Was the collapse of the USSR inevitable. Was the collapse of the Soviet economic system inevitable? The main military-political reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed

In December 1991, the heads of the republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed a Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreement on the establishment of the SSG. This document actually meant the collapse of the Soviet Union. The political map of the world began to look different.

First, you need to decide what caused it. global catastrophe to try to objectively assess the situation. There are many such reasons. This is the degradation of the ruling elites of the "epoch of the funeral", which turned a powerful state into a not very powerful one, and problems in the economy that have long required effective reforms. This also includes strict censorship, deep internal crises, including increased nationalism in the republics.

It is naive to believe that the stars were formed in this way and the state fell apart due to coincidental events. The main political opponent of the Soviet Union did not doze off either, imposing an arms race in which the USSR, given all the existing problems, could not succeed. We must pay tribute to the mind and insight of Western geopoliticians, who managed to shake and destroy the seemingly unshakable " Soviet car».

The USSR broke up into 15 states. In 1991, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan appeared on the world map.

cold war, which resulted in the collapse of the USSR, was by no means limited to indirect skirmishes on various fronts in countries such as Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. The Cold War took place in the heads and hearts of the citizens of the USSR and the USA. Western propaganda was more sophisticated. The United States and its allies turned all their mass riots and discontent into a show. Hippies could preach love instead of war, and the authorities quietly allowed them to express their point of view, nevertheless continuing to bend their policy. In the Soviet Union, dissent was severely suppressed. And when they were allowed to think “otherwise”, it was too late. A wave of discontent, fueled from outside (and the fifth column took Active participation) was unstoppable.

There were a lot of reasons for the collapse, but if we simplify everything, we can conclude that the USSR collapsed because of jeans, chewing gum and Coca-Cola. There were too many "forbidden fruits", which in fact turned out to be empty.

Options for resolving the situation.

Probably, it was possible to prevent the collapse of the USSR. It is difficult to say what solution would be ideal for the state, for the country, for the people, without knowing all the unknown factors. As an example, consider the Chinese People's Republic, which, thanks to the flexible actions of the authorities, managed to bypass the crisis of the socialist system.

However, the national component should not be underestimated. But Soviet Union, and the PRC are multinational states, the peoples of China and the Soviet Union are by no means identical. The difference between culture and history makes itself felt.

We needed an idea for the people. It was necessary to come up with an alternative american dream", which teased Soviet citizens from across the ocean. In the 30s, when the inhabitants of the USSR believed in the ideals of communism, the country turned from an agrarian into an industrial one in a record short time. In the 40s. not without faith in a just cause, the USSR defeated the enemy, who at that time was stronger in military power. In the 50s. people were ready to raise virgin lands for the sake of the common good on bare enthusiasm. In the 60s. The Soviet Union was the first to send a man into space. Soviet people conquered Mountain peaks, made scientific discoveries, beat world records. All this happened largely because of faith in a brighter future and for the good of their people.

For more than 20 years, in most economic and social indicators, the newly formed countries have significantly rolled back.

Then the situation gradually began to deteriorate. The people began to understand the utopian ideals of the past. The country's government blindly continued to bend its line, not thinking about possible development alternatives. The aging leaders of the USSR reacted primitively to the provocations of the West, getting involved in unnecessary military conflicts. The outrageously growing bureaucracy thought primarily about its own good rather than about the needs of the people, for whom all these "people's" bodies were originally created.

There was no need to "tighten the screws" where the situation did not require it. Then the "forbidden fruits" would not have become so desirable, and the intriguers of the West would have lost their main weapon. Instead of thoughtlessly following obviously utopian ideals, it was necessary to pay attention in time to the needs of the people even at that time. And in no case do not alternate “thaws” and other liberalisms with strict prohibitions. Domestic and foreign policy had to be carried out justifiably tough for the benefit of national interests, but without excesses.

long time Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, along with the United States of America, one of the two superpowers. In many important economic indicators, it ranked second in the world, second only to the United States, and in some cases even surpassed them.

