter calls the sale of Russian state industry under shock therapy. About 90 per cent of Russia’s industries were put up for sale to private individuals and companies, and because the restructuring was carried out through market forces rather than government-directed industrial policies, valuable industries were undervalued and sold at throwaway prices.

Q. What is meant by shock therapy?

Answer: Shock therapy is the name given to the model of transition from an authoritarian socialist system to a democratic capitalist system followed in Russia, Central Asia and east Europe, influenced by the World Bank and the IMF. It varied in intensity and speed among the former second world countries, but its direction and features were quite similar.

Q. What does Russia mean by its ‘Near Abroad’?

Answer: Russia perceives the Central Asian states as its ‘Near Abroad’ and believes that they should be under Russian influence. The term matters because the same region became a zone of competition after 2001, when the US paid the Central Asian governments to hire military bases and China developed its own oil and trade interests there.

Q. Why were the Central Asian republics made founding members of the CIS?

Answer: The declaration on the disintegration of the USSR and the formation of the CIS came as a surprise to the other republics, especially the Central Asian ones, which had been left out. Their exclusion was an issue that was quickly solved by making them founding members of the CIS.

Q. What has happened in Chechnya and Dagestan?

Answer: These are two republics within Russia that have had violent secessionist movements. Moscow’s method of dealing with the Chechen rebels and its indiscriminate military bombings have led to many human rights violations, but they failed to deter the aspirations for independence.

Q. How did the break-up of Czechoslovakia differ from that of Yugoslavia?

Answer: Czechoslovakia split peacefully into two, with the Czechs and the Slovaks forming independent countries. The break-up of Yugoslavia was the most severe conflict of the region: after 1991 several provinces like Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, ethnic Serbs opposed this, a massacre of non-Serb Bosnians followed, and NATO intervention and the bombing of Yugoslavia followed the inter-ethnic civil war.

Q. Describe the strengths of the Soviet economy after the Second World War.

Answer: The Soviet Union became a great power after the Second World War, and its economy was then more developed than the rest of the world except for the US.
1. It had a complex communications network and vast energy resources including oil, iron and steel.
2. It had machinery production and a transport sector that connected its remotest areas with efficiency.
3. It had a domestic consumer industry that produced everything from pins to cars, though their quality did not match that of the Western capitalist countries.
4. The Soviet state ensured a minimum standard of living for all citizens, and the government subsidised basic necessities including health, education, childcare and other welfare schemes.
5. State ownership was the dominant form of ownership: land and productive assets were owned and controlled by the Soviet state.

Q. What weaknesses of the Soviet system made reform necessary?

Answer: 1. The system became very bureaucratic and authoritarian, making life very difficult for its citizens.
2. The lack of democracy and the absence of freedom of speech stifled people, who often expressed their dissent in jokes and cartoons.
3. The one-party system represented by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had tight control over all institutions and was unaccountable to the people.
4. The party refused to recognise the urge of people in the fifteen republics to manage their own affairs, including their cultural affairs, and Russia in reality dominated everything.
5. The arms race was matched only at great cost, the country lagged behind the West in technology and infrastructure, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 weakened the system further.
6. Productivity and technology fell behind the West even as wages grew, which led to shortages in all consumer goods, rising food imports, and an economy that was faltering in the late 1970s and became stagnant.

Q. Why does the chapter call nationalism the final and most immediate cause of the disintegration of the USSR, and where was it strongest?

Answer: The rise of nationalism and the desire for sovereignty within various republics, including Russia and the Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia and others, proved to be the final and most immediate cause for the disintegration of the USSR. The chapter records two views on it: one is that nationalist urges and feelings were at work throughout the history of the Soviet Union and that there would have been an internal struggle whether or not the reforms had occurred; the other is that Gorbachev’s reforms speeded up and increased nationalist dissatisfaction to the point that the government and rulers could not control it.

Where it was strongest is the surprise of the chapter. During the Cold War many thought nationalist unrest would be strongest in the Central Asian republics because of their ethnic and religious differences and their economic backwardness. In fact it was strongest in the more ‘European’ and prosperous part, in Russia and the Baltic areas as well as Ukraine and Georgia, where ordinary people concluded that they were paying too high an economic price to keep the more backward areas within the Soviet Union.

