The correct answer to this question is A) The agriculture and manufacture sectors were not meeting people’s needs.
The two things that severely hurt the Soviet Union just prior to its fall were that the agriculture and manufacture sectors were not meeting people’s needs.
Prior to the dissolve of the Soviet Union, agriculture lived difficult times in the country. Farmers were not producing up to the demands of the people. Another aspect that failed to meet people’s expectations was manufacture, that could not fulfill what Soviets citizens were demanding. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the country faced several economic problems and people were angry and some regions wanted their independence. The dissolution of the Soviet Union happened in December 1991.
The other options to this question were b) it was in the middle of fighting a protracted war in Pakistan, c) falling oil prices caused loss of income for the Soviet Union export business, and d) Russia had managed to find itself in a major trade deficit, which proved unhealthy.