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History of the Soviet Union (1982–1991)

The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991 spans the period from the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's death until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, and complex systemic problems in the command economy, Soviet output stagnated. Failed attempts at reform, a standstill economy, and the success of the proxies of the United States against the Soviet Union's forces in the war in Afghanistan led to a general feeling of discontent, especially in the Soviet-occupied Baltic countries and Eastern Europe.

Greater political and social freedoms, instituted by the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, created an atmosphere of open criticism of the communist regime, and also perestroika. The dramatic drop of the price of oil in 1985 and 1986 profoundly influenced actions of the Soviet leadership.

Nikolai Tikhonov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, was succeeded by Nikolai Ryzhkov, and Vasili Kuznetsov, the acting Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was succeeded by Andrei Gromyko, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Several republics began resisting central control, and increasing democratization led to a weakening of the central government. The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin seized power in the aftermath of a failed coup that had attempted to topple the reform-minded Gorbachev.

Leadership transition
By 1982, the stagnation of the Soviet economy was obvious, as evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union had been importing grain from the U.S. throughout the 1970s, but the system was so firmly entrenched that any real change seemed impossible. A huge rate of defense spending consumed large parts of the economy. The transition period that separated the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras resembled the former much more than the latter, although hints of reform emerged as early as 1983.

Andropov interregnum
Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982. After a two-day power struggle Yuri Andropov became the new General Secretary. He maneuvered his way into power both through his KGB connections and by gaining the support of the military by promising not to cut defense spending. For comparison, some of his rivals such as Konstantin Chernenko were skeptical of a continued high military budget. Aged 68, Andropov was the oldest person ever appointed as General Secretary. Andropov began a thorough house-cleaning throughout the party and state bureaucracy, a decision made easy by the fact that the Central Committee had an average age of 69. He replaced more than one-fifth of the Soviet ministers and regional party first secretaries and more than one-third of the department heads within the Central Committee apparatus. As a result, he replaced the aging leadership with younger, more vigorous administrators. But Andropov's ability to reshape the top leadership was constrained by his own age and poor health and the influence of Chernenko, his rival and longtime ally of Brezhnev who had previously supervised personnel matters in the Central Committee.

The transition of power from Brezhnev to Andropov was notably the first one in Soviet history to occur completely peacefully with no one being imprisoned, killed, or forced from office.

Domestic policies
Andropov's domestic policy leaned heavily towards restoring discipline and order to Soviet society. He eschewed radical political and economic reforms, promoting instead a small degree of candor in politics and mild economic experiments similar to those that had been associated with the late Premier Alexei Kosygin's initiatives in the mid-1960s. In tandem with such economic experiments, Andropov launched an anti-corruption drive that reached high into the government and party ranks. Unlike Brezhnev, who possessed several mansions and a fleet of luxury cars, he lived quite simply. While visiting Budapest in early 1983, he expressed interest in Hungary's Goulash Communism and that the sheer size of the Soviet economy made strict top-down planning impractical. Changes were needed in a hurry for 1982 had witnessed the country's worst economic performance, with real GDP growth at almost zero percent.

Foreign policies
Andropov faced a series of foreign policy crises: the hopeless situation of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, threatened revolt in Poland, growing animosity with China, the polarization threat of war in the Middle East, and troubles in Ethiopia and South Africa. The most critical threat was the "Second Cold War" launched by American President Ronald Reagan and a specific attack on rolling back what he denounced as the "Evil Empire". Reagan was using American economic power, and Soviet economic weakness, to escalate massive spending on the Cold War, emphasizing high technology that Moscow lacked. The main response was raising the military budget to 70 percent of the national budget, and supplying billions of dollars worth of military aid to Syria, Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, the PLO, Cuba, and North Korea. That included tanks and armored troop carriers, hundreds of fighter planes, as well as anti-aircraft systems, artillery systems, and all sorts of high tech equipment for which the USSR was the main supplier for its allies. Andropov's main goal was to avoid an open war.

In foreign policy, the conflict in Afghanistan continued even though Andropov—who now felt the invasion was a mistake—half-heartedly explored options for a negotiated withdrawal. Andropov's rule was also marked by deterioration of relations with the United States. During a much-publicized "walk in the woods" with Soviet dignitary Yuli Kvitsinsky, American diplomat Paul Nitze suggested a compromise for reducing nuclear missiles in Europe on both sides that was ultimately ignored by the Politburo. Kvitsinsky would later write that, despite his own efforts, the Soviet leadership was not interested in compromise, instead calculating that peace movements in the West would force the Americans to capitulate. On 8 March 1983, during Andropov's reign as General Secretary, U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire". The same month, on 23 March, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan claimed this research program into ballistic missile defense would be "consistent with our obligations under the ABM Treaty". However, Andropov was dismissive of this claim, and said that "It is time they [Washington] stopped ... search[ing] for the best ways of unleashing nuclear war. ... Engaging in this is not just irresponsible. It is insane".

In August 1983, Andropov announced that the country was stopping all work on space-based weapons. Meanwhile, Soviet–U.S. arms control talks on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe were suspended by the Soviet Union in November 1983 and by the end of the year, the Soviets had broken off all arms control negotiations. Massive bad publicity worldwide came when Soviet fighters shot down a civilian jet liner, Korean Air Flight KAL-007, which carried 269 passengers and crew. It had strayed over the Soviet Union on 1 September 1983 on its scheduled route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, South Korea. The Soviet system was unprepared to deal with a civilian airliner, and the shooting down was a matter of following orders without question. Instead of admitting an accident, Soviet media proclaimed a brave decision to meet a Western provocation. Together with its low credibility explanation in 1986 of the meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the episode demonstrated an inability to deal with public relations crises; the propaganda system was only aimed at people who already were committed friends of the Soviet Union. Both crises were escalated by technological and organizational failures, compounded by human error.

US−Soviet relations deteriorated rapidly especially after March 1983, when Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire". The official press agency TASS accused Reagan of "thinking only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anti-communism". Further Soviet outrage was directed at Reagan's stationing of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe. In Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere, under the Reagan Doctrine, the US began undermining Soviet-supported governments by supplying arms to anti-communist resistance movements in these countries.

President Reagan's decision to deploy medium-range Pershing II missiles in Western Europe met with mass protests in countries such as France and West Germany, sometimes numbering 1 million people at a time. Many Europeans became convinced that the US and not the Soviet Union was the more aggressive country, and there was fear over the prospect of a war, especially since there was a widespread conviction in Europe that the US, being separated from the Red Army by two oceans as opposed to a short land border, was insensitive to the people of Germany and other countries. Moreover, the memory of World War II was still strong and many Germans could not forget the destruction and mass rapes committed by Soviet troops in the closing days of that conflict. This attitude was helped along by the Reagan Administration's comments that a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would not necessarily result in the use of nuclear weapons.

Andropov's health declined rapidly during the tense summer and fall of 1983, and he became the first Soviet leader to miss the anniversary celebrations of the 1917 revolution that November. He died in February 1984 of kidney failure after disappearing from public view for several months. His most significant legacy to the Soviet Union was his discovery and promotion of Mikhail Gorbachev. Beginning in 1978, Gorbachev advanced in two years through the Kremlin hierarchy to full membership in the Politburo. His responsibilities for the appointment of personnel allowed him to make the contacts and distribute the favors necessary for a future bid to become general secretary. At this point, Western experts believed that Andropov was grooming Gorbachev as his successor. However, although Gorbachev acted as a deputy to the general secretary throughout Andropov's illness, Gorbachev's time had not yet arrived when his patron died early in 1984.

Chernenko interregnum
At 73, Konstantin Chernenko was in poor health, suffering from emphysema, and unable to play an active role in policy making when he was chosen, after lengthy discussion, to succeed Andropov. But Chernenko's short time in office did bring some significant policy changes. The personnel changes and investigations into corruption undertaken under Andropov's tutelage came to an end. Chernenko advocated more investment in consumer goods and services and in agriculture. He also called for a reduction in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's (CPSU) micromanagement of the economy and greater attention to public opinion. However, KGB repression of Soviet dissidents also increased. In February 1983, Soviet representatives withdrew from the World Psychiatric Organization in protest of that group's continued complaints about the use of psychiatry to suppress dissent. This policy was underlined in June when Vladimir Danchev, a broadcaster for Radio Moscow, referred to the Soviet troops in Afghanistan as "invaders" while conducting English-language broadcasts. After refusing to retract this statement, he was sent to a mental institution for several months. Valery Senderov, a leader of an unofficial union of professional workers, was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp early in the year for speaking out on discrimination practiced against Jews in education and the professions.

Although Chernenko had called for renewed détente with the West, little progress was made towards closing the rift in East−West relations during his rule. The Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, retaliating for the United States-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. In September 1984, the Soviet Union also prevented a visit to West Germany by East German leader Erich Honecker. Fighting in the Afghan Democratic Republic also intensified, but in the late autumn of 1984 the United States and the Soviet Union did agree to resume arms control talks in early 1985.

Rise of Gorbachev
In addition to the failing economy, the prolonged war in Afghanistan, often referred to as the Soviet Union's "Vietnam War", led to increased public dissatisfaction with the Communist regime. Also, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 added motive force to Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reforms, which eventually spiraled out of control and caused the Soviet system to collapse.

