Once upon a time there was the USSR
Michael the Great's Notepad
“The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies of the twentieth century” (Vladimir Putin, Speech to the Duma, 2005).
Moscow, September 1, 2022: Vladimir Putin pays a hasty tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev 's coffin displayed at the Central Clinical Hospital. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, announced that no state funeral is planned and that the president will not attend the funeral due to work commitments. Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), February 1, 2023: A day early, Putin unveils a bust of Joseph Stalin to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. They are two different but specular examples of that nostalgia for the USSR which permeates the regime's official ideology and its aspirations for "grandeur" in the new millennium. A nostalgia that contemplates not only the glorification of the "bloodiest battle in history", but also a substantial "damnatio memoriae" of those who are considered the gravedigger of the dissolution of the Soviet empire. A trauma, the latter, which has not yet been overcome and which largely explains the strong bond, at least so far, between the former KGB lieutenant colonel and his electorate. An accurate reconstruction of the genesis of this trauma, on which rivers of ink have been poured, is due to Gian Piero Piretto, author of a book – of which these notes are indebted – published for the first time in 2018 and re-edited by Raphael Cortina (When there was the USSR. 70 years of Soviet history).
Constantin Cernenko's successor came to power in March 1985. The following year, in his speech to the XXVII Congress of the CPSU, he illustrated the key words of his mandate: "perestrojka (reforms) and "glasnost" (transparency), to which they add “uskorenie” (acceleration) and “demokratizacija” (democratization). Beyond the strictly political sense of these terms, they clashed with basic categories of Russian culture: slowness and even immobility. Think of Oblomov, the protagonist of Ivan Goncharov's novel of the same name from 1859, a symbol of the inept landed nobility of the time. Oblomovism, characterized by "len" (indolence, apathy), became the bête noire of Westerners who wished for a modern country, in which human and civil rights were proclaimed and respected, which would emancipate the humblest classes from an atavistic submission in power and from a miserable fate. It should therefore come as no surprise that the abolition of serfdom, wanted in 1861 by Tsar Alexander II, met with the hostility of both the masters and their subordinates. Anton Chekhov masterfully portrays in his comedies, The Cherry Orchard (1904) in particular, both the social agony of the former and the almost unshakeable servile mentality of the latter. After all, even the introduction of the five-year plans had been experienced as a violence against the slow passage of time. And even the early Bolsheviks' fight against the samovar had felt like an attack on the serene laziness of days spent drinking endless cups of tea.
Gorbachev's blitz hit Soviet society like a tsunami. After decades of close-eyed and vexatious control, a leader enters the scene who subverts his rules, his customs, his traditions. A wider freedom of choice and investment is granted to farmers and manufacturers, which however is accompanied by price increases which arouse widespread discontent. The widespread absenteeism in the workplace is severely contrasted. The abuse of alcohol consumption is limited with drastic measures. The ongoing censorship of the most serious crimes of Stalinism is abolished. However, there is no shortage of discontent and resistance. Even the elegance and style of Gorbachev's wife, Raisa Maksimova, annoy the most conservative public opinion. In short: too much West, too fast, too much of everything. Only a small elite of intellectuals takes advantage of the new climate that reigns in the world of literature, cinema, music and art. In 1987, Anatoly Ribakov's novel Children of the Arbat was published. It is the quintessential “perestroika” novel. It tells the story of a group of young people who grew up on Arbat street in the heart of Moscow. Its pages unveiled narrate the Stalinist purges, the loves, the illusions, the betrayed hopes of an entire generation. Furthermore, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago are finally seeing the light of day. The dissident physicist Andrej Sakharov is presented in the 1988 elections. The heated parliamentary debates between liberals and conservatives are broadcast live on television, and are commented on in the homes of millions of incredulous citizens in the face of what was certainly an absolute novelty.
Then there is a film released in 1989 that successfully reflects the contradictory feelings caused by "glasnost": "Little Vera" by Vasily Pičul. Vera is a restless girl, fresh out of high school, who lives with her parents in an industrial city in the most squalid Soviet province, Zdanov, the old Marjupol on the Sea of Azov. Pollution, alcoholism, sex, pettiness and domestic violence, existential hardships. Seeing one's vices and frailties represented with brazen realism triggers the indignant reactions of most of the spectators. Troubled spectators like in the days of Sergej Eisenstein's "cine-punch", a cinema that was at the antipodes of Stalin's edifying films that reassure and let you sleep peacefully. Spectators more shocked by a story of ordinary mediocrity than by the ferocity of the Belarusian youth gang protagonist of the film "My name is Arlekino" by Valerij Rybarev (1988). A kind of post litteram "A Clockwork Orange" (Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece is from 1971), where the brutal beatings and rapes of a gang of criminals stand out. These, however, were the "bad guys", a minority from which it was easy to distance oneself. The exact opposite of what happened instead with Pičul's work, which laid bare a malaise and dissatisfaction in which the popular classes recognized themselves but with which they refused to deal with.