The USSR has made great strides in space program, in mining, development of remote areas of Siberia and the Far North. Very unexpectedly, it collapsed in December 1991. Why did this happen?

The main socio-ideological reasons for the collapse of the USSR

The USSR included 15 national republics, which differed greatly in all indicators, industry and agriculture, ethnic, languages, religion, mentality, etc. Such a heterogeneous composition was fraught with a delayed action mine. For cohesion, consisting of so various parts, a common ideology was used - Marxism-Leninism, which proclaimed its goal to build a classless society of "abundance".

However, everyday reality, especially since the second half of the 70s of the last century, was very different from the program slogans. It was especially difficult to combine the idea of the coming "abundance" with trade deficit.

As a result, the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the USSR stopped believing in ideological clichés.

A natural consequence of this was apathy, indifference, disbelief in the words of the leaders of the country, as well as the growth of nationalist sentiments in the union republics. Gradually everything more people began to come to the conclusion that this is how to continue to live.

The main military-political reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed

The USSR actually had to bear the gigantic burden of military spending alone in order to maintain the balance of the Warsaw Pact led by it with the NATO bloc, since its allies were immeasurably weaker in -economically.

As military equipment became more difficult and more expensive, it was increasingly difficult to sustain such expenses.

Prerequisites for the crisis of the system

The USSR as a great one was formed in 1922. At first it was an entity, but over time it turned into a state with power concentrated exclusively in Moscow. The republican authorities, in fact, received orders for execution from Moscow. Their dissatisfaction with this state of affairs was a natural process, at first timid, eventually turning into open confrontation. The surge came at the time of perestroika, for example, the events in Georgia. But even then the problems were not solved, but were driven even more inward, the solution of problems was postponed “for later”, information about discontent was not available, because it was carefully concealed by the authorities.

The USSR was originally created on the basis of the recognition of the right of national republics to self-determination, that is, the state was built according to the national-territorial principle. This right was enshrined in the Constitutions of 1922, 1936 and 1977. It just prompted the republics to secede from the USSR.

The collapse of the USSR was also facilitated by the crisis that overtook the central government in the late 80s. Republican political elites decided to take advantage of the opportunity to free themselves from the "Moscow yoke". It was precisely these that were considered in many republics of the former Soviet Union by the actions of the central Moscow authorities in relation to them. And in the modern political world, the same opinion still prevails.

The meaning of the collapse of the USSR

The significance of the collapse of the USSR cannot be overestimated even after more than 20 years. Yes, on such a scale, their possibility or impossibility is difficult to determine "in hot pursuit." Today we can say that, most likely, the collapse of the Union was irreversible due to the fact that many processes that took place during the 60-80s acted as catalysts. 20th century.

Consequences for the state

During perestroika, it became clear that the model of socialism created in the Soviet Union was practically unreformable. A perfect attempt to reform the system initiated a deep economic crisis in the state, which subsequently led the country to a dead end. Changes in policy, which made it possible to make the country more open and free, only led to the fact that the accumulated long years discontent in populace, was more than splashed out.

The belated perestroika of 1985-1991 is a disastrous example of what can happen to a state if the authorities delay reforms.

Mikhail Gorbachev is confident that the breakthrough made during perestroika is still relevant for most post-Soviet countries. New states still need powerful impulses and active actions of the authorities aimed at the democratization of society, which will have to complete the processes that began back in 1985.

It is generally accepted that the collapse of the USSR was inevitable, and this view is held not only by those who considered it a "prison of nations", or "the last of the endangered species - a relic" - a "multinational empire", as an expert on the problems interethnic relations in the USSR, M. Mandelbaum in the preface to the almanac of articles published by the American Council on Foreign Relations on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. * However, it is more correct to apply the term "dismemberment" to what happened, although it carries a certain charge of emotional evaluation. Disintegration, that is, a natural separation from a body that has not become a single fused organism, could be called a process when the state would lose precisely those ethno-territorial units, those that existed before statehood entered Russia, which were collected during Russian history. However, in the vast majority of cases, the division took place not at all along the historical seams that almost everywhere have disappeared, but along completely different lines. It can hardly be denied that with all the abundance of problems, a certain blow was dealt to those lines that were already incised. arbitrary decision on the body of the state and many of its peoples in accordance with the historical ideology and political tasks of the creators of the socialist federation. It is appropriate to cite the judgment of A. Motyl that “contrary to the widespread belief, the peoples of the Soviet Union are not awakening themselves so much as they are being awakened. They assert themselves right up to the demand for independence because perestroika forced them to do so. Ironically, none other than Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, a home-grown proletarian internationalist par excellence, must be considered the father of nationalism in the USSR.

