The death of the elder brother. The lessons of the crises China teaches very carefully
Summary The leadership of the CPC, which governs the country of the 63 of the year, still draws useful lessons from the death of the “elder brother” of China - the USSR, who extended the 74 of the year. And each year of being in power allows Chinese leaders to take a fresh look at the Soviet experience.“Learning and repeating what was learned is not joy?” Begins Confucius's “Conversations and Judgments”, in which more than a dozen generations of Chinese bureaucrats grew up. Studying the experience of others has always been one of the foundations of the Middle Kingdom, and the sudden loss of interest in overseas affairs often meant the beginning of sunset for the country. The “red” version of the Middle Empire - the People's Republic of China was no exception. Since the beginning of the 1950's. The PRC was built on the basis of studying and copying the best practices of the “elder brother” - the Soviet Union. The USSR was flooded with delegations of Chinese experts, who attentively delved not only into Soviet technologies, but also into the principles of social order, in order to then use this knowledge when building a young state.
After the Soviet-Chinese split 1960-ies. interest in the Soviet experience declined, but after two decades it was revived with a new force and on a new basis - Chinese experts had to investigate the causes of extinction and then the collapse of the once great power. While under Mao Zedong, the Soviet Union was studied as a role model, in the 1990s. he was viewed as a negative model: analyzing the actions of the Kremlin leadership, Chinese scientists tried to understand how not to act. The accumulated materials formed the basis of expert recommendations, thanks to which the PRC leadership was able to resume market reforms and transform the country.
Fatherland in danger: the beginning of the study
Active interest in what is happening in the northern neighbor resumed at the turn of the 1980-s, when the team of Deng Xiaoping finally consolidated power and headed for overcoming the consequences of the Soviet-Chinese split. The analysis of the political life of the “elder brother” was largely carried out through the prism of the struggle within the Chinese elite about the course of development.
Thus, in 1986 – 1987, at the height of the campaign against “bourgeois liberalism” in China, the attitude towards Gorbachev's transformations in the Soviet Union was suspicious. Then, from the autumn of 1987 to the spring of 1989, when the Chinese Communist Party was headed by the liberal-minded Zhao Ziyang, the tone of the commentators changed dramatically: they began to praise the initiatives of Mikhail Gorbachev to separate the party from the state, the policy of rejuvenation of the Politburo, etc. In many ways, behind the positive assessments of the activities of the Soviet Secretary General, there was a veiled support for the reform course of Zhao himself. His resignation in June 1989 and the harsh suppression of student unrest in Tiananmen Square again changed the tone of the discussion to the opposite.
A weighted study of the last years of the USSR’s life began only after its actual death — the events of August 1991, which plunged Beijing into a deep shock. Research has become less opportunistic and ideological. The experts had to answer two practical questions. What factors led to the fall of the USSR, on which the PRC was once formed? And what should the leadership of the CPC do to avoid the fate of colleagues from the CPSU?
Chinese experts already in August 1991 realized that the failure of the coup led by the Emergency Committee, in fact, means the end of the state. Their first reaction was very emotional. For example, on August 30, the editor-in-chief of the leading party newspaper Renmin jibao, Gao Di, delivered a closed program speech entitled “Problems Caused by the Situation in the Soviet Union” addressed to editors of the central media and leading workers on the ideological front. First, Comrade Gao sharply criticizes the helplessness of the conspirators, who could not even isolate Boris Yeltsin and quickly arrest him and Gorbachev. Secondly, he accuses Gorbachev and Yeltsin of treason and actions in the interests of external forces. “Gorbachev and Yeltsin are not true members of the Communist Party. They are simply traitors and western agents. They acted in concert with Western institutions and followed orders from America, ”he argued. Finally, the third, more general cause of the collapse is the policy of publicity and “new thinking”, which has corrupted and demoralized the Soviet elite. However, in the same speech, Gao Di points out other factors, although not particularly analyzing their interrelationship: the decline in the standard of living of the population during the 1980-s, excessive military spending, hasty political reforms compared to economic changes.