On March 13, 1988, a letter entitled "I cannot give up my principles" appears in the newspaper "Sovetskaia Rossija" (Soviet Russia). The signature Nina Andreeva, an unknown chemistry teacher in a school in Leningrad. It is a harsh indictment of Gorbachev's new course, guilty of ignoring the extraordinary feats accomplished in the era of "fulfilled socialism". An attack almost certainly inspired by the secretary of the Central Committee Yegor Ligaçëv, one of the fiercest opponents of "perestroika". Several scholars have read a sort of mini-putsch, anticipating the much more dramatic one that in 1991 will try to overwhelm Gorbachev. The latter, then absent because he was visiting Belgrade, smells the danger. Upon his return to his homeland, he immediately convened the Politburo to discuss the case. No one has the courage to contest it. On April 5, an article appeared in "Pravda" which dismissed Andreeva's letter as a "manifesto of forces opposed to reforms". Opponents are formally silenced, but their dissent is not silenced.
On 7 December 1988, speaking at the UN General Assembly, Gorbachev announced the opening of a new phase in the strategy of détente between East and West: effective ceasefire in Afghanistan, unilateral disarmament plan, withdrawal of several armored divisions of station in the countries of the Warsaw Pact, non-interference in their internal affairs, reconversion of a significant part of the war industry for civilian purposes, more incisive and stringent defense of legality in the Soviet republics. Replying indirectly to his by now numerous enemies, he therefore raises the bar and presents himself with a project of global scope that definitively broke ties with the legacy of Marxism-Leninism. Its most sensational effect is not long in coming: in November 1989 the Berlin Wall is torn down. “Danke, Gorbi!”, could be read on the walls (with a small letter) of the German metropolis. But a stagnant economy weighed like a ton on that project, if not exactly on the verge of a disastrous collapse, also due to the fall in oil prices, on whose revenues depended the prosperity of the consumer goods market and the active of the balance of payments. The shops were empty, the collective-farm markets boasted desolately empty stalls of goods; the infamous queues had disappeared, but only because there was little or nothing to buy. On the other hand, centralized planning had been dismantled but not replaced by a more efficient production system capable of creating wealth. Always a 1990 film helps us understand the climate of those years: "Taxi blues" by Pavel Lugin. The story of a tormented friendship between a taxi driver, conservative and nationalist, and an alcoholic, Jewish and nonconformist saxophonist. A deep relationship is strangely established between the two which is broken when the musician, who has become rich and famous, returns from a tour in the United States. After a furious argument breaks out, a sequence unheard of for Soviet cinematography is triggered: a spectacular chase between cars in a Moscow of breathtaking beauty, which ends tragically with a car catching fire in front of one of the "Seven Sisters", as the imposing buildings built by Stalin to emulate American skyscrapers were nicknamed. As if to mean that even the weight of the past hung over the most radical change.
The events of the final years of Gorbachev's experience are known. On July 1, 1991, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The transformation of the USSR into a new federative reality was imminent. Gorbachev retires to the presidential dacha in Crimea before facing this crucial historical step. To stop it in the bud, the head of the KGB Vladimir Krjučkov, the interior minister Boris Pugo, the defense minister Dmitry Jazov, the vice president Gennadij Janaev, the prime minister Valentin Pavlov, the head of Gorbachev's secretariat Valerij Boldin, organize a coup State. The secretary of the CPSU is imprisoned in his residence. From the television studios of the capital Janaev launches confused messages that however leave the majority of Muscovites indifferent. Nonetheless, the opening melody of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake", sadly famous to prepare the communication of the death of a secretary of the CPSU, is broadcast indefinitely. A few thousand protesters gather in front of the White House, the seat of government, to support Gorbachev. The then President of the Russian Republic Boris Yeltsin stands by his side, and is immortalized on a tank as he addresses the crowd and tries to convince the soldiers not to shoot. When the garrisons sent to Moscow join the resistance, order is restored. The coup had failed spectacularly, but the possibility of forming a new confederation was also waning. On August 24, Gorbachev resigned as secretary of the CPSU and in December as president of the USSR. On December 25, during Christmas night (Catholic), the red flag is lowered from the dome of the Kremlin. The Soviet multinational corporation ceased to exist.
Andrea Graziosi wrote that the two Chechen wars (1994-1996 and 1999-2009) had a crucial influence on the involution of the Russian political system (Ukraine and Putin, Laterza, 2022). In fact, they have given new roles to the military and special services, and have fostered dark ties between the government and criminal elements, documented in detail by Anna Politkovskaja in her reports now collected in the volume Putin's Russia (Adelphi, 2005). Nor should we underestimate the importance that the Soviet legacy has in the structure of Putin's Caesarism, in which imperial ambitions, statist populism and powerful nationalist overtones are combined. The repeated calls for a restoration of the old borders of the USSR, or at least the reconquest of the territories inhabited by Russian minorities, have gradually intensified and have made inroads into large sections of the population and the ruling elites. The same invasion of Ukraine shows that Putin is seduced by the idea of an anachronistic new Russian empire with European hegemonic ambitions, which, with a term in which geography and ideology merge, can be called "Eurasian". Against this perspective, though disturbing due to its aggressive military aspects, also given the current revival of the myth of Stalin as the architect of the great Russian power, a complex opposite perspective cannot be excluded: a disintegration of the current federative structure of Russia , as a result of stagnant authoritarian politics. After all, history is full of heterogeneity of ends.
*The paper
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cera-una-volta-urss/ on Sat, 25 Mar 2023 06:22:15 +0000.