And no matter how great the evil, the night
is still quiet and beautiful, and yet in God's world there is and will be
truth, just as quiet and beautiful, and everything on earth is only waiting to
merge with the truth, as the moonlight merges with the night.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
More than
2 years have passed since Russia's attack on Ukraine. The Russians
seize Ukrainian land, burn and destroy cities, kill civilians, loot and send
stolen goods to Russia. Russians
living in Europe and the United States have to go through difficult times. They lose their jobs, change the Russian
names of their restaurants and shops to European ones, and try not to admit
that they are Russian when asked. How could the Russian nation lose its face to
such an extent? As we will see later, all this was quite accurately predicted by Russian thinkers of the 19th and early
20th centuries.
A bit of history
The
formation of the nation as we know it today began under Peter I the Great.
Before
Peter I, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was a closed medieval state built by Ivan IV
Terrible (1530–1584) with a vertical of power on the model of the Tatar-Mongol
invasion, with a small number of literate people. Even some boyars and
landowners could not write and read. There were many illiterate priests.
In
Europe, starting from the 10th century, an early renaissance began, Latin and
Greek texts were translated, and universities began to open.
From the
thirteenth century onwards, Italy became the center of the Renaissance, where
philosophy, literature, the visual arts, and science spread throughout Europe.
At the
beginning of the XVI century, the reformation of the church took place in
Europe. The reform was prepared by the
ideas of the Renaissance, but while the ideas of the Renaissance lived and
developed in a narrow circle of educated people, the Reformation embraced the
broad masses of the people and put into practice the ideas of freedom and
equality. Church schools taught the children of parishioners to read and
write. After the discovery of printing
in the middle of the XV century, almost every family had the opportunity to buy
a Bible in their native language.
The
Peasant War in Germany, inspired by the ideas of the Reformation, began in 1524
and covered vast territories. The peasants put forward 12 demands for economic
and religious freedoms. The revolt was suppressed in 1525, but in some areas
the peasants were guaranteed their rights and traditional freedoms.
A great
deal of work in science was done in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Great scientists Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Robert Hook, Robert Bailey
and many others worked at this time. In
the 17th century, the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London
were founded. Sebastian Bach composed
his Divine music.
Russia
lagged behind Europe by several centuries in education, science and art.
Peter I the Great (1672–1725) made a great effort to reduce this gap and achieved results. Peter invited scientists, engineers,
architects, builders, military specialists, and other educated people to
Russia. At the beginning of the XVIII century, the Academy of Sciences and the
University were founded in St. Petersburg. Peter gave a new name to the
Muscovite State - the Russian Empire.
Gradually,
science and art began to develop in Russia, and the intelligentsia
appeared. In the 19th and early 20th
centuries, Russia gave the world writers, composers and artists who are the
pride of world culture.
The works
of such writers as Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov have
been translated into many languages and are studied in schools and universities
around the world. The music of Russian composers Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev,
Shostakovich is performed all over the world.
But
nothing was done by Peter and little by the subsequent rulers to improve the life of the
people. The people remained poor and deprived of rights. The wealth of Russia
went to wars and the enlargement of the Russian Empire. The people were all illiterate. "Everywhere ignorance is a murderous
disgrace," wrote Pushkin.
The peasants belonging to the landlords were
bonded and were practically slaves. They could be bought, sold, beaten to death
with rods and exiled to Siberia without any trial. There was no Constitution in
Russia, there was complete lawlessness, so corruption at all levels was
omnipresent and omnipotent.
The
sorrowful hopeless life of the Russian people was depicted in many paintings by
Russian artists. I give 2 examples.
"Bargaining. A scene from serf life.
From the Recent Past" by the artist N Neverov
1866; Moscow, Tretyakov
Gallery
The painting depicts the sale of a serf girl.
"Barge Haulers on the Volga" (1870–1873) by the artist I Repin
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg
During a trip along the Volga, Repin seeing
barge haulers, said: "What a horror, however... People are harnessed
instead of cattle!
At the
beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon opened wide the gates of Russia to the West. The Russian officers who reached Paris saw a huge difference in the
standard of living and education of the peoples of Western countries and the
Russian people.
Russian thinkers began to understand that
Russia was on the wrong path, which had no future, and that the political
structure of Russia needed to be changed.
In the
1940s and 1950s, two political currents appeared: the Slavophiles and the
Westernizers.
Westernizers
believed that Russia should follow the Western European path. Slavophiles, on
the other hand, argued that it was necessary to look for one's own national
Russian idea, conditioned by the history of the country. Despite the
differences in philosophical views, both Slavophiles and Westernizers advocated
the abolition of serfdom, death penalty, corporal punishment, censorship, and the establishment of a
public court with the participation of elected representatives. Finally, in 1861, Tsar
Alexander II abolished serfdom, despite the resistance of the landlords and the
church. Alexander II carried out several
significant reforms. Judicial reform was accomplished, which recognized all
citizens as equal before the law. The population received the right to travel
abroad, many new newspapers and magazines were opened, and the pressure of
censorship decreased. An educational reform was done, new public
schools, both humanitarian and real, were opened.
In 1861, at the call of Herzen, the
so-called “going to the people” began. It was a broad, mostly unorganized
movement of young people: some studied the life of the common people, others
organized schools and workshops to teach
the peasants literacy and crafts.
But at
the same time, an extreme left-wing movement of the revolutionary part of the
intelligentsia, the so-called nihilists, appeared and began to develop. It called for a general revolt and the overthrow of the existing system. Nihilists
rejected generally
accepted values in society, traditional orders, ideals, norms of morality and
culture. Nihilists preached destruction. The nihilist Bazarov in Turgenev's
novel "Fathers and Sons" says that first it will be necessary to
clear the place, and building is no longer their business.
Predictions of the future
of Russia
Fyodor Mikhailovich
Dostoevsky
The future of Russia was predicted by the great
Dostoevsky (1821–1881) in the novels "Demons" (1871) and "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880). Much of what Dostoevsky spoke about came true during
the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and in the subsequent development of
events that lasted almost 100 years and have brought us to the present day.
In the novel "Demons" Dostoevsky
presented several directions of the democratic and revolutionary movement in
Russia: the older generation - liberals, and the new generation, mainly
raznochintsy, - nihilists, atheists and revolutionaries.
The main
character of the novel, Pyotr Verkhovsky, is a political ambitionist. Here is
his plan for seizing power: "We will proclaim destruction, we will start
fires, we will start legends and troubles will begin... Russia will be clouded,
the earth will weep for the old gods...
The only thing lacking in the world is obedience. We will kill the
desire, we will promote drunkenness, gossip, denunciation... All to the same
denominator, complete equality... complete obedience, complete
impersonality."
The
prototype of Pyotr Verkhovensky was the nihilist Sergei Nechaev. In the
Catechism of the Revolutionary, Nechayev proposed to use lies, deception,
mystification, slander, blackmail, meanness, threats and intimidation, and
atrocities, if they lead to the seizure of power. Lenin was his faithful
disciple. Lenin called Nechaev "the Titan of the Revolution."
In the
novel "The Brothers Karamazov", Dostoevsky further develops the theme of the
Demons, their philosophy and their methods of seizing power.
In the
novel, the atheist Ivan Karamazov reads his poem about the Grand Inquisitor to
his brother Alyosha, a novice of the monastery.
In
the poem, the action takes place in the XVI century in Spain during the rampage
of the Inquisition. Jesus Christ comes to Seville, where the day before, in the
presence
of the population, "almost a hundred heretics were burned at once by order
of the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor, into the glory of God."