Ousting the old guard
After years of stagnation, the "new thinking" of younger Communist apparatchik began to emerge. Following the death of terminally ill Konstantin Chernenko, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985. At 54, Gorbachev was the youngest person since Joseph Stalin to become General Secretary and the country's first head of state born a Soviet citizen instead of a subject of the tsar. During his official confirmation on 11 March, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko spoke of how the new Soviet leader had filled in for Chernenko as CC Secretariat, and praised his intelligence and flexible, pragmatic ideas instead of rigid adherence to party ideology. Gorbachev was aided by a lack of serious competition in the Politburo. He immediately began appointing younger men of his generation to important party posts, including Nikolai Ryzhkov, Secretary of Economics, Viktor Cherbrikov, KGB Chief, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze (replacing the 75-year-old Gromyko), Secretary of Defense Industries Lev Zaikov, and Secretary of Construction Boris Yeltsin. Removed from the Politburo and Secretariat was Grigory Romanov, who had been Gorbachev's most significant rival for the position of General Secretary. Gromyko's removal as Foreign Minister was the most unexpected change given his decades of unflinching, faithful service compared to the unknown, inexperienced Shevardnadze.

More predictably, the 80-year-old Nikolai Tikhonov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, was succeeded by Nikolai Ryzhkov, and Vasili Kuznetsov, the acting Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was succeeded by Andrei Gromyko, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Further down the chain, up to 40% of the first secretaries of the oblasts (provinces) were replaced with younger, better educated, and more competent men. The defense establishment was also given a thorough shakeup with the commanders of all 16 military districts replaced along with all theaters of military operation, as well as the three Soviet fleets. Not since World War II had the Soviet military had such a rapid turnover of officers. Sixty-eight-year-old Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov was fully rehabilitated after having fallen from favor in 1983–84 due to his handling of the KAL 007 shootdown and his ideas about improving Soviet strategic and tactical doctrines were made into an official part of defense policy, although some of his other ambitions such as developing the military into a smaller, tighter force based on advanced technology were not considered feasible for the time being. Many, but not all, of the younger army officers appointed during 1985 were proteges of Ogarkov.

Gorbachev got off to an excellent start during his first months in power. He projected an aura of youth and dynamism compared to his aged predecessors and made frequent walks in the streets of the major cities answering questions from ordinary citizens. He became the first leader that spoke with the Soviet people in person. When he made public speeches, he made clear that he was interested in constructive exchanges of ideas instead of merely reciting lengthy platitudes about the excellence of the Soviet system. He also spoke candidly about the slackness and run-down condition of Soviet society in recent years, blaming alcohol abuse, poor workplace discipline, and other factors for these situations. Alcohol was a particular nag of Gorbachev's, especially as he himself did not drink, and he made one of his major policy aims curbing the consumption of it.

Foreign policy
In terms of foreign policy, the most important one, relations with the United States, remained twitchy through 1985. In October, Gorbachev made his first visit to a non-communist country when he traveled to France and was warmly received. The fashion-conscious French were also captivated by his wife Raisa and political pundits widely believed that the comparatively young Soviet leader would have a PR advantage over President Reagan, who was 20 years his senior.

Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time in Geneva in November. The three weeks preceding the summit meeting were marked by an unprecedented Soviet media campaign against the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), taking advantage of opposition at home in the US to the program. When it finally took place, the two superpower leaders established a solid rapport that boded well for the future despite Reagan's refusal to compromise on abandonment of SDI. A joint communique by both parties stated that they were in agreement that nuclear war could not be won by either side and must never be allowed to happen. It was also agreed that Reagan and Gorbachev would carry out two more summit meetings in 1986–87.

Jimmy Carter had decisively ended the policy of détente, by financially aiding the Mujahideen movement in neighboring Socialist Afghanistan, which served as a pretext for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan six months later, with the aims of supporting the Afghan government, controlled by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Tensions between the superpowers increased during this time, when Carter placed trade embargoes on the Soviet Union and stated that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was "the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War."

Economy
East-West tensions increased during the first term of US President Ronald Reagan (1981–85), reaching levels not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis as Reagan increased US military spending to 7% of the GDP. To match the military buildup, the Soviet Union increased its own military spending to 27% of its GDP and froze production of civilian goods at 1980 levels, causing a sharp economic decline in the already failing Soviet economy.

The US financed the training for the Mujahideen warlords such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbudin Hekmatyar and Burhanuddin Rabbani eventually culminated to the fall of the Soviet satellite the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. While the CIA and MI6 and the People's Liberation Army of China financed the operation along with the Pakistan government against the Soviet Union, eventually the Soviet Union began looking for a withdrawal route and in 1988 the Geneva Accords were signed between Communist-Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; under the terms Soviet troops were to withdraw. Once the withdrawal was complete the Pakistan ISI continued to support the Mujahideen against the Communist Government and by 1992, the government collapsed. US President Reagan also actively hindered the Soviet Union's ability to sell natural gas to Europe whilst simultaneously actively working to keep gas prices low, which kept the price of Soviet oil low and further starved the Soviet Union of foreign capital. This "long-term strategic offensive," which "contrasts with the essentially reactive and defensive strategy of "containment", accelerated the fall of the Soviet Union by encouraging it to overextend its economic base. The proposition that special operations by the CIA in Saudi Arabia affected the prices of Soviet oil was refuted by Marshall Goldman—one of the leading experts on the economy of the Soviet Union—in his latest book. He pointed out that the Saudis decreased their production of oil in 1985 (it reached a 16-year low), whereas the peak of oil production was reached in 1980. They increased the production of oil in 1986, reduced it in 1987 with a subsequent increase in 1988, but not to the levels of 1980 when production reached its highest level. The real increase happened in 1990, by which time the Cold War was almost over. In his book he asked why, if Saudi Arabia had such an effect on Soviet oil prices, did prices not fall in 1980 when the production of oil by Saudi Arabia reached its highest level—three times as much oil as in the mid-eighties—and why did the Saudis wait till 1990 to increase their production, five years after the CIA's supposed intervention? Why didn't the Soviet Union collapse in 1980 then?

By the time Gorbachev ushered in the process that would lead to the dismantling of the Soviet administrative command economy through his programs of uskoreniye (speed-up of economic development) and perestroika (political and economic restructuring) announced in 1986, the Soviet economy suffered from both hidden inflation and pervasive supply shortages aggravated by an increasingly open black market that undermined the official economy. Additionally, the costs of superpower status—the military, space program, subsidies to client states—were out of proportion to the Soviet economy. The new wave of industrialization based upon information technology had left the Soviet Union desperate for Western technology and credits in order to counter its increasing backwardness.

Reforms
The Law on Cooperatives enacted in May 1988 was perhaps the most radical of the economic reforms during the early part of the Gorbachev era. For the first time since Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy, the law permitted private ownership of businesses in the services, manufacturing, and foreign-trade sectors. Under this provision, cooperative restaurants, shops, and manufacturers became part of the Soviet scene.

Glasnost resulted in greater freedom of speech and the press becoming far less controlled. Thousands of political prisoners and many dissidents were also released. Soviet social science became free to explore and publish on many subjects that had previously been off limits, including conducting public opinion polls. The All−Union Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM)—the most prominent of several polling organizations that were started then— was opened. State archives became more accessible, and some social statistics that had been kept secret became open for research and publication on sensitive subjects such as income disparities, crime, suicide, abortion, and infant mortality. The first center for gender studies was opened within a newly formed Institute for the Socio−Economic Study of Human Population.

In January 1987, Gorbachev called for democratization: the infusion of democratic elements such as multi-candidate elections into the Soviet political process. A 1987 conference convened by Soviet economist and Gorbachev adviser Leonid Abalkin, concluded: "Deep transformations in the management of the economy cannot be realized without corresponding changes in the political system."

In June 1988, at the CPSU's Nineteenth Party Conference, Gorbachev launched radical reforms meant to reduce party control of the government apparatus. On 1 December 1988, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet constitution to allow for the establishment of a Congress of People's Deputies as the Soviet Union's new supreme legislative body.

Elections to the new Congress of People's Deputies were held throughout the USSR in March and April 1989. Gorbachev, as General Secretary of the Communist Party, could be forced to resign at any moment if the communist elite became dissatisfied with him. To proceed with reforms opposed by the majority of the communist party, Gorbachev aimed to consolidate power in a new position, President of the Soviet Union, which was independent from the CPSU and the soviets (councils) and whose holder could be impeached only in case of direct violation of the law. On 15 March 1990, Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president. At the same time, Article 6 of the constitution was changed to deprive the CPSU of a monopoly on political power.

Unintended consequences
Gorbachev's efforts to streamline the Communist system offered promise, but ultimately proved uncontrollable and resulted in a cascade of events that eventually concluded with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Initially intended as tools to bolster the Soviet economy, the policies of perestroika and glasnost soon led to unintended consequences.

Relaxation under glasnost resulted in the Communist Party losing its absolute grip on the media. Before long, and much to the embarrassment of the authorities, the media began to expose severe social and economic problems the Soviet government had long denied and actively concealed. Problems receiving increased attention included poor housing, alcoholism, drug abuse, pollution, outdated Stalin-era factories, and petty to large-scale corruption, all of which the official media had ignored. Media reports also exposed crimes committed by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet regime, such as the gulags, his treaty with Adolf Hitler, and the Great Purges, which had been ignored by the official media. Moreover, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and the mishandling of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, further damaged the credibility of the Soviet government at a time when dissatisfaction was increasing.

In all, the positive view of Soviet life long presented to the public by the official media was rapidly fading, and the negative aspects of life in the Soviet Union were brought into the spotlight. This undermined the faith of the public in the Soviet system and eroded the Communist Party's social power base, threatening the identity and integrity of the Soviet Union itself.

