Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Predictions of Life in Russia in the 20th Century Made by Russian Sages of the 19th and 20th Centuries

 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 BukovskyAndrei 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) and Putin

 

 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.

    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 continued and continues to lead Russia to the highly centralized authoritarianism of the Stalin era and feudal Russia. Lies have become highly valued again, and telling the truth can lead to imprisonment and murder.

    Under Putin, the material side of people's lives has improved, although the people remain one of the poorest in Europe. According to Rosstat, for 2022, 14% of the population does not have tap water, and 19% do not have sewerage. 25% of the population does not have hot water, 26% do not have a bath or shower, and 34% of homes do not have gas. The wealth of Russia goes to armaments and wars. During Putin's rule, there was not a single year without war.

Russia attacked Ukraine, killing children and civilians.

Russian children are taught in schools to be soldiers from the age of 8. They call it patriotism. According to Lunacharsky, the earlier start of children brainwashing is more successful.

 Children in military uniforms in Russia


     "So, what do these people without religion and without morality believe in and what are guided by? They believe in their own national strength, which other peoples should fear, and are guided by the consciousness of the strength of the regime, which they themself fears. … They are capable of respecting only force, but not personality and freedom," — wrote A Amalrik.