The USSR collapsed from an elite top-down process, not mass uprising

Evidence

It is only partially true that this popular surge of energy contributed to the collapse of the system. And it is entirely wrong to claim that the citizens of post-communist countries got the freedom and democracy that was promised to them. … The process that led to the end of the USSR started at the top, driven by Gorbachev and a small group of elite reformers. Perestroika, or “reconstruction,” was aimed at increasing industrial production and rooting out corruption, which necessarily entailed confronting the nomenklatura. But a “velvet purge” (unlike the purges in the 1930s, no one was getting killed) put wily mid-level bureaucrats on the defensive, and the collapse of the command economy structure cut off the flows of profits (and wages) sustaining the system. It was bureaucrats who really reacted to their change in fortunes, not the workers—who often kept going to work without getting paid. The nomenklatura at the national level seized the assets and territories they controlled, and Gorbachev refused to use force to stop them. As Russian historian Vladislav Zubok puts it, the USSR “met its end at the hand of its own leadership.” — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 107

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Soviet collapse was elite-driven, not a product of mass protest — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 109; Populations abandoned Soviet socialism only after reform movements were crushed — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 42; Mid-level elites drove post-communist party transformation. (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Soviet collapse was elite-driven, not a product of mass protest #corroborates (0.99) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 109
• Populations abandoned Soviet socialism only after reform movements were crushed #qualifies (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 42
• Mid-level elites drove post-communist party transformation. #expands (0.75)
• Jihadists believed their Afghan war defeated the USSR and emboldened attacks on the US #complicates (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1787