Jesus gives sight to a blind old man and
resurrects a dead girl. "The sun of love burns in his heart, the rays of
Light, Enlightenment and Power flow from his eyes and, pouring out on people,
shake their hearts with reciprocal love."
The Grand Inquisitor, orders the guards to take Jesus, lead him to prison and lock him up. At night,
the Grand Inquisitor comes to the prison. He is almost a ninety-year-old man,
tall and erect, with a withered face.
The old man tells Jesus that tomorrow he will be condemned and burned
at the stake, and that the very people who kissed his feet today will
rush to rake the coals to the fire of Jesus at one wave of the old man.
The old man then speaks of Satan's temptation
of Jesus during his forty-day fast in the wilderness. The old man calls Satan "a terrible and
clever spirit, a spirit of self-destruction and non-existence, a great
spirit."
Satan's first question was:
"If you are the Son of God, then tell these stones to become
bread," to which Jesus replied, "Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Matt. 4:3)
The Grand Inquisitor asserts that thousands and
tens of thousands will follow Jesus in the name of the bread of heaven, but millions
and tens of millions of beings who will not be able to neglect the bread of the
earth for the bread of heaven will follow the demons.
The Grand Inquisitor, who
has the deepest contempt for man and for human society, explains to Jesus his
position and speaks of his future victories.
he explains the meaning of the question asked by Satan: "You want
to go into the world, and you go with your bare hands, with some vow of
freedom, which they, in their simplicity and in their innate disorder, cannot
even comprehend, which they fear and dread, — because nothing and never has
been more intolerable to them than freedom! And do you see these stones in this
naked, red-hot desert? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after you as
a flock, grateful and obedient."
The Grand Inquisitor says that free choice in the knowledge of good
and evil is a terrible burden, so "there is no more continuous and
painful care for a person than to remain free, to find as soon as possible
someone to bow down to and pass on the gift of freedom with which this
unfortunate creature is born."
Satan in the wilderness
also tempts the faith of Jesus Christ. He says: "Unto thee will I
give dominion over all kingdoms and their glory, for it is delivered unto me,
and to whom I will give it; therefore, if you worship me, all things will be
yours." to which Jesus replies, "Get thee behind me, Satan; it is
written: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou
serve" (Lk. 4:8)
The Grand Inquisitor claims that he, like Jesus, was in the
wilderness for 40 days and Satan also tempted him, but the Inquisitor chose a
completely different path than the one chosen by Jesus. The Grand Inquisitor bowed down to Satan. And
in the future, the whole world will belong to them.
Of the people, the Grand Inquisitor says:
"They are vicious and rebellious, but in the end they will
become obedient. They will marvel at us and will consider us gods...
They will overthrow the temples and flood the earth with
blood."
The Grand Inquisitor says that it is necessary to go "at the
direction of the terrible spirit of death and destruction, and for this to accept lies and deception and
lead people consciously to death and destruction, and moreover to deceive them
all the way, so that they do not somehow notice where they are being led, so
that at least on the road these pitiful blind men consider themselves
happy."
The Revolution of 1905 showed that Dostoevsky was right in many
ways.
The Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social
protests that swept the entire territory of Russia. The peasants were
responsible for the greatest destruction. The rebels looted, burned and
destroyed noble houses, set fire to libraries, destroyed works of art, stuffed
their carts with looted property. In many provinces, especially in the central
regions of Russia, the sky was lit up at night by the fire of noble houses.
Almost 15% of the estates of the nobility were destroyed. There was an
extraordinary increase in crime and coarsening of morals.
After the Bolshevik seizure of power, Lenin said that the
Revolution of 1905 was a dress rehearsal for the events of 1917.
“Milestones”
As a result of the
revolution of 1905, the future of Russia and the responsibility of the
revolutionary intelligentsia for this future were discussed in the collection
of articles "Milestones", published in 1909.
This
collection includes articles by N. A. Berdyaev, S. N. Bulgakov, S. A. Izgoev, B. A. Kistyakovsky, P. B. Struve
and S. L. Frank. The preface was written by M Gershenzon.
The authors, with
the exception of Gershenzon, began their political activity as Marxists, but
realized the inconsistency and unrealism of this theory and departed from it.
They called themselves critical Marxists, since they reserved the right to
freedom of thought, freedom of criticism. They were expelled from Russia after
the Bolsheviks seized power. Peter Struve participated in the White movement
and after the victory of the Bolsheviks emigrated.
I will retell, and often just quote some ideas from the 'Milestones'.
The entire book is permeated by sorrowful anxiety for the future of the country and doubts about its future.
"The Russian Revolution developed tremendous destructive energy, was like
a gigantic earthquake, but its creative forces turned out to be far weaker than
the destructive ones," wrote S. Bulgakov
The preface states: "The common platform of the authors
of the “Milestones” is the recognition of the theoretical and practical primacy of
spiritual life over the external forms of social life in the sense that the
inner life of the individual is the only creative force of human existence and
that it, and not the self-sufficient principles of the political order, is the
only solid basis for any social construction."
The ideology of the
revolutionary intelligentsia, which rested entirely on the opposite principle,
on the recognition of the unconditional primacy of social forms, seemed to the
participants of the book to be internally erroneous.
In the 1890s, with
the advent of Marxism, the need of the revolutionary intelligentsia for
philosophical foundations of social aspirations began to be satisfied by
dialectical materialism. Frank characterized
Marxism as follows: "Marx's doctrine is a system which, in spite of all
the breadth of his scientific construction, is not only devoid of any
philosophical and ethical foundation, but even rejects it in principle,which
does not prevent it, of course, from actually relying on the crude and unverified
premises of materialist and sensationalist faith."
The revolutionary intelligentsia preaching Marxism was not
interested in the truth or falsity of existing theories, but only in whether
this theory served the interests of the proletariat. Social utilitarianism was
a moral dogma. The revolutionary intelligentsia did not understand the
significance of objective universal truth. Its program was based on the ideals
of materialist socialism and anarchism. This program was declared
"scientific."
Revolutionary intellectuals believed that in order to
establish an ideal order, it was necessary to expropriate the expropriators,
and for this to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat by destroying
political barriers.
"Love for egalitarian justice... paralyzed the love of
truth, almost destroyed interest in the truth. The idea of the Grand
Inquisitor, who demanded the rejection of truth in the name of people's
happiness, was accepted. Philosophy was divided into
"proletarian" and "bourgeois", into "left" and
"right". "The affirmation of two truths, useful and
harmful—these are signs of intellectual, moral, and general cultural
decadence... The class science of the Marxists has more in common with a
special form of faith than with science," wrote Nikolai Berdyaev.
Almost all of the
Russian revolutionary society has become atheistic. The atheism of the
revolutionary intelligentsia took militant dogmatic scientific forms, it
remained deaf to the religious sermons of Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy.
C Bulgakov explained
why the fulfillment of Dostoevsky's predictions is possible in Russia and
impossible in the West: "The astonishing ignorance of our intelligentsia
in matters of religion... has sufficient historical justification... On
the many-branched tree of Western civilization, whose roots go deep into history,
we have chosen only one branch, not knowing,not wanting to know others, in full
confidence that we are instilling in ourselves the most authentic European
civilization… It is often forgotten that Western European culture has at least
half of its religious roots, built on the religious foundations laid by the
Middle Ages and the Reformation. The new personality of European man in
this sense was born in the Reformation. Political freedom, freedom of
conscience, human and civil rights were proclaimed by the Reformation."
