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Abstract on the topic: The collapse of the USSR was an accident or a pattern
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Introduction. 3
Chapter 1. Prerequisites and causes of disintegration processes in the USSR on the eve of the collapse. 5
1.1 Reasons for disintegration in the USSR. 5
1.2 Decay process Soviet state(autumn 1990 - winter 1991). Characteristics of the stages. 8
Chapter 2. “Regularities” and “accidents” in the process of the collapse of the USSR. 15
2.1 Contradiction of reasons for the collapse of the USSR. 15
2.2 Historical background for the collapse of the USSR. 17
Conclusion. 20
List of used literature... 22
Introduction
The collapse of the USSR, the disintegration of a multinational empire, which for three hundred years played a key role on the Eurasian continent, is one of the most significant events in the world history of the 20th century. This is perhaps the only assessment that is accepted by the majority of historians and politicians without controversy or reasoning.
Consideration of the problem of the causes of the collapse of the USSR is far removed from this consensus, since this process has quite multifaceted trends in its development. The possibility and feasibility of preventing these contradictions is practically impossible at the present time, since the polarization of society continues into those who negatively assess the collapse of the USSR and those who see in its disintegration the path to progress, the birth of a new Russia. Scientific analysis of the process of collapse of the Soviet state is associated with various subjective political and ideological positions of researchers.
In this work, an attempt is made to summarize the main views on the causes and prerequisites for the collapse of the USSR, on the issues of a natural or random element in the issue of disunity of the USSR.
Purpose of the study: to consider the main trends and causes of the collapse of the USSR, to highlight the elements of accidents and patterns of this process.
To achieve this goal, the following tasks are put forward: to consider the causes of disintegration in the USSR; highlight the process of collapse of the Soviet state (autumn 1990 - winter 1991). Characteristics of the stages; determine the contradiction in the reasons for the collapse of the USSR; consider the historical background of the collapse of the USSR.
When writing the work, materials from Russian researchers were used - M. Zuev, Sh. Munchaev, V. Ustinov and others; classic works of foreign authors (N. Werth, J. Hosking).
Chapter 1. Prerequisites and causes of disintegration processes in the USSR on the eve of the collapse 1.1 Causes of disintegration in the USSR
The reasons for the collapse of the USSR are multifaceted. They can be considered in various aspects - political, national, international, economic. Let's try to dwell on each of them.
It should be noted that one of the main prerequisites for the disintegration of the Soviet state lies in the very nature of the country. The USSR was created in 1922 as a federal state. However, over time, it increasingly turned into an essentially unitary state, governed from the center and leveling out the differences between the republics and subjects of federal relations.
The first conflict on ethnic grounds occurred back in 1986 in Alma-Ata. In 1988, hostilities began between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory populated predominantly by Armenians, but which was part of the AzSSR. In April 1989, mass demonstrations took place in Tbilisi for several days. The main demands of the demonstrators were democratic reforms and independence of Georgia. The Abkhaz population advocated revising the status of the Abkhaz ASSR and separating it from the Georgian SSR.
The growth of centrifugal tendencies in the USSR had very serious reasons, but the Soviet leadership, as in its other political actions, showed a complete inability to cope with them. The refusal to consider national contradictions as a serious problem in fact only further confused the issue and, rather, contributed to the aggravation of the struggle rather than vice versa.
Thus, the growing confrontation between the union center and the republics became not only a struggle for reforms, but also a struggle between the central and local elites for power. The result of these processes was the so-called “parade of sovereignties.”
On June 12, 1990, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Russia. It legislated the priority of republican laws over union laws. The first president of the Russian Federation was B.N. Yeltsin, the vice-president was A.V. Rutskoy.
By the fall of 1990, it was already obvious that after five and a half years of perestroika, the Soviet Union had entered a new stage in its history and from the point of view domestic policy, and in developing relations with the whole world. A genuine revolution of minds took place, making it impossible to return to the previous state. However, and this was a grave danger for the future of the experiment undertaken by Gorbachev and his team to modernize the country, none of the three key problems that arose after 1985 were resolved:
1) the problem of political pluralism, an organic component of any process of democratization;
2) the problem of creating a market economy.
Although it should be noted that on July 20, 1990, the main provisions of the program adopted by the Russian government, dubbed the “500-day Mandate of Confidence” and providing for the privatization of state property and freeing prices, were published in the press. This “Yeltsin plan” was presented as an alternative program to the more cautious plan that was being prepared for the entire Soviet Union by the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, Ryzhkov. However, this program turned out to be stillborn;
3) the problem of the federal contract.
One of the important prerequisites that played a role in the collapse of the USSR was the economic factor. The moribund planned economy demonstrated rapidly growing rates of inflation (in the last years of the USSR, prices rose quite quickly), a gap between cash and non-cash rubles, destructive for any economy, a planned system bursting at the seams and a breakdown in economic ties with the union republics.
The processes of the collapse of the Soviet state took place against the backdrop of democratic transformations in the countries of Eastern Europe, which resulted in their fall in 1989-1990. communist regimes.
Thus, by 1991, a rigid knot of contradictions had formed in the USSR in the political, national, and economic spheres. The impossibility of resolving the problems facing the country as a whole predetermined the fate of the Soviet state.
1.2 The process of collapse of the Soviet state (autumn 1990 - winter 1991). Characteristics of stages
From the point of view of political analysis, the year from the autumn of 1990 to the winter of 1991, which, according to the French researcher N. Werth, is key in the process of the collapse of the USSR, is divided into three stages:
1) the period before the signing on April 23, 1991 by Gorbachev, representing the union center, and the leaders of nine republics (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan) of the document known as the “9+1 Statement”, which declared the principles of the new union treaty.
2) the period from the end of April 1991, marked by a kind of “truce,” seemed to be established in the relations between Yeltsin and Gorbachev, who were mutually concerned about the decline in the authority of any state power. Gorbachev played a more subtle political game, ceasing to systematically resort, as was evident during the January events in Vilnius, to using conservative forces to create a “counterweight” to Yeltsin. Meanwhile, the political and economic situation in the country deteriorated so much that in August an attempt by conservative forces to carry out a coup d'état became possible;
- the period after the failure of the putsch on August 19-21, when the defeat inflicted on the conservative camp catastrophically accelerated the collapse of the Union, led to the abolition of previous government structures, including the KGB, the suspension of activities and the subsequent ban of the CPSU. In less than four months, a new and very unstable geopolitical formation arose in the place of the former USSR - the CIS.
Moving on to a more detailed consideration of these periods, we note that the first open conflict between supporters of Gorbachev and Yeltsin erupted in October 1990 during a discussion of alternative economic reform projects. On October 11, speaking at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Gorbachev expressed support for the option presented by the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Ryzhkov. This plan, which ultimately provided for a transition to “real” prices, freeing wages, increasing the independence of enterprises, and social protection of the unemployed, the appearance of which its implementation would inevitably cause, was immediately criticized by the authors of a competing project known as the “Program 500” days”, which received the support of Yeltsin and the majority of Russian parliamentarians. G. Yavlinsky, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, and then B. Yeltsin spoke in the Russian parliament on October 17 against a “return to the administrative-command system.” The “500 days program,” approved by the people’s deputies of the RSFSR several weeks earlier, Yeltsin said, was torpedoed by the first measures taken in accordance with the presidential plan. The mutually exclusive nature of the two programs was beyond doubt. Yeltsin's supporters refused any kind of compromise, convinced that the president's plan would soon fail.
On November 23, the republics were presented with another version of the draft new union treaty. All republics took part in its discussion, with the exception of the Baltic and Georgia. Although references to socialism disappeared from the draft and the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” gave way to the “Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics,” the influence of the center was felt in every article of this version of the treaty.
At the same time, already at the time of presentation, this project belonged to the past: three days earlier, on November 20, a bilateral agreement was concluded between Russia and Ukraine, according to which the two republics recognized each other’s sovereignty and the need for economic cooperation without the participation of the center on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. Two days later, a similar agreement was signed between Russia and Kazakhstan. These agreements, said Boris Yeltsin, create a model of the new Union and the core around which it will be formed.
On January 12, during the operation of the Soviet Army to seize the Lithuanian television building in Vilnius, 16 people were killed. This action, enthusiastically greeted by the Lithuanian National Salvation Committee, created from opponents of the independence of the republic, the military, conservatives, and part of the press, led to a final split in the intelligentsia, which until then had mostly supported Gorbachev.
The events in Vilnius, repeated a few days later in Riga, sharply aggravated the conflict between reformers and conservatives. On January 22, B. Yeltsin strongly condemned the use of force in the Baltic republics. On January 26, the Union government announced the introduction of joint police and military patrols of the streets of large cities from February 1 under the pretext of intensifying the fight against rising crime. On January 24, 1991, he announced the withdrawal of fifty- and hundred-ruble banknotes from circulation on the pretext of fighting the “shadow economy.” The immediate and, in fact, the only tangible result of this operation was the indignation and growth of discontent among the population.
On February 21, in the midst of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations sweeping Moscow, Leningrad and other major cities, Yeltsin, in a televised speech, demanded Gorbachev’s resignation and the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In response, Gorbachev accused the “so-called democrats” of “seeking to destabilize the country” ahead of the all-Union referendum on the issue of preserving the USSR, scheduled for March 17.
The reformers' demands received strong support from the leading organizations of the independent labor movement that emerged during the summer strikes of 1989, primarily in the coal basins of Donbass, Kuzbass and Vorkuta. In 1991, miners began a strike on March 1, now demanding not only an increase in wages in connection with the announced increase in retail prices after April 2, but also the resignation of Gorbachev, the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the nationalization of the property of the CPSU, a real multi-party system, the departition of enterprises and organizations . In essence, the process of departitionization had already been going on since the fall, when at hundreds of enterprises workers and strike committees removed party committees and official trade union bodies from business and occupied their premises. Once again, as in 1917, the incapacity of official structures became obvious, and the “power vacuum” fully manifested itself, primarily in the localities.
Chaos in public administration increased even more after the referendum on March 17. According to the results of the referendum, 80% of Russians supported holding general elections of their own president, and only about 50% of Muscovites and Leningraders and 40% of Kiev residents expressed a desire to preserve the Union in the proposed form.
The ambiguous results of the referendum were quickly overshadowed by the increase in prices (from 2 to 5 times), which horrified the population, which caused all the more indignation because wages were increased by an average of only 20–30%. The most massive strikes of labor collectives took place in Minsk, clearly showing how much the consciousness of the working class grew and radicalized after the summer of 1989: not limited to economic requirements, the workers opposed the socio-political system as a whole, putting forward slogans for the resignation of Gorbachev and the entire union government, the abolition of all privileges, the abolition of the KGB, the restoration of private land ownership in full, the holding of free elections on the basis of a multi-party system, the departition of enterprises and their transfer to the jurisdiction republics In April, the number of strikers exceeded one million.
Under these conditions, among conservatives the idea of organizing a conspiracy both against the new model of the Union and against reforms in general arose. On the morning of August 19, TASS transmitted a message about the creation of the State Committee for state of emergency in the USSR (GKChP), which included 8 people, including Vice-President of the USSR Yanaev, Prime Minister Pavlov, KGB Chairman Kryuchkov, Minister of Defense Yazov, Minister of Internal Dots Pugo. Stating that USSR President Gorbachev, who was on vacation in Crimea, “is unable to fulfill his duties due to health reasons,” the State Emergency Committee announced its intention to restore order in the country and prevent the collapse of the Union. The State Emergency Committee declared a state of emergency in certain regions of the country. Power structures that, in the opinion of the State Emergency Committee, acted contrary to the Constitution of the USSR were disbanded. The activities of opposition parties and movements were suspended, rallies and demonstrations were prohibited. Military equipment and troops were gathered in Moscow. In Resolution No. 1, the State Emergency Committee promised to increase wages, give all workers 15 acres of land, and provide everyone with housing. A state of emergency was established for six months and censorship was introduced.
However, having met popular resistance led by RSFSR President Yeltsin, the putsch failed. Indecision and split in the troops, the confusion of the putschists, who fell into prostration in the face of an unexpected reaction from Muscovites (as well as Leningraders, residents of other major cities), tens and then hundreds of thousands of whom spontaneously gathered in front of the building of the Russian parliament, which became a stronghold of resistance to the newly-minted junta, the hesitation of the troops brought into Moscow in front of unarmed people opposing them, the support of Yeltsin by the majority of governments around the world and international public opinion - in their totality, all these factors determined that the coup attempt was liquidated in less than three days.
On the evening of August 21, Gorbachev returned to Moscow, but by this time Yeltsin, who emerged as the main winner from this test, in the words of one French politician, “won the shoulder straps of the head of state.”
The failure of the coup attempt, which demonstrated the incredible growth of public consciousness and political maturity of the masses, sharply accelerated the collapse of the USSR, led to Gorbachev’s loss of influence and power, and the abolition of the previous institutions of central government. In the days that followed the failure of the coup, eight republics declared their independence, and the three Baltic republics, which had already achieved recognition by the international community, were recognized by the Soviet Union on September 6.
