Did the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 come as no surprise to the West?
I doubt anyone expected it to happen as quickly as it did, it was a long time coming but the Soviet Union didn’t really fall apart gradually it was more like they were being held together by a thread for a long time and suddenly the thread broke. The west always expected the Soviet Union to collapse at some point, in fact that was the real reason behind the American military build up from the 1950s through the 1980s, the plan was to create an arms race that would eventually break the Soviets and that’s pretty much what happened.
