What was the world like right after the Soviet Union collapsed?

Some were very happy (the ones who had been taken by force by the Soviet Union) and ended up democracies. Others who were already solidly communist pretty much stayed that way. A major financial crisis did come to those countries as well as to Russia that they still haven't pulled out of yet. The ones who have gone to a democracy however are in better shape financially than those who did not. The one exception to this is China. They have scads of money...the government, not the people. The people are still mostly poor but as China gets more and more into developing business, they are becoming better off now also. In otherwords, they are somewhat turning toward Capitalism.

Although reform in the Soviet Union stalled between 1969 and 1987, a generational shift gave new momentum for reform. The war in Afghanistan, often referred to as the Soviet Union's "Vietnam," led to increased public dissatisfaction with the Moscow regime. Also, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 added impetus to Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reforms, which eventually spiraled out of control and caused the Soviet system to collapse.

After years of stagnation, the "new thinking" of younger Communist apparatchiks began to emerge. Following the death of terminally ill Konstantin Chernenko, the Politburo elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Soviet Union in March 1985, marking the rise of a new generation of leadership. Under Gorbachev, relatively young, reform-oriented technocrats, who had begun their careers in the heyday of "de−Stalinization" under Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964), rapidly consolidated power within the CPSU, providing new momentum for political and economic liberalization, and the impetus for cultivating warmer relations and trade with the West.

Jimmy Carter had officially ended the policy of Détente, by militarily aiding President of Pakistan Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who in turn funded the anti−Soviet Mujahideen movement in neighboring 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". East-West tensions only increased during the first term of U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1981-1985), reaching levels not seen since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

By the time Gorbachev ushered in the process that would lead to the dismantling of the Soviet administrative command economy through his programs of glasnost (political openness), perestroika (economic restructuring), and uskoreniye (speed-up of economic development) 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.

Reagan was responsible for the collapse and the failed Star Wars program and dumping all the mentally ill people into the streets !

i'm pretty sure China didn't care at all, and nothing happened in Cuba since it's still a sucky place to live.

but they celebrated in Poland, Ukraine, all those countries. wouldn't you?

We actually got an opportunity to have peace. But GWB was quick to find another enemy.

It showed that socialism, what Obama is leading us to, does not work,

nothing