However, the Chinese analysis did not stand still at this level, which still characterizes the views of part of the Russian elite. The discussion started by the leading think tanks of the Chinese party and the state. The bulk of the results were published in closed certificates for members of the CPC Central Committee, documents and collections marked “For official use”. Only a part of them got into open access in the form of monographs or articles in scientific journals, such as the largest Sovietological publication “Problems of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe”, published by the Institute for the Study of the USSR and Eastern Europe under the Academy of Social Sciences (AON) of the PRC. Studies were conducted in the depths of the CPC itself (in the structures of the organizational department and the department of external relations, the translation bureau under the CPC Central Committee), in the analytical units of the People’s Liberation Army of China, and also in other organizations. Among them are the Institute of Russian Studies under the AON, the Central Party School of the CPC, the Institute of World Socialism, the Institute stories the international communist movement, the Institute for Strategic International Studies (formerly the ninth department of the Ministry of Public Security of China), Peking University and a number of leading universities.
Quite quickly, Chinese scientists switched in their analysis from simple political determinism (“everything is to blame for Yeltsin’s betrayal and Gorbachev’s lack of foresight”) or economic determinism (“fell apart because he collected too much tanks») To more complex system models that take into account the complexes of various factors.
West will help them
The reasons highlighted by Gao Di in his speech on August 30 laid the groundwork for further analysis. Many Chinese works written in hot pursuit of 1991 events are filled with references to the "intrigues of external forces." For example, Wang Chaowen’s monograph “The American Strategy for Peaceful Evolution” published in 1992 in northeastern Jilin Province, as well as the collective work “Lessons of Dramatic Changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe” (Ding Weiling, Li Dongyu, Zhao Lianzhang) the role of the West in the fall of the Soviet Union.
The authors conclude that the campaign of the “peaceful evolution” of the Soviet regime undermined the confidence of the citizens of the USSR in the ideals of socialism and led to the fall of the regime. Radio Liberty and other radio stations broadcasting to the Soviet Union, support for the dissident movement, non-governmental organizations and autonomous trade unions, academic exchanges that shattered the ideas of Soviet scientists about the “decaying West”, the penetration of Western popular culture (primarily rock music ), economic assistance. The West was more active in Eastern Europe, and after winning there, it used the success of de-Sovietization for propaganda on Soviet territory. At the same time, Chinese researchers note, the strength of the West was that it was a united front - CIA and other Western intelligence agents, human rights activists, dissidents who went abroad, and even the Beatles or Deep Purple musicians, in fact, unwittingly worked for one goal. . For some, the task of destroying the union was part of the circle of official duties, while for others it was a by-product of activity.
In later Chinese works, the role of the international factor is not limited to the actions of the West - the diplomatic mistakes of the Soviet leadership are investigated in detail. So, in the monograph “Fatal mistakes: evolution and influence of the USSR’s foreign policy” published in 2001 in Beijing, Zuo Fengrun lists a number of Moscow’s miscalculations in foreign policy. The first and foremost of them is an attempt to create and retain the eastern bloc of states after the 1945 year. Expansionism and the pursuit of world hegemony (according to Chinese authors, these trends are especially evident under Leonid Brezhnev, for example, the invasion of Afghanistan) forced the Kremlin to set too ambitious foreign policy tasks, diverting resources from domestic development.
Secondly, the content of satellite states like Vietnam, the DPRK, Cuba and Mongolia has torn the economy. The uncontrolled support of the “friendly regimes” in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America also had a devastating impact - most of them simply used the resources of Moscow. In exchange, the Kremlin received only the rhetoric about the joint struggle against American hegemony that was pleasing the ears of Politburo members.
Third, the Soviet Union intervened in the internal affairs of other socialist states (the Czech Republic, Hungary, etc.) and treated them and the rest of the partners in the international communist movement with a fair amount of "Great-Soviet chauvinism." This undermined the position of the USSR within the socialist camp. Finally, the mistake was that Moscow was too carried away by the cold war with the United States. Huge resources have been drawn to support the anti-American front on a global scale. Getting into the expensive arms race led to the militarization of Soviet industry.
Thus, the Soviet leadership made a complex of foreign policy mistakes and, in the words of the Chinese authors, "carried away by the external, forgot about the internal." At the same time, the Chinese authors sometimes even credit Gorbachev and the head of the USSR Foreign Ministry Eduard Shevardnadze with a departure from the costly confrontational line in relations with the West (withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, agreement on unification of Germany, rejection of the arms race), but they believe that the moment for change was missed As a result, Gorbachev's turn in foreign policy only increased the penetration of Western influence and made it easier for the United States to eliminate its rival.