Fraying amongst the members of the Warsaw Pact countries and instability of its western allies, first indicated by Lech Wałęsa's 1980 rise to leadership of the trade union Solidarity, accelerated, leaving the Soviet Union unable to depend upon its Eastern European satellite states for protection as a buffer zone. By 1989, following his doctrine of "new political thinking", Gorbachev had repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine in favor of non-intervention in the internal affairs of its Warsaw Pact allies ("Sinatra Doctrine"). Gradually, each of the Warsaw Pact countries saw their communist governments fall to popular elections and, in the case of Romania, a violent uprising. By 1990, the governments of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania, all of which had been imposed after World War II, were brought down as revolutions swept Eastern Europe.

The Soviet Union also began experiencing upheaval as the political consequences of glasnost reverberated throughout the country. Despite efforts at containment, the upheaval in Eastern Europe inevitably spread to nationalities within the USSR. In elections to the regional assemblies of the Soviet Union's constituent republics, nationalists as well as radical reformers swept the board. As Gorbachev had weakened the system of internal political repression, the ability of the USSR's central Moscow government to impose its will on the USSR's constituent republics had been largely undermined. Massive peaceful protests in the Baltic republics such as the Baltic Way and the Singing Revolution drew international attention and bolstered independence movements in various other regions.

The rise of nationalism under freedom of speech soon re-awakened simmering ethnic tensions in various Soviet republics, further discrediting the ideal of a unified Soviet people. One instance occurred in February 1988, when the government in Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region in the Azerbaijan SSR, passed a resolution calling for unification with the Armenian SSR. Violence against local Azerbaijanis was reported on Soviet television, provoking massacres of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait.

Emboldened by the liberalized atmosphere of glasnost, public dissatisfaction with economic conditions was much more overt than ever before in the Soviet period. Although perestroika was considered bold in the context of Soviet history, Gorbachev's attempts at economic reform were not radical enough to restart the country's chronically sluggish economy in the late 1980s. The reforms made some inroads in decentralization, but Gorbachev and his team left intact most of the fundamental elements of the Stalinist system, including price controls, inconvertibility of the ruble, exclusion of private property ownership, and the government monopoly over most means of production.

The value of all consumer goods manufactured in 1990 in retail prices was about 459 billion rubles ($2.1 trillion). Nevertheless, the Soviet government had lost control over economic conditions. Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies to continue. Tax revenues declined as republic and local governments withheld tax revenues from the central government under the growing spirit of regional autonomy. The anti−alcohol campaign reduced tax revenues as well, which in 1982 accounted for about 12% of all state revenue. The elimination of central control over production decisions, especially in the consumer goods sector, led to the breakdown in traditional supplier−producer relationships without contributing to the formation of new ones. Thus, instead of streamlining the system, Gorbachev's decentralization caused new production bottlenecks.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union' was a process of systematic disintegration, which occurred in the economy, social structure and political structure. It resulted in the abolition of the Soviet Federal Government ("the Union center") and independence of the USSR's republics on 26 December 1991. The process was caused by a weakening of the Soviet government, which led to disintegration and took place from about 19 January 1990 to 26 December 1991. The process was characterized by many of the republics of the Soviet Union declaring their independence and being recognized as sovereign nation-states.

Andrei Grachev, the Deputy Head of the Intelligence Department of the Central Committee, summed up the denouement of the downfall quite cogently:

"'Gorbachev actually put the sort of final blow to the resistance of the Soviet Union by killing the fear of the people. It was still that this country was governed and kept together, as a structure, as a government structure, by the fear from Stalinist times.'"

Post-Soviet restructuring
To restructure the Soviet administrative command system and implement a transition to a market economy, Yeltsin's shock program was employed within days of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The subsidies to money-losing farms and industries were cut, price controls abolished, and the ruble moved towards convertibility. New opportunities for Yeltsin's circle and other entrepreneurs to seize former state property were created, thus restructuring the old state-owned economy within a few months.

After obtaining power, the vast majority of "idealistic" reformers gained huge possessions of state property using their positions in the government and became business oligarchs in a manner that appeared antithetical to an emerging democracy. Existing institutions were conspicuously abandoned prior to the establishment of new legal structures of the market economy such as those governing private property, overseeing financial markets, and enforcing taxation.

Market economists believed that the dismantling of the administrative command system in Russia would raise GDP and living standards by allocating resources more efficiently. They also thought the collapse would create new production possibilities by eliminating central planning, substituting a decentralized market system, eliminating huge macroeconomic and structural distortions through liberalization, and providing incentives through privatization.

Since the USSR's collapse, Russia faced many problems that free market proponents in 1992 did not expect. Among other things, 25% of the population lived below the poverty line, life expectancy had fallen, birthrates were low, and the GDP was halved. There was a sharp increase in economic inequality between 1988/1989 and 1993/1995, with the Gini ratio increasing by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries. These problems led to a series of crises in the 1990s, which nearly led to the election of Yeltsin's Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, in the 1996 presidential election. After the turn of the century, the economy of Russia has begun to improve greatly, due to major investments and business development and also due to high prices of natural resources.

Historiography
According to Boris N. Mironov, by 2020 Russian scholars had produced over 300 books, 3000 articles, and 20 dissertations trying to explain the collapse. Two approaches were taken. The first is to look at the short term, 1985-1991, emphasizing personalities. external causes and policy mistakes. The second looks at long-term economic, political, cultural, and social structures.

Historiography

 * Cox, Michael. "Learning from history? From Soviet collapse to the ‘new’ Cold War." Cold War History 14.4 (2014): 461–485.
 * Kalashnikov, Anthony. "Differing Interpretations: Causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union." Constellations 3.1 (2011) 75–86. online
 * Marples, David R. "Revisiting the Collapse of the USSR." Canadian Slavonic Papers 53.2–4 (2011): 461–473.
 * Mironov, Boris N. "Disintegration of the USSR in Historiography: Collapse or Dissolution." (2021) DOI:10.21638/11701/SPBU02.2021.108 online in Russian
 * Mironov, B. N. "From Indigenization to Sovereignization: How the Disintegration of the Soviet Union Was Prepared." Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences 92.1 (2022): S33-S48. online

title: History of the Soviet Union (1982–1991)


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Corsican language

Corsican (endonym: corsu, ; full name: lingua corsa , ) is a Romance language consisting of the continuum of the Italo-Dalmatian dialects spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, France, and in the northern regions of the island of Sardinia, Italy, located due south.

Corsica, the island proper, is situated approximately 123.9 km (77.0 miles; 66 nautical miles) off the western coast of Tuscany; as such, the Corsican language is related to varieties of Tuscan, from that region of the Italian peninsula, and thus also to Florentine-based standard Italian.

Under the long-standing influence of Tuscany's Pisa, and the historic Republic of Genoa, over Corsica, the Corsican language once filled the role of a vernacular, with Italian functioning as the island's official language until France acquired the island from the Republic of Genoa (1768); by 1859, French had replaced Italian as Corsica's first language so much so that, by the time of the Liberation of France (1945), nearly every islander had at least a working-knowledge of French. The 20th century saw a vast language shift, with the islanders adapting and changing their communications to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican-speakers left by the 1960s. By 1995, an estimated 65% of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican, and a minority of around 10% used Corsican as a first language.

Classification
Corsican is classed as a regional language under French law. It is almost universally agreed that Corsican is typologically and traditionally Italo-Romance, but its specific position therein is more controversial. Some scholars argue that Corsican belongs to the Centro-Southern Italian dialects, while others are of the opinion that it is closely related to, or as part of, Italy's Tuscan dialect varieties. Italian and the dialects of Corsican (especially Northern Corsican) are in fact very mutually intelligible. Southern Corsican, in spite of the geographical proximity, has as its closest linguistic neighbour not Sardinian (a separate group with which it is not mutually intelligible), but rather the Extreme Southern Italian dialects like Siculo-Calabrian. It has been theorised, on the other hand, that a Sardinian variety, or a variety very similar to Sardo-Romance, might have been originally spoken in Corsica prior to the island's Tuscanisation under Pisan and Genoese rule.

The matter is controversial in light of the historical, cultural and particularly strong linguistic bonds that Corsica had traditionally formed with the Italian Mainland from the Middle Ages until the 19th century: in contrast to the neighbouring Sardinia, Corsica's installment into a diglossic system with Italian as the island's prestige language ran so deep that both Corsican and Italian might be even, and in fact were, perceived as two sociolinguistic levels of a single language. Corsican and Italian traditionally existed on a spectrum, and the dividing lines between them were blurred enough that the locals needed little else but a change of register to communicate in an official setting. "Tuscanising" their tongue, or as the Corsican elites would have once said, parlà in crusca ("speaking in crusca", from the name of the Academy dedicated to the standardisation of the Italian language), allowed for a practice not of code-switching, but rather of code-mixing which is quite typical of the Mainland Italian dialects. Italian was perceived as different from Corsican, but not as much as the differences between the two main isoglosses of Northern and Southern Corsican, as spoken by their respective native speakers. When Pasquale Paoli found himself exiled in London, he replied to Samuel Johnson's query on the peculiar existence of a "rustic language" very different from Italian that such a language existed only in Sardinia; in fact, the existence of Corsican as the island's native vernacular did not take anything away from Paoli's claims that Corsica's official language was Italian.