Frank characterized
Marxism as follows: "Marx's doctrine is a system which, in spite of all
the breadth of his scientific construction, is not only devoid of any
philosophical and ethical foundation, but even rejects it in principle,which
does not prevent it, of course, from actually relying on the crude and unverified
premises of materialist and sensationalist faith."
"Cultural
creativity means the improvement of human nature and the implementation of
ideal values. On the contrary, culture, as it is usually understood in our
country, is entirely marked by the seal of utilitarianism." (C. Frank)
Total permissibility, the proclamation of oneself instead of God, was predicted by Dostoevsky ("If there is no God, everything is permitted") in "Crime and Punishment"
and in "Demons".
"I realize my
idea and for the sake of it I free myself from the bonds of ordinary morality,
I allow myself the right not only to property, but also to life and death of others, if it is necessary for my idea...
"Everything is allowed" is simply replaced by unscrupulousness in
everything. Nihilism equals amoralism. Hatred corresponds to destruction and is
the engine of destruction, just as love is the engine of creativity and
strengthening." —S . Bulgakov tells about permissiveness.
In his article "In Defense of Law", Kistiakovsky
discusses another painful problem of the Russian people and the state — the
extremely low level of legal awareness and the complete lack of rights of the
people.
I will cite a few theses from this article.
"The legal order is a system of relations in which all persons of a given society have the greatest freedom of activity.”
“The main and most essential content of the legal order is the freedom of the individual and its inviolability.
“The lack of
interest in legal ideas in Russia is the result of a long-standing evil—the
absence of any legal order in the daily life of the people.”
“Complete
inequality before the courts has killed all respect for the rule of law among
the people. A Russian, of whatever rank, evades and breaks the law wherever it
can be done with impunity, and the government does exactly the same.”
“The Russian
Social-Democrats revealed a striking lack of a sense of justice and a complete
lack of understanding of the significance of legal truth. They rejected a
stable legal order and the constitutional state itself. They proclaimed the
slogan that the success of the revolution is the supreme law. The idea
proclaimed by the Social Democrats of the rule of force and seizure of power
instead of the rule of principles is monstrous.”
“It can be said that in the ideological development of our
intelligentsia... not a single legal idea participated. In this respect, the development of Russia is not like the
development of other civilized peoples."
The gloomy predictions of the authors came true after the
seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks rule
Lenin and Stalin
After
the February Revolution of 1917, Lenin came to Russia from his long emigration
and began to organize a Bolshevik coup.
Lenin began with a Big Lie. In
the summer of 1917, in the event of a Bolshevik victory, he promised the
people immediate peace, free land for the peasants, factories for the workers,
justice and equality for all. This
was what the population of Russia, tired of the chaos of 4 years of war,
dreamed of. The people followed the Bolsheviks. As history has shown, Lenin was
not going to fulfill these promises at any moment.
In
November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power and began to build the state of
demons predicted by Dostoevsky. Later it would be called the "Evil
Empire". The Evil Empire was built
on lies, lawlessness, injustice, lack of compassion and hatred for all
dissenters.
Immediately
after seizing power, Lenin officially began to rob the population, signing
decrees on nationalization.
The
land, with its waters, forests, and mineral resources, was nationalized and
became the property of the state (Nov. 8, 1917). Banks were nationalized.
Banking was declared a state monopoly (Dec. 27, 1917). The merchant marine,
industry and railway transport were nationalized.
Such
a robbery happened for the first time in history. Even Ivan the Terrible,
seizing the fertile central lands, gave their owners land on the outskirts of
Russia.
In
May 1918, the right to inherit private property was abolished. All the
inhabitants of Russia became equally poor. The source of political independence
of the people was destroyed.
The population of Russia throughout its
history was free for only 56 years from 1861 to 1917.
Churches
were robbed and destroyed. All the property of church and religious societies
existing in Russia was declared "national property". The words of the
Grand Inquisitor about the power of demons came true: "They will
overthrow the temples and flood the earth with blood." Many of the priests were exiled to Siberia,
and those few who remained with the surviving churches were obliged to convey
what their parishioners said during confession. The world's first atheistic
state was being built. In schools, children were told that science had long
proved that God did not exist and only old illiterate women believed in God.
Why did the Bolsheviks
hate religion so much? Religions, starting from ancient civilizations, have
always set a moral framework for behavior based on eternal truths. Back in Egypt,
more than 25 centuries BC, there were 42 commandments - 42 principles of the
goddess Maat, who personified
Truth, Justice and Ethical Norm. To enter the afterlife. the soul of the dead had to account to the
gods for his deeds on earth and for the fulfillment of the principles of Maat.
"Behold, I have come to thee, Lord of Truth;
I brought the truth, I drove away the lies. I did not do unjust to people. I
have done no evil" – this is how an Egyptian who wanted to enter into
eternal life began his confession to God.
The code of the Sumerian king Hammurabi was compiled in the XVIII
century BC. The sculptural monument that has survived to this day depicts King
Hammurabi, who received laws from the hands of the God Sun, that is, God taught
people how to live properly.
The moral laws of all times
have said: do not kill, do not steal, do not covet your neighbor's house, do
not bear false witness, etc.
Christianity added the commandment: "Love your neighbor as
yourself." Christianity also
illuminated the great significance of the Truth in people's lives. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ pronounces
the word Truth 26 times. In the Gospel of John and in his letters, the word
Truth is mentioned 47 times.
Internal terror
In December 1917 Lenin created a machine of internal terror, the
Extraordinary Commission (Cheka). The Cheka notified the population "that
'counterrevolutionaries' would be 'mercilessly shot by Cheka detachments at the
scene of the crime'. What was required to shoot a person without trial on the
spot? Not much - just to declare him a counter-revolutionary. The Chekists
could shoot arrested and suspected persons at their own discretion. No proof
was required. No one has been punished or convicted for the murder of
innocents. As Kistiakowski predicted in "Milestones", the
Bolsheviks completely destroyed the legal branch of the state.
Thus, the old, obvious commandment "Thou shalt not kill"
was not recognized by the Bolsheviks. If it is allowed to kill, then you can
kill, just as you can be killed. This is what happened to the Bolsheviks. Many
of those who, after the revolution and during collectivization, killed people
without any trial, were themselves killed in 1937-8, either as a result of a
false trial, or without trial, according to the execution lists.
N.V. Krylenko, People's Commissar of Justice of the USSR, explained
the essence of the Bolshevik state as follows: "adherence to only one law
– the law of political expediency. We find it necessary – and shoot them." Krylenko
was shot in 1938
N. Bukharin wrote in 1920: "Proletarian
coercion, from shootings to labor service, is a method of developing communist
humanity." After his arrest in 1938,
Bukharin said: "I feel my
helplessness before the infernal machine, which ... has gigantic power,
fabricates organized slander, acts boldly and confidently. … At present,
most of the so-called organs of the NKVD are a degenerated organization of
unprincipled, decayed, well-to-do officials, ... who, in pursuit of orders and
glory, do their heinous deeds, not realizing that they are destroying
themselves at the same time." Bukharin was shot at the Kommunarka
shooting ground in the Moscow region and buried there.
During the years of the Great Terror of 1937-38, 682,000 of
"old" communists were shot. They had led the revolution, but later
became undesirable to the Stalinist elite.
They were shot according to the legal theory of the Bolsheviks on the
basis of the "law of political expediency."
The
State Security Service (GB) changed its names over time—the Cheka, the GPU, the
NKVD, the KGB, and the FSB. Its responsibility included ensuring the security
of the leadership of the party and government, preserving the existing system,
as well as combating dissent and anti-Soviet activities.
