Red Squares

"Superpower," "red empire," "country of victorious socialism," "colossus on clay feet," and even "prison of nations" - these are just a few definitions that are still used for the country that demised 30 years ago. Although the USSR disappeared from the political scene irreversibly, it has forever remained in the memory, and not only of its former residents. For seven decades, the world used to follow the successes and failures of the Soviet experiment. There were those that feared the eastern neighbor, others attempted to adopt the Marxism-Leninism model.

Nevertheless, despite its vast territories, resources, and production capacity, the Soviet Union lost the battle for its existence. There are those who would say that this was the result of insidious plans of the West that had filled the country with jeans and Coke. Yes, indeed, the USSR's geopolitical opponents nurtured anti-Soviet plans for decades. Nevertheless, the reasons for the country's collapse were much deeper.

The economic stagnation, the aggravation of interethnic relations, the ideological crisis, the decline of authority in the international arena, the inconsistency of Gorbachev's reforms, and the desire of the leadership of the republics to take power into their own hands - all those factors eventually went off and led to the state collapse. The trends of that time clearly showed: the "15 sisters and brothers" could no longer get along together. The "parade of sovereignty" that had started in the late 1980s showed that clearly. The Baltic countries were the fastest to adopt declarations of independence. During 1990, such documents appeared in the rest of the republics, including Russia.

In December of that year, USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a referendum on changing the collaboration model between the Union Center and the republics that would receive more powers. The authorities of Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Estonia immediately refused to participate in the plebiscite. The results of the remaining territories were positive for the Union Center - more than 76% of the population supported the continued existence of the USSR. Based on these results, a new cycle of negotiations was initiated for creating a renewed state - the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics. However, it was implemented. One of the obstacles was the 1991 action by the State Committee of the State of Emergency (GKChP) - it went down in history as the "August putsch". After that, the existence of the "indestructible Union of Free Republics" became a formality.

The Belavezh Accords of December 8, 1991, finalized the solution to a mass of problems that had been accumulating for years. Exactly 30 years ago, the leaders of Russia (Boris Yeltsin), Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk), and Belarus (Stanislav Shushkevich) signed a treaty in Belovezhskaya Pushcha that de jure ended the existence of the USSR. At the same time, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was established. On December 25, Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down as president. At the same time, the national flag of Russia was raised over the Moscow Kremlin.

And yet, there are more items of those times that are still there than those that have gone. Residents of now independent countries spend their New Year's holidays watching classics of Soviet cinematography. Countless achievements of science and culture of those years are still considered an integral part of the national cultural code of many nations. The streets of cities and towns in post-Soviet countries are full of time-worn Khrushchev-era and Brezhnev-era houses. Monuments to Soviet statesmen can be seen in the central squares of cities, and Lenin Avenue, Victory Boulevard, and Soviet Street can be found on the maps of almost every settlement in the former Soviet Union.

Such names as Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sverdlovsk, Gorky, Kalinin, Leninabad, Kuibyshev can be still heard today. Nevertheless, a wave of decommunization has passed through all post-Soviet countries in one way or another. In some countries, it is done with particular zeal. For example, for the decades, the Ukrainian leadership has sought to define its identity through the denial of the Soviet past and the designation of that period as an occupation. For example, in 2021 the Kiev authorities reported the demolition of the last Lenin monuments, and even earlier the Communist Party was banned in Ukraine. Other countries still have a style similar to the Soviet one on the official symbols. For example, elements from Soviet times can be seen on the coats of arms of independent Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Russia became the rightful successor of the former superpower taking the place of the "red empire" in the UN Security Council. But it is not only geopolitics that determined Russia's leading position in the post-Soviet space. As a mediator in a number of conflicts, Russia has firmly secured this status. Such action as arranging negotiations between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, providing guarantees of protection for Belarus in case of aggression, sending peacekeepers to sensitive regions of the CIS prove special attention to former Soviet republics. The priority of the post-Soviet territory has been recorded in key Russian foreign policy documents as well. Ordinary Russians also warmly recall that era. According to recent WCIOM polls, almost two-thirds of our citizens regret the collapse of the USSR.

"Those who are in the Soviet are responsible for the people," reads a popular Soviet proverb. It was ordinary people who were the main victims of "the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," as Russian President Vladimir Putin called the country's collapse. Citizens of the vast state were scattered in dozens of different countries, and many of them continue to face difficulties to return home. The quintessential example is the Crimean spring of 2014, which was a manifestation of people's desire to return home. This desire had been growing for decades, and Ukraine's anti-Soviet choice was one of the reasons to address the painful issue.

Thirty years after the collapse of the superpower, Russia continues to face the need to defend its interests in the foreign policy arena due to problems that seem to have only increased in recent years. In three decades, Russian elites have become disillusioned with an initially attractive Western-centered world where the Russian Federation was supposed to be only a follower. The new Russia chose a different path - keeping the legacy of the past and strengthening its status as a great power. Our state was able to preserve its special status in the global hierarchy, consolidate nuclear parity, modernize the Armed Forces, and build a new model of relations with the leaders of the new, non-Western world. Nevertheless, there are still many challenges that today's Russia has yet to address as the heir to a superpower.

Source: Izvestia