In 1991, the main argument for recognizing the existing internal borders between the union republics as international and inviolable was the thesis of the need for peaceful and conflict-free dismantling, as well as the doctrine of the right of self-determining nations to secede. However, in the real conditions of the centuries-old unified state and the political ambitions of the elites, these tools turned out to be unsuitable for a consistent, legitimate and conflict-free solution.

Thus, the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the blood in Bendery and the categorical unwillingness of Pridnestrovie to submit to the dictates of Chisinau, the war between the Abkhazians and Georgians, the persistent unwillingness of the Russian population of Crimea to turn into Ukrainians showed that it was the adopted approach that immanently contained the potential for conflict and clash of interests, which continues to characterize the geopolitical situation on the territory historical state Russian. Each of the union republics, in fact, represented a reduced copy of the Union - also a multinational entity. Moreover, unlike the country as a whole, which took shape over the centuries, some republics were often not cut along the boundaries of the ethnic or historical unity of the population. The titular nations of these republics, having proclaimed their right to self-determination, showed complete unwillingness to grant the same right that they had won for themselves to nations that fall into the position of national minorities within previously non-existent states.

The explanation for this, as a rule, boiled down to the impossibility of following the path of endless fragmentation of the country, although in reality such a prospect would not affect all the republics. But it was obvious that the dismantling of the USSR by withdrawing from it through the constitutional procedure is objectively more would promote the interests of Russia, the Russians and the peoples gravitating toward them. At the same time, the Russian Federation itself would not even be affected. Contrary to the widespread illusion, the Russian Federation did not announce its withdrawal from the USSR, and even if all the others announced their withdrawal, it would remain its legal successor, and its autonomies did not have the right to withdraw under the constitution, and the problem of choice would legally arise only before the peoples who were separating republics.

From the very beginning, the CIS did not inspire hope that its institutions would implement a mechanism with signs of a subject of world politics, in new form preserving the geostrategic image of the historical state of Russia or the USSR. The reasons are both in the non-random amorphousness of the original legal instruments, and in the deep centrifugal tendencies that have become obvious. Nevertheless, the potential of the centripetal impulses of the peoples included in it, contrary to the popular opinion, is also obvious. However, the specifics of the formation of new subjects of international relations in 1991 was such that it was the integration potential that turned out to be legally constrained, if not paralyzed, since the peoples gravitating towards Russia (except for Belarus) were deprived of legal personality. This by no means accidental reality not only made it difficult for Russia to maintain its geopolitical area, which immediately became the object of the foreign policy of surrounding interests, but also made the new states internally unstable, gave rise to armed conflicts, and inconsistency of governments.

Now it is quite obvious that one of the deep and hardly removable causes of both tragic clashes and contradictory integration and disintegration tendencies in the CIS is the double (in 1917 and 1991) reshaping of the historical Russian statehood exercised under the doctrine of the right of nations to self-determination, adopted by both Bolshevism and militant liberalism, two doctrines that seek to historical result to the destruction of nations and borders. "From the time of Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin, throughout the century, the idea that ethnicity gives the right to claim cultural and political rights and territory has had a wide resonance," admits the American author R. G. Seuni.

National principle of organization Soviet state by isolating a titular nation in an arbitrarily defined territory and endowing it with special rights(the state language, priority in the development of culture, the formation of government bodies, the disposal of resources and capital, tax revenues) is a natural fruit of both the teachings of Locke and historical materialism as a philosophy, as well as a specific political doctrine of building "the world's first state of workers and peasants", carried out Russian Bolsheviks and liberals on the rubble historical Russia declared for the success of the revolution "a prison of nations".

