What prompted the collapse of the Soviet Union

Answer 1

I lived in USSR. My opinion is that economically USSR was very weak in general compared to US, Europe and Japan especially after crude oil glut in 1986 as USSR was the major oil producer. USSR was selling crude oil and buying food and grains from others. As crude oil price declined there were not enough savings to buy needed goods on international market. Government controlled production and prices of everything. This resulted in deficits of goods and food for people, black market and starvation for some. USSR was going through political hard times with opposition in many regions, including Estonia. Economical reforms of 1987 allowed foreign investment and entrepreneurship. This made regional opposition even greater as more people gained power and money from control over local resources. Gorbachev wanted to solve all this by democratizing country and economy, but central governance was too weak to hold country, economy, regions under control and democratization turned into an idea of "every is allowed, no more control, US and their economic model will safe us". When there are no money, no control and lots of local and regional power and money, it required very radical solutions like Bolsheviks did in 1917-1922 with civil war and lots of people killed. Government did not want to go through it again, because they were mostly old wise people. But they did not know what to do. So they lost their power to younger men, who fortunately were not as radical as Bolsheviks were in 1917. Money, greed and fear of civil war was much more important to them, then ideas of keeping Soviet Union together.