The
Bolsheviks called the state they created the dictatorship of the proletariat,
but in fact it was a terrorist state that used lies and violence to achieve the
goals of the ruling group.
The
ruling and only party was the Communist Party. It "elected" the
Central Committee, which in turn "elected" the Politburo. The
Politburo consisted of several people, which was chaired by the top officials
of the Communist Party - Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. Brezhnev and so on. They
had absolute power. Members of the Politburo held key leadership positions in
the political and executive branches.
In
fact, there were no elections. The Politburo and the Organizational Bureau
compiled nomenclature lists of leading positions, and those Party Members who
should occupy these positions. This was the highest level of party and economic
leaders. In elections, only one
candidate was proposed for any position. Usually 99% of the population voted
for him, at least that's what was announced after the elections. KGB officers
checked all the ballots. If they found a lot of votes against, they still
declared a 99% win, and after the elections, the KGB tried to determine by the
handwriting of those who voted against. The latter were exiled to the Gulag.
"We
have convinced Russia. We have reconquered Russia... We must now rule
Russia," Lenin said in 1918.
To
manage the deceived Russian people, a leading class, the nomenklatura, was
created.
The
duty of the nomenklatura was to execute the directives of the Politburo. The personnel nomenclature policy began in 1923 and
was finally formed under Stalin. "People who know how to carry out
directives, who can understand directives, who can accept directives like their
own, and who know how to put them into practice,"— this is how Stalin
described them. No initiative was required, only execution. Complete
impersonality, "complete obedience," as Pyotr Verkhovensky said in
"Demons."
Social organization
Marxist-Leninist
theory asserted that the social structure of the socialist society consisted of
workers and peasants and a stratum—the intellectuals. Marx called intellectuals the
stratum, since they came from different classes of society.
In fact, in
the Bolshevik state, the population was
divided into 2 classes and stratum:
1. ruling class — nomenclature
2. workpeople — workers in factories and plants,
peasants and employees (teachers, doctors, engineers, scientists, and so on).
3. new stratum of the
"Soviet intelligentsia" that was spreading the ideas of the ruling
elite to the masses.
In Russia, in the
19th century, people who received education were divided into two groups:
intellectual workers and the intelligentsia. The main characteristic of the
intelligentsia was a high intellectual, moral and ethical culture. According to
this definition, the "revolutionary intelligentsia" and the "soviet
intelligentsia" were not intelligentsia, since they did not have a moral
and ethical culture.
Nomenclature
The concept of the class of the party nomenclature was
introduced by Mirosław Dzhilos in his book "The New Class" (1957)
The nomenklatura class lived as "under communism". The
slogan of communism was "from each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs". Each
nomenklatura person received according to his needs from the state feeder. They
had their own shops, hotels, holiday homes, large apartments with housekeepers,
limousines with a chauffeur. They had Western medical care. They could travel
abroad. Their women flew to Paris to buy a dress, perfume or do their hair.
The compilation of nomenclature lists led to great corruption
at the top, in the republics and at lower levels. There, the party kinglet usually
chose friends, relatives and devoted careerists who served him faithfully in
order to have access to the state trough.
The nomenklatura did everything to preserve their material
position, otherwise they flew from the height of the material peak into the
abyss to the working people.
Workpeople
The words trud (work) and trudnyy (difficult)
have the same root in the Russian language, and the same root has the words
rabota (work) and rab (slave). These words have a
negative connotation, indicating the attitude of the Russian people to work,
due to Russian history. With the exception of a short period after the
abolition of serfdom, the people's labor was forced.
The largest group of workers were collective farmers. They
made up 82 percent of the population from 1914 to 1926. In 1939, their
percentage decreased to 67, and in 1957 peasants made up 50% of the population.
Life in collective farms was difficult and poor. Collective
farmers did not receive money. In
autumn, after the harvest, the collective farmers were paid part of the
harvest, which remained after the collective farm paid the tax to the state. Many
collective farms did not have enough funds to pay the tax and they remained
debtors from year to year. In this case, the collective farmers were not paid
anything, and they lived on what they received from their personal plot, which
was 20-30 acres. In addition, collective farmers were allowed to have one cow,
one pig, and a dozen chickens. This was not enough to survive, so they stole
from collective farms. Under Stalin, prison sentences were given for stealing
collective farm goods, but after Stalin's death, theft became widespread.
The peasants were bonded. After the collectivization of
agriculture, peasants for the labor were prescript to the collective farms in which they
worked. Collective farmers did not have
passports and no identity cards. They had the right to move only within their
district. To visit relatives in another district or region, it was necessary to
ask permission from the chairman of the collective farm. The collective farm
issued a certificate permitting a trip for a maximum of one month, only to the
city or village where relatives lived. In the summer, during intense
agricultural work, such certificates were not issued. The country's leaders
were afraid that the collective farmers would flee as soon as they received
their passports. In 1974, serfdom ended, collective farmers were issued
passports, but city organizations were forbidden to hire collective farmers. It
was only in 1981 that the rural population was allowed to work in the cities.
After that, only old women remained in the collective farms.
Urban workers did not live much better than collective
farmers. Often the family occupied one room in a communal apartment. Many lived
in barracks. But urban workers had more freedom, they had passports that
allowed them to move around the Soviet Union, although this freedom was relative
due to the existence of a residence permit. When the law on registration was
introduced, everyone was registered where he lived. Cities with good supplies
such as Moscow, St. Petersburg (Leningrad), as well as the capitals of the
republics and other large cities were closed. It was almost impossible to
register legally in these cities. Those
who wanted to register in closed cities paid large bribes, unbearable for
workers, formalized fake marriages or found other loopholes.
According to the State Statistics Committee of the USSR, the
average monthly money salary of workers and employees in the USSR increased
from 33.1 rubles in 1940 to 80.6 rubles in 1960 and 122.9 rubles in 1970.
https://top-rf.ru/investitsii/581-srednyaya-zarplata.html
Complete equalization was achieved, as proposed by Pyotr
Verkhovensky in "Demons".
Thus, in 1940, the average salary of workers was 33.1 rubles. At
the same time, workers in industry received an average of 34 rubles per month.
In the field of public education, the average
monthly salary was 33.7 rubles, and in health care - 25.5 rubles.
Propaganda
from the very beginning said that the next generation would live under
communism, that is, the entire population would live as the nomenklaturists
live. It was a pure lie. Generation after generation passed, but the standard
of living practically did not improve. The carrot was kept away from the donkey.
Author of the drawing —
Boardman Robinson
Improving
the lives of the working people has never been part of the state's plans. The
state allocated to the population the minimum that was necessary for the
reproduction of the labor force.
According
to Marxist-Leninist theory, industrial production was divided into groups A and
B. Group A was called "production of means of production". It
included mining, heavy, metallurgical, chemical and other types of industry,
which make up the so-called Military-Industrial Complex (MIC). Group B -
"production of consumer goods for the population" included light and
food industries.
In
planning, the main assets went to the military-industrial complex, and group B
was left with the minimum that was necessary to workers survival. This ratio has changed little
over time, since the state has always been interested in the success of the
military-industrial complex and the main funds were spent on its development.
Industrial
goods for the population were of low quality and always in short supply.
This
was the case under Stalin, when the Iron Curtain was impenetrable and people
did not know what was over the hill, and those few who knew could not say
anything, because otherwise the Gulag awaited them.
Soviet intelligentsia
The pre-revolutionary intelligentsia did not accept the
dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. The intelligentsia exposed lies, the foundation
on which the Bolshevik ideology was built.