M. Gorbachev, despite his newly confirmed commitment to communist ideals, resigned his post as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and dissolved the Central Committee. The activities of the CPSU were suspended, and a few weeks later they were completely banned by Yeltsin. Due to the removal of a number of important functions and departments from the competence of the KGB, this organization was greatly reduced. There has been a complete renewal of the political establishment (from the heads of funds mass media to members of the government), which was joined by reformers and Yeltsin’s associates, who immediately consolidated the new position with a number of parliamentary resolutions. Gorbachev, wanting to preserve the center and thereby his post, proposed a new - but too reminiscent of the past - version of the union treaty. However, the political positions of the President of the USSR were already too weakened by the putsch.
Chapter 2. “Regularities” and “accidents” in the process of the collapse of the USSR 2.1 Contradiction of the reasons for the collapse of the USSR
The process of holding a referendum on the preservation of the USSR (March 1991) and the subsequent collapse of the country during the Belovezh Accords (December 1991) can be considered one event of a contradictory nature. The majority of the population said “yes” at the same time to both the preservation of the “big country” and its disintegration, approving the national-state independence of their republics. There is still no agreement among experts about what this phenomenon means. But it is obvious that the factors that determined the “lifetime” of the USSR were complex. Some of them can still be named.
Our century has witnessed the transformation of many government entities. It's not just about empires. A number of federal states collapsed, and in some others elements of confederal relations were introduced. Difficult fate also affected individual unitary state units (the collapse of Pakistan, the division of the Republic of Cyprus, the formation of the Palestinian Authority within Israel, the federalization of Belgium, the introduction of a system of relations close to a federal one in Spain and Great Britain).
Ethno-territorial separatism is very noticeable in global political processes. Along with this, opposite trends are also expressed - towards regional integration. The most striking example here is the formation of the European Union, but such a focus political processes is also typical for other regions of the world. It can be stated that for now geopolitical processes are akin to tectonic ones: they are observed, but not controlled. The region of Northern Eurasia cannot be considered unique, where over the course of a century two sociopolitical systems have changed: the Russian Empire and the USSR, and now there is a third (CIS).
In the 20th century, the world experienced two revolutions in technology: heavy industrialization (around World War II) and the computer revolution (begun in the 1950s and 1960s). Radical changes also took place in the field of politics: the introduction of universal suffrage, a radical reorganization of public administration (the creation of a “rule of law state”), and the emergence of a “welfare state.” These changes were global in nature, but their leaders were countries Western Europe and North America, where “primary modernization” began earlier - the industrial revolution. The leaders were followed by other countries that began “secondary” industrial modernization from different starting positions. Russia was among them. The states living in the “catch-up development” mode were faced with the task of covering in the shortest period of time a path that took the West many decades to achieve. One of the options for “secondary modernization,” as many historians and sociologists admit, was the “socialist path of development.” “Secondary” modernization often gives rise to a special type of society called “mobilization”. As a result, in order to achieve socially significant goals, society was forced to pay a higher “price”, regardless of costs, including human casualties.
The peculiarity of the Soviet Union was that here technological modernization was not synchronized with changes in the political system. If at the stage of heavy industrialization (the creation of production of means of production, communication systems operating on the basis of an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, etc.) the imbalance between the technological and political foundations of society did not manifest itself so clearly, then the scientific and technological (computer) revolution of the second half of the 20th century V. in countries of this type could not be implemented without a radical transformation of their political organization. The archaic political system itself came into conflict with the development needs of the country and its peoples. The victim of this conflict was the state, which carried out accelerated modernization in a “mobilization” mode and failed to carry out “demobilization” at the right historical moment.
The costs of “catch-up development” and increasing global unevenness were complemented by the intrastate sociocultural distance between the peoples and regions of the USSR. In Soviet times, it was never possible to level out the level of socio-economic and sociocultural development ethnic groups and regions of the country. Thus, fertile soil was created for the ideology of nationalism. Its spread in the 19th and especially in the 20th centuries. has acquired an avalanche-like character, determined by modernization processes. Although the right to self-determination was central to the Bolshevik national program and enabled the creation of the USSR, few of the country's peoples were in control in the 1920s. at the level of development that presupposes the desire for national-state independence. But later, the socio-economic development of the USSR led to the growth of nationalism among the numerous peoples of the country. We are talking about the emergence of a national political, managerial, creative elite that accumulates the values of a given people. Nationalism developed in a particularly crisis form among peoples who had not gone through all stages of the modernization process. The very state structure of the USSR left room for the implementation of this ideology.
2.2 Historical background for the collapse of the USSR
The Russian Empire was a unitary state, although it included a number of self-governing territories. During the revolution and civil war, federalist ideas allowed the Bolsheviks to “gather” lands and peoples and recreate Russian statehood. In the early 1920s. The USSR was created. The new Union of four countries (Russian and Transcaucasian Federations, Ukraine and Belarus) took shape as a confederation. Each state had the right to secede from the Union. Subsequently, Ukraine and Belarus even became members of the UN, and this is one of the signs of state sovereignty. At the same time, trends of unitarianism also developed. Their carrier was Communist Party. Already at the XII Congress of the RCP (b) (1923), the thesis about its dictatorship was adopted, which was established as a constitutional norm. The party performed the functions of a unitary state. Elements of confederalism, federalism and unitarism coexisted in the state structure of the Soviet Union until recently.
Of course, Unitarianism dominated. But he was strong as long as the power of the Communist Party remained. With its weakening (second half of the 1980s), confederal and federal sentiments revived. Separatist movements emerged. In conditions of commodity shortages, domestic customs began to be introduced. Appearance “ business cards buyer” highlighted the collapse of the unified financial system. The Belovezhskaya agreements of December 1991 only legally formalized the collapse of a single state.
In the works of the late 1980s. our research team consistently insisted on the reorganization of the USSR, taking into account both the peculiarities of the state structure (the combination of elements of confederation, federation and unitarianism), and the integration experience of the Western European community. A gradual transition to a type of regional integration was proposed. Perhaps, by choosing this vector of development, it would be possible to already have in Northern Eurasia a political system of a more civilized and, most importantly, promising type than the CIS.
The policy of the Government of M.S. Gorbachev was multidirectional. On the one hand, the core that held together both the political and economic system of the USSR (party leadership, state dominance in the economy, hierarchy of subordination of territories, etc.) was removed. Instead, a new durable structure was not created. The 1991 referendum, according to the plan, was supposed to strengthen the legitimacy of the central government and formally and legally suppress separatist sentiments. But could he have legal consequences? The referendum procedure requires that the issue be clearly understood and not subject to multiple interpretations. In reality, the referendum invited people to simultaneously speak out on several issues, artificially combined into one phrase. The legal consequences of such a vote would be negligible. At the same time, the “Novoogarevo process” was underway, during which autonomous entities the lower level acquired a new “patron” in the person of the central government. As experience has shown, this policy turned out to be a failure.
We must not forget about the personal factor, which ultimately decided the fate of the USSR. We are talking not only about disagreements in the CPSU Central Committee, which led to an attempted coup in August 1991. (It is known that it was then that the Baltic republics declared their independence, and soon Ukraine.) The confrontation between the leadership of the USSR and the RSFSR, which became the last the drop that destroyed the Soviet Union. Thus, we do not consider the collapse of the USSR to be either a random or inevitable event, but interpret it as a manifestation of social patterns that are not fully realized.
Conclusion
Analysis of the material presented in the work allows us to come to the following conclusions and generalizations.
The reasons for the collapse of the USSR lie on various levels - political, economic and spiritual. Exhausting opportunities for extensive development; a sharp drop in economic growth rates; the undivided dominance of the command-administrative system of economic management; further centralization in economic management; crisis of the system of non-economic coercion, lack of real economic incentives for workers; huge costs for the military-industrial complex; The economy of the USSR could no longer withstand competition with the West - all this is determined by the economic crisis.
The crisis of the political system was due to the fact that complete dominance in the socio-political life of the CPSU and Marxist-Leninist ideology; the determining role of the party leadership in making almost all decisions; intensifying repression against dissidents; increased bureaucratization in public administration; deepening crisis in interethnic relations.
In the spiritual sphere, comprehensive ideological control over culture and education was asserted; widespread double morality and double standards of behavior; increasing the gap between word and deed; avoidance of an objective analysis of the state of affairs in society; another round of rehabilitation of Stalinism; the growth of mass skepticism, political apathy, and cynicism; a catastrophic decline in the authority of management at all levels.
The pattern of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nature of the predetermination of the collapse of the Soviet Union, is also exaggerated by many researchers. Rather, a group of people who wanted to come to power determined the fate of the USSR; there was a banal change from one political group to another, without taking into account the opinion of the majority of the population.
Thus, the collapse of the USSR was not a natural phenomenon, but rather an accidental one, since a country of such a scale needed at least another 10-20 years before it naturally came to naught. The main reason for the collapse, therefore, was the inability of the political forces of the Soviet Union to continue their policies.
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The collapse of the Soviet Union is in any case not an accident.
I will speak in simple everyday language using clear image. Let's say there is some kind of family, husband and wife. They can have one child, two, three, five, ten, etc. If such a couple in the role of husband and wife gets divorced, is it an accident or not? When a family falls apart, there is always a reason.
The USSR is a big family.
In a family conflict, everyone can have their own truth. Either the husband has a mistress, or the wife has a lover, or they are generally tired of each other, or something else. If you lock two people in one room, they will still get tired of each other, get annoyed with each other and end up quarreling.
Between a man and a woman there is a sexual attraction called love. Children do not come from love, but from sexual desire. A similar process was observed in the Soviet Union. In the USSR, the friendship of peoples and “everyone is equal” was preached and, except for the Russians, no one else believed in this. All republics understood that the Russians were number one, and everyone else was secondary.
This can be proven simply - the USSR anthem was sung in Russian, not Ukrainian, not Armenian, not Kazakh or any other. All spoke Russian. And the words in the anthem “... united forever by great Rus'...” prove that the Russians knew that they were number one, that’s why the anthem is sung like that - forever.
However, this "forever" fell apart. What's wrong?
Russia is a husband in its psychology. And a man, as is customary among us, must have one wife, and the most correct wife was Ukraine: in terms of population, territory, religion and history. And everyone else is like mistresses. For example, Belarus was a favorite mistress. But, let’s say, Kyrgyzstan, a not-so-favorite mistress. And mistresses are a costly and troublesome business, because funds are required to support and educate them.
Russian greatness is a demonstration of power to the whole world through junior countries: Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc. - was attractive to others: to Bulgaria, Vietnam... and similar lagging countries in Africa.
When money becomes tight in a family, neither the mistress nor the wife will love such a husband. (There are exceptions, of course.)
On December 8, 1991, in Viskuli (Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus) “senior officials and heads of government of three union republics were present: Boris Yeltsin and Gennady Burbulis (RSFSR), Stanislav Shushkevich and Vyacheslav Kebich (BSSR), Leonid Kravchuk and Vitold Fokin (Ukraine). The preamble of the document stated that “The USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist”.(Wikipedia) That is. they documented the collapse of the USSR. And Yeltsin “from a comfortable bear’s den, from a dark forest, a dense Pushcha,” called America and asked how they would look at this issue, what they would say. So he calls America because these “secretaries” of Belarus and Ukraine told him to. Shameless Yeltsin called to America: Here my mistress is interested in who will put on their shoes and dress them in such a difficult period of time. And other secretaries, including Nazarbayev N.A. I didn’t have the courage to get together and say to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: “if you don’t like it, goodbye.” Then a union of twelve or eight states would constitute a real geopolitical economic force. There were options for creating such a union.
* * *
Now let's move on to another “politically understandable” language.
What good can be said about the Union before its collapse? The Soviet Union lost more than two tens of millions killed, but, nevertheless, won the Second World War. The war was won thanks to the support all country because a little less than half were people from the union republics. Let’s say 15 million were Russians, and the remaining 10 were Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz...
The USSR, with the same incredible efforts of everyone, created the atomic bomb and the military industry. Everyone served in the army, which means that about 30-40 percent were non-Russians. All the Union Republics were located around Russia, and the geopolitical component, like the military component, was a ring around Russia. That is, if some army tried to capture Russia... - and the capture of Russia is actually the capture of the entire Soviet Union - for example, Hitler sought to take Moscow, and not Tashkent, Ashgabat, Alma-Ata, etc. And Russia's contributions to these countries, as a geopolitical military protection, are justified, since they would have taken the first blow from the outside. In addition, around all these republics there was another “ring” - for example, Eastern Europe.
Those. The USSR, based on the language, from the anthem, was a purely Russian empire, a friendly formation to all nations. Each formation, together with the Russian voice, felt strong and worthy. And Russia, as the main component of the USSR, generously shared its dignity and respect.
And the first part about mistresses-wives and the dark Pushcha is the story that turned out in the end. The story we see today. Where everyone is a bad mistress or a bad wife, but I was a good Russian husband. Everyone has their own truth.
Unfortunately, in all the republics that were connected with Russia with life and blood, today they also do not have very happy memories. Every year people in these countries speak Russian worse and worse. Thus, Russia loses its conscious, intellectual and emotional connection with these countries. The worse they know the Russian language, the more they will move away from Russia and, like weaker countries, will be drawn into the orbits of stronger and more developed countries. Someone will begin to revolve around Europe, someone around China, someone around America, someone around Iran, someone around Turkey. And few people will remain with the Russians and share their fate with the Russians - a multinational, multi-confessional people.
