What The USSR Was?

The USSR started its life as a violent, cruel and insidious criminal and ended it as a helpless and malicious half-wit. It would have reached 85 on 30 December, 2007. Happily, it didn’t… A whole generation that hadn’t lived in the USSR has already grown up. And now people once again hear the propaganda about what wonderful the Soviet state was.

USSR was an amazing state. With a maniacal persistence it denied everything what it declared.

Appeared as a claim on a just world order, it created a regime, which was on top of the hit-parade of the world most cruel dictatorships in the history of mankind. It created a slogan “Peace – to the nations!”, but it behaved itself aggressively, making revolutions in other countries, dividing the world into spheres of influence, invading it with tanks, leading wars with neighbors, breeding own and brotherly terrorists. By telling “Land – to peasants!”, it took the land away and created such a harsh system of obligations, that Tsarist era serfdom was merely a liberal and progressive institute comparing to it. Declaring “Plants – to workers!”, it gave them into the hands of bureaucrats and created such a disposal of property neither the wildest capitalism, nor Marx could dream about. Luckily, there was no “Air – to the people!” slogan, because it’s unknown what would come out from that.

It started its life as a cruel and cunning criminal and finished it as and finished it as weak and spiteful half-wit, that didn’t learn a thing, had some insults like collectivization, big terror or XX party congress, but still capable of smashing dishes or even throwing a bottle from the balcony.

The history of the USSR is a total nightmare, boredom, squalor. All its “achievements” – hockey, bomb, space – shouldn’t be called so because of the price Soviet people had paid.

That’s why even the victory in the Great Patriotic war is an achievement not of the USSR, but of the people, living in it, a victory regardless of the USSR.

The Union…

To create the USSR there was a need to destroy Russian Empire. The Bolsheviks made it well. As they didn’t declare themselves as successors of the Empire, from the juridical point of view a new state appeared. On it’s “edges” there also appeared independent national states – Belarus, Ukraine, in Caucasus, Middle Asia.

At times of civil war all those states were occupied by the Red army, led from Moscow, and the leaders were the locals from the communist parties as well as from the centre. Both were united by the fact that they were from the same organization – Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

As the real power belonged to the RCP(b), there were no talks about any independence from the start. The Union of two stated into one could only make legal the fact that they were all subordinate to the guidance of the party, situated in Moscow.

This union needed to have the proper image. That’s why December 30, 1922 in Moscow opened the First Party Congress, which united the delegates from the republics, chosen by Bolsheviks’ electoral law, to approve Union treaty, worked out not by the interrepublican body, what would be logical, but by the Plenary Session of The Central Committee of the RCP(b) – the organization that usurped the power. This means the Bolsheviks legalized seizures of territory.

Then Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Caucasian Federation (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) entered the USSR. As a result of manipulations of territories and names in 20-s, 30-s there were formed Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek Soviet Republics under the guise of free expression of popular will.

Then the amount of members of the USSR “elite club” grew due to external captures according to Molotov-Ribbentrop (Stalin –Hitler) pact; Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova (knocked together from captured from Romania Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Moldavian ASSR) and Karelian –Finnish SSR (Karelian ASSR and territories captured from Finland in Winter War 1939-1940) that was abolished in 1956.

…of Soviet…

The Soviets appeared at the time of 1905-07 revolution as a form of people’s self-government. The Bolsheviks soon understood the meaning of this production of masses, saw in it realization of a century-long dream about people’s justice and used it knowledgeably.

The headline for their revolution was “All the power to the Soviets!”. And all the three constitutions claimed that the power belonged to these Soviets. Only in the last constitution of 1977 there appeared either Freudian slip or sincere conviction that “The leading and the directive power of the soviet society, the center of its political system, state and civic organizations was the Communist party of the USSR”.

The Congresses of the Soviets weren’t held from the end of 1930-s till 1988, and the Congresses of Communists were regular, they created the next five-year plan and were the state event, not only the event the party. The post of the Secretary General was more important then the post of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and the organization itself existed only to approve everything invented by the Central Committee.

Periods of time were associated with the names of the secretary Generals – “in the times of Stalin, in the times of Khrushchev”. No one ever said “in the times of Schvernik” – who's that? Even MS Word spellchecker doesn’t know him.

…Socialist…

Communists determine socialism as a social state system when there is no exploitation of people, the power belongs to people, there is social justice, condemnation of the results of the work is minimized, the rights and freedoms are guaranteed, and the means of production are collectivized. To say that all this was in the USSR means either that the dream had won the reality in the head, or either of lack of sense and sincerity.

The main contradiction of socialism was the denial of what was and the affirmation of what wasn’t. Its tracks can be seen not only in the jokes, but also in such a respected science as political economy of socialism. It is easy with the political economy of capitalism – the reality was the same with its reflection in the books and the science theories differed only in the way of subject description. In the political economy of socialism the subject slipped away and diverse schools differed only in the percentage correlation of the declared and existing and the virtuosity of the methodology of connection the first and the second.

Medieval scholastics should really envy soviet economists.

…Republics

From the start Bolsheviks built stern unitary state with Russia at the head. Stalin, that was responsible for the creation of this project, at the beginning of 20-s didn’t have enough state wisdom and didn’t understand that the façade should be better than the interior, that’s why sincerely proposed the republics to join Russian SFSR as autonomies

Lenin had enough wisdom, that’s why Stalin’s variant was ruthlessly criticized and proposed the one that was implemented, when the republics were formally equal and independent and even could leave USSR. This treaty was needed to declare internationalism and profitably differ Russian Empire, which they called the prison of the nations (undoubtedly, not the best Empire, but it didn’t allow itself deportations).

Even if there appeared any who seriously talked about the rights of the nations on self-determination, he was called bourgeois nationalist and in the times of Stalin he would be killed, later- “treated” from mental illness in a closed hospital. There was no way back from the USSR, only through war, for example the perestroika events in the Baltic countries and in the Caucasus.

USSR was the straight successor of the Russian Empire. Russia was the main and was associated with the USSR. That’s why it didn’t have such attributes of “independence” as the Academy of sciences and communist party – they were substituted by the Union prototypes.

The primacy of Russia was expressed, for example, in the fact hat the second secretary in the national communist parties was an appointed representative from Moscow (to control). So, it’s better to say that there was only one republic in the USSR and all the rest can be called provinces.

The Epitaph

Dead men USSR was a very bad guy. All its short life he humiliated its own population and the rest of the world. That’s why, when he died, not many wept his death.

The majority of the soviet people didn’t care. Maybe, that’s why on its tombstone there is no precise date of death, there was no one to fix it.

No one poisoned him, no one plotted against him, not even nine dollars per barrel of oil killed him. He died because he was a too inert and awkward animal.

The ideology that gave food to its organs and gave him vital energy, was such a blunt, feeble and aggressive lie, that it couldn’t sustain its decrepit body. And it couldn’t eat anything else as it was an ideological state.

And there is no worth weeping it. The republics started living as they could, not as the monster named USSR told him.