But that was not the main problem, it also led to the hostility between the USSR and much of the Muslim world. The government hoped to spread out the communist ideology threw the war and to get access to the mineral oil reserves. The Soviet Union wasn't really in control of the war and so it ended in a disastrous destruction and a major problem occurred, the large frightened Muslim population in the USSR. Gorbachev was faced with this problem and had to look how to get out of this situation and to convince the Muslim population that they are secure in their own country.
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Gorbachev was the first person who was determined to force the past. He was the fist one as leader who saw the problems and tried to get rid of them with Glasnost and Perestroika. Leader before him led the problems swift away with out doing something. The economy was in a very bad shape in the 1980s. Not only the domestic economy couldn't meet the needs of the population also alcoholism played a huge role. The work was under to hard conditions, the people had nothing they could believe on and so the take hold of alcohol. Gorbachev wanted to get rid of this problem and started an anti-alcohol campaign. .
The main problem Gorbachev had to force was the lagging behind the west in quantity and quality. It was an era of stagnation, nothing was going on forward in the past few years. But the need for catching up with the western state was enormous. They had to speed up with the technology, industry and the agricultural sector, and also with the scientific and technological development. But also the west was steadily moving forward with their economy and so it seemed difficult to catch up with the west and stop the drift out of the situation. .
Another point that has to be mentioned are the leaders before Gorbachev, beginning the earliest with Stalin, who ruled as an dictator and destroyed the work on farms threw his collectivisation.