7 Gorbachev's fatal mistakes
"The moor has done his work; the moor can leave." 25 December 1991 of the year Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from the powers of the President of the USSR "for reasons of principle". The next day, the USSR officially ceased to exist.
1. Gorbachev's plan
We remembered glasnost, lines, acceleration, endless party plenary sessions and meetings, songs of Viktor Tsoi and free television, blood in Tbilisi, Dushanbe, Yerevan and the Baltic republics, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Tanks in Moscow. But we do not remember anything that would tell us: Gorbachev and his entourage, in addition to numerous high-profile slogans, had a concrete plan, they knew very well what they were doing and why. We heard whether someone likes them or not, about the “Putin plan”, “the Marshall plan”, “the new Roosevelt course”, and even “500 days of Yavlinsky” - but we never heard about the “Gorbachev plan”, at least for in order to retroactively find errors in it. Was he at all?
2. Anti-alcohol campaign
There is still no consensus on the advisability of an anti-alcohol campaign, even among experts. But there are things that can be considered an axiom: all the advantages of the campaign, such as increasing the birth rate, worked in the long run, and all the disadvantages hit the country here and now. In the middle of 80, the USSR was no longer ready for the loss of 10-12% of tax revenues to the budget. In numerous queues for alcohol and so low prestige of the leadership fell very low. And, finally, the main thing - to look at what is happening in the country with sober eyes for many of its citizens was simply unbearable.
3. Yakovlev and Ligachev
The role of the Communist Party in the life of the country was interpreted as "leading and directing." Political monopoly demanded, if not unity of opinion in the apparatus, then at least unity of action of the apparatus. Under Gorbachev, the most important, ideological department of the CPSU Central Committee split into two groups: one was personified by a conservative gravitating to Stalinist views, Yegor Ligachev, and the other by radical liberal Alexander Yakovlev. The power system of checks and balances working in the “peace time” proved to be fatal during the period of large-scale reforms. The country has reached the point of absurdity - in the morning the liberal wing of the party allowed something, in the evening the conservative tried to ban the same thing. Now it’s clear: unfamiliar with the principles of the democratic press, the Soviet country would have survived the program “Sight” and the revelatory stripes of “Moscow News”, In the same way she would have survived the temporary tightening of nuts, but there is no acute conflict of freedom and lack of freedom, simultaneous permissions and prohibitions. Gorbachev could not, and perhaps did not want to reconcile the warring party groups and develop a common program of action in the crisis period.
4. Yeltsin
By the time Perestroika began, none of the Soviet politicians had any experience of a public struggle for power. This partly justifies Gorbachev’s grand miscalculation against Boris Yeltsin. When the future first president of Russia straddled the populist wave and began to rapidly "score points", Gorbachev and his circle were not ready for this. The awkward blackening publications in the party press (which few people believed already), ugly picks at the Plenary Sessions of the Supreme Council, the general “phi” which the Soviet power pointedly expressed to Yeltsin did not prevent, and greatly helped him to become a national hero in the shortest possible time. On the shoulders of this people, Yeltsin very soon and will carry the Soviet Union to drink an outrageous amount of vodka on its ruins.
5. Gorby and Raisa
Russia is a country with deep authoritarian traditions. All reforms, regardless of their price (usually it is in the hundreds of thousands of Russian lives), are implemented only by charismatic leaders: Ivan the Terrible, Peter 1, Catherine the Great, Stalin. Gorbachev tried to disrupt the unchanged course of Russian stories. He began Perestroika, not having broad popular support. One gets the impression that at a certain moment his image abroad began to worry him more than within the country. Gorbachev was disliked for indistinct public appearances, for his wife, too lady, unlike ordinary Soviet women, for indecision and much more. Along with the fall of Gorbachev’s rating, which he couldn’t strengthen, the hopes of the people of the country for the success of economic, social and political transformations fell. In such cases, the Russians say: "Not according to Senka hat."