Today's Corsican is the result of these historical vicissitudes, which have morphed the language to an idiom that bears a strong resemblance to the medieval Tuscan once spoken at the time of Dante and Boccaccio, and still existing in peripheral Tuscany (Lucca, Garfagnana, Elba, Capraia). The correspondence of modern Corsican to ancient Tuscan can be seen from almost any aspect of the language, ranging from the phonetics, morphology, lexicon to the syntax. One of the characteristics of standard Italian is the retention of the -re infinitive ending, as in Latin mittere "send"; such infinitival ending is lost in Tuscan as well as Corsican, resulting in the outcome mette / metta, "to put". Whereas the relative pronoun in Italian for "who" is chi and "what" is che/(che) cosa, it is an uninflected chì in Corsican. The only unifying, as well as distinctive, feature which separates the Corsican dialects from the mainland Tuscan ones, with the exception of Amiatino, Pitiglianese, and Capraiese, is the retention of word-final o-u. For example, the Italian demonstrative pronouns questo "this" and quello "that" become in Corsican questu or quistu and quellu or quiddu: this feature was also typical of the early Italian texts during the Middle Ages.

Even after the acquisition of Corsica by Louis XV, Italian continued to be the island's language of education, literature, religion and local affairs. The affluent youth still went to Italy to pursue higher studies. (It has been estimated that Corsican presence in Pisa amounted to a fourth of the University's total student body in 1830.) Local civil registers continued to be written in Italian until 1855; it was on May 9, 1859 that Italian was replaced by French as the island's official language, although the latter would start to take root among the islanders from 1882 onwards, through the Jules Ferry laws aimed at spreading literacy across the French provinces. Even so, a specifically homegrown Corsican (rather than Italian) literature in Corsica only developed belatedly and, in its earliest phase, there were no autonomous cultural instances; Corsican writers, such as Salvatore Viale, even prided themselves on their affiliation to the broader Italian sphere, considering Corsican "one of the lowest, impure dialects of Italy".

It was the Italian Fascist aggressive claims to the island in the 20th century, followed by their invasion, that provoked a popular backlash, estranging the native islanders from standard Italian and, if anything, only accelerated their shifting to the French even further. By the Liberation of France, any previously existing link between the two linguistic varieties and with Italy altogether had been severed; any promotion of Corsican, which had been politicized by the local collaborators with the regime, would be met with popular criticism and even suspicion of potentially harboring irredentist sentiments. From then on, Corsican would grow independently of Italian to become, later in the 1970s, a centerpiece of the Riacquistu ("reacquisition") movement for the rediscovery of Corsican culture. Nationalist calls for Corsican to be put on the same footing as French led the French National Assembly, in 1974, to extend the 1951 Deixonne Law, which initially recognized only a few languages (Breton, Basque, Catalan and Occitan), to including Corsican as well, among others, not as a dialect of Italian, but as one of France's full-fledged regional languages.(See governmental support.)

Origins
The common relationship between Corsica and central Italy can be traced from as far back as the Etruscans, who asserted their presence on the island in as early as 500 BC. In 40 AD, the natives of Corsica reportedly did not speak Latin. The Roman exile, Seneca the Younger, reported that both coast and interior were occupied by natives whose language he was not able to understand. More specifically, Seneca claimed that the island's population was the result of the stratification of different ethnic groups, such as the Greeks, the Ligures (see the Ligurian hypothesis) and the Iberians, whose language had long since stopped being recognizable among the population due to the intermixing of the other two groups. The occupation of the island by the Vandals around the year 469 marked the end of authoritative influence by Latin speakers. (See Medieval Corsica.) If the natives of that time spoke Latin, they must have acquired it during the late empire.

Modern Corsican has been influenced by the languages of the major powers taking an interest in Corsican affairs; earlier by those of the medieval Italian powers, such as the Papal States (828–1077), the Republic of Pisa (1077–1282) and the Republic of Genoa (1282–1768), and finally by France which, since 1859, has promulgated the official Parisian French. The term "gallicised Corsican" refers to the evolution of Corsican starting from about the year 1950, whereas "distanciated Corsican" refers to an idealized variety of Corsican following linguistic purism, by means of removing any French-derived elements.

Corsica
The two most widely spoken forms of the Corsican language are the groups spoken in the Bastia and Corte area (generally throughout the northern half of the island, known as Haute-Corse, Cismonte or Corsica suprana), and the groups spoken around Sartène and Porto-Vecchio (generally throughout the southern half of the island, known as Corse-du-Sud, Pumonti or Corsica suttana). The dialect of Ajaccio has been described as in transition. The dialects spoken at Calvi and Bonifacio (Bonifacino) are dialects of the Ligurian language.

This division along the Girolata-Porto Vecchio line was due to the massive immigration from Tuscany which took place in Corsica during the lower Middle Ages: as a result, the northern Corsican dialects became very close to a central Italian dialect like Tuscan, while the southern Corsican varieties could keep the original characteristics of the language which make it much more similar to Sicilian and, only to some extent, Sardinian.

Northern Corsican
The Northern Corsican macro variety (Supranacciu, Supranu, Cismuntincu or Cismontano) is the most widespread on the island and standardised as well, and is spoken in North-West Corsica around the districts of Bastia and Corte. The dialects of Bastia and Cap Corse belong to the Western Tuscan dialects; they being, with the exception of Florentine, the closest to standard Italian. All the dialects presenting, in addition to what has already been stated, the conditional formed in -ebbe (e.g. (ella) amarebbe "she would love") are generally considered Cismontani dialects, situated north of a line uniting the villages of Piana, Vico, Vizzavona, Ghisoni and Ghisonaccia, and also covering the subgroups from the Cap Corse (which, unlike the rest of the island and similarly to Italian, uses lu, li, la, le as definite articles), Bastia (besides i > e and a > e, u > o: ottanta, momentu, toccà, continentale; a > o: oliva, orechja, ocellu), Balagna, Niolo and Corte (which retain the general Corsican traits: distinu, ghjinnaghju, sicondu, billezza, apartu, farru, marcuri, cantaraghju, uttanta, mumentu, tuccà, cuntinentale, aliva, arechja, acellu).

Transitional area
Across the Northern and Southern borders of the line separating the Northern dialects from the Southern ones, there is a transitional area picking up linguistic phenomena associated with either of the two groups, with some local peculiarities. Along the Northern line are the dialects around Piana and Calcatoggio, from Cinarca with Vizzavona (which form the conditional as in the South), and Fiumorbo through Ghisonaccia and Ghisoni, which have the retroflex sound (written -dd-) for historical ; along the Southern line, the dialects of Ajaccio (retroflex -dd-, realized as -ghj-, feminine plurals ending in i, some Northern words like cane and accattà instead of ghjacaru and cumprà, as well as ellu/ella and not eddu/edda; minor variations: sabbatu > sabbitu, u li dà > ghi lu dà; final syllables often stressed and truncated: marinari > marinà, panatteri > panattè, castellu > castè, cuchjari > cuchjà), the Gravona area, Bastelica (which would be classified as Southern, but is also noted for its typical rhotacism: Basterga) and Solenzara, which did not preserve the Latin short vowels: seccu, peru, rossu, croci, pozzu).

Southern Corsican
The Southern Corsican macro variety (Suttanacciu, Suttanu, Pumontincu or Oltramontano) is the most archaic and conservative group, spoken in the districts of Sartène and Porto-Vecchio. Unlike the Northern varieties and similarly to Sardinian, the group retains the distinction of the Latin short vowels ĭ and ŭ (e.g. pilu, bucca). It is also strongly marked by the presence of the voiced retroflex stop, like Sicilian (e.g. aceddu, beddu, quiddu, ziteddu, famidda), and the conditional mood formed in -ìa (e.g. (idda) amarìa "she would love"). All the Oltramontani dialects are from an area located to the South of Porticcio, Bastelica, Col di Verde and Solenzara. Notable dialects are those from around Taravo (retroflex -dd- only for historical : frateddu, suredda, beddu; preservation of the palatal lateral approximant: piglià, famiglia, figliolu, vogliu; does not preserve the Latin short vowels: seccu, peru, rossu, croci, pozzu), Sartène (preserving the Latin short vowels: siccu, piru, russu, cruci, puzzu; changing historical -rn- to -rr-: forru, carri, corru; substituting the stop for the palatal lateral approximant: piddà, famidda, fiddolu, voddu; imperfect tense like cantàvami, cantàvani; masculine plurals ending in a: l'ochja, i poma; having eddu/edda/eddi as personal pronouns), the Alta Rocca (the most conservative area in Corsica, being very close to the varieties spoken in Northern Sardinia), and the Southern region located between the hinterlands of Porto-Vecchio and Bonifacio (masculine singulars always ending in u: fiumu, paesu, patronu; masculine plurals always ending in a: i letta, i solda, i ponta, i foca, i mura, i loca, i balcona; imperfect tense like cantàiami, cantàiani).

Sardinia
"Sassarese derives from the Italian language and, more precisely, from ancient Tuscan, which by the 12th century had slowly grown to become the parlance of the commoners, at a time when the bourgeois and nobles still spoke Logudorese Sardinian. During the age of the Free Commune (1294–1323), the Sassarese dialect was nothing more than a contaminated Pisan, to which Sardinian, Corsican and Spanish expressions had been added; it is therefore not an indigenous dialect, but rather a continental one and, to be more specific, a mixed Tuscan dialect with its own peculiarities, and different from the Corsican-imported Gallurese."

Some Italo-Romance languages that might have originated from Southern Corsican, but are also heavily influenced by the Sardinian language, are spoken in the neighbouring island of Sardinia.

