While Poland may have indeed been the “weakest link” among communist states, this does not mean that the others were necessarily strong and intact. During the 1970s, the states founded on Marxist ideology were actually entering a deep economic crisis, which in turn prompted social and political crises. This also affected the Soviet Union itself, where the standard of living left much to be desired. Despite several decades of a nearly unblemished record of success, discontent was mounting there, too. The accomplishments of the engineers who designed the long-range missiles, nuclear weapons, and space vehicles contrasted sharply with the quality and quantity of consumer goods in Soviet homes. The Soviet Union's client states, comprised of poor Central American, African, and Asian countries, ranging from Fidel Castro's Cuba to Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Laos, and Vietnam, increased the USSR's prestige, guaranteeing it several military bases as well as votes in the United Nations. This all helped the Soviet Union to maintain its status as a superpower. The costs of this expansion, however, seriously burdened its budget. In late 1979, Moscow involved itself militarily in Afghanistan, which prompted the United States to impose harsh economic sanctions. These affected, for example, the grain imports on which the Soviet economy was very dependent. From the start, that war had high costs and was for many years a serious additional strain on the increasingly wobbly economy.

President Reagan did not limit himself, however, to his inspired anti-Soviet rhetoric, symbolized by his famous expression “the Evil Empire.” In March 1983, he announced that work would begin on “Star Wars”—i.e., the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). This was to some extent a bluff, but the Pentagon's budget did double in several years, which meant that a new phase was beginning in the arms race, one for which the Soviet economy was unprepared. In addition, the prices of crude oil had begun to fall on the world market, and this was the main source of hard currency required for Soviet industry, as well as for supplying the cities with bread. If this weren't enough, in 1982–85, Moscow experienced a “geriatric crisis”: three of the party's general secretaries died while in office (Leonid Brezhnev, Iurii Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko), as well as two other extremely important Politburo members (Mikhail Suslov and Dmitrii Ustinov).