By the middle of 1991 the Soviet Union's economy had plummeted drastically. Foreign trade was down 32 per cent. The 1991 budget deficit planned to be 26 billion rubles was now estimated at 125 billion. GNP in the first quarter of 1991 was down by 10 per cent. Living standards were estimated to have fallen by between 15 and 20 percent.

On July 22 1987 The Guardian, a British newspaper, published a document secretly circulated amongst some of the elite in November 1986:

'The Soviet Union lags 10 to 15 years behind the capitalist countries in its economic development and this lag is growing...the Soviet people's standard of living is one of the lowest in the industrially developed world...Low pay is vitiated by difficult living cond

The Soviet Union has never spent excessive amounts of money on the military because it always promoted the fight for universal disarmament of arms, for the banning of nuclear weapons forever, and for every partial step in this direction. In the Soviet Union, the class gap never existed because the workers had always been satisfied with their conditions. The workers in the USSR had industrial freedom, which meant they had a share in the ownership of the industry and a share in the determination of their working conditions.

Marxist-Leninist policies were derived from a basic misjudgment of history and from a fatal misconception of human nature. Communism failed to take into account the basic human craving for individual freedom, for artistic or spiritual self-expression.

Anatoly Kuznetsov, a dissident Soviet author wrote:

The immunity of the bureaucracy from any kind of political or economic control and their privileged lifestyle, inherited from one generation to the next - all contributed to a bureaucratic culture utterly remote from the conditions of the masses, arrogant and deeply cynical. The working class meanwhile saw its living standards decline while isolated from workers in the developed capitalist counties whom they saw enjoying better living standards. This social gap called for change.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Soviet USSR, Arms Race, Structure Communist, Crime Soviet, Class Gap, Igar Donbass, Soviet Union's, Karl Marx, IDEOLOGY Marxist-Leninist, soviet union, communist party, living standards, create atmosphere nervousness, atmosphere nervousness uncertainty, soviet ussr, crime soviet, organized crime, soviet constitution, wage price controls, supreme soviet, people economic freedom, create atmosphere, organized crime soviet, economic freedom,
Approximate Word count = 1527
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)