Gallurese is spoken in the extreme north of the island, including the region of Gallura, while Sassarese is spoken in Sassari and in its neighbourhood, in the northwest of Sardinia. Their geographical position in Sardinia has been theorised to be the result of different migration waves from the already tuscanized Corsicans and the Tuscans, who then proceeded to settle in Sardinia and slowly displace the indigenous Logudorese Sardinian varieties spoken therein (at present, Luras is the only town in the middle of Gallura that has retained the original language).

On the Maddalena archipelago, which was culturally Corsican but had been annexed to the Savoyard Kingdom of Sardinia a short while before Corsica was ceded by Genoa to France in 1767, the local dialect (called isulanu or maddaleninu) was brought by fishermen and shepherds from Bonifacio over a long period of immigration in the 17th and 18th centuries. Though influenced by Gallurese, it has maintained the original characteristics of Southern Corsican. In the dialect of maddalenino, as it is known in Italian, there are also numerous words of Genoese and Ponzese origin.

Although Gallurese and Sassarese both belong to Italo-Dalmatian, which is a group typologically different from Sardinian, it has long been a subject of debate whether the two should be included as dialects either of Corsican or of Sardinian or, in light of their historical development, even considered languages of their own. It has been argued that all these varieties should be placed in a single category, Southern Romance, but such classification has not garnered universal support among linguists.

On 14 October 1997, Article 2 Item 4 of Law Number 26 of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia granted "the Sassarese and Gallurese dialects" («al dialetto sassarese e a quello gallurese») equal legal status with the other languages indigenous to Sardinia. Thus, even though they would technically not be covered by the national law pertaining to the historical linguistic minorities, among which is Sardinian, Sassarese and Gallurese are nonetheless recognized by the Sardinian government on a regional level.

Number of speakers
The situation of Corsican with regard to French as the country's national language is analogous to that of many other French regions and provinces, which have or used to have a traditional language of their own, even though the islanders' switch from their local idiom to regional French has happened relatively later and the presence of Corsican, albeit declining, is still strongly felt among the population. In 1980, about 70 percent of the island's population "had some command of the Corsican language." In 1990, out of a total population of about 254,000, the percentage had declined to 50 percent, with 10 percent of the island's residents using it as a first language. The language appeared to be in serious decline when the French government reversed its unsupportive stand and initiated some strong measures to save it.

The January 2007 estimated population of Corsica was 281,000, whereas the figure for the March 1999 census, when most of the studies—though not the linguistic survey work referenced in this article—were performed, was about 261,000. Only a fraction of the population at either time spoke Corsican with any fluency.

According to an official survey run on behalf of the Territorial Collectivity of Corsica which took place in April 2013, in Corsica, the Corsican language had a number of speakers between 86,800 and 130,200, out of a total population amounting to 309,693 inhabitants. 28% of the overall population was able to speak Corsican well, while an additional 14% had a capacity to speak it "quite well." The percentage of those who had a solid oral understanding of the language varies between a minimum of 25 percent in the 25–34 age group and the maximum of 65 percent in the over-65 age group: almost a quarter of the former age group reported that they were not able to understand Corsican, while only a small minority of the older people did not understand it. While 32 percent of the population of Northern Corsica was reported to speak Corsican quite well, this percentage dropped to 22 percent for Southern Corsica. Moreover, 10 percent of the population of Corsica spoke only French, while 62 percent code-switched between French and at least some Corsican. 8 percent of the Corsicans knew how to write correctly in Corsican, while about 60 percent of the population did not know how to write in Corsican. While 90 percent of the population was in favor of a Corsican-French bilingualism, 3 percent would have liked to have only Corsican as the official language in the island, and 7 percent would have preferred French to have this role.

UNESCO classifies Corsican as a "definitely endangered language." The Corsican language is a key vehicle for Corsican culture, which is notably rich in proverbs and in polyphonic song.

Governmental support
When the French Assembly passed the Deixonne Law in 1951, which made it possible for regional languages to be taught at school, Alsatian, Flemish and Corsican were not included on the ground of being classified as dialectes allogènes of German, Dutch and Italian respectively, i.e. dialects of foreign languages and not languages in themselves. Only in 1974 were they too politically recognized as regional languages for their teaching on a voluntary basis.

The 1991 Joxe Statute, in setting up the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse, also provided for the Corsican Assembly, and charged it with developing a plan for the optional teaching of Corsican. The University of Corsica Pasquale Paoli at Corte, Haute-Corse took a central role in the planning.

At the primary school level Corsican is taught up to a fixed number of hours per week (three in the year 2000) and is a voluntary subject at the secondary school level, but is required at the University of Corsica. It is available through adult education. It can be spoken in court or in the conduct of other government business if the officials concerned speak it. The Cultural Council of the Corsican Assembly advocates for its use, for example, on public signs.

In 2023, in a judgement initiated by local prefect and going in opposite direction of recent trends, usage of the Corsican language in French public offices and the regional parliament was legally banned, the existence of the "Corsican people" was also deemed unconstitutional.

Literature
According to the anthropologist Dumenica Verdoni, writing new literature in modern Corsican, known as the Riacquistu, is an integral part of affirming Corsican identity. Some individuals have returned from careers in continental France to write in Corsican, including Dumenicu Togniotti, director of the Teatru Paisanu, which produced polyphonic musicals, 1973–1982, followed in 1980 by Michel Raffaelli's Teatru di a Testa Mora, and Saveriu Valentini's Teatru Cupabbia in 1984. Modern prose writers include Alanu di Meglio, Ghjacumu Fusina, Lucia Santucci, and Marcu Biancarelli.

There were writers working in Corsican in the 1700s and 1800s.

Ferdinand Gregorovius, a 19th-century traveller and enthusiast of Corsican culture, reported that the preferred form of the literary tradition of his time was the vocero, a type of polyphonic ballad originating from funeral obsequies. These laments were similar in form to the chorales of Greek drama except that the leader could improvise. Some performers were noted at this, such as the 1700s Mariola della Piazzole and Clorinda Franseschi. However, the trail of written popular literature of known date in Corsican currently goes no further back than the 17th century. An undated corpus of proverbs from communes may well precede it (see under External links below). Corsican has also left a trail of legal documents ending in the late 12th century. At that time the monasteries held considerable land on Corsica and many of the churchmen were notaries.

Between 1200 and 1425 the monastery of Gorgona, which belonged to the Order of Saint Benedict for much of that time and was in the territory of Pisa, acquired about 40 legal papers of various sorts related to Corsica. As the church was replacing Pisan prelates with Corsican ones there, the legal language shows a transition from entirely Latin through partially Latin and partially Corsican to entirely Corsican. The first known surviving document containing some Corsican is a bill of sale from Patrimonio dated to 1220. These documents were moved to Pisa before the monastery closed its doors and were published there. Research into earlier evidence of Corsican is ongoing.

Alphabet and spelling

Corsican is written in the standard Latin script, using 21 of the letters for native words. The letters j, k, w, x, and y are found only in foreign names and French vocabulary. The digraphs and trigraphs chj, ghj, sc and sg are also defined as "letters" of the alphabet in its modern scholarly form (compare the presence of ch or ll in the old Spanish alphabet) and appear respectively after c, g and s.

The primary diacritic used is the grave accent, indicating word stress when it is not penultimate. In scholarly contexts, disyllables may be distinguished from diphthongs by use of the diaeresis on the former vowel (as in Italian and distinct from French and English). In older writing, the acute accent is sometimes found on stressed $\langlee\rangle$, the circumflex on stressed $\langleo\rangle$, indicating respectively and  phonemes.

Corsican has been regarded as a dialect of Italian historically, similar to the Romance lects developed on the Italian peninsula, and in writing, it also resembles Italian (with the generalised substitution of -u for final -o and the articles u and a for il/lo and la respectively; however, both the dialect of Cap Corse and Gallurese retain the original articles lu and la). On the other hand, the phonemes of the modern Corsican dialects have undergone complex and sometimes irregular phenomena depending on phonological context, so the pronunciation of the language for foreigners familiar with other Romance languages is not straightforward.

Vowels
As in Italian, the grapheme $\langlei\rangle$ appears in some digraphs and trigraphs in which it does not represent the phonemic vowel. All vowels are pronounced except in a few well-defined instances. $\langlei\rangle$ is not pronounced between $\langlesc/sg/c/g\rangle$ and $\langlea/o/u\rangle$: sciarpa ; or initially in some words: istu

Vowels may be nasalized before $\langlen\rangle$ (which is assimilated to $\langlem\rangle$ before $\langlep\rangle$ or $\langleb\rangle$) and the palatal nasal consonant represented by $\langlegn\rangle$. The nasal vowels are represented by the vowel plus $\langlen\rangle$, $\langlem\rangle$ or $\langlegn\rangle$. The combination is a digraph or trigraph indicating the nasalized vowel. The consonant is pronounced in weakened form. The same combination of letters might not be the digraph or trigraph but might be just the non-nasal vowel followed by the consonant at full weight. The speaker must know the difference. Example of nasal: $\langlepane\rangle$ is pronounced and not.

The Northern and central dialects in the vicinity of the Taravo river adopt the Italian seven-vowel system, whereas all the Southern ones around the so-called "archaic zone" with its centre being the town of Sartène (including the Gallurese dialect spoken in Northern Sardinia) resort to a five-vowel system without length differentiation, like Sardinian.