In theory and practice, there were antinomies and mutually exclusive problems. On the one hand, the political slogan was to ensure the identity, preservation and "equal conditions" for state development of all nations large and small, although equal representation of small and big people meant the possibility for tiny peoples to dictate their will to many millions of peoples. However, both from the point of view of small and from the standpoint of the interests of large peoples, the selection of titular nations did not remove, but only exacerbated the problem, since not a single ethnic group is localized within one autonomous entity, and sometimes it is specially divided for political reasons.

"Socialist nations" and "socialist peoples" were constructed on the basis of real or imaginary ethno-cultural differences and "attached to a certain territory" - writes M. Strezhneva, and "members of the ethnic nation that gave the name to the corresponding republic ... belonged to the titular population if they lived in "their" republic, and to national minorities if they permanently lived anywhere else within the Union. At the same time, ethnic Russians were essentially a transnational Soviet ethnos, and the category of the non-titular population in the Soviet Union consisted primarily of Russians. "In the territories of these entities, not only Russians, but also many other peoples fell into the second grade. In many entities, Russians made up the majority, and in some, the titular nation was even in third place (in Bashkiria, for example, there are fewer Bashkirs than Russians and Tatars).

However, this problem was of little interest to architects, because historical materialism does not consider the nation to be the subject of history and assigns it only a temporary significance, proceeding from the movement towards a single communist model up to the merger and disappearance of all nations. Therefore, the creation of quasi-state autonomous and republican formations along arbitrary borders with the Marxist goal of universal leveling of the spirit while preserving only the national form (the slogan of culture - socialist content - national form), combined with the never-cancelled slogan "on the right of nations to self-determination up to secession", at the beginning of the 20th century laid the foundation for a huge destructive power to the very foundation of Russian statehood.

It must be borne in mind that the number of peoples and nationalities once united in the Russian Empire was much greater than the number of arbitrarily drawn "socialist" autonomies and quasi-state formations. With repeated redistribution of republican borders, both the Russian people and some other peoples, either completely or in parts, were arbitrarily included in the composition of the federal subjects being created in violation of the agreements they once independently concluded with Russia. Such are the cases of Abkhazia and Ossetia, which independently entered Russia, and then were made part of socialist Georgia, dismemberment of the Lezgi people, position Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the obvious situation of Crimea and Transnistria. Such an arbitrary division was not of decisive importance for life in the USSR, but turned into a drama of separation from Russia or the dismemberment of the nation in two when it collapsed. This must be taken into account when judging the causes of conflicts, the prospects for the entire geopolitical space of the CIS, the relationship between its participants, and the role external forces who are very interested in drawing new subjects into their orbit and using conflicts between them for their own purposes.

Referring to the dismemberment of the USSR as a fait accompli of history, one cannot help but realize when considering the processes in its space that the circumstances of its liquidation largely laid down many of today's conflicts and trends, and also programmed the most interested participation of the outside world in the processes. Strictly according to legal norms, the seceding union republics could be considered constituted as states only with the consensus of all the peoples included in them and after procedures that ensured on the territory of the union republic that declared its desire for independence, each people and territory the opportunity free choice of their state affiliation.

In some republics, the situation generally satisfied these criteria, but in a number of them, from the very beginning, the situation was far from such. Nevertheless, these neoplasms were immediately recognized the international community, and the conflicts that arose precisely on the issue of secession from the USSR and constitution into an independent state, which arose before the fact of recognition and formalization of independence, were declared "separatist", as if they had arisen on the territory of long-established and legitimately recognized states.

The failure to provide a constitutional procedure for secession from the Union allows the parties to the conflicts to challenge the historical fate imposed on them today. It is for these reasons that the process of the national-state reorganization of the post-Soviet space in these states themselves is not considered complete by everyone, and the territorial and legal status of its former republics is final. But one way or another, and this is also a given, Moscow, in accordance with the internal political circumstances of the method it chose to liquidate the USSR, and also in connection with external pressure, recognized the existing administrative borders as international ones.