Immediately after seizing power, the Bolsheviks began to persecute the
intelligentsia with the aim of completely destroying it. Lenin said that the
intelligentsia are accomplices and lackeys of the bourgeoisie, shit.
Many remarkable figures of Russian philosophy, culture and
science emigrated. It was a forced emigration.
Very
famous ones were sent abroad on the so-called "philosophical
steamships". The names of outstanding representatives of Russian
culture who left Russia can be found in the article "WhiteEmigration".
I
will list only a few names. That was the Russian flower of world culture.
Historians
and philosophers:
Nikolay
Berdyaev, Sergey Bulgakov, Ivan Ilyin, Dmitriy Obolenskiy, Lev Shestov, Pitirim
Sorokin, Petr Struve, Georgiy Vernadskiy
Writers and poets: Mark
Aldanov, Arkady Averchenko, Ivan Bunin (Nobel Prize), Zinaida Gippius,
Alexander Kuprin, Vladimir Nabokov (Nobel Prize), Igor Severyanin, Marina
Tsvetaeva, Evgeny Zamyatin and many others.
Opera and ballet dancers, choreographers: George Balanchine, Feodor Chaliapin, Sergei Diaghilev, Michel
Fokine, Mathilde Kschessinskaya, Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Olga
Preobrazhenskaya
Composers: Sergei
Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky
Artists: Ilya
Repin, Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, Konstantin Korovin,
Nicholas Roerich, Zinaida Serebryakova, Boris
Grigoriev and others.
Scientists and inventors: Georgy Gamov, Vladimir Ipatiev,
Alexander M. Poniatov, Ilya Prigozhin, Igor Sikorsky, Otto Struve, Vladimir
Zvorykin, Vladimir Yurkevich and others.
Russia
lost from one to 2 million highly educated people – not only humanitarians, but
also technical specialists. The children of intellectuals who remained in
Russia were not allowed to enter higher educational institutions in order to
eradicate the intelligentsia.
After
the Bolshevik coup, the "old" creative intelligentsia made literary
associations. Their goal was to provide material assistance to starving
writers, as well as, if possible, assist in organizing lectures, concerts, and publishing work. They were supposed to preserve the traditions of the Great Russian literature
and protect the legal and material interests of writers. M. Gorky, A.
Blok, N. Gumilev, K. Chukovsky, A. Kuprin, E. Zamyatin and others took part in
the creation and work of these creative associations.
In 1932, all
creative associations of the "old" intelligentsia were liquidated.
Strict
censorship was introduced, which did not allow any criticism of the Bolshevik
ideology. But this was not enough, it was necessary to praise the existing
order. They printed large editions and
paid a lot of money to everyone who praised the existing system and its
leaders.
Unions
of writers, composers, artists, and other "creative" unions were
formed. Their purpose was to compose works
about the heroic struggle of the international proletariat and the victory of
socialism. The authors were supposed to reflect the great wisdom and heroism of
the Communist Party and its leaders.
The
creative method of "socialist realism" was obligatory for all the
arts. The method of "socialist realism" required the dissemination of
a materialistic and atheistic worldview, an idealized
depiction of the life of a prosperous and happy society, as well as the praise of achievements leading to a rich and happy life.
Following the method of socialist realism was a
prerequisite for membership in all creative unions. Membership provided access to the feeding
trough. The state gave orders, sent on creative trips, organized exhibitions,
gave prizes and orders. Began the creation of a social layer
of propagandists — "accomplices and lackeys" of the nomenklatura, to
paraphrase Lenin.
Lies poured on the heads of Russians, because the state paid
only for lies. The truth did not
interest the feeders. I will give just one example. There have been at least 2
Holodomors in Ukraine and surrounding areas, one during collectivization and
the other after the war. Millions of people died, but there was not a single
artist who would dedicate his works to this tragedy. Artists were materialists
and did not want to know anything about the truth, about love for one's
neighbor and sympathy for the grief of others. The feeder was above all.
Persons belonging to creative unions were propagandists. The basis of their works was lies. Throughout
their existence, creative unions have not
produced a single great writer, artist or composer equal to those that Russia
has given the world in the 19th and early 20th century.
Immediately after
the Bolshevik Revolution, there was still an old intelligentsia who had gone
through school before the revolution. Usually its representatives came from
intelligent families. Not all of them were able to emigrate. Here are a few
names of intellectuals who continued to create, often in very difficult
conditions:
Writers and
poets:
Mihail Bulgakov, Evgeniy Zamyatin, Mihail Prishvin, Nikolay Gumilev,
Sergey Esenin, Aleksandr Blok, Andrey
Platonov, Anna Ahmatova
Composers:
Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich
Artists:
Mikhail Nesterov, Boris Kustodiev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Kazimir Malevich
Iron Curtain
After the revolution, Russia immediately
began to close its borders, which eventually led to the construction of an
impenetrable iron curtain.
As
early as December 1917, the "Instruction to Commissars at the
Border Points of the Russian Republic" was issued, requiring that all
those traveling abroad, both foreign and Russian citizens, have the appropriate
foreign passports with photographs of their holders, certified by proper seals,
and those leaving Russia must have exit visas—special permits from the foreign
department of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs or from the Commissariat
for Foreign Affairs. It was not allowed to take valuables, precious metals,
stones, jewelry, weapons, and a large amount of money. All this was subject to
confiscation. All the property left in the country by the escaped families was
confiscated.
The construction of the curtain was
completed in 1934. The law stated that escape abroad was equated to treason and was punishable by the highest
criminal punishment - execution by firing squad with confiscation of all
property, while the prisoner's family was sentenced to exile to Siberia to 10
years in prison with confiscation of property.
The construction of the Iron Curtain was
necessary for the authorities to survive.
The Bolsheviks, having seized power,
were confident that the world revolution would begin in the near future.
Even the Grand Inquisitor said that if you give
bread, then all of humanity will run like a herd, grateful and obedient,
and finally unite into an indisputable collective and harmonious anthill.
Karl Marx spoke
about this in his Communist Manifesto (1848) when he put forward the slogan
"Proletarians of all countries , unite!"
The Comintern, created in 1919,
discussed the victory of the world revolution. Lenin said in his concluding
speech: "The victory of the
proletarian revolution throughout the world is assured. The foundation of an
international Soviet republic is coming." This idea was also confirmed by the coat of arms of the Soviet Union: on the globe there is a sickle and hammer
- the symbol of the Bolshevik Party.
But this did not happen, as the authors of
"Milestones" predicted. Europe did not follow the communists.
In Europe, in the second half of the 19th century and at
the beginning of the 20th century, a middle class appeared and multiplied.
Middle-class families tend to have their own homes, have the opportunity to
educate their children, save for retirement, and have enough money to travel
and participate in cultural activities. At the same time, the number of the
poor decreased, that is, those about whom the Grand Inquisitor said that they
would run like a flock after demons who would promise them bread.
S. Frank described
Europe in the following way in "Milestones": "The
objective, intrinsically valuable development of external and internal
conditions of life, the increase in material and spiritual productivity, the
improvement of political, social and everyday forms of communication, the
progress of morality, religion, science, art, in a word, the multilateral work
of raising collective existence to an objectively higher level - such is the
vital and powerful in its influence on the minds the concept of culture, which inspire the
European."
In comparison with Europeans, the Russian
people were poor, illiterate, lawless and backward. He believed the promises of
the Bolsheviks. Thus, the predictions of the Grand Inquisitor in this case came
true. The same happened after World War II with other poor peoples: China,
Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia. In these countries, the communists won.