The vowel inventory, or collection of phonemic vowels (and the major allophones), transcribed in IPA symbols, is:

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Corsican language


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Commodore International

Commodore International Corporation (other names include Commodore International Limited) was a Bahamian home computer and electronics manufacturer with executive offices in the United States founded by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM), was a significant participant in the development of the home computer industry in the 1970s to early 1990s. In 1982, the company developed and marketed the world's second-best selling computer, the Commodore 64, and released its Amiga computer line in July 1985. Commodore was one of the world's largest personal computer manufacturers, with sales peaking in the last quarter of 1983 at $ (equivalent to $ in ).

Founding and early years (1954–1977)

Jack Tramiel and Manfred Kapp met in the early 1950s while both employed by the Ace Typewriter Repair Company in New York City. In 1954, they partnered to sell used and reconditioned typewriters and used their profits to purchase the Singer Typewriter Company. After acquiring a local dealership selling Everest adding machines, Tramiel convinced Everest to give him and Kapp exclusive Canadian rights to its products and established Everest Office Machines in Toronto in 1955.

By 1958, the adding machine business was slowing. Tramiel made a connection with an Everest agent in England who alerted him to a business opportunity to import portable typewriters manufactured by a Czechoslovakian company into Canada. On October 10, 1958, Tramiel and Kapp incorporated Commodore Portable Typewriter, Ltd. in Toronto to sell the imported typewriters. Commodore funded its operations through factoring over its first two years but faced a continual cash crunch. To bolster the company's financial condition, Tramiel and Kapp sold a portion of the company to Atlantic Acceptance Corporation, one of Canada's largest financing companies, and Atlantic President C. Powell Morgan became the chairman of Commodore. In 1962, the company went public on the Montreal Stock Exchange, under the name of Commodore Business Machines (Canada), Ltd.

With the financial backing of Atlantic Acceptance, Commodore expanded rapidly in the early 1960s. It purchased a factory in West Germany to manufacture its typewriters, began distributing office furniture for a Canadian manufacturer, and sold Pearlsound radio and stereo equipment. In 1965, it purchased the furniture company for which it served as the distributor and moved its headquarters to its facilities on Warden Avenue in the Scarborough district of Toronto. That same year, the company made a deal with a Japanese manufacturer to produce adding machines for Commodore, and purchased the office supply retailer Wilson Stationers to serve as an outlet for its typewriters.

In 1965, Atlantic Acceptance collapsed when it failed to make a routine payment. A subsequent investigation by a royal commission revealed a massive fraud scheme in which the company falsified financial records to acquire loans funneled into a web of subsidiaries where C. Powell Morgan held a personal stake. Morgan then pocketed the money or invested it in several unsuccessful ventures. Commodore was one of the Atlantic subsidiaries directly implicated in this scheme. Despite heavy suspicion, the commission could not find evidence of wrongdoing by Tramiel or Kapp. The scandal left Commodore in a worse financial position as it had borrowed heavily from Atlantic to purchase Wilson, and the loan was called in. Due to the financial scandal, Tramiel could only secure a bridge loan by paying interest well above the prime rate and putting the German factory up as collateral. Tramiel worked with a financier named Irving Gould to extricate himself, who brokered a deal to sell Wilson Stationers to an American company. Commodore now owed Gould money and still did not have sufficient capital to meet its payments, so Tramiel sold 17.9% of the company to Gould in 1966 for $ (equivalent to $ in ). As part of the deal, Gould became the company's new chairman.

Tramiel saw some of the first electronic calculators through his Japanese contacts in the late 1960s. He pivoted from adding machines to marketing calculators produced by companies like Casio under the Commodore brand name. In 1969, Commodore began manufacturing its electronic calculators. Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the more popular brands in the early 1970s, producing both consumer and scientific/programmable calculators. However, in 1975, Texas Instruments, the leading supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly and put out a line of machines priced at less than Commodore's cost for the parts. Commodore obtained an infusion of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including MOS Technology, Inc., to assure his supply. He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own, on the condition that its chip designer Chuck Peddle join Commodore directly as head of engineering.

Through the 1970s, Commodore also produced numerous peripherals and consumer electronic products such as the Chessmate, a chess computer based on a MOS 6504 chip, released in 1978.

Entry into the computer market and success (1977–1984)

Chuck Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead end business and that they should turn their attention to home computers. Peddle packaged his single-board computer design in a metal case, initially with a keyboard using calculator keys, later with a full-travel QWERTY keyboard, monochrome monitor, and tape recorder for program and data storage, to produce the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor). From PET's 1977 debut, Commodore was primarily a computer company.

Commodore had been reorganized the year before into Commodore International, Ltd., moving its financial headquarters to the Bahamas and its operational base to West Chester, Pennsylvania, near the MOS Technology site. The operational headquarters, where research and development of new products occurred, retained the name Commodore Business Machines, Inc. In 1980, Commodore launched production for the European market in Braunschweig, Germany.

By 1980, Commodore was one of the three largest microcomputer companies and the largest in the Common Market. The company had lost its early domestic-market sales leadership, however by mid-1981 its US market share was less than 5% and US computer magazines rarely discussed Commodore products. BYTE stated "the lack of a marketing strategy by Commodore, as well as its past nonchalant attitude toward the encouragement and development of good software, has hurt its credibility, especially in comparison to the other systems on the market". Writing for Programming the PET/CBM, Raeto Collin West wrote "CBM's product manuals are widely recognized to be unhelpful; this is one of the reasons for the existence of this book."

Commodore re-emphasized the US market with the VIC-20. The PET computer line was used primarily in schools, where its tough all-metal construction and ability to share printers and disk drives on a simple local area network were advantages, but PETs did not compete well in the home setting where graphics and sound were important. This was addressed with the VIC-20 in 1981, which was introduced at a cost of US$299 (equivalent to $ in ) and sold in retail stores. Commodore bought aggressive advertisements featuring William Shatner asking consumers, "Why buy just a video game?" The strategy worked, and the VIC-20 became the first computer to ship more than one million units, with 2.5 million units sold over the machine's lifetime, which helped Commodore's sales in Canadian schools. In promotions aimed at schools and to reduce unsold inventory, PET models labeled 'Teacher's PET' were given away as part of a "buy 2 get 1 free" promotion.

In 1982, Commodore introduced the Commodore 64 (C64) as the successor to the VIC-20. Due to its chips designed by MOS Technology, the C64 possessed advanced sound and graphics for its time, and is often credited with starting the computer demo scene. Its US$595 (equivalent to $ in ) price was high compared to that of the VIC-20 but was much less expensive than any other 64K computer. Early C64 advertisements boasted that "You can't buy a better computer at twice the price", with Australian adverts in the mid-1980s using the slogan "Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you."

In 1983, Tramiel decided to focus on market share and cut the price of the VIC-20 and C64 dramatically, starting the home computer war. TI responded by cutting prices on its 1981 TI-99/4A, leading to a price war involving most vendors other than Apple Computer, including Commodore, TI and Atari. Commodore began selling the VIC-20 and C64 through mass-market retailers such as K-Mart, in addition to traditional computer stores. By the end of this conflict, Commodore had shipped around 22 million C64s, making the C64 the best-selling computer of all time.

At the June 1983 Consumer Electronics Show, Commodore lowered the retail price of the C64 to US$300, and stores sold it for as little as US$199. At one point, the company was selling as many computers as the rest of the industry combined. Prices for the VIC-20 and C64 were $50 lower than Atari's prices for the 600XL and 800XL. Commodore's strategy was to, according to a spokesman, devote 50% of its efforts to the under-US$500 market, 30% on the $$500$ market, and 20% on the over-US$1000 market. Its vertical integration and Tramiel's focus on cost control helped Commodore do well during the price war, with US$1 billion in 1983 sales. Although the company and Tramiel's focus on cost cutting over product testing caused hardware defects in the initial C64, some resolved in later iterations. By early 1984, Synapse Software, the largest provider of third-party Atari 8-bit software, received 65% of sales from the Commodore market, and Commodore sold almost three times as many computers as Atari that year.

Despite its focus on the lower end of the market, Commodore's computers were also sold in upmarket department stores such as Harrods. The company also attracted several high-profile customers. In 1984, the company's British branch became the first manufacturer to receive a royal warrant for computer business systems. NASA's Kennedy Space Center was another noted customer, with over 60 Commodore systems processing documentation, tracking equipment and employees, costing jobs, and ensuring the safety of hazardous waste.

Departure of Tramiel, acquisition of Amiga and competition with Atari (1984–1987)

By early 1984, Commodore was the most successful home computer company, with more than US$1 billion (equivalent to $ in ) in annual revenue and US$100 million (equivalent to $ in ) in net income, whilst competitors had large losses. The company's revenue of $425 million in the fourth calendar quarter of 1983 more than doubled its revenue of US$176 million a year earlier. Although Creative Computing compared the company to "a well-armed battleship [which] rules the micro waves" and threatened to destroy rivals like Atari and Coleco, Commodore's board of directors, affected by the price spiral, decided to exit the company. In January 1984, an internal power struggle resulted after Tramiel resigned due to disagreements with the board chairman, Irving Gould. Gould replaced Tramiel with Marshall F. Smith, a steel executive without a computer or consumer marketing experience. Tramiel's departure at the moment of Commodore's greatest financial success surprised the industry.