For example, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, especially Azerbaijan, are almost Turkic-speaking countries. They are already drawn into Turkey's orbit. Tajikistan - they speak the language of Iran. Ukraine - Russia left Crimea to them, left Sevastopol, there are a huge number of people there who speak Russian, but, nevertheless, the Poles are closer to them today. The Poles, who, neither Sevastopol nor Crimea, left them nothing at all. Moldova, gradually forgetting the Russian language, with Romania, which actually speaks the same language, is entering into close relations with it. That is, both Ukraine and Moldova are looking for ways to Europe.
All this listing is necessary to understand that if there is discord in the family, you can get so carried away in looking for someone to blame that you stop understanding anything. Understand what is happening. Romania did not collapse the USSR, Türkiye, Iran did not collapse the USSR. The USSR was destroyed by stupid, hopelessly stupid management. The USSR was not destroyed by Gorbachev, the USSR was destroyed by Yeltsin. He wanted to be the main and important one so much that we can’t come to our senses after him. Unfortunately, during Gorbachev’s time, his perestroika did not switch to Chinese rails. If this were so, then the anthem “...great Rus' has united us forever...” we would also sing in Russian.
Bottom line
The management elite were senile “old men” who had lost their minds. The USSR was destroyed by the party-oligarchic corrupt communist elite. And today, 20 years after the collapse, in our country, in Russia, the most main enemy came out, showed and identified himself. The word appeared - corruption. It originated in the USSR, Gorbachev could not heal it in the Chinese way. Under Yeltsin, corruption became the norm in political, economic and everyday life.
And today the question is: either corruption or Russia.
Socio-political, spiritual and economic problems in modern Russia
(Continuing the essay on the topic: “The collapse of the USSR: an accident or...?”)
My history teacher asked me the topic of the essay. Answering this question, I did not use documents, did not play with numbers, and did not examine in detail the political figures of that time. I used the thoughts, experience and worldly wisdom of those people active age who at that time were from 30 to 40 years old. They lived in modern Russia for about 20 years. Today they are over 50.
They have something to compare. After listening carefully about that period, I wrote an essay based on their experiences and worldly wisdom that I, my friends and adults of all ages can understand. But, nevertheless, a historian I respect described the essay “The Collapse of the USSR: An Accident or...?” as “sluggish.”
I will try to supplement the previous essay in a nutshell so that it is not sluggish, and with this essay to fill a new topic about the socio-political, spiritual and economic problems of modern Russia. I decided to talk to the same people with whom I spoke about the non-accidental collapse of the Soviet Union.
Thus, I do not base my texts on history textbooks, because they describe the actions of politicians: this one did this, and this one did that. But their actions do not describe the real lives of people, and the country ends up with two stories. In one history of the country there are politicians, and in another history of the country there is a large part of the population, which, as it were, has nothing to do with history. As if it were some kind of inert, weak-willed mass that politicians crush like clay. And this very mass chooses politicians, and this same mass expects politicians to improve their lives. And the adults with whom I spoke and communicated saw the USSR live and, years later, understood what was happening in the country. In a country where information was hidden, in a country where there was no freedom of speech, in a country where information deception was the norm. Smart adults were deceived by politicians born in the USSR, but they believed them. Informationally, they were so zombified that they believed that they were being led to some wonderful communist future, where there would be equality for everyone, brotherhood, friendship of peoples, and where there would be one freedom for all. And they believed it, because the symptoms of everything that was said were clearly visible.
Let me remind you how the previous essay ends:
"Bottom line.
The management elite were senile pensioners who had lost their minds. The USSR was destroyed by the party-oligarchic corrupt communist elite. And today, 20 years after the collapse, in our country, in Russia, the main enemy has come out, shown itself and identified itself. The word appeared - corruption. It originated in the USSR; Gorbachev could not heal it in the Chinese way (corruption is ineradicable and incurable, it can only be treated).
And today the question is: either corruption or Russia."
Under Yeltsin, corruption became the norm in political, economic and everyday life. Thus, under Yeltsin, deception swept the entire country, and such abnormality became the norm of life. In such conditions...what kind of spirituality, politics and economics can we talk about?
I wrote that modern Russia is the legacy of the Soviet Union. These are those who ruled before Gorbachev for 21 years: L.I. Brezhnev (1966 -1982), Yu.V. Andropov (1982-1984), K.U. Chernenko (1984-1985). That is, the Soviet Union was ruled by old, sick and economically illiterate people. We need to think about what a sick person might be thinking about - about the state or about his health? A doctor usually prescribes rest for a sick person. And politics, as I understand from adults, is the art of intrigue. And intrigue is anxiety, intrigue and anxiety is like giving a sick person not medicine, but poison. The art of intrigue is the art of holding oneself correctly and sincerely on the political stage, regardless of the truth or not, etc. This, in general, deceptive behavior, with the right facial expression, has become the norm in politics: playing at sincerity, playing at truth, and after the first handshake calling each other friends. Such a game of deception can cripple any person, in fact, this is a split personality, and it is difficult to talk about spirituality in such a playing person. Traces of corruption are lost between the split personalities in one person. To catch such an honest thief by the hand...
As I understood from the reasoning of adults, there are two fundamental concepts for a country: Motherland and State. So the state is governed by officials, governed through the law; and concept justice for officials it is not a spiritual concept. And the Motherland is for those who live in the country of Russia and do not govern the state. For them justice is a spiritual concept, not a law. (As a consequence, a conflict arises between law and spirituality.)
That is, a conflict arises between those who govern the state and between those for whom it is their homeland. (Do not confuse the modern democratic spiritual concept of equality, freedom with the religious spiritual concept.)
The USSR was ruled by senile people for at least 10 years - these are the last years of Brezhnev and those who came before Gorbachev. The socially oriented state, the USSR, was ruled by sick political intriguers. Also, they were economically illiterate managers. They were passionate about themselves, their insatiable families, and their selfishness was boundless. And therefore they are unspiritual persons, both in the modern and in the religious sense. Spiritual people love people, and unspiritual people love themselves.
The problems of modern Russia begin with the USSR, with these soulless, unloving people, political idiots. And modern Russia was built by B.N., who collapsed the USSR. Yeltsin was a man from their communist environment, only he was younger and more energetic. And people believed him that this young and energetic Yeltsin will improve the health of both the state and the Motherland. I didn’t see him myself, but the adults remembered that at first he was, indeed, a very strong person, who, before our eyes, suddenly suddenly showed up as a drunkard, showing his essence. He, as the heir-disciple of Soviet pensioned senile politicians, eventually turned into a creature similar to them. That is, internal political intrigues acted on him in exactly the same way, not as a medicine, but as a poison. He rejoiced at his intriguing victories and forgot about the state and the people for whom this state is the Motherland.
He destroyed the USSR; the economy of all republics was tied to Russia. And all the logistics came from the center, from the Kremlin. Through the collapse of the economy of the entire country, he put both Russian people and non-Russian people under extinction. (Those who had oil were eventually lucky - the price of oil rose. And those who did not have oil were brought to the brink of extinction.)
The either sick or half-drunk leader of Russia appeared on TV. What kind of socio-political or spiritual or economic life in Russia can there be in such conditions, with such management, if the guarantor of social, spiritual and economic stability is either drunk, or sick, or doesn’t care about anyone, both Russians and not in Russian.
The beginning of the 90s turned out to be frankly gangster. All adults, who are under 50 or more, vividly remember how at every stall, young people in leather jackets jostled with each other and found out who was protecting whom here. And they, poor fellows, just wanted to eat. At least most of them. The whole country was embroiled in petty money disputes. Banditry during Yeltsin's time was openly street in nature. And, under the guise of such banditry, the country was divided between oligarchs according to the law; not according to justice, but according to written laws. And so we grow from there - from the troubled nineties. As a result, today's main topic is corruption and the fight against it.(Question: will the fight against corruption be by law or by justice?)
But politics is an intriguing matter: where the truth is and where it is not true is very difficult for an inexperienced person to understand. Who is corrupt and who is not is very difficult for an inexperienced person to understand. And who is catching whom, and why he is catching is also very difficult for an inexperienced young person to understand.
In times of crisis, the fight in Europe against immodest super-incomes looks like “calming the crowd”, and this works for politicians. They are gaining points, maybe for the next elections. This is in Europe. And we are not quite Europe. They have been a democracy for 500 years, but we have people for whom the country is the Motherland, who do not yet think about the law: they want justice, and therefore, when V.V. Putin enters into a conversation with the people, the people turn to him personally: to him, and not to the law. (For those who administer the law, it turns out that this is a business, which is why they are corrupt, but justice is important to people, and the law is not a business for them).
People for whom the country is their homeland pay taxes, that is, they bring benefits. And the people who govern the state... they distribute taxes... But corruption is such that it covers the entire population, and everyone, without exception, suffers from it. Let's say there is no state. Where will the official receive his salary? And where will he receive his envelopes? And, as the adults explained to me, it is impossible to get rid of corruption; it can be reduced so that the state does not collapse. For thinking corrupt officials, the state is a business, and only crazy people can destroy their business. In the 90s, this is exactly what happened - the destruction of the state, so all the money went offshore. Today, corruption can be reduced, but it cannot be eliminated.
* * *
If Russia inherited corruption from the USSR, then the question arises: did the USSR really give birth to corruption?
When the Soviets came to power in 1917, they did not know how to govern the state, because they were completely incompetent in this matter. They invited and forced officials who actually ruled Tsarist Russia and managed its economy. And the economy is responsible for social stability, and social stability it is the basis of strong political power.
If the economy, strong political power, people, social strata are balanced and harmonized, then a subtle spiritual connection arises between layers of society which can be expressed in one word - justice. Such a society feels whole and protected.
Tsarist power fell to a small group of Bolsheviks, from which it follows that the first World War Russia was plunged into a deep economic crisis. Russian families, who are mostly peasants, are tired of losing their male breadwinners. No breadwinner means hunger. And so it was.
I have a father and mother, with them I feel protected. I have been taken care of since childhood, and since childhood I remember constantly the warm hands of my mother. Every family, like a child, wants this kind of attitude from the state. When families lose breadwinners who are not fighting for their country, it means that this is an unjust war. Because the First World War is political war, that is, a war of international intriguers. A just war is to defend your homeland, and those who help defend their homeland are true friends. Eventually, The unjust war for Tsarist Russia became the main reason for its collapse.
And then the Bolsheviks began to rule the former tsarist state, inviting and coercing tsarist officials. And each official was assigned his own spy, “an October boy, a pioneer, a Komsomol member and a communist.” A communist revolutionary studied with an official, then taught a Komsomol member, a Komsomol member taught a pioneer, a pioneer passed on knowledge to an October child, and, as a result, this October child became a pioneer, became a Komsomol member, became a communist, became a revolutionary, and eventually destroyed the USSR. But the tsarist corrupt officials, who understood what a state was and served their state, remained back in 1917. Those who replaced them only knew how to fight and destroy, but never learned how to govern the state and serve the state.
As a result, the form of management was distorted. Even before that, under the tsar, she was the subject of denunciations, but in the USSR snitching simply became the norm.
I used my family as an example - what child would be happy being left without a father? The government, which does not care about fathers - breadwinners, is rotten, so a bunch of Bolsheviks overthrew her. True, nothing good came of it, a civil war began, a global purge began, millions of people were killed. And it was not Stalin who started the purge, but Lenin. And Stalin completed it, as Lenin’s faithful disciple.
I remind you of this because at the same pace as in 1917, the Soviet Union collapsed - overnight. In Pushcha, at night, three secretaries of the Communist Party of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus destroyed the Soviet Union and, in fact, formally, for good measure, invited the secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. (On December 8, 1991, the leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in Belovezhskaya Pushcha signed an agreement on the creation of a commonwealth of independent states. Nazarbayev is one famous example grievances, and there were fifteen republics).
Considering these two experiences, in modern Russia we must draw a conclusion and remember that the powerful Tsarist Empire collapsed, and the even more powerful USSR collapsed overnight. And we need to understand this not by the numbers, what happened in what years, but by the essence of the question: why did this happen? This happened because between people for whom the country is the Motherland and for whom the country is the state, the spiritual connection that binds society into one whole has been lost. And it was lost due to the impoverishment of some and the enrichment of others. The impoverished and the enriched seem to speak the same language, but these are people who seem to be from different countries, one country is called the Motherland, and the other is the State.
* * *
Looking at Russia today, we see how the head of state is trying to fight corruption. What benefits can be achieved if corruption is defeated by at least 10 percent? This is the return of capital back to the treasury. This can improve the lives of pensioners, help the sick, put our roads in order, and everyone needs roads, both ordinary people and the economy. Let’s imagine that the price of oil does not rise, and 10 percent of corruption is the same as the price of oil skyrocketing.
The fight against corruption is another opportunity, like oil, to incredibly enrich Russia. What if it's 20 percent? or the absolutely incredible, to defeat corruption by 30 percent? Russia will become one third richer overnight.
Policies aimed at social well-being attract people. Spirituality, as a clear ideology, unites people. And the economy contains such a union.