Europe was recovering quickly after the
First World War. Technological advances have facilitated the production and
distribution of goods on a mass scale, which has led to an overall improvement
in life. Europe reached the pre-war level as early as the mid-1920s, while the
Soviet Union reached this level in 1932 according to Soviet statistics but in
fact later.
It
was necessary to tightly close the borders so that the population could not
flee to the West, and also to believe communist propaganda that life in the
Soviet Union was the happiest and richest.
Creating
a New Man
In pre-revolutionary Christian culture,
children in schools and families were taught moral values such as truth, faith,
hope, love, forgiveness and reconciliation, kindness, gentleness, empathy,
loyalty, joy, and others that help a person make a choice between good and
evil.
Christian ethical principles contradicted communist
"morality." Therefore, the communists began to preach the idea of
creating a "new man." Nikolai Bukharin, whom Lenin considered the
most educated communist, said that people should be turned into such
"living machines that would be guided in all their actions by new
principles" and "a new proletarian ideology." The communists needed human robots, capable and
organized, carrying out orders from above. It was necessary to achieve
"complete obedience." This was difficult to do with people who had
been brought up in Christian culture before the revolution.
Children
are a completely different matter. The
child does not have any knowledge, and he does not have the opportunity to
check what he heard. The child is defenseless against propaganda. It was
decided to start creating a "new man" from school and even
preschool age.
Minister
of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, addressing the IV
All-Russian Congress on Preschool Education, said that "a small child of preschool age can be molded, a
schoolchild-child can be bent, a young man can be broken, and an adult can only
be corrected by the grave. If we miss this preschool age,
then the person already freezes, ossifies. The most important, the most basic
upbringing, which leaves a mark for life, is preschool upbringing." Ideological
education divided into age groups:
5–9 years old — Octobrists
9–14 years old — pioneers
14–28 years old — Komsomol members (members of the Communist Youth League)
The goal of ideological education was the readiness to fight for the victory of the ideas of the Communist Party and its leaders at any cost, that robbing, informing, killing is permissible and even praiseworthy, if they serve this purpose. The ideal of education was a hard worker and a warrior, disciplined and obedient to the authorities. As Pyotr Verkhovensky said - complete obedience, complete impersonality.
In 1931, at the height of collectivization, twelve-year-old pioneer Pavlik exposed his father, who helped exiled dispossessed peasants leave their village, and also informed the investigating authorities about neighbors and relatives who hid grain from the state. Monuments to Pavlik were erected for educational purposes in many cities and pioneer camps of the Soviet Union. An attempt was even made to make a film about his life.
Komsomol members were an example to follow was Pavka Korchagin, a young revolutionary, a participant in the civil war, the hero of Nikolai Ostrovsky's book "How the Steel Was Tempered" A quote from this book should have been known to every schoolchild: "The most precious thing in a person is life... and it must be lived in such a way that it is not excruciatingly painful for the aimlessly lived years... And so that, dying, he could say: all his life and all his strength were given to the most beautiful thing in the world—the struggle for the liberation of mankind." The idea was propagated that the Russian people have the right and even the duty to decide the fate of all humanity.
No deviation from the official ideology was allowed. Everything was forcibly and precisely scheduled, like at a parade.
"The clichés of forced thinking, and not thinking, but dictated reasoning, daily shoved through the magnetic throats of the radio, reproduced in thousands of twin newspapers, weekly notes for political study circles, have disfigured all of us, left almost no intact minds," Solzhenitsyn wrote in the samizdat collection From Under the Rubble (Collection of Articles, Part 1)
The value system of the new man – atheist, materialist and soldier, created by the Bolsheviks, was passed down from generation to generation. School teachers who had been brainwashed as children continued to brainwash their students because they knew nothing else.
N. S. Khrushchev (1953–1964)
Brezhnev (1964–1982) and others (1982–1985)
After Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev
came to power. Three years later, in
1956, Khrushchev read a report on the crimes of Stalin and his entourage at the
20th Congress of the Communist Party.
Political prisoners of the Gulag were released and many were
rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti. The pressure of censorship was
reduced. With this, Khrushchev "cut a
window" in the Iron Curtain, marking the beginning of the end of the
Soviet Union. People saw the lies of Soviet propaganda, which said:
"The sunniest and
brightest
The whole Soviet land has become.
Stalin's abundant harvest
Collective farm fields are expanding...
The Soviet country is famous
for songs
of love and abundance."
In fact, no one glorified the Soviet country,
there was no love and abundance, and there was backwardness and poverty all
around.
Khrushchev's report was an unexpected
bombshell not only for the inhabitants of the Soviet Union, but also for those
abroad. Mao Zedong, having established a dictatorship similar to Stalin's, did
not agree to abandon his "successes". He broke off relations with the
Soviet Union. North Korean dictator Kim
Il Sung has followed Mao Zedong's example. In these countries, oppositionists
who fought to change the Stalinist foundations of political life were shot
publicly in stadiums.
In 1956, revolutions took place in the
Eastern European countries, Hungary and Poland.
The bloody revolution in Hungary against
the communist government, thanks to the introduction of Soviet troops, ended in
defeat and large emigration, practically the flight of the population from the
country. The revolutionary
anti-government uprisings in Poland were less bloody and led to more profound
changes. The slogans of the uprising were: "Bread!", "Freedom!", "God!",
"Down with communism!". The
collectivization of the peasants became optional, freedom was given to the
Catholic Church. Khrushchev gave
the go-ahead for the liberalization of the political course in the country and
the replacement of the Stalinists with reformers in the country's leadership.
In other Eastern European countries, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, and the East Germany, there were also mass unrests." In
Germany, Soviet troops were used on June 17,
1956, to suppress protests that swept the entire country . A
state of emergency was declared in Berlin and almost throughout the
country.
Cultural changes
have taken place. Stalin's screws, tightened to the
limit, were loosened under Khrushchev—the so-called "thaw" began. For
truthful works, writers were no longer shot or exiled to camps. Alexander
Solzhenitsyn wrote a true story about the life of prisoners, "One Day of
Ivan Denisovich." It was published with Khrushchev's permission.
For the Soviet Union, the Khrushchev thaw
was a peaceful revolution from above. The material provision of citizens has
improved. Extensive construction of separate apartments began for the
population, who lived in communal apartments and in barracks. In the villages,
electrification and improvement of the material and technical base took place.
Travel abroad was allowed.
Going abroad was everyone's dream, but it
was difficult to get a ticket for such a trip. A lot of documents and permits
were required, as well as a medical examination and an interview before the
trip, where the person was told how to behave and what he could and could not
do and say abroad. The Soviet group was usually accompanied by a KGB officer who, upon arrival home, reported on the behavior of the group members, and if
he wrote something bad about the tourist, he never received permission to travel
again. At the same time, the tourist was never told what he was accused of.
During the 10 years of Khrushchev's rule,
about 3-4 percent of the population received permission to travel to other
countries, mainly Eastern Europe.
On these trips, clothes and shoes were
usually bought. A Moscow ballerina recounted in her memoirs that before their
theatre began touring abroad, the artists would buy Western outfits for a lot
of money from those who had already been able to go there. Later, when their theater was already touring in other
countries, the theater employees saved money by eating canned food for dogs and
cats. With the money saved in this way, it was possible to bring Western gifts
to the family. Clothes and shoes showed a person's status in society. If a
student came to school wearing Western sneakers, the attitude of his colleagues
and teachers towards him would change. He became special, belonging to the top
of society. Therefore, in Russia then
and until now, people were and are judged by their clothes. Clothing indicates
to which class a person belongs.
