20 years has passed since the collapse of the USSR, the country, where many of us were born and raised. We can agree or disagree with Vladimir Putin, who said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the XXth century. However, for certain people, who lived in the USSR, it was a crucial moment in their lives.
Mentality and values of most people living in the former Soviet space were formed in the USSR epoch. Contemporary politicians understand it and sometimes try to impose on us their own views of the events, which have nothing in common with historic reality and historic reasons of the great state’s collapse.
I am interested in this period of history from professional point of view. I eagerly waited for the wide-advertised documentary “USSR. Collapse.” The TV-channel Rossia usually produces documentary of high quality. However, “USSR. Collapse” didn’t fulfill my expectations despite a great volume of work, number of skillful experts and relevant respondents.
The authors of the documentary seem to present a general conception of reasons of the superpower collapse. I must say they failed. I mean the result is too eclectic, sometimes absurd and even nonsense, for example, reference to Buddhism of Alexander Yakovlev, the Political Bureau member.
Can a strong country be destroyed by a couple of “Jesuits,” who entered the Kremlin supported by the CIA? Ronald Reagan didn’t want and couldn’t destroy “big Russia” together with communism. One of reasons for that is threat of nuclear armament proliferation. In 1991 his vice president George Bush spoke in Kiev and urged the Soviet republics to maintain federative structure of the state rejecting communist ideology.
The episodic documentary looks like a narration of Roman historians: “Senator A abused senator B, and tribune C used it and encouraged a centurion to provoke anti-consul riot in a camp, which was favorable in the context of poor harvest and lack of bread.”
The superpower couldn’t collapse due to conflict of the Political Bureau members Yeltsin and Gorbachev or low oil prices only. If the problem were in it, we would live like our brothers from North Korea and dream about a pile of rice. Gorbachev and his team had great capacities for quick reformation of social and economy system, according to China experience, in 1985-1988. Current statements by Gorbachev that “the system rejected reforms” are wide open to criticism. Why did the system of the USSR reject them while in China didn’t?
Collapse of the rotten, ineffective and futureless communist-totalitarian system with its planned economy and collapse of the state, which had been formed not for 70 years, but for several centuries, are different things. The basic of any governmental system is unity of command of army, common system of borders security, currency, transport, communications, and so on.
The fact that there was lack of meat in shops (I should say at markets you could buy it, but for higher price) couldn’t destroy the state. It could be destroyed by efforts of regional, nationalist elites to break a balance of cooperation between state structures, to doubt the center’s functions, i.e. pull apart national sovereignty. Sovereignty is a specific notion. A state cannot be half-sovereign, as a woman cannot be half-pregnant. Gorbachev achieved his purpose and the USSR actually lost his sovereignty before Bialowieza forest.
The authors of the documentary did not ignore the theme. They did worse: substitute notions and cause-and-effect relations. The documentary states that collapse of the USSR economy, fail of communist ideology and destroying of the state system are interconnected. But we had also culture, the Russian language, common cultural values and motivation. Of course we had Afghanistan and Chernobyl, but the disaster in Fukusima didn’t lead to collapse of Japan.
To be continued
Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to VK
