The virus of nationalism destroyed the Soviet Union
Exactly three decades ago, two people were jealously watching each other. Gorbachev had power over the whole country and world recognition. Yeltsin has an unclear position as the Russian leader and popular support.
Photo: Alexey Merinov
Nikolai Ivanov, a well-known investigator for particularly important cases in those years, recalled: “Boris Nikolaevich showed an acute dislike for the general secretary in the fact that he did not pronounce either his last name or first name, replacing it with pronouns:” he said”,” he had to”,”they called from him”.
Yeltsin envied Gorbachev: he is the president, and he has all the levers of power in his hands. Gorbachev envied Yeltsin, for whom ordinary people voted and for whom huge rallies gathered.
The Union Government did not pay attention to the declarations and statements of the Russian authorities. Yeltsin pretended that the union government does not exist, and he heads an independent state. The Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR declared that without its ratification, no decrees of the President of the USSR are valid on the territory of Russia.
And the situation in the country was getting worse before our eyes. Queues were forming for bread. Gorbachev said at a meeting of the Security Council: in two or three months there will be nothing to feed the country with. In Moscow, food and goods were sold upon presentation of a passport with a metropolitan residence permit, so that nothing would get to visitors. The Muscovites were happy, although this did not increase the food. The regional owners forbade the export of food to their neighbors and did not obey Moscow.
Yeltsin said: to introduce the post of president is the only way to save Russia from all problems. The aspirations of the Democrats coincided with the slogans of the national patriotic forces, who said that Russians are being offended and Russia should not pay for everyone. On March 17, 1991, at a referendum, Russian residents answered the question: is the post of president of the RSFSR necessary? More than 70 percent of Russians wanted to have their own president. The elections were scheduled for June 12.
On the eve of the election, I asked Galina Starovoitova, a deputy of two parliaments — the union and the Russian and a member of the Supreme Advisory and Coordinating Council under Yeltsin:
— Will the Soviet Union remain a single country or will it break up?
— We are now at the transition stage from a unitary state to a confederation. This is an objective historical process.
— Does the sovereignty of the President of Russia exclude the sovereignty of the President of the Union?
— We must ask ourselves the question: what is more important for us, Russians? If the independent statehood of Russia excludes the existence of the Union, then Russia is more important for me. Another thing is that the Union can be transformed into a confederation of friendly states that are inextricably linked by a common economy.
– The transformation of one state into fifteen can entail terrible consequences.
— And what if this process is unstoppable? Of course, if there were people in the center who are not bound by ideological dogmas, who are willing and able to develop democracy and a market economy, maybe the country would not disintegrate at such a speed. The republics would not have fled so quickly, fleeing from the center.
In addition to Yeltsin, former Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin, General Albert Makashov, former Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikolai Ryzhkov, Chairman of the Kemerovo Regional Council Amangeldy Tuleyev, founder of the Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky ran for president.
The Central Television was going to hold a “round table” of all six presidential candidates. Boris Nikolaevich refused to participate. He deliberately did not engage in the election campaign. I didn’t campaign for myself, I didn’t pay attention to my rivals.
Zhirinovsky did everything to be recognized, but then he was not taken seriously. Tuleyev proved that he has support in one particular area, but he will not make an all-Russian revolution. The real candidate was Ryzhkov, the owner of a unique entry in the workbook: “In connection with the amendment of the Constitution of the USSR, he resigned.” Nikolai Ivanovichhe was perceived as an honest, decent and businesslike person. When he first appeared on the political arena, a young, well-smiling Ural man aroused universal sympathy. But the last years of his tenure as head of government left a sad impression. He was supported by the Communist Party of the RSFSR, and this automatically deprived him of the sympathies of democratically minded people.
In the elections of June 12, 1991, Yeltsin collected 57.35 percent of the vote. When taking office, he said: “For the first time in the thousand-year history of Russia, the president solemnly swears an oath to his citizens. There is no higher honor than the one that turns out to be a person by the people…” Yeltsin looked impressive-tall, broad-shouldered. Father of the nation.
Why were the republics eager to gain sovereignty? They were grasping at straws — the situation in the country was becoming more and more desperate. If we cannot all be saved together, then we must at least save ourselves. We were in a hurry to fence ourselves more securely with a republican front garden in order to get the houses in such order as we want. They were eager to get rid of their allied superiors, they believed that their ruler would be more reasonable and fairer. But there were more serious reasons. The peoples wanted to build their national-state existence in accordance with historical traditions, cultural heritage, spiritual structure, and political thinking.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Empire collapsed, among other things, because the peoples inhabiting the country were not satisfied with their fate. After the First World War, many new countries appeared on the map of Europe. On the territory of the former Russian Empire, Ukraine, the Transcaucasian and Baltic republics, and the Central Asian khanates formed their own governments… During the Civil War, Moscow stopped this process with the help of the Red Army and promises to create national states within the Soviet Union. The process of national-state emancipation was interrupted. But what had been maturing for decades was waiting in the wings and finally broke free.
Is it possible to avoid the complete separation of the republics and bloody inter-republican conflicts-that’s what they thought about in 1991. Nagorno-Karabakh, where it was not possible to stop the war, set a bad example. The hopelessness of such situations is that the behavior of the conflicting parties is determined by a special state of mass consciousness, which is focused on uncompromising, on the fight against “strangers”.
After Sumgait and Ferghana, it became clear that the country was threatened by national cataclysms. The national problem has become no longer a problem of language, culture, economic independence. It became a matter of life and death, ethnic conflicts became bloody, people died, and the troops turned into ambulance teams sent to different regions.
The very atmosphere in society was infected with nationalist sentiments, and offensive expressions no longer seemed reprehensible. Nationalist vocabulary has penetrated the pages of party publications and the dictionary of party committee secretaries. The party apparatus throughout the country tried to form an alliance with the nationalist forces, hoping at least under thisthe banner to keep the power. The unsettled life, instability, uncertainty about the future required some kind of compensation, self-affirmation — at the expense of others. We watched with amazement how entire republics were split along national lines, how neighbors feverishly found out each other’s nationality, how meticulously they dug into the biographies of grandparents.
But wasn’t it programmed? For many decades, official and unofficial personnel departments at all levels have been calculating on their own initiative and on their own initiative: if the head is a Moldovan, then the second person is Russian, there are too few Kazakhs here, there is an overabundance of Latvians, do not accept Jews here, do not take Germans there… All this seemed to affect a few. But even a small drop of poison was enough to poison an entire country.
The self-assertion of one people at the expense of another is nationalism. The country was faced with the fact that not one ethnic group, not two, but almost the whole country wanted to assert itself at the expense of others. National interests came to the fore, which crushed all the others. Few understood how dangerous it was to encourage such sentiments in a multinational state. Outright nationalism eventually destroyed the country. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.