As the title says. This is something that has always confused me, but why was it so easy to dismantle the Soviet Union? The blame is usually put in Gorbachev and Yeltsin, but the Union wasn’t governed by just a single man. The whole CPSU was responsible for the government’s actions. How was it, that these opportunists managed to get in there and just tear the country apart?
Also, how was it impossible to restore the previous order? So Yeltsin, a liberal sell out, is in power and nothing can be done to remove him and restore socialism? Why were the protests to bring back socialism not enough?
My armchair points:
It was the first socialist state in history, first attempts at anything are rarely successful.
The USSR had to inherit the absolute mess the Russian Empire left over with a lot of anti-Russian sentiment left over in the peripheral republics. Over time their Anti-Russianism morphed into anti-communism.
WW2 killed much of the ideologically disciplined vanguard and forced the USSR to lower the standards of who was recruited in.
Western propaganda and sabotage. An obvious point but a point nonetheless. The US dwarfed the USSR’s soft power influence with USSR having little to compete with the likes of Hollywood and whatnot.
Economically competing with rest of the world while isolated and alone is an extremely tall task no matter the merits of your education and workforce.