During Khrushchev's rule, society began to change gradually. Elder
people, who studied before the revolution, for the most part, have already
passed away because of their age. Now the basic
laws of the new atheistic and materialistic society created by Stalin were
gaining strength.
Materialistic
and atheistic post-revolutionary education led to all-round immorality.
Theft became ubiquitous. They stole
everything they worked with: food, fabrics, spare parts for cars, and so on.
There was nothing in the entire Soviet Union that was not stolen.
Corruption became endemic. Everything could
be bought and sold. You could buy a place in a higher educational institution,
buy grades, buy an amnesty, pay a bribe to publish poems or stories. What the authors of the Milestones spoke about came true.
The black market and the shadow economy
developed. Dollars were banned. But
dollars were needed for the development of the shadow economy. Therefore,
shadow services for the exchange of dollars for rubles have appeared, in
parallel with the state ones. With dollars, shadow entrepreneurs bought
consumer goods in the West, copied them and reproduced in large quantities. For
successful production, industrial areas, machine tools, as well as trucks and
wagons for transporting raw materials and goods were needed. All this was
bought from party leaders for bribes. Nomenclature was actively involved in
many economic crimes. Shadow entrepreneurs and nomenklatura used the
accumulated money to buy enterprises during the sale and plundering of Russian
wealth in the 90s. As an example, seven of the new billionaires were Komsomol
leaders, one of them was Khodorkovsky.
In science and technology, the theft of
Western achievements has become almost the main source of development. In 1966,
at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, it was decided that the allocated
money would be used to copy the American Electronic Computer IBM-360, but not
to develop country's computer technology.
The Soviet intelligentsia changed
little. The younger generation of poets
and writers grew up in the Soviet school and believed in Bolshevik slogans. In
addition, belonging to the Writers' Union brought material security.
But there were a few exceptions.
"Samizdat" appeared - an independent
publishing of works banned by censorship, written by hand or typed.
Unfortunately, their circulation was very small in comparison with the
circulation of the official lies of the Writers' Union.
There
was a strong movement to allow the resettlement of Jews in Israel. It was
supported by the West both financially and by the media. This movement was well
documented. There were also national movements in almost all the republics.
But
the protest movement for human rights was weak.
This movement put forward several outstanding
personalities: the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the academician Andrei
Sakharov, the philosopher Alexander Zinoviev, writers Vladimir Bukovsky, Andrei Amalrik, and others.
Solzhenitsyn
in his essay "Living Not by Lies" showed that since the Soviet
official ideology is based on lies, "the simplest, most accessible key to
our liberation is personal non-participation in lies!" Solzhenitsyn was
too optimistic about the capabilities of the Russian people. His appeal
referred to employees, whose wages could depend on the number of lies, but it
did not affect the interests of workers and peasants who received wages for the
fulfilled norm. And they were the majority. They believed in what they had been
taught in school, since they had no other information. They believed that the
Soviet Union was a great power that had the right to determine the fate of the
world.
When
Russian troops entered Czechoslovakia in 1968, only 7 people protested on Red
Square. They unfurled slogans such
as "Long live a free and independent Czechoslovakia!", "Shame on
the occupiers!", "Hands off Czechoslovakia!". A few minutes
later, they were arrested. Their posters were declared defamatory. Two of the
demonstrators were sent to a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment. The
rest were given various terms. Soviet radio claimed that 100% of the population
supported the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia. And it was true: 7
people out of 237 million were a very small percentage and could be neglected,
which is what Soviet radio did.
In 1969, a book-essay by Andrei Amalrik "Will the Soviet
Union Survive until 1984?" was distributed in samizdat. The book predicted
the collapse of the Soviet Union as a result of the war.
Andrei Amalrik turned
out to be a clairvoyant. His predictions were detailed and accurate, except for
one deviation. The book discussed a
possible war with China. In fact, the impetus for the collapse of the Soviet
Union was the almost 10-year war with Afghanistan (1979-1989).
The Soviet pioneers
sang: "Boiling, mighty, invincible country." In reality, the Soviet
Union could not defeat the mujahideen and withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in
1989, thus admitting defeat.
The war required great expenses. The Soviet economy
was in stagnation. This led to major shortages of food and essential items. The common people were getting poorer. People stood in line
for all the goods for many hours. It was necessary to change the system.
Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991)
The old government understood the need for change. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected, who
began glasnost and perestroika. Censorship was abolished. The restructuring of the economy was
conceived as a process of accelerating development and integrating the country
into the world community. This process required long time due to the lack of
personnel who knew the market economy and finance.
The old nomenclature did its best to keep the system as long as
possible in order to have access to the trough. But a new force appeared and
developed in the country - the shadow economy, which had grown together with
part of the nomenklatura elite. Later they were called "new
Russians". They needed more freedom, more ties to the West, and access to
the country's natural resources.
On his way to democracy, Gorbachev found himself between two
fires: on the one hand, the nomenklatura, fighting to preserve the system that
provided it with a rich life, and on the other hand, the "new
Russians" were trying to crawl out of the shadows into the light, that is,
to move from the shadow economy to the market economy. The "new Russians" won.
None of these groups thought about the welfare of the people.
Russia was plundered. The gap between rich and poor has become the highest in the
world.
In 1989, the Brezhnev Doctrine was
abolished. The doctrine stated that the USSR had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of the communist states of Eastern Europe, including by military
means. Now to the states of Eastern
Europe were returned sovereignty, they could decide their own fate. In all
these countries, new Constitutions were adopted in 1989-1990. Human rights, the
inviolability of private property, civil liberties, a multi-party system, free
elections to parliament, separation of powers and an independent judiciary were
affirmed.
The transition to
Western-style democracy was carried out. West Germany was united with East
Germany. All these countries joined the European Union. 116 million people were freed. These changes
took place painlessly and with the mass participation of the population, who
lived in democracies before the war and knew what law and freedom were.
The collapse of the Soviet Union began at the same time. Gorbachev's
plan was to create a Federation of equal sovereign republics in place of the
Soviet Union. In the referendum, 76% voted for this plan. It was the right plan
for the time. The economies of the republics were closely intertwined, and it
took time to weaken these ties and give the republics greater economic
independence. These changes had to take place within the framework of existing
laws.
But the soviet republican elites sought the formation of new sovereign
states with their own constitutions, which took precedence over union laws. The
legal system of the Union was thus weakened, which led to its collapse
(December 1991). 15 sovereign states were formed on the basis of 15 republics
of the Union. The state sovereignty of the Russian Federation was adopted on
June 12 1990, and provided for the supremacy of Russian legislation in relation
to the Union.
To date, 7 of these
states are democratic: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia
and Georgia, and 8 authoritarian: Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. 74 million people lived in
the soviet republics that became democratic. In total, 190 million people were
freed under Gorbachev (74 million in the soviet republics plus 116 million in
Eastern European countries). No ruler in history has achieved such success in
the liberation of people. Time magazine called Gorbachev the man of the
decade.
Yeltsin (1991-1999)
Boris Yeltsin was
elected President of the Russian Federation on July 12, 1991 during Gorbachev's
rule. It was the first and only democratic presidential election in the history
of Russia. Yeltsin's election for second term in 1996 was fraught with many
violations of electoral legislation, including falsification of voting results.
Yeltsin "won", although his rating before the elections was only a
few percent.
Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin decided to
embark on a program of radical economic reform: to move from a command economy
to free-market economy. It was too early to introduce a market economy, since
there was no legal basis for its development and no specialists in market economy.
