How the Soviet Union was killed
The Olympic bear as a symbol and protection of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow
Information war
The Cold War was primarily an information war. A war of meanings and values. The collective West offered freedom. Deception in a beautiful wrapper. The basis of Soviet civilization was social justice. However, when the Soviet elite itself began to forget about social justice, became complacent, and replaced development with stability (Degradation of the USSR under Brezhnev), then the West won the culture war. The Red Project, Soviet civilization and the USSR perished.
The masters of the West are strong because they know how to play for a long time. In the 19th – early 20th centuries, the masters of London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Washington also rocked Russia and tried to destroy it. Informationally and culturally, they acted in several directions:
1) they treated the young aristocracy, the children of the elite. So that they, having replaced their grandfathers and fathers in government bodies, in the army, themselves, with their own hands, produce the appropriate policy. “Liberated” Russia. This was not difficult to do, since young aristocrats studied in Europe and lived for a long time in European cities. They absorbed Western culture, languages, all the latest in philosophy. For many of them, Latin, ancient Greek, German and French were closer and more native than the Russian language. They knew Greek mythology, not Russian. And Russian history studied the processing of Germans and Westerners;
2) Western ideas, philosophy, meanings and values infected the emerging Russian intelligentsia, the “brain of the nation,” the guardian and producer of Russian culture. Therefore, by the beginning of the XNUMXth century, most of the Russian intelligentsia was against “tsarism”, was pro-Western and liberal. She dreamed of turning Russia into “dear Holland or France”;
3) in Russia itself any opposition movements of any kind were supported. From nationalists and socialist revolutionaries to the Basmachi. The fifth column was preparing. At the same time, revolutionary ideological and organizational centers were being prepared abroad. Thus, London already in the XNUMXth century became the capital of various kinds of oppositionists, revolutionaries, saboteurs and terrorists.
Soviet civilization was broken according to the same scheme
In the second half of the 20th century, the USSR was broken according to the same scheme. Only instead of the aristocracy there were already children of the Soviet nomenklatura, young party functionaries, and Komsomol members. They no longer believed the mossy dogmas of Marxism-Leninism, the slogans and ideals of communism. They knew the whole kitchen from the inside. We grew up spoiled and greedy. Golden youth.
They already have communism - better education, all material benefits. They studied in elite schools for the elite, from which they entered higher party schools, institutes of international relations and other elite higher educational institutions. There was the opportunity to travel abroad - countries of the socialist camp, the friendly third world. But I wanted more. What's the point of having everything, but using it only in your own circle, behind closed doors. Conventions had to be followed.
The golden youth had the opportunity to read foreign literature and watch films without censorship. Been abroad. And she envied the “freedom” that reigned even in European socialist countries, compared to the more strict Soviet Union. I envied the Western material level and way of life. I wanted taverns and brothels. “Live beautifully,” like the Western elite. Open and free. So that it can be seen who is the master of life and who stinks.
Girls assemble cabs for ZIL-130 trucks
The disintegration of Soviet society
At the same time, the decomposition of Soviet society was in full swing. The USSR adopted the standard of the consumer society dominant in the West. The society of knowledge, service and creation, which was built under Stalin, was systematically subjected to destruction, decay, and dismantling.
Russian oil and gas flowed ever more widely to the west. The broad modernization of Soviet industry and Kosygin's reforms were rejected. The material base is outdated. Soviet industry was losing its ability to produce competitive goods. Except weapons, atom, space industry, etc. In the 1960s, there was a sharp increase in the quality of life of Soviet people; in the second half of the 70s, the situation noticeably worsened. Prices went up. A number of consumer goods have become in short supply. People stood in lines for several years to buy cars, and people started buying TVs and refrigerators by appointment.
The food supply has gotten worse. The shops were empty. Behind the scenes, cities were divided into categories: only the allied capitals were fully supplied. The phenomenon of “sausage trains” arose - residents from the region and neighboring regions came with backpacks and bags to Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv to stock up on food. Things were better in the national Ukrainian outskirts, personal farms were not restricted there, and opportunities for gardening and livestock farming were wider.
The Soviet gerontocracy followed a simple path. The problem was solved by importing. Imported goods began to conquer the Soviet market. People began to chase after better quality things - jackets, blouses, boots, tights, household appliances. Even imported furniture began to displace domestic ones. Merchants in such conditions became important people.