Q. Describe the consequences of shock therapy for the people of Russia.

Answer: Shock therapy did not lead the people into the promised utopia of mass consumption; it brought ruin to the economies and disaster upon the people of the entire region.
1. About 90 per cent of Russia’s industries were put up for sale, entire industries virtually disappeared, and the sale was called ‘the largest garage sale in history’.
2. Citizens were given vouchers to take part in the sales, but most sold them in the black market because they needed the money.
3. The value of the ruble declined dramatically and inflation was so high that people lost all their savings.
4. The collective farm system disintegrated, leaving people without food security, and Russia started to import food. The real GDP of Russia in 1999 was below what it was in 1989.
5. The old system of social welfare was systematically destroyed and the withdrawal of government subsidies pushed large sections of the people into poverty.
6. The middle classes were pushed to the periphery of society, the academic and intellectual manpower disintegrated or migrated, a mafia emerged and began controlling many economic activities, and privatisation led to new disparities between rich and poor regions and between people.

Q. Why were the democratic institutions of the post-communist states weak?

Answer: The construction of democratic institutions was not given the same attention and priority as the demands of economic transformation. The constitutions of all these countries were drafted in a hurry, and most of them, including Russia, had a strong executive president with the widest possible powers, which rendered the elected parliaments relatively weak. In Central Asia the presidents had great powers and several of them became very authoritarian; the presidents of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan appointed themselves to power first for ten years and then extended it for another ten years, allowing no dissent or opposition. A judicial culture and the independence of the judiciary were yet to be established in most of these countries.

Q. Why has Central Asia become a zone of competition between outside powers?

Answer: The Central Asian Republics are areas with vast hydrocarbon resources, which have brought them economic benefit and made them attractive to oil companies. The region also sits next to Russia, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan and close to West Asia. After 11 September 2001 the US wanted military bases in the region and paid the governments of all the Central Asian states to hire bases and to allow airplanes to fly over their territory during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia, however, perceives these states as its ‘Near Abroad’ and believes that they should be under Russian influence. China has interests here because of the oil resources, and the Chinese have begun to settle around the borders and conduct trade. The region is also unstable in itself: Tajikistan had a civil war that ran for ten years till 2001, there are many sectarian conflicts, and countries and provinces are fighting over river waters.

Q. Explain the three broad kinds of enduring changes that the collapse of the Soviet Union brought to world politics.

Answer: The collapse of the second world of the Soviet Union and of the socialist systems in eastern Europe had profound consequences for world politics. The chapter groups them into three.

1. The end of Cold War confrontations. The ideological dispute over whether the socialist system would beat the capitalist system was not an issue any more. Since this dispute had engaged the military of the two blocs, had triggered a massive arms race and accumulation of nuclear weapons, and had led to the existence of military blocs, the end of the confrontation demanded an end to this arms race and a possible new peace.

2. A change in power relations. The end of the Cold War left open only two possibilities: either the remaining superpower would dominate and create a unipolar system, or different countries or groups of countries could become important players, bringing in a multipolar system where no one power could dominate. As it turned out, the US became the sole superpower. Backed by the power and prestige of the US, the capitalist economy became the dominant economic system internationally; institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund became powerful advisors to all these countries since they gave them loans for their transitions to capitalism; and politically, the notion of liberal democracy emerged as the best way to organise political life.

3. The emergence of many new countries. All of them had their own independent aspirations and choices. Some, especially the Baltic and east European states, wanted to join the European Union and become part of NATO. The Central Asian countries wanted to take advantage of their geographical location and continue their close ties with Russia while also establishing ties with the West, the US, China and others. The international system thus saw many new players emerge, each with its own identity, interests, and economic and political difficulties.

Q. What was shock therapy, and what were its main features?

Answer: The collapse of communism was followed in most of these countries by a painful process of transition from an authoritarian socialist system to a democratic capitalist system. The model of transition in Russia, Central Asia and east Europe that was influenced by the World Bank and the IMF came to be known as shock therapy. It varied in intensity and speed amongst the former second world countries, but its direction and features were quite similar.

Its main features:
1. Each of these countries was required to make a total shift to a capitalist economy, which meant rooting out completely any structures evolved during the Soviet period.
2. Private ownership was to be the dominant pattern of ownership of property, and privatisation of state assets and corporate ownership patterns were to be immediately brought in.
3. Collective farms were to be replaced by private farming and capitalism in agriculture.
4. The transition ruled out any alternate or ‘third way’ other than state-controlled socialism or capitalism.
5. There was a drastic change in the external orientation of these economies. Development was now envisaged through more trade, so a sudden and complete switch to free trade was considered essential, with the free trade regime and foreign direct investment as the main engines of change. This involved openness to foreign investment, financial opening up or deregulation, and currency convertibility.
6. Finally, the existing trade alliances among the countries of the Soviet bloc were broken up. Each state was now linked directly to the West rather than to the others in the region, and these states were to be gradually absorbed into the Western economic system, with the Western capitalist states guiding the development of the region through various agencies and organisations.