If the economy is weak, then spirituality, as a coherent ideology that unites politicians and people, will be weak. And weakness does not unite, but separates - this is proven by historical experience. Today's weakness is proven by the fact that officials have begun to be held accountable: “Where do you get this for EVERYTHING if everyone is poor?” Well, let’s say we forgot the year 17, but the collapse of the USSR was literally yesterday. There, secretaries and their families grew fat non-stop, and people for whom the USSR was their homeland became poor. The situation is dangerously repeating itself.
Today's fight against corruption is a consequence of the economic crisis that has gripped the whole world. During a crisis, the owner begins to count money: income and expenses, just as it happens in any normal family. And wastefulness leads to ruin.
What is the conclusion? Unfortunately, the fight against corruption is a necessary measure. Because if there had not been a global crisis, then we might not have had a fight against corruption, or it would have been sluggish. They are fighting corruption in Europe, and we have begun to fight it, because we and Europe are economically intertwined, and our corruption harms both us and them. Our corruption harms the real sector of the international economy and puts a spoke in the wheels of development.
Let's imagine the crisis is over. As a result, will the fight against corruption end or not? Will the fight against corruption in today's Russia bog down or not? And by the next elections it will be clear how well the president has dealt with corruption: by 5, 10 percent - by how much?
I don’t understand much about economic figures, but the adults explained that 10 percent is a lot. 20 percent - this will not be economic in Russia everyday problems. And 30 percent - we will stand firmly on our feet, and we will be reckoned with, as they were reckoned with the USSR, as they were reckoned with the Russian Empire.
To conclude the topic, we can say that the socio-political, spiritual and economic problems of modern Russia are a legacy from Tsarist Russia. Only if in Tsarist Russia corruption was a child, then in the USSR it matured, and in Russia it became a businessman.
Thus, until corruption is defeated by at least 10 percent, the socio-political, spiritual and economic development of Russia will be problematic, both within the country and in the world.
Target:
- Expand educational space students as part of the formation research skills and skills of students in Russian history lessons;
- Contribute to the formation of creative thinking, development of a personal attitude towards social problems of society;
- Study the events of 1991, the causes and consequences of the collapse of the USSR.
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Municipal educational institution secondary school of the Lenin state farm
Methodological development of the lesson
On the history of Russia, grade 11.
Dukhanina Anna Viktorovna _
Lesson on Russian history, grade 11.
Topic: “The collapse of the USSR: a pattern or an accident.”
Target:
- Expand the educational space of students as part of the development of research skills of students in Russian history lessons;
- Contribute to the formation of creative thinking, development of a personal attitude towards social problems of society;
- Study the events of 1991, the causes and consequences of the collapse of the USSR.
Tasks:
- Continue to develop students’ understanding of the mutual influence of the country’s development trends;
- To develop in students independence, creative activity, initiative, as stable personality traits, and the ability to creatively solve problems that arise in life.
- Develop the ability to study, acquire and deepen or expand knowledge, work with books, multimedia aids, master skills and abilities and creatively apply them in practice;
Planned results
Students will learn about:
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the causes of interethnic conflicts during the years of perestroika;
- objective prerequisites for the formation of national movements to leave the USSR;
- the historical significance of the adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Russia;
- the origins and manifestations of the constitutional crisis in the USSR;
Attempts by the Soviet leadership to preserve a multinational state and the reasons for the failure of these attempts;
- the circumstances of the termination of the existence of the USSR.
Basic knowledge
Dates and events:
March 17, 1991 - all-Union referendum on the preservation of the USSR; All-Russian referendum on the introduction of the post of President of the RSFSR
Names:
M. S. Gorbachev, N. I. Ryzhkov, B. N. Yeltsin, A. A. Sobchak, R. I. Khasbulatov, A. V. Rutskoy, G. I. Yanaev.
Basic concepts and terms:perestroika, federation, confederation, interethnic conflicts, state sovereignty, constitutional crisis, lease, State Emergency Committee.
Form : combined lesson (updating and deepening previously acquired knowledge (grade 9), learning new material, applying knowledge and developing skills)
Teacher's methods of activity:explanation, story, conversation, organization of individual presentations, work with text,use of multimedia aids,solving cognitive tasks and problematic issues.
Lesson equipment: textbook “” 11th grade, worksheet notebook, multimedia technical teaching aids, Computer textbook “History of Russia. XX century” Antonova T.S., Kharitonova A.L., Danilova A.A., Kosulina L.G.
Plan: | 1. The role of Russia within the USSR. 2. The beginning of decay. 3. Confrontation of personalities . 4. Collapse of the USSR. |
Introduction | The collapse of the USSR is one of the most significant events in world history of the 20th century. This is perhaps the only assessment that is accepted by most historians and politicians. All other issues related to the analysis of the causes and significance of the collapse of the USSR remain the subject of heated debate. Today in class we will try to find possible options answer to the problem posed:The collapse of the USSR: a pattern or an accident. |
In the ideological life of society, issues of national identity increasingly came to the fore. In politics, this was reflected in the growth of separatist movements, in the general struggle of the republics with the Center (Kremlin)... And Russia was identified with the Center in the mass consciousness. Russian ideologists and scientists, primarily of a national-patriotic orientation, persistently raised the question of the true position of Russia in the Union, about specific gravity RSFSR in the USSR according to the main indicators of economic and social development. In their opinion, a picture of a depressing situation emerged Russian Federation, shamelessly used by the Union government as a donor to other republics. In the family of peoples of the USSR, Russia found itself in the position of “Cinderella”. Producing 60% of the gross social product and providing 61% of the national income produced, the RSFSR was one of the last places in the country in terms of living standards. The country's budget was formed mainly at the expense of Russia, and more than 70 billion Russian rubles were redistributed annually from its pocket in favor of other republics. In 1989, for example, Russia contributed more than 100 billion rubles to the all-Union budget, but received back next year only 30 billion. The Russians found themselves in a particularly difficult situation. Even within the RSFSR, in terms of the number of people with higher education per capita were in 16th place in the city and 19th in the village. The so-called demographic problems of the Russian nation have worsened. For many years, the birth rate among Russians did not ensure simple population reproduction, and in a number of regions of Central Russia, mortality exceeded the birth rate (including in Moscow itself, where the increase was due to migrants). Every year, more than 3,000 settlements were erased from the map of Russia. Under the influence of such facts, which became public knowledge, the conviction grew stronger that Russia needed independence: economic, political, spiritual. |
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Organization of work with the document in mini-groups on the first issue (worksheet task No. 1) Formulating a general conclusion. |
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Perestroika and the weakening of the central government exposed the long-hidden contradictions of the Soviet system, including the unresolved national question and its new aggravation caused by the strengthening of the positions of national elites in the allied and autonomous republics THE USSR. « An amazing discovery awaited the leaders of national movements in the text of the 1977 Constitution of the USSR, which they disliked - the coined formula: “The Soviet Union consists of sovereign states.” The formula, which no one had ever attached importance to, suddenly turned out to be winning. Since it is a union of sovereign states, then, therefore, it is not a federation, but a confederation. Initially, mass national movements in the republics were ready to settle for the idea of a confederation: the republics delegated certain powers to the center. Moreover, Moscow has no powers other than those transferred to it by the republics"(L.M. Mlechin). |
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Exercise. In the reference literature, find the meaning of the terms “federation” and “confederation”. Which of them corresponded, in your opinion, to the USSR before 1985? (A federation is a state consisting of entities that have a certain legal and political independence; a confederation is a permanent union of states that maintain an independent existence and unite to coordinate their activities on certain issues). Listening to student responses. A possible vector of answers should be aimed at the idea that the USSR was still formally a federation, in fact a unitary state, but over time it could acquire real federalism. |
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In March 1990, at an all-Union referendum, the majority of citizens spoke in favor of preserving the USSR and the need to reform it. By the summer of 1991, a new Union Treaty was prepared, which gave a chance to renew the federal state. But it was not possible to maintain unity. The USSR collapsed. Why? |
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Working with the circuit Prerequisites collapse of the USSR |
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Here are the most common explanations offered by researchers: As the central leadership weakened, conflicts on ethnic grounds began. The first of them occurred completely unexpectedly as a result of a fight at a skating rink between Yakut and Russian youth in Yakutsk in February 1986. Which? |
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Slide 2 | Trying to save the USSR, M.S. Gorbachev initiates the signing of a new Union Treaty, to which 12 of the 15 Union republics agree (except for the three Baltic ones). Page But the coup attempt undertaken by opponents of M.S. Gorbachev in senior management country on August 19-21, 1991 (the so-called August Putsch), disrupted the signing of this document. On December 8, 1991, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus announced the denunciation (termination) of the Union Treaty of 1922 and the formation of the CIS - the Commonwealth of Independent States, which was joined a few days later by the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan.Thus, the USSR collapsed.December 25, 1991 live on Central Television M.S. Gorbachev announced his voluntary resignation from the post of President of the USSR. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. Thus ended the era of M.S. Gorbachev. |
Summing up the results of the lesson. | The significance of such large-scale events is determined by time. Only 20 years have passed since the collapse of the USSR, historians and politicians, citizens of the states that arose in the place of the USSR, are at the mercy of emotions and are not yet ready for balanced, well-founded conclusions. Let us therefore note the obvious: the collapse of the USSR led to the emergence of independent sovereign states; the geopolitical situation in Europe and throughout the world has changed radically; the severance of economic ties became one of the main reasons for the deep economic crisis in Russia and other countries - the heirs of the USSR; Serious problems arose related to the fate of Russians who remained outside Russia, and national minorities in general. |
Consolidation of the formulation of students’ personal attitude to the topic under consideration (using technology - POPS formula) |
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Homework: | historical design.Imagine that M.S. Gorbachev would have given the order for the arrest of B.N. Yeltsin, L.M. Kravchuk and S.S. Shushkevich, accusing them (quite rightly) of conspiracy to overthrow the legitimate government. Technicallyit was possible - in the hands of the President of the USSR there were still strong structure and a nuclear button. How would events develop further? Try to create your own scenario for the development of events 10 years in advance - until the end of 2001. |
Zhuravlev V.V. and others. History of modern Russia. 1984-1994 // Teaching history at school. 1995. No. 8. P. 46-47
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………......3
Topic: “Collapse of the USSR”
2 The collapse of the USSR - a pattern or an accident………………………...21
3 Geopolitical position of Russia after the collapse of the USSR………………20
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….21
References…………………………………………………………………………………24
Topic: “The Formation of Christianity in Russia” ………………………………………………………25
Answers to control tasks……………………………………………………28
Introduction
The topic of the work is relevant because at this stage of development and political changes, taking place in the Russian Federation and neighboring states, successors of the former USSR, when the main characters of that period have already left the political scene, the interest in this period in Russian history has subsided somewhat, you can try to consider this time in the history of our state in order to find answers to those questions and problems that we have now.
The purpose of the work is a geopolitical analysis of the causes of the collapse of the USSR.
As for the sources, periodical literature of that time was used as the main ones, namely the newspapers “Moskovsky Komsomolets” and “Arguments and Facts”, some magazines - the international yearbook “Politics and Economics”, “Business People”, etc. The last two sources I trust a little more than newspapers, since these are serious publications. In addition, textbook sources are “History of the Soviet State by N. Werth” and “History of the Fatherland” (school textbook). But these sources cannot be used as the main ones for the reason that they reflect a certain ideological position, and comments that are free of this shortcoming are important to us. This is why I prefer to rely mainly on magazines.
In order to understand the processes that took place in the USSR and led to its collapse, it is necessary to consider the features of the development of this state, the form of government in the USSR, the state regime, the form of the administrative-territorial structure, as well as some other problems Soviet statehood.
"Collapse of the USSR"
1. The August 1991 events and their assessment.
August putsch- an attempt to forcibly remove M. S. Gorbachev from the post of President of the USSR and change his course, undertaken by the self-proclaimed State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) - a group of conservative conspirators from the leadership of the CPSU Central Committee and the government of the USSR on August 19, 1991, which led to radical changes political situation in the country. Accompanied by the declaration of a state of emergency for 6 months, the deployment of troops to Moscow, reassignment local authorities military commandants appointed by the State Emergency Committee, the introduction of strict censorship in the media and the banning of a number of them, the abolition of a number of constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens. The leadership of the RSFSR (President B.N. Yeltsin and the Supreme Council of the RSFSR) and some other republics (Moldavian SSR, Estonia), and subsequently also the legitimate leadership of the USSR (President and Supreme Council of the USSR) qualified the actions of the State Emergency Committee as a coup d'etat.
The goal of the putschists. The main goal of the putschists was, according to their official statements, to prevent the liquidation of the USSR, which, in their opinion, was to begin on August 20 during the first stage of signing a new union treaty, turning the USSR into a confederation - the Union of Sovereign States. On August 20, the agreement was to be signed by representatives of the RSFSR and Kazakhstan, and the remaining future components of the commonwealth during five meetings, until October 22.
Choosing the moment. Members of the Emergency Committee chose the moment when the President was away on vacation in Crimea and announced his temporary removal from power for health reasons.
- GKChK forces. The State Emergency Committee relied on the forces of the KGB (Alpha), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Dzerzhinsky Division) and the Defense Ministry (Tula Airborne Division, Taman Division, Kantemirovskaya Division). In total, about 4 thousand military personnel, 362 tanks, 427 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles were brought into Moscow. Additional airborne units were transferred to the vicinity of Leningrad, Tallinn, Tbilisi, and Riga.