Power paralysis
The main body of Chinese works devoted to the collapse of the USSR explores the organization of power and the effectiveness of the ruling party. This is not surprising, considering that the actual customer for the research was the CCP, the sister of the late CPSU.
If in the early 1990-s. Chinese authors thought more about what mistakes should be avoided in order to maintain a one-party regime, then they saw the collapse of the Soviet state and the death of the CPSU in a broader context. The economic and social results of Russia's development convinced the Chinese of the harmfulness of too drastic political transformations for the fate of not only the party, but also the country. Moreover, a fairly successful development experience in the same period of Eastern Europe rightly relied for China inapplicable - unlike Poland or the Czech Republic, which immediately fell under the wing of the EU, China (like Russia) could not seriously count on interested help in the difficult transition from one system to other.
A large part of the responsibility for the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chinese experts personally lay on Mikhail Gorbachev, who allowed the CPSU to lose control over the reform process. As Zhang Yulyan notes in the extensive article “Gorbachev's Tragedy” (1993), reforms were necessary, but the methods chosen led the country and the party to collapse. First, Gorbachev weakened the party from the inside, effectively allowing the formation of factions, and then weakened it from the outside, agreeing to the abolition of the 6 article of the USSR Constitution, which determined the monopoly on power. Fateful role played by attempts to separate the party and state bureaucracy by strengthening the institution of the Soviets and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. As noted in the collective monograph “The collapse of a great power: analysis of the causes of the collapse of the USSR”, published in Beijing in 2001, the Supreme Council was not institutionally ready to take full power in its hands.
Gorbachev is blamed for the haste of change, as well as a too sharp rotation of Politburo members after 1985. The lack of continuity of the course has created a rift between the “conservatives” and supporters of the young general secretary. Finally, many Chinese authors blame Gorbachev for trying to replicate Western Social Democracy and the excessive spread of “glasnost”, which has led to the undermining of ideology and faith among ordinary citizens and among party members.
Many Chinese experts immediately thought about the reasons why the mistakes of one person turned out to be so destructive for the system, and such an inefficient leader turned out to be at the head of the party and the state. The answer to the first question was found in the excessive concentration of supreme power in the USSR in the hands of one person and the abandonment of the principle of collective leadership. As Xiao Guisen notes in the article “The Concentration of Power in the Hands of the Highest Central Government and Changes in the USSR” (1992), the tradition was laid under Stalin. Many Chinese authors are generally convinced that congenital defects of an over-centralized Soviet model with an inflexible command-and-control system, as well as problems and contradictions that have accumulated over the years that could not be solved due to the non-adaptiveness of the design, led to collapse. The reason for the poor selection of leaders was the lack of a clear system of rotation of leading cadres - the elderly Politburo first spawned a succession of bosses, dying one after another, and then brought to the surface of the young Gorbachev.
In addition to the deplorable state of the central leadership, Chinese experts point to the general state of the ruling party by the middle of the 1980s. Huang Weidin in his book “The Tenth Anniversary of the Fall of the CPSU” (2002) notes: “The death of the CPSU was caused not so much by anti-communist forces, as by corrupt party members. The disintegration of the USSR was the result of an autotransference of the privileged class of the nomenclature. ” Chinese scholars agree that the Soviet Communist Party gradually turned into a ruling class focused exclusively on its own material interests. The CPSU only indulged in the growth of corruption tendencies, because it did not pay enough attention to the fight against bribery - they didn’t do this for a long time, so as not to cast a shadow on the CPSU, and at the end of the 1980s. anti-corruption campaigns like the “cotton case” were episodic and non-systemic. As a result, the rulers at all levels became so detached from the people that they could not even feel the threatening direction in which society moved in the era of perestroika. One of the reasons for this development of the situation, according to experts from the PRC, was the closed nomenclature system of appointment to posts. The other is the formation of a powerful obkomovskoy elite and the absence of rotation with the constant movement of officials within the system to break personal ties.
As the experts of the international department of the Central Committee of the CPC concluded, the regulation of the media before Gorbachev was too harsh - as a result, the population no longer trusted state newspapers and central television. And the policy of "publicity", on the contrary, has gone too far, showing people the unpleasant underside of Soviet society and destroying the taboos on criticism of the party and the system.