The country descended into anarchy. The law was widely everywhere
violated, crime flourished, and there was a redistribution of property, in
which state property was transferred to private individuals. Some of the future
billionaires were friends of Yeltsin. The criminal world began to merge with
corrupt officials, security officials and new Russian capitalists. From 1989 to
1993, GDP was halved. Salaries and pensions were not issued. The people were
impoverished.
In the autumn of 1993, the Constitutional Crisis broke out. Yeltsin
announced the dissolution of the parliament. The parliament, in turn, removed
Yeltsin from power for violating the Constitution. Yeltsin called in tanks to
shell the Russian White House (parliament building). As a result of the attack,
187 people were killed and almost 500 were injured.
Yeltsin began to turn his rule onto
the road of authoritarianism. . With the departure of Gorbachev, violent fight against dissent returned to Russia.
The Russian people needed bread, not democracy and freedom, which they did not
understand. The chaos of rule under Yeltsin was called "democracy" by
the people, in contrast to the "order" in the Soviet
Union. For most people brought up in
Soviet schools, the word "democracy" was a dirty word.
Putin (2000 - )
During Putin's first two terms in office (2000–2008), household income per capita in Russia grew rapidly. I co_speechnotes_plugin_fab_id:131,350 t continued to grow under Medvedev (2008–2012). Vladimir Putin's third presidential term (2012–2018) began with major problems. Household income per capita began to fall. Putin's rating also fell.
Diagram of household income per capita in Russia from November 2012 to November 2023
At the end of 2013, Putin's imperial policy was subjected to severe shock. The so-called Euromaidan began in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine—mass protests against the policies of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who refused to sign the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. After three months of mass protests, Yanukovych fled to Russia in late February 2014. The new Ukrainian government signed an agreement with the European Union in The dissent of the Ukrainian people, their desire to join the community of developed democratic countries is one of the main reasons for the start of Putin's war with Ukraine. In March 2014, Putin annexed Crimea. In practice, this was the beginning of the Russian Ukrainian war, which continues to this day. Russian media switched from economic problems to political ones. Putin's rating increased again to 80%.
Russia will fight as long as Putin is alive. Putin has no other way to keep the population of the Russian Federation together. Any dissenter during a war can be declared an unpatriotic, an enemy of the motherland and punished. War contributes to the strengthening of an authoritarian regime.
But every war is a cancer on the country's economy. Like cancer, military spending draws funds from the civilian economy. The Ministry of Defense has increased military orders. The production of weapons and ammunition has increased many times over. All this is happening due to the weakening of civilian production. It has lost many workers, as workers go to military production and as soldiers to war. In both cases, the state pays much more than in civilian life. The Russian economy is growing due to the growth of a cancerous tumor. Treatment of a cancerous tumor will be expensive, since it will be necessary to restore all the destruction. And as we know, it is much easier to destroy than to build.
The people are getting poorer, the middle class is shrinking. In terms of family income per capita, Russia ranked 33rd in the world in 2019. Income increased slightly until 2022, but already in 2023 it fell sharply. According to Rosstat data for 2022, 14% of the population does not have running water, and 19% do not have sewage, 25% of the population does not have hot water, and 26% do not have a bath or shower, 34% of houses do not have gas. For comparison, Russia ranks 2nd in the world in terms of nuclear weapons, after the United States, and 3rd in terms of military spending, after the United States and China.
An even more dangerous consequence of the war will be a decrease in the population. There are several reasons for this: hundreds of thousands of Russians were killed in the war, about a million fled the country due to fear of military conscription, and the birth rate will also fall due to a shortage of young men capable of starting families but did not return from the front.
During Putin's reign, there was not a single year without war. Putin has continued and continues to lead Russia to the highly centralized authoritarianism of Stalin and feudal Russia. Lying has again become highly prized, and people are imprisoned and killed for telling the truth. As under Stalin, dissent is considered a crime and is punishable by imprisonment, exile, and even death. One of many examples is the life and struggle of Alexei Navalny.
Russian children from the age of 8 (according to Lunacharsky) are taught to be soldiers, they are taught to kill. The commandment “do not kill” does not exist for Russians.
Schoolchildren and preschoolers in military uniforms.
Russians preach patriotism—love for the Motherland. At the same time, they understand love for the Motherland not as love for their people, improvement of their life and culture, pride in their achievements. Patriotism for Russians is love for their state, which they consider great, one of the most powerful states in the world and which has the right to impose its will on other peoples. This official patriotism, advantageous to the state elite, does not allow any disagreement with the state ideology.
“The Levada Center found that the number of Russians who are ready to sacrifice the well-being of their citizens for the sake of the country being “respected and feared” has grown from 34% in 2004 to 47% in 2015.
Now this percentage is probably much higher.
“So, what does this people without religion and without morality believe in and what is it guided by? It believes in its own national strength, which other nations should fear, and is guided by the consciousness of the strength of its regime, which it itself fears... It is capable of respecting only strength, but not personality and freedom,” wrote A. Amalrik.
A little more history
During the entire existence of the Russian Empire, only 4 rulers set the goal of improving the lives of the people. All of them were eliminated by the ruling elite.
1. Emperor Paul I (1797–1801). Paul limited serfdom, actively fought corruption and embezzlement, limited the privileges of nobility, and improved the situation of ordinary soldiers. Paul introduced the silver standard of the Russian ruble, reduced the costs of maintaining the imperial court by ten times, reduced the costs of the navy by half, and reduced the army. He was killed in the 5th year of his reign as a result of a conspiracy of officers. His son and heir Alexander participated in organizing the conspiracy.
2. Emperor Alexander II (1855–1881). I wrote about the reforms of Alexander II above. Thanks to the reforms of this enlightened ruler, Russia took 5th place in the world in terms of economic development. Neither before nor after has Russia occupied such a high level. The intellectual elite of Russia rose to the world level. Russia was a respected state in the world. Alexander was killed by conspirators 2 days before the adoption of the Constitution. Someone from the tsar's close family circle participated in organizing the conspiracy, most likely it was his son and heir Alexander III.
3. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (1953-1964). Khrushchev began the process of de-Stalinization, the destruction of the "kingdom of the axe". The Bolshevik ideological and political system was weakened. The destruction of the "iron curtain" began. The material situation of the people has improved. Khrushchev was removed from office after 11 years of rule.
4. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1985-1991) Gorbachev introduced new political and economic freedoms. Gorbachev's reforms led to the injection of new Western technologies into all spheres of activity. Abacuses were replaced by computers. Labor productivity increased. The rise in prices for oil and minerals allowed Russia to buy new technologies. Gorbachev was removed after 5 years of rule.
Thus, all the reforms that raised Russia to a higher level were carried out by heads of state.
The coming to power of a person from outside in authoritarian regimes is unlikely and is possible only in exceptional circumstances, that is, as a result of a revolution which is unthinkable in contemporary Russia.
So, the Russian people will have to wait for an emancipated ruler to come to power - a Patriot, whose plans will include liberating Russia from corruption, poverty and lawlessness, and improving the material and spiritual life of the people. To do this, the ruler must create a government in the country that observes laws at all levels. This will most likely occur after the collapse of the Russian Empire. There is no doubt that it will happen, as all other empires in the world have collapsed.
During the breaking of the Soviet Union, almost all autonomous republics of Russia demanded greater economic and legislative independence, but without demanding sovereignty. Only Tatarstan and Chechnya declared independence. Tatarstan gave up its demands after long negotiations, and Chechnya gave up after 2 wars. Now the Russian Federation includes 24 republics. It is expected that at a new opportunity they will demand independence. Unfortunately, these changes may be accompanied by civil wars.