The airborne troops were commanded by generals Pavel Grachev and his deputy Alexander Lebed. At the same time, Grachev maintained telephone contact with both Yazov and Yeltsin. However, the putschists did not have complete control over their forces; So, on the very first day, parts of the Taman division went over to the side of the defenders of the White House. From the tank of this division, Yeltsin delivered his famous message to the assembled supporters.
- Information support for the putschists was provided by the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (for three days, news releases certainly included revelations of various acts of corruption and violations of the law committed within the framework of the “reformist course”), the State Emergency Committee also secured the support of the Central Committee of the CPSU, but these institutions were unable to have a noticeable impact on the situation in the capital , but for some reason the committee was unable or unwilling to mobilize that part of society that shared the views of the members of the State Emergency Committee.
Leader of the coup. Despite the fact that Yanaev was the nominal head of the conspirators, the real soul of the conspiracy, according to many analysts, was Kryuchkov
Opponents of the GKChK. The resistance to the State Emergency Committee was led by the political leadership of the Russian Federation (President B. N. Yeltsin, Vice President A. V. Rutskoi, Chairman of the Government I. S. Silaev, Acting Chairman of the Supreme Council R. I. Khasbulatov).
In an address to Russian citizens on August 19, Boris Yeltsin, characterizing the actions of the State Emergency Committee as a coup, said:
At the call of the Russian authorities, masses of Muscovites gathered at the House of Soviets of the Russian Federation (“White House”), among whom were representatives of a wide variety of social groups - from supporters of anti-Soviet political organizations, students, intelligentsia to veterans Afghan war. The three killed during the incident in the tunnel on the Garden Ring were representatives of various professions - an architect, a driver and an economist.
The former head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, claims that in 1991 he “went to defend” The White house"
Background.
· On July 29, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the President of Kazakhstan N.A. Nazarbayev met confidentially in Novo-Ogaryovo. They scheduled the signing of a new Union Treaty for August 20.
- On August 2, Gorbachev announced in a televised address that the signing of the Union Treaty was scheduled for August 20. On August 3, this appeal was published in the Pravda newspaper.
- On August 4, Gorbachev went to rest at his residence near the village of Foros in Crimea.
- August 17 - Kryuchkov, Pavlov, Yazov, Baklanov, Shenin and Gorbachev’s assistant Boldin meet at the “ABC” facility - the closed guest residence of the KGB at the address: Academician Vargi Street, possession 1. Decisions are made to introduce a state of emergency from August 19, to form the State Emergency Committee, to demand Gorbachev to sign the corresponding decrees or resign and transfer powers to Vice President Gennady Yanaev, Yeltsin to be detained at the Chkalovsky airfield upon arrival from Kazakhstan for a conversation with Yazov, then act further depending on the results of the negotiations.
- The beginning of the coup. On August 18 at 8 o’clock in the morning, Yazov informs his deputies Grachev and Kalinin about the upcoming introduction of a state of emergency.
- In the afternoon, Baklanov, Shenin, Boldin and General V.I. Varennikov travel on Yazov’s personal plane to Crimea to negotiate with Gorbachev in order to secure his consent to introduce a state of emergency. At about 5 p.m. they meet with Gorbachev. Gorbachev refuses to give them his consent.
The Emergency Committee agreed that the group would go to Crimea to see Gorbachev in order to persuade him to make a decision to introduce a state of emergency. ... Another purpose of our visit to Foros to see Gorbachev was to disrupt the signing of a new union Treaty scheduled for August 20, which, in our opinion, had no legal basis. On August 18, we met with him, where, as you know, we did not agree on anything.
- V. Varennikov, interview
- At the same time (at 16:32) all types of communications were turned off at the presidential dacha, including the channel that provided control of the strategic nuclear forces of the USSR. In a later interview with Gorbachev, it is stated that a group of guests cut the communication lines only in his cabin, and the facility itself in Foros and the lines in other rooms worked properly. In addition, communications in Gorbachev’s cars, incl. control of strategic forces also worked.
- On August 19, at 4 a.m., the Sevastopol regiment of the USSR KGB troops blocked the presidential dacha in Foros. By order of the Chief of Staff of the USSR Air Defense Forces, Colonel-General Maltsev, two tractors blocked the runway on which the President's flight assets are located - a Tu-134 plane and a Mi-8 helicopter. In a later interview with Gorbachev, it is stated that in essence there was no blockade, because “About 4,000 people in the nearest units and units were directly subordinate to me, and these were mainly units of my personal security.”
Development of main events.
- At 6 o’clock in the morning, the USSR media announced the introduction of a state of emergency in the country and the inability of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev to perform his functions “for health reasons” and the transfer of all power to the State Emergency Committee. At the same time, troops were sent to Moscow and other large cities, politicians The “democratic opposition” were put on the wanted list.
- At night, Alpha moved to Yeltsin’s dacha in Arkhangelskoye, but did not block the president and did not receive instructions to take any action against him. Meanwhile, Yeltsin urgently mobilized all his supporters in the upper echelon of power, the most prominent of whom were Ruslan Khasbulatov, Anatoly Sobchak, Gennady Burbulis, Mikhail Poltoranin, Sergei Shakhrai, Viktor Yaroshenko. The coalition compiled and faxed an appeal “To the Citizens of Russia.” B. N. Yeltsin signed a decree “On the illegality of the actions of the State Emergency Committee.” Echo of Moscow became the mouthpiece of opponents of the coup.
- Yeltsin's condemnation of the State Emergency Committee during a speech from a tank of the Taman division at the White House. Russian President B.N. Yeltsin arrives at the “White House” (Supreme Council of the RSFSR) at 9 o’clock and organizes a center of resistance to the actions of the State Emergency Committee. Resistance takes the form of rallies that gather in Moscow near the White House on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment and in Leningrad on St. Isaac's Square near Mariinsky Palace. Barricades are being erected in Moscow and leaflets are being distributed. Directly near the White House there are armored vehicles of the Ryazan regiment of the Tula Airborne Division under the command of Major General Alexander Lebed and the Taman Division. At 12 o'clock, from a tank, Yeltsin addresses those gathered for the rally, where he calls what happened a coup d'etat. From among the protesters, unarmed militia groups are created under the command of deputy Konstantin Kobets. Afghan veterans and employees of the private security company Alex take an active part in the militia. Yeltsin is preparing space for retreat by sending emissaries to Paris and Sverdlovsk with the right to organize a government in exile.
- Evening press conference of the State Emergency Committee. V. Pavlov, who developed a hypertensive crisis, was absent from it. The members of the State Emergency Committee were noticeably nervous; The whole world went around the footage of G. Yanaev’s shaking hands. Journalist T. Malkina openly called what was happening a “coup,” the words of the members of the State Emergency Committee were more like excuses (G. Yanaev: “Gorbachev deserves all respect”).
- By order of the State Emergency Committee, preparations were made for the previously unplanned seizure of the building of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR by groups special purpose KGB of the USSR. However, the generals responsible for preparing the assault began to doubt the feasibility. Alexander Lebed goes over to the side of the White House defenders. The commanders of Alpha and Vympel, Karpukhin and Beskov, ask Deputy Chairman of the KGB Ageev to cancel the operation. The assault was called off.
- In connection with the hospitalization of V. Pavlov, the temporary leadership of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was entrusted to V. Kh. Doguzhiev, who did not make any public statements during the putsch.
- For the first time in its modern history, Russia is creating its own Ministry of Defense. Konstantin Kobets is appointed Minister of Defense.
- On the night of August 21, tank units controlled by the State Emergency Committee carried out maneuvers in the area of the White House (the building of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR). Supporters of Boris Yeltsin clash with a military column in the tunnel under New Arbat. (see Incident in the tunnel on the Garden Ring)
- Alpha Group refuses to storm the White House. At 5 o'clock in the morning Yazov gives the order to withdraw troops from Moscow. On the afternoon of August 21, a session of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR begins, chaired by Khasbulatov, which almost immediately accepts statements condemning the State Emergency Committee. Vice-President of the RSFSR Alexander Rutskoi and Prime Minister Ivan Silaev fly to Foros to see Gorbachev. Some members of the Emergency Committee fly to Crimea on another plane to negotiate with Gorbachev, but he refuses to accept them.
- Mikhail Gorbachev returns from Foros to Moscow together with Rutskoi and Silaev on a Tu-134 plane. Members of the State Emergency Committee were arrested.
- Moscow declared mourning for the victims. A mass rally was held on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment in Moscow, during which demonstrators carried out a huge banner of the Russian tricolor; At the rally, the President of the RSFSR announced that a decision had been made to make the white-azure-red banner the new state flag of Russia. (In honor of this event, in 1994 the date August 22 was chosen to celebrate the Day of the State Flag of Russia.)
- The defenders of the White House are supported by rock groups (“Time Machine”, “Cruise”, “Shah”, “Metal Corrosion”, “Mongol Shuudan”), who are organizing the “Rock on the Barricades” concert on August 22.
Live, Yeltsin, in the presence of Gorbachev, signs a decree suspending the Communist Party of the RSFSR
Much later, in 2008, Gorbachev commented on the situation as follows:
One of the members of the State Emergency Committee, Marshal Yazov, about the lack of levers to control the situation:
Architect of the design and construction cooperative "Kommunar" Ilya Krichevsky
Afghan veteran, forklift driver Dmitry Komar
Economist of the Ikom joint venture Vladimir Usov
All three died on the night of August 21 during an incident in a tunnel on the Garden Ring. All three were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Meaning. The August putsch was one of those events that marked the end of the power of the CPSU and the collapse of the USSR and, according to popular belief, gave impetus to democratic changes in Russia. Changes took place in Russia itself that contributed to the formation of its statehood, in particular, even during the events of August 20, 1991, it had its own Ministry of Defense.
On the other hand, supporters of preserving the Soviet Union argue that the country began to be in chaos due to the inconsistent policies of the then government.
2. Is the collapse of the USSR a pattern or an accident?
The reasons for the collapse of the USSR and the collapse of the Soviet Empire require an objective analysis, which in no case can be reduced to identifying external (hostile) and internal (subversive) influence, i.e. to a "conspiracy theory". The external pressure of the liberal-democratic West on the USSR was truly enormous, and the activities of “subversive elements” within the country were extremely effective and coordinated. But both of these factors became decisive only in a situation when the existence of the Soviet Empire entered a stage of internal crisis, which had deep and natural causes rooted in the very specifics of the Soviet system and the Soviet system. Without understanding these internal reasons for the collapse and their analysis, any attempts to restore the USSR (and especially to create a New Empire) will be futile and unpromising. Moreover, any purely inertial conservatism in this matter can only worsen the situation.
Let us identify several factors that led the Soviet Union to geopolitical and socio-economic collapse.
Firstly, at the ideological level, during the entire existence of the socialist regime, purely national, traditional, spiritual elements were never introduced into the general complex of communist ideology. Being largely national-communist de facto, it was never transformed into one de jure, which hindered the organic development of Russian-Soviet society, gave rise to double standards and ideological contradictions, and undermined clarity and awareness in the implementation of geopolitical and socio-political projects. Atheism, materialism, progressivism, "enlightenment ethics", etc. were deeply alien to Russian Bolshevism and the Russian people as a whole. In practice, these provisions borrowed from Marxism (by the way, and in Marxism itself, which are rather arbitrary elements of a kind of tribute to old-fashioned positivist humanism in the style of Feuerbach) were understood by Russian communists in the key of folk-mystical, sometimes unorthodox eschatological aspirations, and not as the rationalistic fruits of Western European culture. However, the ideology of National Bolshevism, which could find more adequate, more Russian terms for the new socio-political system, was never formulated. Consequently, sooner or later the limitations and inadequacy of such an ideologically contradictory structure were bound to have a negative impact. This especially made itself felt in the late Soviet period, when senseless dogmatism and communist demagoguery finally crushed all ideological life in society. This “freezing” of the ruling ideology and the persistent refusal to introduce organic, national and natural components into it for the Russian people resulted in the collapse of the entire Soviet system. Responsibility for this lies not only with the “agents of influence” and “anti-Soviet”, but, first of all, with the central Soviet ideologists of both the “progressive” and “conservative” wings. The Soviet Empire was both ideologically and actually destroyed by the communists. To recreate it in the same form and with the same ideology is now not only impossible, but also pointless, since even hypothetically this will reproduce the same preconditions that have already led to the destruction of the state once.