Thus, the potential for conflict was immanent in the ongoing process of disintegration of a single state along non-historical borders. It has not been overcome, only by changing its forms and dynamics depending on the orientation of the new states on the world stage. Here we come to a very important and defining aspect of the problems of the CIS and the entire geopolitical area of the historical Russian state.

It is pointless to deny that the revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 had internal preconditions. However, it is also indisputable that the external context in 1991 played a greater role in the internal political life of Russia than at any other time in history. Moreover, in the 20th century "Realpolitik", in contrast to the times of "tyrants", hides under ideological clichés, which was demonstrated by communist universalism, and now repeats the philosophy of "one world".

Parallels with the revolution are evident in the politics of the West, primarily of Anglo-Saxon interests. It is curious that the United States responded to the dramatic events of 1991 in the spirit of its strategy of 1917 and welcomed the destruction of the communist state in the same words as the collapse of the Russian state at the beginning of the century. The policy of ubiquitous American interests in the mid-1990s clearly showed features of "neo-Wilsonianism." When the protagonist of "freedom and democracy" in Moscow, Kyiv and Tbilisi, President Bush, promising recognition to Ukraine, blessed the Belovezhskaya Accords, when the United States recognized Georgia without waiting for the legitimization of the Tbilisi regime, the times of the Brest Peace were involuntarily recalled, House and V. Wilson with their Program from XIV points, Lloyd George's plan to dismember Russia, an attempt to immediately recognize all the "de facto" existing governments on the territory of the "former" Russian Empire, etc. But behind all this, H. Mackinder's scheme is a belt of small and weak states from the Baltic to the Black Sea, confirmed by the conclusion of the American Council on Foreign Relations of August 1941 on the need for a "buffer zone between Slavs and Teutons", controlled by the Anglo-Saxons through multilateral structures and supranational mechanisms .

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Moscow State Mining University

Department of History and Sociology

creative essay

The death of the USSR, collapse, collapse

soviet society socialism belovezhsky

Performed:

student of ASP-B-11 group

Kovalevskaya Darina Evgenievna

Checked:

PhD in History, Associate Professor

Bokarev Vladimir Valentinovich

Moscow, 2011

I was born in 1991, in the year of the demographic crisis, in the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the year of the emergence of Russia, which now, 20 years later, has become Russia “today” for me. I know a lot about the Soviet Union first hand, from older people, from grandparents. From parents, from friends. I talked a lot about the USSR with my mother. She told me how she lived, an ordinary schoolgirl, what she ate, what she played, what color the notebook sheets were and what “chewing gum” was at that time.

I did not like my first acquaintance with the Soviet Union. For me, a girl with a heightened sense of justice and maximalist views on life, my mother's life caused vivid indignation. I didn’t understand why she calmly walked home when she was kicked out of school for not having a tie or an unironed skirt, why she sat for hours on the windowsill, waiting for the aunt from the butcher opposite to look out of the store’s fire exit door and wave her hand. Thus, the first thing that comes to my mind when mentioning the Soviet Union is the deficit. Lack of food, clothing. The lack of freedom.

On the other hand, almost everyone was sure of tomorrow. The worker was not afraid of being fired, or being unable to pay the rent. Everyone knew that he had a certain gram of butter and a loaf of bread allotted to him, that sooner or later he would receive a state apartment, and in the summer he would go to a sanatorium. There was a specific life scenario that the Soviet people had to follow.

People swarmed about in their everyday life and small problems, but the general tension, the general indignation and the general thirst for freedom grew more and more, faith in a wonderful future became thinner.

The main symbol of those years was the anthem of the USSR, words aimed at awakening patriotism, glorifying the country. Let's remember the first lines:

Union indestructible free republics

United forever Great Russia.

Long live the one created by the will of the peoples,

United, mighty Soviet Union!

And from the first words you can find inconsistencies with reality Soviet life. Created by the "will of the peoples", but not all republics voluntarily became part of the USSR, let us recall, for example, the accession of the Baltic republics and the western part of Ukraine. The unity of the Union is also in doubt, because throughout almost the entire history of the Union there were republics that wanted to secede, whose desire was brutally suppressed, while the rest were simply profitable to exist on top dressing.