Chinese researchers note that Gorbachev’s fatal mistake was to depoliticize the armed forces (including the abolition of the political party system), breaking the bond of the CPSU with the troops and turning the army from party (“red”) into national. In addition, the army was in many respects a cast of the whole of Soviet society, and the same negative processes took place in it. Finally, the mass reductions of the army that began under Gorbachev were not supported by the integration program of demobilized soldiers, which is why the military joined the ranks of the disillusioned with the system. According to experts from the PRC, it was precisely the complex of these factors that predetermined the failure of the coup of 1991 in August, the arrest of the members of the Emergency Committee and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR.
Everything is not according to plan
Xu Zhixin from AON calls the economy the “core cause” of a collapse. Experts in the PRC were particularly active in this issue at the beginning of the 1990s. At that time, the CCP was faced with a choice - to interpret the events of 1989 in China and the collapse of the Soviet Union as arguments for or against economic reforms. The final choice in favor of the market, made in 1992 after Deng Xiaoping’s trip to the south of the country, seems to be based on an analysis of Soviet mistakes.
The Chinese experts believe that the main trouble of the Soviet economy is its planning and command character and inability to use market mechanisms. Excessive centralization and ignoring the law of supply and demand led to the fact that the industry produced a mass of unclaimed products and wasted resources. And many really needed goods were in short supply. The lack of competition between manufacturers led to extremely low quality products and a complete disregard for such a thing as cost. Separate criticism of Chinese experts deserves non-market pricing in the USSR and the availability of price subsidies.
The merging of the party and economic bureaucracy led to the ideologization of the economy — urgent reforms were immediately swept aside as inconsistent with the spirit of socialism. The weakness of the economic bloc in the Soviet leadership was also caused by poor-quality statistics that falsified data and overestimated figures for ideological reasons. Another reflection of excessive centralization is the inadequate distribution of tax revenues in favor of Moscow, which significantly slowed down the development of the regions (all this happened against the background of a low tax base). The domination of rigid decision-making schemes made the economy non-adaptive to the changing world situation and incapable of innovation. Weak integration into the world economy and its financial institutions, the lack of external competition exacerbated the inefficiency of Soviet industry. The fall in oil prices at the end of 1980's. was another powerful blow to the Soviet Union.
Particularly harshly, Chinese scientists criticize the structure of the Soviet economy. Thus, one of the leading councilologists of the PRC, Lu Nanquan, calls militarization almost the main cause of the collapse — the military industry (and heavy industry in general) was dragging too many resources on itself and developing to the detriment of others. As a result, the USSR was a colossus in the manufacture of rockets and a dwarf in the production of consumer goods. Researchers Huang Zongliang and Zhang Zhiming directly point to the destructiveness of Stalin's collectivization, which destroyed the most active of the peasants, the kulaks. The support of collective farms has finally destroyed the private initiative (here we can clearly see the experience of criticism of the “people's communes” of the era of the “big leap”). As a result, an inefficient economy could not meet the needs of the population, which only increased the effect of other social factors that were fatal to the fate of the USSR.
Crisis of Faith
The “crisis of faith” many Chinese scientists call the breeding ground that allowed forces that ruined the country to breed - the Soviet Union fell not so much because of members of a passionate democratic minority like Boris Yeltsin, academician Sakharov and members of the Interregional deputy group, but because of tacit approval these actions by the absolute majority. In addition, as noted by the head of the Institute of Eastern Europe and the USSR under AON, Li Jingjie, in an article entitled “Historical lessons of the fall of the CPSU” (1992), the population pushed the unattractive and dogmatic Marxist ideology, as well as monotonous and tedious propaganda, from the party - the words “ class struggle ”and the study of historical materialism in universities by the middle of the 1980-ies. caused irritation. Citizens did not associate themselves with the party or with the country as a whole. In addition, Chinese scientists are paying serious attention to the suspicious attitude of the party towards the intelligentsia. Instead of recruiting the intelligentsia into their ranks and evolving, the CPSU tried to crush intellectuals, turning them either into explicit (dissidents) or hidden opponents of the regime. It was the intelligentsia who formulated the anti-Party direction of the general desire for change, which became firmly established in Soviet society at the end of the 1980s. Decadent sentiment reflected on the state of the economy.