Secondly, at the geopolitical and strategic level, the USSR was uncompetitive in the long term to resist the Atlanticist Western bloc. From a strategic point of view, land borders are much more vulnerable than sea borders, and at all levels (number of border troops, cost of military equipment, use and deployment of strategic weapons, etc.) After World War II, the USSR found itself in an unequal position compared with the capitalist bloc of the West, grouped around the United States. The USA had a gigantic island base (the American continent), completely controlled and surrounded on all sides by oceans and seas, which were not difficult to defend. Plus the US controlled almost everything coastal zones in the South and West of Eurasia, creating a gigantic threat to the USSR and at the same time remaining practically out of reach of potential destabilizing actions of the Soviet Union. The division of Europe into Eastern (Soviet) and Western (American) only complicated geopolitical situation The USSR in the West, increasing the volume of land borders and placing it close to a strategic potential enemy, and in a situation of passive hostility of the European peoples themselves, who found themselves in the position of hostages in a geopolitical duel, the meaning of which was not obvious to them. The same thing happened in the southern direction in Asia and the Far East, where the USSR had immediate neighbors either controlled by the West (Pakistan, Afghanistan, pre-Khomeinist Iran) or rather hostile powers of a non-Soviet socialist orientation (China). In this situation, the USSR could acquire relative stability only in two cases: either by rapidly advancing to the oceans in the West (to the Atlantic) and in the South (to the Indian Ocean), or by creating neutral political blocs in Europe and Asia that were not under the control of any one country. from the superpowers. This concept (of neutral Germany) was tried to be proposed by Stalin, and after his death by Beria. The USSR (together with the Warsaw Pact), from a geopolitical point of view, was too big and too small at the same time. Maintaining the status quo was beneficial only to the United States and Atlanticism, since at the same time the military, industrial and strategic potential of the USSR was increasingly exhausted, and the power of the United States, a protected island, was increasing. Sooner or later, the Eastern Bloc was bound to collapse. Consequently, the reconstruction of the USSR and the Warsaw bloc is not only almost impossible, but also unnecessary, because even in the case of (almost incredible) success it will only lead to the revival of an obviously doomed geopolitical model.
Third, administrative structure The USSR was based on a secular, purely functional and quantitative understanding of intrastate division. Economic and bureaucratic centralism did not take into account either the regional, much less the ethnic and religious characteristics of the internal territories. The principle of leveling and purely economic structuralization of society led to the creation of such rigid systems that suppressed, and at best “preserved” forms of natural national life various peoples, including (and to a greater extent) the Russian people themselves. The territorial principle operated even when nominally we were talking about national republics, autonomies or districts. At the same time, the process of regional-ethnic leveling became more and more distinct as the entire Soviet political system “aged”, which towards its last stage was increasingly leaning towards the type of Soviet “nation-state” rather than the Empire. Nationalism, which largely contributed to the creation of the USSR in the early stages, in the end became a purely negative factor, as excessive centralization and unification began to give rise to natural protest and discontent. The atrophy of the imperial principle, the ossification of bureaucratic centralism, the desire for maximum rationalization and purely economic productivity gradually created from the USSR a political monster that has lost its life and is perceived as the forcefully imposed totalitarianism of the center. Some communist theses of literally understood "internationalism" are largely responsible for this. Consequently, this aspect of the Soviet model, which operates not with a specific ethnic group, culture, religion, but with abstract “population” and “territory,” should under no circumstances be revived. On the contrary, we should get rid of the consequences of such a quantitative approach as soon as possible, the echoes of which are so tragically reflected today in the issue of Chechnya, Crimea, Kazakhstan, Karabakh conflict, Abkhazia, Transnistria, etc.
These four main aspects of the former Soviet model are the main factors in the collapse of Soviet statehood, and they are responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Empire. It is quite natural that with a hypothetical re-creation of the USSR, radical conclusions should be drawn in this regard and radically destroy those reasons that have already historically doomed a great nation to state disaster.
It is generally accepted that the collapse of the USSR was inevitable, and this point of view is held not only by those who considered it a “prison of nations”, or “the last of the endangered species - a relic” - a “multinational empire”, as an expert on problems of interethnic relations in the USSR put it M. Mandelbaum in the preface to the almanac of articles published by the American Council on Foreign Relations on the eve of the collapse of the USSR.*
3. Geopolitical position of Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
Russian foreign policy at the end of the 20th century. has become more defined, forward-looking and geopolitically sensitive. But serious problems remain related to the possibilities of its implementation. They are due to such circumstances as: the discrepancy between ideas in our country and abroad about the future of Russia, incl. about its positions in the world order; risks of new isolation of the country; the emergence of alternative geopolitical models that do not take into account or infringe on the interests of our state.
To realistically assess the possibilities of Russian geopolitical projects embedded in the country’s foreign policy in the second half of the 1990s, it is necessary to once again analyze the features of the current situation. The geopolitical position of a state is determined not only by physical geography, but also by changes in the global geopolitical order and geo-economic processes. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia's geopolitical status declined. In the post-Soviet space, not excluding parts of the territory of the Russian Federation itself, external centers of power began to establish themselves. Disintegration processes have called into question Russia's geopolitical subjectivity.
The current geopolitical position of our country in the world can be viewed from two points of view. In the first case, Russia is assessed as the geographic center of the global system (heartland) and the integration core of Eurasia. The idea of Russia as a kind of “bridge” between Europe and Asia is also widespread (this also has a philosophical justification: domestic thinkers, in particular N. Berdyaev, spoke of Russia as a “mediator” between the West and the East).
Modern Russia retains its geopolitical potential as the center of Eurasia, but with disabilities use, which leads to its transformation into a regional power with a tendency to further decline in geopolitical status. Economic weakness (according to IMEMO data for 1998, our country produces only 1.7% of world GDP), lack of state will and public consensus on development paths do not allow the implementation of the heartland model in its new interpretation: Russia as the integration core of Eurasia.
The geopolitical structure of the post-Soviet space is changing qualitatively, which is losing its original “Russian-centrism”. The CIS, which includes all the former Soviet republics except the three Baltic ones, is very ineffective. The main factors restraining its collapse are the dependence of many post-Soviet states on Russian fuel raw materials, other economic considerations, and, to a lesser extent, cultural and historical ties. However, as a geopolitical and geo-economic center, Russia is clearly weak. Meanwhile, European countries are actively interacting with the post-Soviet republics, especially Germany, Turkey with its attempts to restore the unity of the Turkic world “from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China,” China (Central Asia), the USA (Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia), etc. On status Uzbekistan and Ukraine are claiming new regional powers, which Western geostrategists see as a natural counterweight to Russia and its “imperial ambitions” regarding the territories of the former USSR (Brzezinski’s idea).
Post-Soviet states are included in a number of geopolitical unions alternative to the CIS (European, Turkic, Islamic and other types of integration). Their role is underestimated in Russia, where there is still a strong belief that “they will not get away from us.” New ones are emerging on the borders of the Russian Federation regional systems cooperation. In some of them she takes part as much as she can - the Baltic, Black Sea, Caspian, Asia-Pacific systems, but in a number of cases the unification takes place without her presence. The countries of Central Asia are actively interacting. Meetings of the “troika” (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan) and the “five” (the same plus Turkmenistan and Tajikistan) regularly take place here, formulating their special interests. As an alternative to the CIS, this region is considering its own Central Asian Union, Turkic integration (including Turkey) or the unification of Muslim countries within the framework of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. A characteristic event is the meeting in Dushanbe (December 1999) of the heads of government of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, dedicated to the development of the Central Asian Community in the 21st century.
An important geopolitical phenomenon is the consolidation of Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan (the association is called GUAM); in 1999, Uzbekistan (from now on - GUUAM) joined the process. This bloc is intended as a geopolitical counterbalance Russian influence in the post-Soviet space. Ukraine is very active here, whose leaders have repeatedly exchanged visits with the heads of the countries that make up GUUAM. Official Kyiv, with the encouragement of the West, is trying to play the role of a geopolitical alternative to Moscow. In addition, the experience of recent years shows: in Eastern Europe, the ideas of a union of any configuration, but without Russia, are, as a rule, projects of an alliance against Russia, which means that the prospects for recreating the medieval Balto-Pontic belt (the “cordon sanitaire” along its western border) should cause our state has concerns.
Already being decided important task overcoming the CIS countries' transport dependence on Russia. For example, the Central Asian states are “cutting a window” to the Indian Ocean. The Tejen - Serakhs - Mashhad railway was built, connecting Turkmenistan with Iran, which gives the countries of the region access to this ocean (which in the future will also be useful for Russia, especially in the case of the construction of the North - South transport corridor along the relatively short route Kazakh Eraliev - Krasnovodsk - Kizil56 Atrek - Iran). Options for an alternative communication axis connecting Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan are being considered. The idea of the Great Silk Road (GSR) has been revived, which almost completely removes the southern neighbors of the Russian Federation from its influence on communications. It is unlikely that Caspian (Azerbaijani) oil will be transited through Russia: oil pipelines leading to Georgia (Supsa) and Turkey (Ceyhan) are now considered promising. Only oil exports from Kazakhstan can go through the port of Novorossiysk. In addition, it is natural for Turkmenistan to introduce visas for Russians. Our country itself gave the reason for such actions, accusing Georgia and Azerbaijan of supporting Chechen separatists and initiating the process of establishing a visa regime with these countries. In fact, this means their exit from the CIS.
As a result, the CIS participants “scatter”, reorienting themselves to other geopolitical centers. Only the Moscow-Minsk axis remains geopolitically stable: it strengthens the unity of Eurasia on a pro-Russian basis and prevents the creation of the Balto-Pontic belt. Russia is clearly on the path to losing its geopolitical role as the center of Eurasia. Based on this circumstance, many Western researchers already believe that the main global processes are determined by the relations between America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region (APR).
The geopolitical unity of the Russian Federation itself is in question; the National Republics are developing their external relations, guided by ethnocultural criteria. In a number of them, Turkish influence increased, especially in the North Caucasus and the Volga-Ural region (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan). In republics with a Muslim population, the influence of Saudi Arabia and Iran is felt (to a lesser extent). Islamic countries even compete for such influence. The result of geopolitical stratification Russian space There was a de facto "autarky" of Chechnya, and the North Caucasus as a whole became a risk zone within Russian borders.
Geopolitical problems are also associated with other regions of the Russian Federation. Thus, the Far East remains an abandoned outskirts of Russia and is forced to independently develop ties with China, Japan, etc. The exclave Kaliningrad region is in a difficult situation, at the same time maintaining the role of the country’s western military outpost. In this problematic situation, pressure from neighboring countries claiming parts of Russian territory (Karelia, Pskov region, border with China, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) is increasing.
After the collapse of the USSR, Russia's access to the sea was severely limited. The role of geopolitical “windows” is played by: in the Baltic Sea, St. Petersburg with the Leningrad region (it is clear that the Kaliningrad exclave does not count here); on the Black Sea - Krasnodar Territory (Novorossiysk) and Rostov Region (attempts to revive Taganrog); in the Caspian - Astrakhan (Dagestan is excluded due to ethnopolitical problems); on the Pacific Ocean - Primorsky Territory and (much less) Khabarovsk Territory, Sakhalin and Kamchatka. It is important that the Baltic and Black Seas are classified as “closed”, because the straits are controlled by other powers (hence the minimal geopolitical significance of the Baltic and Black Sea fleets). The Sea of Japan is also “closed”. Therefore, the Kola and Kamchatka peninsulas are of particular military strategic importance - the only territories of Russia with access to open spaces The World Ocean: the Northern and Pacific fleets are based here, respectively [Kolosov and Treyvish 1992].
The role of our country in the quality of transit hub. Really working international communications are now passing Russia. Relations between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are mainly carried out by sea, bypassing its territory (sea transportation is quite cheap). Russian land communications are also not operational. But the GSR is being recreated in the form of a trans-Eurasian corridor connecting East Asia and Europe by land. Work begins on the implementation of the transport corridor project - "Europe - Caucasus - Central Asia" (TRACECA), which finds support both in China and Japan, and in the European Union (especially in Germany). The TRACECA project was approved in 1993 at a conference in Brussels (the leaders of eight states of Transcaucasia and Central Asia participated; later Mongolia, Ukraine and Moldova joined the program). And in September 1998, a meeting of the leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria was held in Baku, where an agreement was adopted on the development of a transport corridor, transit and communications.
Thus, the trans-Eurasian corridor, due to geopolitical changes at the end of the 20th century. must bypass the largest state that considers itself the center of Eurasia - Russia. The most important highway of the future is supposed to be laid from China through Kazakhstan (Kyrgyzstan), Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia to Turkey and further to Europe (via Turkey and Bulgaria or through Ukraine, Moldova and Romania). Theoretically, its “northern” version is still possible from Europe through Belarus or Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan with access through Turkmenistan to Iran and the Indian Ocean, i.e. simpler in terms of the number of boundaries overcome. But the West today supports the option of bypassing our territory, preferring not to make its relations with the Asia-Pacific region dependent on unstable Russia (despite the fact that the internal political stability of a number of GSR countries is even more questionable). Russia is paying such a high price for the geopolitical disintegration of the USSR space with the loss of Transcaucasia and Central Asia, its “soft underbelly.”
True, there are vulnerabilities in the emerging belt of small states to the south and southwest of Russia's borders. Ethnopolitical instability is typical for XinjiangUyghur autonomous region China, bordering Central Asian countries. The location of the connection between the HSR and Chinese communications has not been determined. This is claimed by Kazakhstan, which is already connected to China in transport terms, and by Kyrgyzstan, which can be supported by Kazakhstan’s geopolitical rivals (in this case, it is necessary to build roads in the high mountainous regions of the Tien Shan, which the Chinese are ready for). A special position is occupied by Iran and Armenia, pushed aside from the GSR. They insist on using their land communications, but other participants in the project, for geopolitical reasons and with the support of the West, propose using a ferry from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan (bypassing Iran) and a road directly connecting Azerbaijan with Georgia (bypassing Armenia). Finally, communication between Georgia and Ukraine is planned to be carried out by sea, since land communications pass through semi-independent Abkhazia and Russia.