Q. Describe the four dimensions of the relationship between India and the USSR during the Cold War era.

Answer: During the Cold War era India and the USSR enjoyed a special relationship, which led critics to say that India was part of the Soviet camp. The chapter calls it a multi-dimensional relationship and gives four dimensions.

Economic. The Soviet Union assisted India’s public sector companies at a time when such assistance was difficult to get. It gave aid and technical assistance for steel plants like Bhilai, Bokaro and Visakhapatnam, and machinery plants like Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. It also accepted Indian currency for trade when India was short of foreign exchange.

Political. The Soviet Union supported India’s positions on the Kashmir issue in the UN. It also supported India during its major conflicts, especially during the war with Pakistan in 1971. India too supported Soviet foreign policy in some crucial but indirect ways.

Military. India received most of its military hardware from the Soviet Union at a time when few other countries were willing to part with military technologies. The Soviet Union entered into various agreements allowing India to jointly produce military equipment.

Culture. Hindi films and Indian culture were popular in the Soviet Union, and a large number of Indian writers and artists visited the USSR. The chapter adds that Indian heroes from Raj Kapoor to Amitabh Bachchan are household names in Russia and many post-Soviet countries even today.

Q. Explain the main causes of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Answer: 1. Internal weaknesses of the institutions. There is no doubt that the internal weaknesses of Soviet political and economic institutions, which failed to meet the aspirations of the people, were responsible for the collapse of the system. Economic stagnation for many years led to severe consumer shortages, and a large section of Soviet society began to doubt and question the system openly.

2. The economic burden of being a superpower. The Soviet economy used much of its resources in maintaining a nuclear and military arsenal and in developing its satellite states in Eastern Europe and within the Soviet system, the five Central Asian Republics in particular. This led to a huge economic burden that the system could not cope with.

3. Awareness of the West. Ordinary citizens became more knowledgeable about the economic advance of the West and could see the disparities. After years of being told that the Soviet system was better than Western capitalism, the reality of its backwardness came as a political and psychological shock.

4. Administrative and political stagnation. The Communist Party that had ruled for over 70 years was not accountable to the people. Ordinary people were alienated by slow and stifling administration, rampant corruption, the inability of the system to correct its mistakes, the unwillingness to allow more openness in government, and the centralisation of authority in a vast land. Party bureaucrats gained more privileges than ordinary citizens, so people did not identify with the system or with the rulers, and the government increasingly lost popular backing.

5. Gorbachev’s reforms and the ‘tug of war’. When Gorbachev loosened the system he set in motion forces and expectations that few could have predicted and that became virtually impossible to control. One section felt he should have moved much faster; members of the Communist Party and those served by the system felt their power and privileges were eroding and that he was moving too quickly. He lost support on all sides and divided public opinion.

6. The rise of nationalism. The rise of nationalism and the desire for sovereignty within various republics, including Russia, the Baltic Republics, Ukraine and Georgia, proved to be the final and most immediate cause for the disintegration of the USSR.

Q. What is the importance of Indo-Russian relations for India and for Russia today?

Answer: India has maintained good relations with all the post-communist countries, but the strongest relations are still those between Russia and India, and they are an important aspect of India’s foreign policy. Indo-Russian relations are embedded in a history of trust and common interests and are matched by popular perceptions.

A shared vision. Russia and India share a vision of a multipolar world order, by which they mean the co-existence of several powers in the international system, collective security in which an attack on any country is regarded as a threat to all countries and requires a collective response, greater regionalism, negotiated settlements of international conflicts, an independent foreign policy for all countries, and decision making through bodies like the UN that should be strengthened, democratised and empowered. More than 80 bilateral agreements have been signed between India and Russia as part of the Indo-Russian Strategic Agreement of 2001.

What India gains. India stands to benefit on issues like Kashmir, energy supplies, sharing information on international terrorism, access to Central Asia, and balancing its relations with China. Since India is an oil-importing nation, Russia has repeatedly come to its assistance during oil crises, and India is seeking to increase its energy imports from Russia and the republics of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, including partnership and investment in oilfields. Russia is important for India’s nuclear energy plans and assisted India’s space industry by giving, for example, the cryogenic rocket when India needed it.

What Russia gains. Russia benefits because India is the second largest arms market for Russia, and the Indian military gets most of its hardware from Russia. The two countries have also collaborated on various scientific projects.