Finally, the crisis of the common Soviet project reinforced the unifying protest identity, which in the outskirts of the empire easily assumed nationalist forms and reinforced separatist tendencies. The growth of Russian chauvinism also played its role - among the representatives of the titular nation by the end of the 1980s. ideas about other peoples of the USSR as “freeloaders” living exclusively at the expense of the RSFSR were spread. Many researchers also note in the national policy of Moscow considerable excesses - the national culture (especially religious) has been eradicated, sometimes too harshly, provoking a backlash. However, the conclusion reached by the majority of Chinese experts on the national issue is curious - problems could have been avoided if Lenin and Steel immediately relied on the creation of a unitary state, rather than the complex structure of quasi-autonomous republics.
Learn and repeat learned
The study of the experience of the collapse of the Soviet Union has not yet been completed: new books are being published, numerous articles are published in scientific journals, open conferences and closed seminars are being held. Intellectual activity is not only exercises in academic excellence, it has a purely practical purpose. The leadership of the CPC, which governs the country of 63 of the year, is still drawing useful lessons from the death of the “elder brother” of China - the USSR, who extended the year to 74. And each year of being in power allows Chinese leaders to take a fresh look at the Soviet experience.
This is evidenced by at least the number of educational films for the party leadership. In 2003, the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee held a collective study session at which examples of the rise and fall of nine great powers of world history, including the USSR, were examined, and in 2006, the film based on the materials of this session was also shown on PRC central television. At the same time, the Institute of Marxism AON released a film on eight DVDs “Think about the Danger in Peacetime: Historical Lessons from the Fall of the CPSU”, which became a must-see guide up to the level of district secretaries. Finally, at the height of the economic crisis in the spring of 2009, the Chinese party leadership again obliged the CCP leaders to watch a training film about the fall of the USSR and the experience of the “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet space.
From the Soviet experience in China, conclusions have long been made that are constantly being integrated into political practice. The CPC set the age limit for party and country leaders, as well as the deadline for working in leadership positions (two terms of five years). A mechanism for the regular transfer of supreme power has been formed. The CPC relies on collective leadership and the active involvement of independent experts in the decision-making process. The party is actively updating its ideology, gradually integrating nationalist ideas into it and at the same time not abandoning the communist heritage. Beijing is actively (though not enough) fighting corruption and not trying to mask this problem. With the traditional Chinese desire to form regional and related groups in the power of the CPC, it is possible to attract competent personnel to the state service and at least partially support meritocratic principles. Examples can be continued.
The experience of studying the collapse of the USSR is now again in demand more than ever, especially those areas of analysis that concern the inter-factional struggle in the ruling party and the problems of political leadership. Back in 2009, when Beijing faced the large-scale social consequences of the global crisis (for example, unrest in export-oriented enterprises, primarily in Guangdong Province), the party began a discussion about the future development of the country in the context of global economic instability. A tough struggle between the factions inside the CPC for the opportunity to bring their people to the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Party at the 18th CPC Congress, which was scheduled for the autumn of 2012 (opened on November 8), has been superimposed on the difficult socio-economic situation.
One of the leaders of public opinion turned out to be the head of the party organization in Chongqing (this city agglomeration with a population of almost 30 million people has the status of a province) Bo Xilai is the son of Dan Xioping’s associate Bo For, former minister of commerce and one of the most likely candidates for membership in the Politburo . Bo began to promote the “Chongqing model” - a combination of hard state paternalism, left-wing populism, the fight against corruption without regard to the law (mass arrests of suspected officials without court sanction, etc.), as well as Chinese nationalism. The public campaign of Bo Xilai’s self-praise, which was actively supported by the “new left”, led to sad consequences for him. In March, 2012, after a series of public and non-public conflicts with other party leaders (Bo was the main opponent of the CCP in Guangdong, Wang Yang, but the Chongqing secretary ruined relations with Chairman Hu Jintao and with Premier Wen Jiabao) he was dismissed expelled from the party and sent under investigation.
The formal reason was the case of his wife, Gu Kailai, accused of poisoning British citizen Neil Haywood, and the unsuccessful attempt of the head of Chongqing security forces Wang Lijun to take refuge in the US consulate in Chengdu. However, few experts doubt that Bo Xilai himself became the real reason - he turned out to be unacceptable both because of conflicts with other members of the elite and because of the extremely dangerous left and anti-corruption rhetoric for the CCP. Many commentators, watching the “Bo Xilai case,” noted that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to avoid the appearance of its “little Gorbachev” or “little Yeltsin” - again referring to the sad experience of an older Soviet brother.