Imported things became for the Soviet consumer, the new tradesman, an example of an ideal world. It is not surprising that later the crowd will surrender to the USSR for 100 varieties of sausage, cheese, jeans and chewing gum. And she won’t even understand what she lost.
What’s worse is that the Soviet government even tried to carry out modernization and renewal of industry at the expense of Western equipment and technology. They bought not only equipment and machines abroad, but entire automated lines and even factories. Similar or more advanced developments of Soviet research institutes and design bureaus remained unclaimed and gathered dust in the archives of the military-industrial complex.
Trade turnover with Western Europe in the 1970s increased 5 times, with the USA - 8 times. Russia gave the West billions of “petrodollars,” rubles backed by gold. The vicious practice of purchasing provisions, launched under Khrushchev, who dealt a fatal blow to the Russian countryside, continued. And such fashion has also expanded. This is despite the simply endless possibilities for the development of agriculture in Russia.
However, it is worth keeping in mind that these negative phenomena have not yet assumed the character of total dependence on the West, as they have since the 2000s. The Soviet Union maintained educational, scientific and technological, industrial and food (for example, the seeds were its own) independence and security. The USSR produced not only galoshes, but also the entire line of products - from nails and tanks to spaceships and tractors.
Soviet anti-alcohol poster
Development of the criminal world
Theft became another serious problem of the Brezhnev USSR. As soon as Stalin's strictures were abolished, theft took on such proportions that already under Khrushchev in 1961 it was necessary to pass harsh laws on economic crimes. Punishments for theft on an especially large scale were provided for, including the death penalty.
However, during the Brezhnev era, new princes, bais and khans began to establish themselves in the capitals and national republics. The basis for a new feudalism is being created. Party and state dignitaries became almost absolute masters of their estates, contacted each other, and established connections with the shadow world. They were not averse to extracting additional profits from their position. Various specialists were attached to their hand, who made gesheft in construction, using funds allocated for industry and agriculture. Thieves and swindlers began to contact the relevant officials, buttering them up so that no one would interfere with them.
Soviet law enforcement agencies could only punish petty crooks, or “scapegoats,” or when the case was made public, there was a struggle between various clans. Persons belonging to the nomenklatura were inviolable.
Entire branches of the shadow economy are emerging, especially in the national outskirts. The swindlers resold scarce goods and organized the production of counterfeit products from state-owned raw materials, often on state-owned machines. According to some estimates, in the mid-1980s, up to 15 million people worked in the shadow economy.
With the collapse of the USSR, the criminal world and shadow economy businessmen will play their negative role. And then a direct merging of the criminal world with representatives of the authorities will begin. The landmark film “Blind Man’s Bluff,” when the surviving “brothers” became power. Or “Cop Wars” - when the role of organized crime groups is played by different power structures.
Bus convoy to the pioneer camp
Preparation of the fifth column
While the Brezhnev elite enjoyed peace and stability, the masters of the West did not sleep and gradually prepared the collapse of the USSR. The dissident movement was still cultivated in the USSR. Various committees were created abroad to protect dissidents in the USSR, and corresponding pickets and demonstrations were held.
In fact, there were only a few thousand dissidents in the USSR, and several hundred active ones. Almost no one in the country knew them. But they acted precisely in order to create information noise around themselves and a corresponding information agenda in the world. So, in August 1968, several people staged a rally on Red Square against the entry of the Soviet army into Czechoslovakia. Who could they persuade? They were immediately tied up. The only spectators were foreign journalists, who had been warned in advance. So we have material for the world media.
The dissidents who clustered around Sakharov acted in the same way. They called several foreign journalists in Moscow and posted some negative things about Soviet reality.
Human rights activists worked in the same spirit. In 1968, Khodorovich, Kovalev and Velikanova began publishing the underground “Chronicle of Current Events,” collecting materials about violations of “human rights” in the USSR. They created a hidden network of informants. When the USSR signed an obligation to comply with the “Declaration of Human Rights” in Helsinki, they took advantage of this.
In 1976, the “Group for Assistance to the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR” arose in Moscow, headed by Orlov, Sharansky, Amalrik and Ginsburg. She took upon herself the mission of checking and reporting abroad how human rights are respected in the Union.
Denunciation is all that the “human rights activists” were capable of. Knock abroad. Let good foreigners help. Although in the West, “human rights” were far from ideal.
Andrei Sakharov and US President Ronald Reagan, 1988
To be continued ...
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