The Soviet Union did indeed give its citizens the belief that they were living in great country which cares about its citizens and will never, under any circumstances, let them offend. But at what cost!

Playing one of the leading roles in world politics, the USSR spent colossal sums on supporting and planting friendly, communist regimes around the world, thus creating a counterbalance to the actions of the United States and the friendly NATO bloc. All this required incredible forces and resources. A widely deployed propaganda system inside and outside the country contributed to the implementation of these plans. The planned economy, put on a war footing, provided the country's leadership with steel, reinforced arguments for creating the image of the Great State.

Meanwhile, the people of the "Great State" went to the same empty shops in the same gray clothes. The main slogan is "let's fulfill the plan set by the government for this five-year period." And how does it differ from the slogan of the war years? All for the front, all for victory. Victory over whom? A mythical external enemy invented by propagandists? The situation was significantly aggravated by the property stratification of the population, which contradicted the fundamental idea of socialism. Over time, the elite began to live a petty bourgeois life, which could not but arouse in the people the desire to improve their financial situation, their living conditions. It also cast doubt on the political ideology of the country.

Many are beginning to realize that the apparent equality in fact is not. There is a mass feeling of injustice and ideas of struggle against the system. As a result, the general spirit of rebellion begins to emerge in the country, at first quietly. Petty industrial thefts thrive, people tend to get everything "through connections", through acquaintances. Soviet civilization is gradually losing its foundation, losing the support of society and ceases to be legitimate.

It is now known that spontaneous protests against the ruling regime have repeatedly flared up in the USSR. For example, on July 3 and 4, 1962, there was an uprising in Novocherkassk Rostov region. 4,000 workers at an electric locomotive plant staged a protest against the rise in prices for meat and butter. The protesters were dispersed with the help of troops. Then 23 people died, 70 were injured. 132 instigators were brought to criminal responsibility.

Returning to the topic of this essay, what happened in 1991? Death, collapse or collapse? Three words that have a similar meaning in essence, but are completely different in meaning and emotional coloring. I believe that the “death” began long before the announcement of the demise of the USSR, then in 1991 the “collapse” occurred, and the “collapse” is something from which we still cannot recover.

So why did the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapse?

First, I want to talk about the economy. In my opinion, the idea of a planned system in itself is not bad. If the surplus of each person, which he spends on his own pleasures, actually sinks into nowhere, is directed to the improvement of production technologies, the state will develop, which should be followed by an increase in the standard of living in general. Only in the Soviet Union did the idea of human needs and, accordingly, planning differ greatly from reality. This can be seen even in the banal - if for every hundred people a shoe factory produced a hundred boots, it was believed that everyone would have a pair of boots. But, for some reason, no one foresaw that the majority of the feet have the same size, and only some have very large or very small ones. Already from this mistake there was a shortage of shoes for the main part of the population. And such a picture was observed with all goods.

Today, demand creates supply, and competitive firms strive to meet the supply, for which they produce better quality goods or more affordable goods. At the same time, supply did not depend on demand, production was monopolized by the state, so no one sought to improve the quality of the goods. The small assembly line worker sewing a button on his pants did not strive to do it better, or to overfulfill the plan, because he knew that his wages would remain the same, and for the overfulfilled plan they could appoint a new one, corresponding to his capabilities. The director of the enterprise did not strive for quality, because his product is the only one and people would still buy it. The reverse situation was in the military and space production. Models of a new rocket or assault rifle were approved on a competitive basis, so the designers tried to make their inventions the best, lightest, and most functional. Maximum funds were invested in further development, no new funds were invested in the production of consumer goods. As a result, the Soviet Union was first on the world stage in armaments, and far behind in the well-being of its citizens.