6. Abroad will help us
The suspicious naivety of Gorbachev and part of the party elite in relation to Western countries is surprising. The fact that with great difficulty, then with blood, was conquered by the military imperialism of previous generations of Russians, was squandered in a few years. In addition to the global strategic miscalculation - a powerful, sovereign Russia is not needed by anyone (even among Russians, there is no consensus now whether Russians themselves need it, and especially the West), Gorbachev made a lot of tactical mistakes. Assume that the unification of the FRG and the GDR was inevitable, but why, when we still had a strong influence on the Germans, and the Russian divisions were stationed in Berlin, we did not insist, but the Germans would agree to include in the treaty a clause prohibiting Germany from entering military and political blocs in the future? The whole contemporary problem of NATO expansion to the East is the essence, the thoughtlessness of the Gorbachev era. After all, under the same conditions, we could “release” the countries of Eastern Europe - while maintaining our influence there and not allowing the deployment of Anglo-Saxon military bases. The Black Sea Fleet, the Russian Crimea is all; even with the worst possible course of events, Gorbachev did not do what he could, had to save for Russia.
7. Neoliberalism
Privatization, reduction of state intervention in the economy, curtailment of social programs - with the coming to power in the Anglo-Saxon countries Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, neoliberalism has become the leading practical direction in the global economy. In the United States and Great Britain, neoliberal reforms bore tangible rewards. Russia is a country of extremes, we have traditionally completely denied the Western experience for a long time, and then we begin to rapidly and feverishly copy “the most progressive tendencies”. Having no experience of capitalism at all, we suddenly took the most modern form of it as a model and model. After all, it seems, and a no-brainer: the problems of the British and American economies of 80-s are not close to the difficulties of the Soviet economy of those years. But it was under Gorbachev that the neoliberal economic core began to form in the country's leadership. It is known: "Hurry up - make people laugh." In the twentieth century, Russia at least twice tragically hurried: first build socialism in an agrarian country, then advanced capitalism in the Soviet empire. As a result, one part of the country hatefully hates all Soviet and socialist, although the whole of Western Europe has been building more or less socialism in recent years. The other part is all liberal and capitalistic, although no one has abolished the absolute values of personal freedom, private property and civil rights. The only point of social consensus in Russia was running in place or stagnation, and then suddenly again, without sorting out the roads, we would run somewhere so that there would be no Russians left. Gorbachev had a historic chance to change everything. He missed it.
1. Gorbachev's plan
We remembered glasnost, lines, acceleration, endless party plenary sessions and meetings, songs of Viktor Tsoi and free television, blood in Tbilisi, Dushanbe, Yerevan and the Baltic republics, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Tanks in Moscow. But we do not remember anything that would tell us: Gorbachev and his entourage, in addition to numerous high-profile slogans, had a concrete plan, they knew very well what they were doing and why. We heard whether someone likes them or not, about the “Putin plan”, “the Marshall plan”, “the new Roosevelt course”, and even “500 days of Yavlinsky” - but we never heard about the “Gorbachev plan”, at least for in order to retroactively find errors in it. Was he at all?
2. Anti-alcohol campaign
There is still no consensus on the advisability of an anti-alcohol campaign, even among experts. But there are things that can be considered an axiom: all the advantages of the campaign, such as increasing the birth rate, worked in the long run, and all the disadvantages hit the country here and now. In the middle of 80, the USSR was no longer ready for the loss of 10-12% of tax revenues to the budget. In numerous queues for alcohol and so low prestige of the leadership fell very low. And, finally, the main thing - to look at what is happening in the country with sober eyes for many of its citizens was simply unbearable.
3. Yakovlev and Ligachev
The role of the Communist Party in the life of the country was interpreted as "leading and directing." Political monopoly demanded, if not unity of opinion in the apparatus, then at least unity of action of the apparatus. Under Gorbachev, the most important, ideological department of the CPSU Central Committee split into two groups: one was personified by a conservative gravitating to Stalinist views, Yegor Ligachev, and the other by radical liberal Alexander Yakovlev. The power system of checks and balances working in the “peace time” proved to be fatal during the period of large-scale reforms. The country has reached the point of absurdity - in the morning the liberal wing of the party allowed something, in the evening the conservative tried to ban the same thing. Now it’s clear: unfamiliar with the principles of the democratic press, the Soviet country would have survived the program “Sight” and the revelatory stripes of “Moscow News”, In the same way she would have survived the temporary tightening of nuts, but there is no acute conflict of freedom and lack of freedom, simultaneous permissions and prohibitions. Gorbachev could not, and perhaps did not want to reconcile the warring party groups and develop a common program of action in the crisis period.
