Answer:
C. The Soviet economy became overcommitted to military needs.
Step-by-step explanation:
The cold war ended with the collapse of one of its contenders. The process of reforms initiated by Gorbachev in 1985 precipitated a dynamic that ended up taking ahead the very existence of the state founded by Lenin.
In the midst of a deep economic crisis, with a population thanks to glasnost increasingly aware of the cruelty and corruption that had characterized the Soviet dictatorship, nationalism came to act as irrepressible factor of disintegration of the Soviet state, heir of the Tsarist Empire .
Centrifugal movement began in the Baltic republics, which during the autumn of 1989 made clear their intention to break ties with a state they had joined as victims of the Pact signed by Molotov and Von Ribbentrop in 1939. At the same time, nationalism appeared in the Caucasian republics, fueled by the confrontation between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1988.
When in February 1990, Gorbachev took a step forward in his perestroika by renouncing the political monopoly of the CPSU and calling for partially pluralist elections, he found that in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova the independentist political forces won. Lithuania immediately declared its independence, setting a precedent for the other republics that made up the USSR.