So on southern outskirts In the post-Soviet space and in South-Eastern Europe, a “new rimland” is being formed, covering the “Eurasian heartland” in a semi-ring. Russia turns out to be the remote northeastern corner of Eurasia, located on the sidelines trade routes. Existing communications, such as the Trans-Siberian Railway, are poorly used as a transit “bridge”; the prospects for their reconstruction are unclear (although Japan has shown interest in the reconstruction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, it is investing money in the reconstruction of the roads that make up the HSR). At the turn of the century, Russia poorly used its “triple” geopolitical potential: the integration core of Eurasia, a transit state and a developed economic center. In the meantime, we have to talk only about potential, prospects, opportunities, and not about decisions, actions and achievements.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we will summarize the results and draw appropriate conclusions.
The implementation of economic reforms with the subsequent abolition of the USSR and a gradual transition to the market caused an abundant flow of contradictory discussions about the collapse of the so-called. Soviet Empire. But it should be noted that the collapse of the USSR was not the collapse of a classical empire. Let us note once again: the collapse of a unique multinational country did not occur for natural reasons, but mainly at the will of politicians pursuing their goals, contrary to the will of the majority of peoples living in the USSR in those years.
In 1978, Collins put forward several general provisions relating to territorial expansion and contraction of states. When, two years later, Collins, having formalized his principles and given them quantitative form, applied them to the Soviet Union, the conclusions he obtained completely contradicted the generally accepted point of view. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many American politicians and interest groups expressed alarm over the supposedly rampant Soviet military buildup that threatened the United States and its allies. Collins foresaw the onset of a period of instability in the USSR, partly due to the excessive military-imperial expansion of the Soviet power. In the long term, such instability could lead to the disintegration of the “Russian Empire”, incl. to the Soviet Union's loss of control over Eastern Europe and its own collapse. He foresaw that the disintegration of the central power of the Russian state would be a precondition for the emergence of powerful ethnic separatist movements. The scientist noted that the formal mechanism for the dismemberment of the Soviet Union already exists in the form of 15 union republics with nominal autonomy and their own state institutions. This federal structure, while rendered meaningless under a strong central government, supports ethnic identities while at the same time providing an organizational framework that allows for the emergence of truly independent states once the power of the center is seriously weakened. Collins believed that the disintegration of the Soviet Union he predicted would most likely occur under the leadership of dissident communist politicians, and that these favorable structural opportunities would encourage some communist leaders to align themselves with regional ethnic groups.
Much of his analysis seems accurate and insightful today. The collapse of the USSR, however, was also predicted by other observers. But in contrast to their expectations that it would be the result of a war with China or the uprising of the Islamic republics of the USSR, Collins, for the most part, pointed to the true reasons for the collapse that occurred. The main drawback of the forecast was its timing. According to the scientist, the disintegration of the Soviet Union should have taken many decades.
Collins' analysis was carried out along three dimensions: a) the principles of this model as applied to the history of the Russian Empire over a long period of time; b) the applicability of the model to the collapse of the Soviet Union; c) its sources in Weber's social theory, as well as aspects of Weber's thinking that Collins may have missed. Collins lists five geopolitical principles that outline the factors that influence the expansion, contraction, or stability of national borders over time. long periods time. These principles concern mainly the ability of a state to wage war and control its population.
1. Advantage in size and resources. All other things being equal, large and resource-rich states win wars; therefore they expand, while smaller and poorer ones contract.
2. Advantage in location.. States bordering militarily powerful countries in fewer directions, i.e. “peripheral” are in an advantageous position compared to states that have powerful neighbors in a greater number of directions, i.e. with "core" ones.
3. Fragmentation of core states. Core territories facing adversaries on multiple fronts tend to fragment over the long term into an ever-increasing number of small states.
4. Decisive wars and turning points.
5. Overexpansion and disintegration. Even “world” empires may be subject to weakening and long-term decline if they achieve excessive, from a military point of view, expansion.
So, more than 10 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Collins compiled a plausible scenario for the future collapse, based on the principles of geopolitics and ethnopolitical science. In its external characteristics, this scenario seemed to correspond to what actually happened.
Collins's opponents, in particular the political scientist G. Derlugyan, argue that nuclear weapons, despite their "symbolic significance", lead to deadlock"in interstate rivalry. Competition was imposed on the Soviet Union in non-military areas - economic, political, cultural and ideological production, where America's significant advantages left it no chance of victory." The USSR basically ensured its territorial security in the traditional sense (which is why Gorbachev could afford to take numerous unilateral initiatives in the field of arms limitation), but in the post-Stalin era, something more was required from Soviet leaders and from Soviet society, and, above all, concern for improving the level and quality of life associated with changes in the structure of the population (growth of the urban population employed in industry).
Literature
1. Boffa J. History of the Soviet Union. M: International Relations, 2004.
2. Butenko V. Where we are coming from and where we are going. Lenizdat, 1990.
3. Weber M. Selected works. M.: Progress, 1990.
4. Derlugyan G.M. 2000. The collapse of the Soviet system and its potential consequences: bankruptcy, segmentation, degeneration. - "Polis", No. 2, 3.
5. Collins R. 2000. Prediction in macrosociology: the case of the Soviet collapse. - "Time of the World", Almanac. Vol. 1: Historical macrosociology in the 20th century. Novosibirsk
6. International Yearbook: Politics and Economics, 1991
7. International Yearbook: Politics and Economics, 2001.
8. Sanderson S. Megahistory and its paradigms // Time of the World. Almanac. Issue 1. Historical macrosociology in the twentieth century / Ed. N.S. Rozova. Novosibirsk, 2000. P. 69.
9. Tikhonravov Yu.V. Geopolitics: Textbook. - M.: INFRA-M, 2000. -269 p.
10. Igor Kommersant-Bunin. Union republics: putsch as an indicator chemical composition// Kommersant, No. 34 dated August 26, 1991.
11. Olga Vasilyeva. “Republics during the coup” // In the collection “Putch. Chronicle of troubled days." - Progress Publishing House, 1991.
12. Resolutions of the State Emergency Committee No. 1 and No. 2
13. B. N. Yeltsin. Biography. 1991-1995 // Website of the Yeltsin Foundation
THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN Rus'
Following Kiev, Christianity gradually comes to other cities of Kievan Rus: Chernigov, Novgorod, Rostov, Vladimir-Volynsky, Polotsk, Turov, Tmutarakan, where dioceses are created. Under Prince Vladimir, the vast majority of the Russian population accepted the Christian faith, and Kievan Rus became a Christian country.
Residents of the north and east of Rus' showed much greater resistance. The Novgorodians rebelled against Bishop Joachim, who was sent to the city, in 991. To conquer the Novgorodians, a military expedition of the Kievites, led by Dobrynya and Putyata, was required. Residents of Murom refused to allow Vladimir's son, Prince Gleb, into the city and declared their desire to preserve the religion of their ancestors. Similar conflicts arose in other cities of the Novgorod and Rostov lands. The reason is so hostility is the population's commitment to traditional rituals; it was in these cities that elements of a religious pagan organization developed (regular and stable rituals, a separate group of priests - magi, magicians). In southern, western cities and rural areas pagan beliefs existed more as superstitions than as a formal religion. In rural areas, resistance to Christianity was not so active. Farmers and hunters who worshiped the spirits of rivers, forests, fields, and fire most often combined faith in these spirits with elements of Christianity.
Dual faith, which existed in villages for decades and even centuries, was only gradually overcome through the efforts of many, many generations of clergy. And now everything is still being overcome. It should be noted that elements of pagan consciousness are highly stable (in the form of various superstitions). So many of Vladimir’s orders, designed to strengthen the new faith, were imbued with a pagan spirit.
One of the problems after formal baptism was the education of subjects in the Christian spirit. This task was performed by foreign priests, mainly immigrants from Bulgaria, whose inhabitants adopted Christianity back in the 9th century. The Bulgarian Church had independence from the Patriarch of Constantinople, in particular, it could elect the head of the church. This circumstance played a big role in the development of the church in Rus'. Not trusting the Byzantine emperor, Vladimir decided to subordinate the Russian Church to the Bulgarian, and not the Greek, hierarchs. This order was maintained until 1037 and was convenient because Bulgaria used service books in the Slavic language, close to spoken Russian.
Vladimir's time cannot be considered a period of harmony between government and society. Historical meaning at this time was as follows:
Creating conditions for full-blooded cooperation of the tribes of the East European Plain with other Christian tribes and nationalities.
Rus' was recognized as a Christian state, which determined a higher level of relations with European countries and peoples.
The immediate consequence of the adoption of Christianity by Vladimir and its spread in the Russian land was, of course, the construction of churches. Vladimir immediately after baptism ordered churches to be built and placed in the places where the idols had previously stood: thus, the Church of St. Basil was erected on the hill where the idol of Perun and other gods stood. Vladimir ordered to build churches and assign priests to them in other cities as well, and to bring people to baptism in all cities and villages. Here two questions arise - in which cities and regions and to what extent was Christianity spread under Vladimir, and then - where did the clergy at the churches come from? There is news that the Metropolitan with bishops sent from Constantinople, with Dobrynya, Uncle Vladimirov, and with Anastas went to the north and baptized the people; Naturally, they first walked along the great waterway, up the Dnieper to the northern end of this route - Novgorod the Great. Many people were baptized here, a church was built for new Christians; but from the first time Christianity was not widespread among all the inhabitants; From Novgorod, in all likelihood, the preachers went by water to the east, to Rostov. This ended the work of the first Metropolitan Michael in 990; in 991 he died. It is easy to imagine how his death must have saddened Vladimir in his new position; the prince could hardly be consoled by other bishops and boyars; soon, however, a new metropolitan, Leon, was called from Constantinople; with the help of Bishop Joachim Korsunyan, who he installed in Novgorod, paganism was completely crushed here. Here is an interesting piece of news about this from the so-called Joachim Chronicle: “When they learned in Novgorod that Dobrynya was going to baptize, they gathered a veche and swore they would not let him into the city, not to give idols to be overthrown”; and exactly when Dobrynya arrived, the Novgorodians swept away the large bridge and came out against him with weapons; Dobrynya began to persuade them kind words, but they didn’t want to hear it, they took out two stone-shooting machines (vices) and placed them on the bridge; The chief among the priests, i.e., especially persuaded them not to submit. their wise men, a certain Bogomil, nicknamed the Nightingale for his eloquence.
The Russian Church, which developed in cooperation with the state, became a force that united residents of different lands into a cultural and political community.
The transfer of the traditions of monastic life to Russian soil gave originality to the Slavic colonization of the northern and eastern Slavs Kyiv State. Missionary activities on lands inhabited by Finnish-speaking and Turkic tribes, not only drew these tribes into the orbit of Christian civilization, but also somewhat softened the painful processes of the formation of a multinational state. This state developed on the basis not of a national, but of a religious idea. It was not so much Russian as Orthodox.
When the people lost faith, the state collapsed. The state collapse of Rus' reflected the ongoing collapse of the ethnic system: although Russians still lived in all the principalities and they all remained Orthodox, the sense of ethnic unity between them was destroyed. The adoption of Christianity contributed to the widespread spread of literacy in Rus', the enjoyment of enlightenment, and the emergence of rich literature translated from Greek language literature, the emergence of our own Russian literature, the development of church architecture and icon painting.
Since the Christianization of ancient Russian society was an ideological action undertaken by the grand ducal authorities in order to illuminate feudal relations, the introduction of Kievan Rus to Christianity stimulated the socio-cultural development of our ancestors not directly, but indirectly. The development of the process of Christianization of some types of socio-cultural activities was accompanied by simultaneous opposition to others. For example, while encouraging painting (frescoes and icons were needed for religious purposes), the newly established church condemned sculpture (there is no place for sculpture in an Orthodox church). Cultivating a cappella singing, which accompanies Orthodox worship, she condemned instrumental music, which had no liturgical use. Folk theater (buffoonery) was persecuted, oral folk art was condemned, and monuments of pre-Christian Slavic culture were exterminated as “pagan heritage.”
Regarding the adoption of Christianity in Ancient Rus', only one thing can be said unequivocally: it became a new round in the development of social relations of the Eastern Slavs.
Answers to test tasks.
Exercise 1.
1.What were the names in Rus' of the participants in military predatory campaigns, immigrants from Northern Europe, the founders of the Old Russian state? Varangians.
2. The upper class of feudal lords in Rus' in the 9th–13th centuries Boyars .
3. People's Assembly in Rus' in the 9th–12th centuries. Veche.
4. Type of land ownership in Russia, family estate, inherited. Patrimony .
5. Armed detachments under the prince in Ancient Rus', who participated
in campaigns, management and personal farming. Squad.
6. The Council under the Prince in the Old Russian State was subsequently a permanent estate-representative body under the Grand Duke. Boyar Duma .
a) under an agreement b) took out a loan c) as a result of military actions Answer B.