The decline of Europe: a look from the Middle Kingdom
Analogies with some phenomena that led to the collapse of the USSR appear in Chinese analytics not only in relation to the internal situation in the PRC, but also when assessing events in other regions of the world. The most recent example is the analysis of the crisis of the eurozone and the European Union in general. The study of the prospects for the “collapse of the EU modeled on the USSR” is a fairly frequent area of Chinese thought.
Of course, discussions about the fate of the Soviet Union and the European Union are very different in the Chinese context. The USSR is perceived as a typologically close system, the study of which can help to avoid mistakes. The European Union is only interesting as an important trade and political partner, the situation in which is important for understanding the dynamics of the global economy (and, undoubtedly, the potential of Chinese exports), as well as for the EU's ability to act as the “third force” in relations between China and the United States. Accordingly, the Chinese analysis is not particularly different from the quality work on this topic in the West and in Russia.
True, there is one remarkable fact that influences the quality of analysis - an emotional attitude towards European problems. In the crisis 2009, in the Chinese elite, including among the experts of the leading think tanks, euphoria reigned. While the United States and the European Union were experiencing a recession, China’s GDP increased by 9%. According to Western investment bankers working in the People's Republic of China, at that moment many Chinese officials and analysts liked to make fun of the liberal economic principles that brought America and Europe to a crisis, and speculate about the advantages of the "Chinese model." However, there is almost no trace of "gloating" in the academic analysis.
Chinese analysts point out several reasons for the crisis in which Europe finds itself. The first is purely financial. The European Central Bank and financial regulators of European countries in obese years did not have adequate tools for assessing long-term risks and did not carry out stress tests for the stability of banks. Thus, in the work “The sovereign debt crisis and the problems of the banking industry of the“ European Five ””, published in the journal Macroeconomics, Lee Huanli and Lee Shikai note that financial regulators have for too long turned a blind eye to the state of the banking system in Portugal, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy.
The second reason is financial and political. Creating a monetary union without a single fiscal policy was a mistake. Many Chinese authors ask the pertinent question: to what extent can a single currency equally satisfy the interests of such diverse economies as Germany and Greece? For example, Din Yuanhun in the article “Causes and Prospects for the Development of the European Debt Crisis” notes that the introduction of a single currency is beneficial for typologically close economies of EU member states, and new members had to leave their currency (as was done for the Baltic countries).
The third reason is insufficient political coordination. The authorities' commitments to voters in their countries outweigh the concern for common interests within the EU - for example, the protectionist barriers that began to arise in Europe at the peak of the crisis (for example, Nicolas Sarkozy’s measures to support the French car industry). There is also a general vacuum of power in solving collective problems, when one country (Greece) can hold all the rest as hostages. This idea is carried out, for example, by Yu Xiang and Wang Hui from the Institute for the Study of Modern International Relations in the article “Problems of the European Union's Development through the Prism of the Sovereign Debt Crisis”.
The collapse of the EU on the model of the USSR is considered possible only by a few Chinese scientists, most often such radical views are expressed by financiers who deal with global problems, and not by Europeanists-professionals. For example, Zhang Shanbin in the article “The European Union is on the verge of collapse” in the magazine “Stock Market” indicates that such different economies as Germany and Greece simply cannot exist within a single economic and political space. Having absorbed too many peripheral countries in the wake of the confrontation with the USSR and Russia, Western Europe will have to retreat and not pull on its “ballast”.
However, the overwhelming majority of experts agree that Europe is threatened only by the narrowing of the eurozone due to the forced withdrawal of Greece and, possibly, Spain from it (this idea is carried out by Yu Bin and U Yan in the article “From the sovereign debt crisis to the eurozone crisis”, published in the magazine "International Finance"). Optimists even believe that a crisis can be a catalyst for even greater integration. The first steps should be the empowerment of the European Commission and the ECB with great oversight powers, as well as the ability to conduct a unified financial policy. The next steps could be greater managerial integration going further than the principles of the Lisbon Agreement. For example, Wang Yi in the article “Strengthening or weakening of European integration?”, Published in 2011 in the journal “Modern World”, notes that centripetal forces in Europe will inevitably prevail, because the benefits of integration exceed the negative consequences.
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