Lessons from the past. How Western values ​​destroyed the USSR

Thirty years ago, on September 5, 1991, the last in the history of the USSR, the V Congress of People's Deputies, ended. It ended like many other works of the hands of perestroika managers - self-dissolution. This event, as a rule, is bypassed in historical materials and analytical articles, focusing on brighter milestones of the collapse, however, from the point of view of the theory of state and law, it was the decisions made at the V Congress, being wholly and completely dictated by Western influence, that laid fundamental legislative basis for the collapse of the USSR.

Rights and freedoms - ready for disintegration

Before ingloriously approving self-dissolution, the Congress, which at that time was the highest body of state power in the Union, adopted two major bills: the law "On the State Power and Management Bodies of the USSR in the Transitional Period" and the Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms. In addition, by a separate act, the deputies of the Congress decided to declare a transitional period for the formation of a new system of state relations, as well as the preparation and signing of a new Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States. Thus, in fact, it was the V Congress, which acted as the "response" of the nomenklatura to the failure of the State Emergency Committee, became the penultimate nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union. The Belovezhskaya Agreements, completing the collapse, will be signed only three months later.



The Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms, adopted with pomp in the Kremlin, was supposed to mark the transition of the USSR to a new bright and democratic future, but in fact there is not a single point in it that has been fully implemented today in at least one of the former Soviet republics. At the same time, under the speeches about freedom and democracy, uttered so loudly from a high rostrum, the party elite, headed by Gorbachev, purposefully led the country to ruin.

And the westerners who applauded her acceptance policy were sincerely pleased, understanding where everything was going and already thinking about the redistribution of the Soviet legacy. Having distributed loans to the USSR - money that they could always print out - Western countries received unprecedented concessions from the Soviet leadership.

Struggle for the Soviet legacy

And the concessions were truly unprecedented. That is just the withdrawal of Soviet medium and short-range missiles from Europe and the abolition of the Warsaw Pact Organization - an association designed to counter NATO on European territory. But there was also the collapse of the socialist camp, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the GDR (the Americans, for example, have not left the FRG so far and are not going to leave) and much more.

It is clear that seeing all this, the United States and the countries of Western Europe thought of only one thing: how to divide the former zones of influence of the USSR among themselves.

To understand this, it is enough to simply ponder over one historical fact. The Masstricht Treaty, according to which, in fact, the current EU was created, was signed less than two months after the signing of the Belavezha Accords - on February 7, 1992. Cunning European politicians quickly realized that in order to profit from the Soviet legacy, one must represent at least some more or less unified force capable of wresting at least some of the influence from the ubiquitous Americans.

As a result, their calculation was justified. The United States received new military bases - in the form of the notorious expansion of NATO to the East. And the EU, over time, significantly increased its territory, annexing almost all Eastern European countries of the social bloc. The GDR was annexed to the FRG in advance - back in 1990. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and divided into two parts Czechoslovakia entered the EU later and in full force. Only Albania (now a candidate country) and Yugoslavia did not join the European Union. But after the deterioration of relations with the USSR in the 1960s, Albania no longer belonged to the “eastern” bloc, even if it remained a socialist country. And Yugoslavia was simply destroyed: bombed and divided into pieces between the peoples who inhabited it. What is indicative is that two of them, from the states formed on its ruins: Croatia and Slovenia, eventually (amazingly!) Also became part of the EU and NATO. In principle, if the USSR had not had nuclear weapons, something similar to the fate of Yugoslavia could certainly have been done with it.

Money and the consumer market

The Americans who won the Cold War, along with the Western Europeans who served them, did it for two reasons: money and the consumer market. With money it is clear - in the historical segment of the second half of the XNUMXth century, capitalism turned out to be a slightly more self-regulating system. A system where commodity-money relations have become the best "foolproof". In the USSR, by the time its first and last President came to power, there was no such protection.

The consumer market is much more complicated. In a command-and-control economics the leadership of the USSR simply criminally underestimated the influence exerted by Western goods on Soviet youth. What did it cost the Union to start producing jeans and sneakers on its own? What did it cost to flood the domestic market with a sufficient amount of comfortable clothes and shoes and other consumer goods? Why did a Soviet person, coming from abroad, look like a guest performer from Ali Baba's cave, bringing perfume, lipstick, electronics, coffee and other consumer goods and distributing them to relatives and friends? Was it really not clear that the well-being of the state is primarily the well-being of its people?

And still, even in spite of all these factors, the citizens of the USSR voted by an overwhelming majority to preserve the union. The vote, which despite the proclaimed course towards democratization, was subsequently completely ignored. Has at least one of the Western partners talked about this? Did he blame Gorbachev for not fulfilling the will of the people? Hardly. Everyone was silent and smiled, looking at how the "enemy" confidently followed the path of self-destruction.

Perestroika, glasnost, deficit

If the collapse of the Union, as a phenomenon, stood on "three pillars", then it would be perestroika, glasnost and deficit. The first two words even deserve a special form of use from the Americans, becoming the terms that entered the English language without translation: perestroika and glasnost. They were so interested in and subsequently delighted with the paintings unfolding in the USSR.

One of the key goals of perestroika was the growth of the economic potential of the Soviet Union. The result was a catastrophic decline in economic growth rates from + 2,3% in 1985 to an almost "free fall" of -11% in six years, as well as a tenfold decrease in the gold reserve and a devaluation of the ruble. At the same time, the problem of deficit, as you might guess, has not been resolved.

Glasnost, on the other hand, gave nothing but an awareness of how harmful and destabilizing the sudden and abrupt introduction of freedom of speech can be. The fact that in the West exists very conditionally and with a lot of restrictions, but nevertheless developed there for years, Gorbachev wanted to turn it on at the click of a switch. No, the "light", of course, lit up, only he not only made the first President of the USSR the last, but at the same time burned half the country with the fire of nationalism and separatism.

The Soviet system was much more socially oriented, truly revolutionary in every sense, but fell as a result of delaying urgent reforms in the Brezhnev era and their frenzied, monstrously unprofessional implementation under Gorbachev. Ultimately, perestroika was supposed to fill store shelves, not destroy the country.

And still, the collapse occurred more from the top than from the bottom. Rushing to power, the Democrats were ready to destroy the country, just to get the largest part of it in control. And then to rape the population of this part with ill-conceived reforms such as "shock therapy". In fact, it’s how to learn surgery on not a corpse - analytics built on the experience of previous economic systems, but on a living organism - the world's largest state.

Today, almost thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And if you do not take into account the first months of confusion after its collapse, then there would not be a day when someone in the post-Soviet space did not regret that the great, once common country no longer exists. The building of socialism with capitalist elements, as the Chinese successfully proved, did not require the disintegration of the state. And the constant glance at the hypocritical Western politicians does not lead to good. Distributing loans and negotiating with Moscow on friendship and cooperation - with one hand, with the other they will always strive to grab a fatter piece, sacrificing its interests for their own benefit. And we must not forget about it. Especially now, when the West again wants to impose its agenda, but now on Russia.