There was also the influence of "From Outside". The mass demonstrations that took place throughout the country in the late 1980s were aimed mainly at destroying the ideological foundations of Soviet society. These demonstrations were anti-communist and anti-Soviet, and most importantly, brought their destructive results. Freedom of speech, launched by Gorbachev, turned into an active discussion of the Soviet system from abroad, the image of a terrible Motherland and a wonderful abroad appears in the press. Reports and information "from there" had all the features advertising materials.

Both street speeches and publications in the press had a clearly powerful organizer with finances, since, firstly, they were planned and, secondly, they had the same informational focus: criticism of the Soviet political and ideological system and the Soviet Union in general, creating a negative image of our country and a positive image of "abroad". Such an identical direction of action of various factors can only be explained by guidance from single center. In other words, an information attack was carried out on the USSR. And this attack gave its results: the composition internal environment, culture was changed, and signs of a crumbling country began to appear throughout the country.

But the main reason for the collapse, as I believe, did not come from below, and not “from outside”, but from the top itself. Soviet power. It was from above that the betrayal of the basic ideas of socialism took place. Changes began under Khrushchev. The reborn elite was looking for their own benefit in everything. AT last years The existence of the Union was a struggle for power of different parties, but the liberals were not able to achieve any changes, and the communists lost the main support of the people. Against the backdrop of a decline in ideology and "differences in power", they started talking about independence, and the union republics, which were forcibly in the Union or were dissatisfied with their position, declared independence and the creation of independent nation states, the first were the Baltic republics.

The real danger of the uncontrolled collapse of the USSR, threatening with unpredictable consequences, forced the center and the republics to look for a way to compromises and agreements. The idea of concluding a new union treaty was put forward by the popular fronts of the Baltic states back in 1988. But until mid-1989, it did not find support. Awareness of its importance came only after the "parade of sovereignties" changed the Union beyond recognition.

And the apotheosis, in my opinion, was the Belovezhskaya agreement, the decision on which took place in dubious circumstances ...

What are the results of the collapse?

In the global understanding of this issue, of course, Russia has made a leap back. In fact, a new state has been created, and it is forced to start building the economy anew. Opened on the other side iron curtain, and it became possible to purchase high-quality or inexpensive goods. They say that the import of goods did not allow domestic enterprises to develop, but people simply chose what was best for them. And if the enterprises have not risen, then they simply could not stand this competition.

As for the changes in the life of each person individually, I will not be able to evaluate them objectively, for me the result was free society and a mixed economy, the right of every person to his own opinion. In the first post-Soviet period, many cried about the death of the USSR, feared for the future, someone's life has not changed much. And someone began to move actively, started his own business and used new opportunities.

Of course, today there is no such confidence in the future, but who prevents a person from being confident in himself, and not in the state? Today, the whole world is open to man. He can choose where to live and what to do.

Tags: The death of the USSR, collapse, collapse Essay History

On December 8, 1991, the collapse of the USSR was formalized. The document, which testified that the Soviet Union no longer exists, was signed by the heads of 3 countries: Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. The former Union included 15 countries. Now these republics became completely independent.

1991 was a fateful year. The political map of the world has lost a large country. Instead of one power, a series of independent states. The collapse of the USSR did not happen immediately. The end of the 1980s was characterized by perestroika. Perestroika was a set of reforms that were supposed to have a positive impact on the political and economic life of the Soviet Union. New ideology did not live up to the expected results. The population was dissatisfied. It wanted a change in leadership. But many did not want the collapse of a huge country. Reality dictated its conditions. It was impossible to change the structure of the state without significant consequences.

On June 12, 1991, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin became President of Russia. Vice President G. Yanaev, Minister of Defense
D. Yazov, KGB Chairman V. Kryuchkov, Prime Minister V. Pavlov on August 19 created state committee state of emergency (GKChP). Was introduced state of emergency, media and democratic organizations temporarily ceased their activities. There was a putsch. A putsch is an attempted coup d'état or, in fact, the coup itself. It was the August putsch that helped to disrupt the state system.