8.What was the name of the collection of tribute by the ancient Russian prince and his retinue from free community members? Polyudye.
9. Conditional ownership in Russia at the end of the 15th – beginning of the 18th centuries. Estate.
10. Unofficial government under Ivan the Terrible in 40–50. XVI century The chosen one is glad.
11. The highest class representative body in Russia, created by Ivan the Terrible in 1549. Zemsky Sobor.
12.What were the names of the central, state government bodies in Russia? XVI V. - Boyar Duma, XVII V. - Senate, XIX V. - State Council.
13. The system of maintaining officials in Rus' at the expense of the local population. Feeding .
14. Form of peasant dependence: attachment to the land and subordination to the administrative and judicial power of the feudal lords. Serfdom .
15.What is the name of the policy of forced centralization, without sufficient political and economic prerequisites in order to strengthen the personal power of the king? Oprichnina .
16.What was the name of the systemic crisis Russian state late 16th – early 17th centuries? Time of Troubles .
17. The process of transition from a traditional feudal society to a new industrial one. Modernization .
18. A type of state power characteristic of Russia in the 18th – early 20th centuries, when all legislative, executive, and judicial power was concentrated in the hands of the monarch. Monarchy .
19. List the main directions of Russian social thought of the 19th century. a) those who advocated the development of Russia along the Western European path - Westernism, b) defending the original path of development of Russia- Slavophiles .
20. Name the main political and ideological trends of the 30-50s. XIX century Conservatism, liberalism, radicalism.
21.List the basic principles of the “theory of official nationality.” Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.
22. List the main trends of revolutionary populism: rebellious, propagandistic, conspiratorial .
23. Radical revolution, deep qualitative change in the development of society, the transition from an outdated socio-economic system to a more progressive one. Revolution.
24. A form of government in which the highest state power belongs to an elected representative body, characteristic of the Soviet period of development. Republic.
25.What was the name of the form of power of the working class in alliance with the poorest peasantry, was established as a result of the socialist revolution. Dictatorship of the proletariat.
26.What was the name of the economic policy of the Soviet government?
a) from 1918 to 1921 - policy of war communism,b) from 1921 to 1929. - new economic policy (NEP).
27.The transition of private enterprises and sectors of the economy into state ownership, the policy of the Bolsheviks in the first years of Soviet power. Nationalization.
28. The process of creating large-scale machine production, the introduction of machine technology into all sectors of the economy. Industrialization .
29. Transformation of small individual farms into large public farms. Collectivization.
30. A model of the socio-political structure of society, characterized by the complete subordination of a person to political power, comprehensive control of the state over society. Totalitarianism.
31. Code name period of the history of the Soviet state from the mid-50s to the mid-60s. Thaw.
32. What is the name of the period of international relations from the second half of the 40s to the beginning of the 90s? The twentieth century, characterized by the confrontation between two world socio-economic systems. Cold War era.
Task 2
2.a)2, b)4, c)5, d)3, e)1
6.1d), 2e), 3c), 4b). 5a).
7.a), b), d), g).
8.c) 1547, i)1549, g), 1550, a)1551, h)1555, d)1555, b)1555-1556, f)1565, e)1613.
10.b), e), f), g).
11. 1-e), 2-d), 3-a), 4-c), 5-b).
a) 1714 - Peter 1 founded the Academy of Sciences and the library,
c) 1721 - declared Russia an Empire.
d) 1708 - provincial reform, 1719 - founded 12 colleges
e) 1711 - wedding of Peter and Catherine 1.
f) 1712 - St. Petersburg is the capital.
g) 1718 - established the Admiralty Board.
h) 1722 - approved the law on order civil service in the Russian Empire and the report card in the authorities.
13.b), d), g), c), a, f).
14.a), b), d), f).
15.a), b), d).
16.a), d), f), i).
18. d), i), a), f), c), h), e), b), g)
19. c), i), k).
20. b), d), e), g)
22. c), d), b), g), a), e), h), f)
24. VTsIK - All-Russian Central Executive Committee
RSDLP - Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
GOELRO - abbreviation for State Commission for Electrification of Russia
VKP(b) - All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions
Red Army - Workers' and Peasants' Red Army
CPSU - Communist Party of the Soviet Union
State Emergency Committee - State Committee on the state of emergency in the USSR
25. a), b), d), g)
27. a-2; b-2; at 3; g-1; d-1; e-4; f-4; z-2; u-1; k-4; l-1; m-4
Election of B. N. Yeltsin as President of the Russian Federation
Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On the phased con-
constitutional reform and dissolution of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation
First war in Chechnya – 1994
Task 3.
Horizontally: 6 Impeachment; 3Christianity; 5. Entente; 7Unia; 9 Formation; 11 Uprising; 13 Dictatorship; 15 Heretic; 17 Trekhpolye; 19 pacification; 21 Civilization; 23 Strike; 25 Label; 27 Empire; 29 Perestroika; 31 Historiography; 33 Occupation; 35 Methodology; 37NATO; 39 Serf; 41 Reformation; 43 Kamenev; 47 feudal lord; 49 Renaissance; 51 defaults; 53 Nevsky; 55 Nationalization; 57Donskoy; 59 Senate; 61Monk; 63 Veche; 65 Romantics; 67batch; 69 World; 71 Rear; 73 Absolutism; 75 Ermak; 77 Repression; 79 Decree; 81 Opposition; 83 Five-Year Plan; 85 subjectivity; 87 Prince.
Vertically: 2 Theory; 4 Cathedral; 6 Industrialization; 8 Manufactory; 10 Gorbachev; 12 Tips; 14 Destiny; 16Intervention; 18 Communism; 20 Crimean; 22 Rotation; 24 Polis; 26 Khrushchev; 28 war; 30 Abroad; 32 Strike; 34 History; 36 Kurchatov; 38 Periodization; 40 Castro; 42 Thaw; 44 Gilyarovsky; 48 Volok; 50 True; 52 Covenant; 54 Yanaev; 56Oprichnina; 58 Revolution; 62 Stolypin; 64 Salavat; 66 Vyatichi; 68 Smerd; 70Community; 72 Atheism; 74 Orthodoxy; 76 Stagnation; 78 System; 79 Duma; 81 Terror; 82 Chronicle; 84 Tiun; 86 Life; 88 Plenum; 90 Hitler.
The collapse of the USSR: a pattern, an accident, a conspiracy?
The USSR is a great powerful power, where there is equality and unity, where there are no poor and rich, all people are equal. The huge country relied on the idea of socialism. So why did the USSR collapse? Why did the seemingly ideal country fall apart?
The ideal political system was not so ideal. The main reason was the country's economy; it was falling apart before our eyes. There were always huge queues where people stood for days. Shortages of goods generated dissatisfaction among citizens. The leaders did not care about producing the necessary products; heavy industry had prevailed in the country since the war; production technologies had long been outdated. The industry could not compete with other countries. The decline in oil prices as a result of its overproduction has shaken the country's already shaky economy. People didn’t want to work for the same, meager wages. salaries. The attitude towards work was of course at a very weak level. Another reason was the degradation of power. The administrative apparatus was old, and the new leadership was not an ardent supporter of socialism. People had no real choice of leaders of the country; only one candidate was nominated, already elected by the top of the government. Not an honest leadership that hid many facts, including the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The republics' exit from the Soviet Union dealt no small blow to the country's ideology. Drunkenness also served as a reason - people's absence from work worsened the situation of the country and affected the quality of goods. The collapse of Soviet ideology. The younger generation did not need socialism. Many looked to the West and wanted to live like them. The disclosure of many classified facts caused dissatisfaction with the country's government. The USA, the Cold War, the arms race and much more also took part directly in the collapse of the USSR.
Possible reasons for the collapse
· degradation of the power elites, a sharp aging of the top bureaucrats (the average age of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was already 75 years by 1980), which led first to the Age of Funerals, and then to the rise of Gorbachev due to his relatively young age (54 years at the time of his election 5th General Secretary of the CPSU);
· the incompetence of the union leadership, the selfish desire of the leaders of the union republics to get rid of the control of the central authorities and use Gorbachev’s democratic reforms to destroy the foundations of the state and society;
· deep internal crises and conflicts, including national ones: the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Transnistrian conflict, the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict, the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict;
· strong inequality in the development of the republics of the USSR, including in terms of shortages of goods, as well as the possibility of building a shadow economy;
· unsuccessful attempts to reform the Soviet system, which led to stagnation and then the collapse of the economy, which led to the collapse of the political system;
· crisis of confidence in the economic system: in the 1960-1970s, the main way to combat the inevitable shortage of consumer goods in a planned economy was to rely on mass production, simplicity and cheapness of materials; most enterprises worked in three shifts, producing similar products from low-quality materials quality. The quantitative plan was the only way assessing the efficiency of enterprises, quality control was minimized. The result of this was a decline in the quality of consumer goods produced in the USSR. The crisis of confidence in the quality of goods became a crisis of confidence in the entire economic system as a whole;
· a decline in world oil prices caused by overproduction, which shook the rather weak raw material economy of the USSR;
· growing dissatisfaction of the population associated with periodic food shortages (especially during the era of stagnation and Perestroika) and other essential and durable goods (refrigerators, televisions, toilet paper etc.), prohibitions and restrictions (on the size of the garden plot, etc.); a constant lag in living standards compared to developed Western countries and unsuccessful attempts to “catch up” with it;
· artificial closure of the country, which by the 80s had already become clear to the entire USSR, including the mandatory issuance of exit visas for traveling abroad (including to the countries of the socialist camp), bans on listening to enemy voices, and the suppression of a number of facts about problems within the USSR, as well as much more high level life in Western countries;
· Severe censorship in the press and on television. Lack of goods from capitalist countries on free sale with an ongoing and increasing shortage of goods;
· denial, and then sharp recognition of the problems of Soviet society - prostitution, drug addiction, alcoholism, criminalization of society and others. Active growth of the shadow economy;
· The Cold War, continuous financial assistance to the countries of the socialist camp, disproportionate development of the military-industrial complex to the detriment of other sectors of the country's economy;
· a number of man-made disasters (plane crashes, the Chernobyl accident, the crash of the Admiral Nakhimov, gas explosions, etc.) and the concealment of information about them;
· subversive activities of Western countries led by the United States, which was integral part“Cold War”, including through “agents of influence” within the leadership of the USSR - this assessment (with varying degrees of recognition of this factor as decisive) is expressed in some analyzes, in particular, by a number of former high-ranking leaders of the KGB of the USSR, as well as some communist movements .
The fall of the USSR ended the Cold War. Naturally, the victors in this war hastened to take credit for the collapse of their enemy, but for us it is much more important to analyze not the external, but the internal causes of this event. There was, of course, external pressure; the active and highly professional work of foreign intelligence services was of great importance. However, what happens inside is always decisive. The system could not have collapsed so quickly and painlessly if there had been no internal prerequisites for this. We have to admit that the collapse of the USSR was natural and inevitable.
Here two events should be distinguished: 1) the death of the USSR state as a union socialist republics; 2) the actual collapse of a single state entity and the emergence of independent states on the territory of the former USSR.
The second is due to the first. As long as the state declared socialism as its ideological basis, it was possible to unite rather heterogeneous elements. The economically and socially lagging Asian republics caught up, adapting to the voiced socialist ideals, while the Baltic republics, gravitating toward the West, were restrained in this endeavor, which was again justified by socialist ideology. Once socialism was dismantled, there was no platform left to realize geopolitical unity. The Asian republics have largely returned to their traditional way of life. The Baltic states have integrated into Europe. The Slavic republics, which preserved the mentality developed by Orthodoxy, found themselves in search of own path, in which the experience of community and conciliarity would be realized. The unified geopolitical structure was torn apart.
The fall of socialist statehood in the USSR was also predetermined. It is due to the dialectics of psychology Soviet man. While the state was experiencing objective difficulties, people believed that solving public problems had a higher priority than solving their private problems. The socialist nature of the state made it possible to solve social problems quite effectively, and the existence of the USSR seemed justified. Once the main difficulties were overcome, a person's private life came to the fore.
This attitude was embedded in the original message of socialist ideology. Socialism was supposed to provide a good life for the common man. Accordingly, the main criterion by which the quality of government was assessed was the standard of living of an individual. While objective difficulties made it possible to attribute this good life to a fairly distant future, the USSR was strong and socialism was attractive. When the time came to fulfill the promise, it turned out that the capitalist system was more suitable for realizing the concept of success in life. Having received a basic background of public goods of quite acceptable quality, and deciding that this is how it should be, the person wanted more. The principles of socialism, which binds a person to his social environment, began to be perceived as a hindrance, and capitalism, which encourages entrepreneurship and initiative, seemed more attractive. It was not possible to integrate the encouragement of entrepreneurship into socialism, and it could not have been possible, since the individualism required for this contradicted the emphasis on the importance of social values. As a result, the population preferred the possibility of individual well-being to the general, but smaller in the personal dimension, good.
I believe that the political system of the USSR has long been ineffective and has outlived its usefulness. And the fact that the country fell apart was a pattern and a confluence of certain circumstances.
The socialists tried to create a large, friendly and equal family. But as it turned out, not everyone wants to live in a stable and equal society, and in the end the USSR remained only on the pages of Russian history.