How did the fall of the Berlin Wall lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Answer 1

You might consider rephrasing your question to ask how did the fall of the Berlin Wall contribute to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specificity is important in academic writing and the variety of historical events and processes culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Union is too complicated to attribute to any singular event. That being said, one might argue that the most important way in which the fall of the Berlin Wall contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the loss of legitimacy suffered by other communist states resulting from the rapid and unforeseen dissolution of state authority in the GDR. The fall of the Berlin Wall showed that without popular legitimacy, government control over the security apparatus is a fragile means of maintaining authority. In such a system, individuals efforts to exert agency must constantly be constrained by security forces willing to exert violence upholding state legitimacy. When the soldiers of the GDR refused to use violence against fellow citizens, the world learned that illegitimate governments are easily overthrown by their own security forces because those forces can realign their interests at any time. Basically, the fall of the Berlin Wall contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union by providing an example to the soldiers and citizens of the Eastern Bloc of how easily communist systems might unravel. These oppressed masses quickly followed the German example.