4. Yeltsin
By the time Perestroika began, none of the Soviet politicians had any experience of a public struggle for power. This partly justifies Gorbachev’s grand miscalculation against Boris Yeltsin. When the future first president of Russia straddled the populist wave and began to rapidly "score points", Gorbachev and his circle were not ready for this. The awkward blackening publications in the party press (which few people believed already), ugly picks at the Plenary Sessions of the Supreme Council, the general “phi” which the Soviet power pointedly expressed to Yeltsin did not prevent, and greatly helped him to become a national hero in the shortest possible time. On the shoulders of this people, Yeltsin very soon and will carry the Soviet Union to drink an outrageous amount of vodka on its ruins.
5. Gorby and Raisa
Russia is a country with deep authoritarian traditions. All reforms, regardless of their price (usually it is in the hundreds of thousands of Russian lives), are implemented only by charismatic leaders: Ivan the Terrible, Peter 1, Catherine the Great, Stalin. Gorbachev tried to disrupt the unchanged course of Russian stories. He began Perestroika, not having broad popular support. One gets the impression that at a certain moment his image abroad began to worry him more than within the country. Gorbachev was disliked for indistinct public appearances, for his wife, too lady, unlike ordinary Soviet women, for indecision and much more. Along with the fall of Gorbachev’s rating, which he couldn’t strengthen, the hopes of the people of the country for the success of economic, social and political transformations fell. In such cases, the Russians say: "Not according to Senka hat."
6. Abroad will help us
The suspicious naivety of Gorbachev and part of the party elite in relation to Western countries is surprising. The fact that with great difficulty, then with blood, was conquered by the military imperialism of previous generations of Russians, was squandered in a few years. In addition to the global strategic miscalculation - a powerful, sovereign Russia is not needed by anyone (even among Russians, there is no consensus now whether Russians themselves need it, and especially the West), Gorbachev made a lot of tactical mistakes. Assume that the unification of the FRG and the GDR was inevitable, but why, when we still had a strong influence on the Germans, and the Russian divisions were stationed in Berlin, we did not insist, but the Germans would agree to include in the treaty a clause prohibiting Germany from entering military and political blocs in the future? The whole contemporary problem of NATO expansion to the East is the essence, the thoughtlessness of the Gorbachev era. After all, under the same conditions, we could “release” the countries of Eastern Europe - while maintaining our influence there and not allowing the deployment of Anglo-Saxon military bases. The Black Sea Fleet, the Russian Crimea is all; even with the worst possible course of events, Gorbachev did not do what he could, had to save for Russia.
7. Neoliberalism
Privatization, reduction of state intervention in the economy, curtailment of social programs - with the coming to power in the Anglo-Saxon countries Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, neoliberalism has become the leading practical direction in the global economy. In the United States and Great Britain, neoliberal reforms bore tangible rewards. Russia is a country of extremes, we have traditionally completely denied the Western experience for a long time, and then we begin to rapidly and feverishly copy “the most progressive tendencies”. Having no experience of capitalism at all, we suddenly took the most modern form of it as a model and model. After all, it seems, and a no-brainer: the problems of the British and American economies of 80-s are not close to the difficulties of the Soviet economy of those years. But it was under Gorbachev that the neoliberal economic core began to form in the country's leadership. It is known: "Hurry up - make people laugh." In the twentieth century, Russia at least twice tragically hurried: first build socialism in an agrarian country, then advanced capitalism in the Soviet empire. As a result, one part of the country hatefully hates all Soviet and socialist, although the whole of Western Europe has been building more or less socialism in recent years. The other part is all liberal and capitalistic, although no one has abolished the absolute values of personal freedom, private property and civil rights. The only point of social consensus in Russia was running in place or stagnation, and then suddenly again, without sorting out the roads, we would run somewhere so that there would be no Russians left. Gorbachev had a historic chance to change everything. He missed it.
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