Prerequisites for the crisis of the system

The USSR was born in 1922. At first, this formation resembled a federation, but soon all power was concentrated in Moscow. The republics only received instructions from the capital. Of course, this did not please the authorities of other territories. At first it was a hidden discontent, but gradually the conflict escalated. During perestroika, the situation only worsened. An example of this was the events in Georgia. But the central government did not solve these problems. The carefree attitude paid off. Although ordinary citizens were completely unaware of the political battles. All information was carefully hidden.

From the very beginning of their existence, the Soviet republics were promised the right to self-determination. This was stated in the Constitutions of 1922, 1936 and 1977. It was this right that helped the republics to secede from the USSR.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was also influenced by the crisis of power, which was located in Moscow. Weakness central government took advantage of the republic former USSR. They wanted to get rid of the "Moscow yoke".

Was the collapse of the USSR inevitable?

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the formation of 15 sovereign states as a result of the collapse of the USSR. The collapse of the Soviet Union was documented and officially signed on December 8, 1991 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha by the leaders of three of the fifteen (!) Union republics former USSR, these were B. Yeltsin, L. Kravchuk and S. Shushkevich.

According to the defenders of the 1991 Belovezhskaya Accords, the USSR itself collapsed without their participation. But, as you know, the collapse of any state becomes inevitable only if economic conditions ripen for this, accompanied by social upheavals. It is from these positions that we will consider the question of the collapse of the big state in the world, the first in Europe and the second in the world (after the USA) in terms of economic development, which was the USSR until 1991.

The social prerequisites for the collapse of the Union should have been that the "lower classes" no longer wanted to live in single state, and the "tops" - could not (just do not confuse with the concept of "did not want to") govern the state in the current economic conditions. All-Union referendum held on March 17, 1991, i.e. nine months before the collapse of the USSR, showed that more than three-quarters of the population were in favor of united union. And the rest either ignored him, or really spoke out against the union, but they were in a significant minority. Consequently, it cannot be argued that the "lower classes" did not want to live in a single state anymore.

From an economic point of view, the USSR looked like this: over the past 5-7 years before the collapse, the country produced a third of the world's scientific products, was one of the three most educated countries in the world, extracted 30 percent of the world's industrial raw materials, was one of the five most secure, stable countries in the world, having full political sovereignty and economic independence.

The tightness of the queues in our stores depended primarily on the state of affairs not in the domestic, but in the foreign economy. Western countries have long abandoned the increase in the total volume of production and have concentrated all their efforts on the production of high-quality products and environmentally friendly clean products. The West preferred to receive the missing mass of goods from underdeveloped countries and from the Soviet Union. He managed to do this through bribing the highest nomenklatura, which controlled both the production and distribution of goods in the USSR. Selling Soviet officials made up for the second-rate deficit in the West by emptying our stores, and thus helped the Western powers to successfully solve their problems of super-profitable production. If in the USSR the total mass of all commodities grew steadily from year to year, then in the West it decreased every year. For 19 years - from 1966 to 1985 - the rate of output of gross domestic product per capita in the developed capitalist countries decreased by more than 4 times. But at the same time, life in the West was getting better and better, because he himself satisfied the growing demand for exquisite goods, and received goods that were necessary, but not prestigious, from third world countries and from the USSR.

It should be recognized that thanks to the policy of our leadership, the economy of the former USSR worked quite productively for the well-being of the West. However, everyone there understood that this productivity was rather shaky if the socio-economic system in the USSR was not changed. And so the West was faced with the task: how to rebuild the Soviet Union so that directly, and not through bribery political leaders, and on a wider scale to use the Soviet republics as colonial appendages for the development of their economy. And everything that the team of presidents of the former Soviet republics is doing today is nothing more than the fulfillment of this task.

Consequently, in the collapse of the USSR leading role politics played. And therefore, without changing it for the state as a whole, one cannot expect any positive results from the current reforms, the point of which is mainly aimed at preserving and continuing the “erroneous” actions in the leadership of the country.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Options for resolving the situation.

The main socio-ideological reasons for the collapse of the USSR

The main military-political reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed

Prerequisites for the crisis of the system

The meaning of the collapse of the USSR

Consequences for the state

Prerequisites for the crisis of the system

Was the collapse of the USSR inevitable?

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