In May 1984, Tramiel founded a new company, Tramel Technology, and hired several Commodore engineers to begin work on a next-generation computer design. That same year, Tramiel discovered Warner Communications wanted to sell Atari, which was rumored to be losing about US$10000 a day. Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network for a new computer, he approached Atari and entered negotiations. After several talks with Atari in May and June 1984, Tramiel had secured funding and bought Atari's Consumer Division (which included the console and home computer departments) in July. In July 1984 Tramiel bought the consumer side of Atari Inc. from Warner Communications and released the Atari ST earlier in 1985 for about US$800. As more executives and researchers left Commodore after the announcement to join Tramiel's new company Atari Corp., Commodore followed by filing lawsuits against four former engineers for theft of trade secrets in late July. This was intended, in effect, to bar Tramiel from releasing his new computer. One of Tramiel's first acts after forming Atari Corp. was to fire most of Atari's remaining staff and to cancel almost all ongoing projects to review their continued viability. In late July to early August, Tramiel representatives discovered the original Amiga contract from the previous fall. Seeing a chance to gain some leverage, Tramiel immediately used the agreement to counter-sue Commodore on August 13.

The remaining Commodore management sought to salvage the company's fortunes and plan for the future, and did so by buying a small startup company called Amiga Corporation in August 1984 for US$25 million (US$12.8 million in cash and $550,000 in common shares). Amiga became a subsidiary of Commodore, called Commodore-Amiga, Inc. During development in 1981, Amiga had exhausted venture capital and needed more financing. Jay Miner and his company had approached their former employer, the Warner-owned Atari, who paid Amiga to continue development work. In return, Atari received the exclusive use of the design as a video game console for one year, after which Atari would have the right to add a keyboard and market it as a complete Amiga computer. The Atari-Amiga contract and engineering logs identify the Atari-Amiga product was designated as the 1850XLD. As Atari was heavily involved with Disney at the time, it was later code-named "Mickey", and the 256K memory expansion board was codenamed "Minnie".

Still suffering serious financial problems, Amiga sought more monetary support from investors that entire spring. At around the same time that Tramiel was negotiating with Atari, Amiga entered into discussions with Commodore. The discussions ultimately led to Commodore's intentions to purchase Amiga outright, which Commodore viewed would cancel any outstanding contracts – including Atari Inc.'s. Tramiel counter-sued on the basis of this interpretation, and sought damages and an injunction to bar Amiga and effectively Commodore from producing any resembling technology, to render Commodore's new acquisition and the source for its next generation of computers useless. The resulting court case lasted several years.

Commodore introduced a new 32-bit computer design to market in the fall of 1985 named the Amiga 1000 for US$1295, first demonstrated at the CES in 1984. An Atari-Commodore rivalry continued throughout the life of the ST and Amiga platforms. While the rivalry was a holdover from the competition between the C64 and Atari 800, the events leading to the launch of the ST and Amiga served to further alienate fans of each computer, who disagreed as to which platform was superior. This was reflected in sales numbers for the two platforms until the release of the Amiga 500 in 1987, which led the Amiga sales to exceed the ST by about 1.5 to 1, despite reaching the market later. However, neither platform captured a significant share of the world computer market, with only the Apple Macintosh surviving the industry-wide shift to Intel-based x86 computers using Microsoft Windows.

Commodore and Atari both sought to compete in the workstation market, with Commodore announcing in 1988 a Transputer-driven system based on the Amiga 2000 in response to the Atari Transputer Workstation. Similarly, a Unix workstation based on the Amiga 2000, featuring the 68020 CPU, was detailed as Atari announced developer shipments of its own 68030-based Unix workstation within a claimed "to or three months". Atari's workstation, the TT030, eventually arrived in 1990 without a version of Unix available, this only eventually becoming available to developers in late 1991. Commodore's workstation arrived in 1990 in the form of the Amiga 3000UX.

Decline and later years (1987–1994)
Commodore suffered a poor reputation with its dealers and customers, and upon the 1987 introduction of the Amiga 2000, Commodore retreated from its earlier strategy of selling its computers to discount outlets and toy stores and favored authorized dealers. Adam Osborne stated that in April 1981 "the microcomputer industry abounds with horror stories describing the way Commodore treats its dealers and its customers." Many in the industry believed rumors in late 1983 that Commodore would discontinue the C64 despite its success because they disliked the company's business practices, including its poor treatment of dealers and introducing new computers incompatible with existing ones. One dealer said, "It's too unsettling to be one of their dealers and not know where you stand with them." After Tramiel's departure, another journalist wrote that he "had never been able to establish excellent relations with computer dealers ... computer retailers have accused Commodore of treating them as harshly as if they were suppliers or competitors, and as a result, many have become disenchanted with Commodore and dropped the product line". Software developers also disliked the company, with one stating that "Dealing with Commodore was like dealing with Attila the Hun." At the 1987 Comdex, an informal InfoWorld survey found that none of the developers present planned to write for Commodore platforms. Commodore's software had a poor reputation; InfoWorld in 1984, for example, stated that "so far, the normal standard for Commodore software is mediocrity".

Tramiel's successor, Marshall F. Smith, left the company in 1986, as did his successor Thomas Rattigan in 1987 after a failed boardroom coup. The head of Blue Chip Electronics, a former Commodore employee, described the company as "a well-known revolving door". Commodore faced the problem when marketing the Amiga of still being seen as the company that made cheap computers like the C64 and VIC. The C64 remained the company's cash cow but its technology was aging. By the late 1980s, the personal computer market had become dominated by the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh platforms. Commodore's marketing efforts for the Amiga were less successful in breaking the new computer into an established market compared to the success of its 8-bit line. The company put effort into developing and promoting consumer products that would not be in demand for years, such as an Amiga 500-based HTPC called CDTV.

As early as 1986, the mainstream press was predicting Commodore's demise, and in 1990 Computer Gaming World wrote of its "abysmal record of customer and technical support in the past". Nevertheless, as profits and the stock price began to slide, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Top 100 Businesses Annual continued to list several Commodore executives among the highest-paid in the region and the paper documented the company's questionable hiring practices and large bonuses paid to executives amid shareholder discontent.

Commodore failed to update the Amiga to keep pace as the PC platform advanced. CBM continued selling the Amiga 2000 with 7.14 MHz 68000 CPUs, even though the Amiga 3000 with its 25 MHz 68030 was on the market. Apple, by this time, was using the 68040 and had relegated the 68000 to its lowest-end model, the black and white Macintosh Classic. The 68000 was used in the Sega Genesis, one of the leading game consoles of the era, Computers fitted with high-color VGA graphics cards and SoundBlaster (or compatible) sound cards had also caught up with the Amiga's performance, and Commodore began to fade from the consumer market. Although the Amiga was originally conceived as a gaming machine, Commodore had always emphasized the Amiga's potential for professional applications, but the Amiga's high-performance sound and graphics were irrelevant to MS-DOS-based routine business word-processing and data-processing requirements, and the machine could not successfully compete with computers in a business market that was rapidly undergoing commoditization. Commodore introduced a range of PC compatible systems designed by its German division, and while the Commodore name was better known in the US than some of its competition, the systems' price and specifications were only average.

In 1992, the A600 replaced the A500, which removed the numeric keypad, Zorro expansion slot, and other functionality, but added IDE, PCMCIA, and intended as a cost-reduced design. Designed as the Amiga 300, a non-expandable model to sell for less than the Amiga 500, the 600 became a replacement for the 500 due to the unexpectedly higher cost of manufacture. Productivity developers increasingly moved to PC and Macintosh, while the console wars took over the gaming market. David Pleasance, managing director of Commodore UK, described the A600 as a "complete and utter screw-up". In the same year, Commodore released the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 computers, which featured an improved graphics chipset, the AGA. The advent of PC games using 3D graphics such as Doom and Wolfenstein 3D spelled the end of Amiga as a gaming platform.

In 1993, Commodore launched a 32-bit CD-ROM-based game console called the Amiga CD32, described as a 'make or break' system, according to Pleasance. The Amiga CD32 was not sufficiently profitable to return Commodore to solvency, however this was not a universal opinion at Commodore, with Commodore Germany hardware expert Rainer Benda stating "The CD32 was a year late for Commodore. In other words, here, too, it might have been better to focus on the core business than jump on a console and hope to sell 300,000 or more units quickly to avoid bankruptcy."

In 1992, all UK servicing and warranty repairs were outsourced to Wang Laboratories, which was replaced by ICL after failing to meet repair demand during the Christmas rush in 1992. Commodore International's Canadian subsidiary authorized 3D Microcomputers of Ontario to manufacture IBM PC clones with the Commodore brand in late 1993.

By 1994, only Commodore's operations in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom were still profitable. Commodore announced voluntary bankruptcy and liquidation on April 29, 1994, causing the board of directors to "authorize the transfer of its assets to trustees for the benefit of its creditors", according to an official statement. With Commodore International having reported a $8.2 million quarterly loss in the US, hopes were expressed that the UK and European divisions might be able to continue trading and even survive the demise of the parent company, with a management buyout considered a possibility. Other possibilities included the sale of profitable parts of the company to other parties, with Philips and Samsung considered "likely choices". However, no sale was ever completed.

Post–Commodore International Ltd. (1994–)
Commodore's former assets went separate ways following liquidation, with none of the descendant companies repeating Commodore's early success. Both Commodore and Amiga product lines were produced in the 21st century, but separately with Amiga, Inc. being its own company and Commodore computers briefly being made by Commodore USA, an unrelated Florida-based company that licensed the brand name. Other companies develop operating systems and manufacture computers for Commodore and Amiga brands and software.

Subsidiaries Commodore UK and Commodore BV (Netherlands) survived bankruptcy but failed to place a bid to buy out the rest of the operation, or the former parent company. Due to press exposure at the time, Commodore UK was considered the front runner in the bid. Commodore UK and Commodore BV (Netherlands) stayed in business by selling old inventory and making computer speakers and other types of computer peripherals. Commodore BV (Netherlands) dissolved in early 1995, leaving Commodore UK left to make a bid. However, Commodore UK withdrew its bid at the start of the auction process after several larger companies, including Gateway Computers and Dell Inc., became interested, primarily for Commodore's patents relating to the Amiga. The only companies who entered bids were Dell and Escom. The successful bidder was German PC conglomerate Escom on April 22, 1995, beating Dell's bid by $6.6 million. Commodore UK went into liquidation on August 30, 1995. In 1995, Escom paid US$14 million for the assets of Commodore International. It separated the Commodore and Amiga operations into separate divisions and quickly started using the Commodore brand name on a line of PCs sold in Europe. However, it soon started losing money due to over-expansion, declared bankruptcy on July 15, 1996, and was liquidated.

In September 1997, Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers acquired the Commodore brand name. In July 2004, Tulip announced a new series of products using the Commodore name: fPET, a flash memory-based USB Flash drive; mPET, a flash-based MP3 Player and digital recorder; eVIC, a 20 GB music player. Tulip also licensed the Commodore trademark and logo to the producers of the C64 DTV, a single-chip implementation of the Commodore 64 computer with 30 built-in games. In late 2004, Tulip sold the Commodore trademarks to Yeahronimo Media Ventures for €22 million. The sale was completed in March 2005 after months of negotiations. Yeahronimo Media Ventures soon renamed itself to Commodore International Corporation and started an operation intended to relaunch the Commodore brand. The company launched its Gravel line of products: personal multimedia players equipped with Wi-Fi, hoping the Commodore brand would help them take off. The Gravel was never a success and was discontinued. On June 24, 2009, CIC renamed itself to Reunite Investments. CIC's founder, Ben van Wijhe, bought a Hong Kong-based company called Asiarim. The brand is now owned by C= Holdings (formerly Commodore International B.V.). Reunite became the sole owner in 2010, after buying the remaining shares from the bankrupt Nedfield, then sold it to Commodore Licensing BV, a subsidiary of Asiarim, later in 2010. It was sold again on November 7, 2011. This transaction became the basis of a legal dispute between Asiarim (which, even after that date, made commercial use of the Commodore trademark, among others by advertising for sale Commodore-branded computers, and dealing licensing agreements for the trademarks) and the new owners, that was resolved by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on December 16, 2013, in favor of the new owners.

The Commodore Semiconductor Group (formerly MOS Technology, Inc.) was bought by its former management and, in 1995, resumed operations under the name GMT Microelectronics, utilizing a troubled facility in Norristown, Pennsylvania that Commodore had closed in 1992. By 1999 it had $21 million in revenues and 183 employees. In 2001, the United States Environmental Protection Agency shut the plant down, and GMT ceased operations and was liquidated.

Ownership of the remaining assets of Commodore International, including the copyrights and patents, and the Amiga trademarks, passed from Escom to Gateway 2000 in 1997, who retained the patents and sold the copyrights and trademarks, together with a license to use the patents, to Amiga, Inc., a Washington company founded, among others, by former Gateway subcontractors Bill McEwen and Fleecy Moss in 2000. On March 15, 2004, Amiga, Inc. announced that on April 23, 2003, it had transferred its rights over past and future versions of the Amiga OS (but not yet over other intellectual property) to Itec, LLC, later acquired by KMOS, Inc., a Delaware company. Shortly afterwards, based on loans and security agreements between Amiga, Inc. and Itec, LLC, the remaining intellectual property assets were transferred from Amiga, Inc. to KMOS, Inc. On March 16, 2005, KMOS, Inc. announced that it had completed all registrations with the State of Delaware to change its corporate name to Amiga, Inc. The Commodore/Amiga copyrights were later sold to Cloanto. AmigaOS (as well as spin-offs MorphOS and AROS) is still maintained and updated. Several companies produce related hardware and software today.

Commodore's former US headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is currently the headquarters to QVC.

The company's computer systems, mainly the C64 and Amiga series, retain a cult following decades after its demise.

After a brief reappearance on the gaming PC market in 2007, the brand was acquired under license in 2010 by two young entrepreneurs to become Commodore USA in Florida, until 2013. On December 26, 2014, two Italian entrepreneurs licensed the brand and founded Commodore Business Machines Ltd. in London, to manufacture smartphones.

In February 2017, an exhibition room for about 200 Commodore products was opened in Braunschweig, commemorating the European production site of Commodore with up to 2000 employees.

In 2023, since then headquartered in Rome, Italy, Commodore announces a new range of laptops, under the leadership of its CEO Luigi Simonetti, as well as consumer electronics such as futuristic wireless headphones, Bluetooth speakers and video games. By 2024, Commodore has four divisions: Engineering for computers, Sinapsy for video game development — a sector that contributed to the brand's success in its heyday, Academy for user training and Commodore Digital, with Luca Tomassini as President, a division dedicated to Artificial intelligence and the digital human.

Product line
The product line consists of original Commodore products.

Calculators

774D, 776M, 796M, 9R23, C108, C110, F4146R, F4902, MM3, Minuteman 6, P50, PR100, SR1800, SR4120D, SR4120R, SR4148D, SR4148R, SR4190R, SR4212, SR4912, SR4921RPN, SR5120D, SR5120R, SR5148D, SR5148R, SR5190R, SR59, SR7919, SR7949, SR9150R, SR9190R, US*3, US*8 and The Specialist series: M55 (The Mathematician), N60 (The Navigator), S61 (The Statistician).

6502-based computers
(listed chronologically)
 * KIM-1 – single-board computer (1976); was produced by MOS Technology, which was bought by Commodore
 * Commodore PET/CBM range (1977)
 * VIC-20 – a.k.a. VIC-1001 (1980 [VIC-1001] – 1984) (CBM);
 * Commodore CBM-II range – a.k.a. B-range a.k.a. 600/700 range (1982–1984)
 * MAX Machine – Predecessor to C64 (1982)
 * Commodore 64 – including C64C (1982–1994)
 * Commodore Educator 64 – 64 in a PET 40xx case (1983)
 * Commodore SX-64 – all-in-one portable C64 including screen and disk drive (1984–1986)
 * Commodore 16 – including C116, incompatible with C64 (1984)
 * Commodore Plus/4 – compatible with C16 (1984–1985)
 * Commodore LCD – LCD-equipped laptop (never released)
 * Commodore 128 – including 128D and 128DCR (1985–1989)
 * Commodore 65 – C64 successor (never released, an unofficial recreation was released as MEGA65)
 * Commodore 900 workstation (never released)

Amiga

 * Amiga 1000 (1985–1987)
 * Amiga 500 – incl. A500+ (1987–1991)
 * Amiga 2000 – incl. A2000HD (1987–1991)
 * Amiga 2500 (1988–1991)
 * Amiga 1500 (1987–1991)
 * Commodore CDTV (1990)
 * Amiga 3000 – incl. Amiga 3000UX & Amiga 3000T (1990–1992)
 * Amiga 4000 – incl. A4000T (1992–1994), rereleased by Escom (1995–1997)
 * Amiga 600 (1992–1993)
 * Amiga 1200 (1992–1994), rereleased by Escom (1995–1996)

x86 IBM PC compatibles

 * Commodore PC compatible systems – Commodore Colt, PC1, PC10, PC20, PC30, PC40 (1987–1993)
 * Commodore PC laptops – Commodore 286LT, 386SX-LT, 486SX-LTC, 486SX-LTF, (–1993) Pentium P120i Ultramedia, P166i Ultramedia and the P200i Ultramedia (1996–1997)

Game consoles

 * Commodore TV Game 2000K/3000H (1975–1977) (Commodore TV Game 2000K/3000H, 1st-gen home consoles list)
 * MAX Machine – predecessor to C64 (1982)
 * Commodore 64 Games System (1990)
 * Amiga CD32 (1993)

Monitors
1000, 1024, 1070, 1080, 1081, 1083S, 1084, 1084S, 1084ST, 1085S, 1201, 1402, 1403, 1404, 1405, 1407, 1428, 1428x, 1432D, 1432V, 1701, 1702, 1703, 1801, 1802, 1803, 1900M/DM602, 1901/75BM13/M1, 1902, 1902A, 1930, 1930-II, 1930-III, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1936ALR, 1940, 1942, 1950, 1960, 1962, 2002, A2024, 2080, 76M13, CM-141, DM-14, DM602

VIC 1520 plotter
The VIC 1520 plotter used the ALPS mechanicals and four-color rotary pen setup that scrolled a 4¼" roll of paper. The ALPS mechanism was shared with several other 8 bit computers of the era, including Tandy, Atari, and Apple.

Software

 * AmigaOS – 32-bit operating system for the Amiga range; multitasking, micro kernel, with GUI
 * Amiga Unix – Operating system for the Amiga, based on Unix System V Release 4
 * Commodore BASIC – BASIC interpreter for the 8-bit range, ROM resident; based on Microsoft BASIC
 * Commodore DOS – Disk operating system for the 8-bit range; embedded in disk drive ROMs
 * KERNAL – Core OS routines for the 8-bit range; ROM resident
 * Magic Desk – Planned series of productivity software for the C64; only the first entry was released
 * Simons' BASIC – BASIC extension for the C64; cartridge-based
 * Super Expander – BASIC and memory extension for the VIC-20; cartridge-based
 * Super Expander 64 – BASIC extension for the C64

title: Commodore International