Joanna
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This article was published in The Russia Journal ISSUE No.7 (50), DATE: 2000-02-28
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- New union from ashes of the Soviet Union
By Alexander Zevelev Among questions put by readers of Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper to acting President Vladimir Putin recently, was: "What do you think about the fate of the U.S.S.R.?" Putin’s answer sounded almost like an aphorism – "Whoever doesn’t regret the collapse of the U.S.S.R. has no heart, and whoever wants to restore the U.S.S.R. has no head."
The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great geopolitical upheavals of the 20th century. It was a state run by the Communist Party Politburo and could not continue to function as it had. Over time, various factors converged to make inevitable the collapse of this multinational empire that the Bolsheviks had inherited from the tsars.
The economic crisis of the late 1980s made the Soviet Union’s flaws more apparent than ever. The Russian Empire had been formed by wars and expansion and also by some territories voluntarily joining Russia to seek protection from other powers such as the Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman empires.
Among the subjective factors leading to the Soviet Union’s demise was Vladimir Lenin himself who, shortly before his death, began thinking about how to reform the country. Lenin’s successor Josef Stalin turned out to be a national chauvinist and destroyed any unity there could have been between the different peoples.
Stalin’s successors were too far removed from their own people, let alone the peoples on the far edges of the empire, and they didn’t have the intellect to see how the union was coming apart.
>From the moment the Communist Party left the political stage, it was
inevitable that the national movements in the republics – that had already
spilled over into the bloody events of Tbilisi, Baku, Fergana and the
Baltics – would gather strength.
Boris Yeltsin, first president of Russia, had a particular part in the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his book "Notes of a President," he wrote that his Ukrainian and Belarussian counterparts, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich, met secretly in Belarus to "decide the fate of the Soviet Union."
It came despite the fact that in March, 1991, 70 percent of Soviet citizens voted in a referendum to keep the U.S.S.R. Yeltsin realized that he would be accused for the rest of his life of having brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As for why Yeltsin made his decision, the answer is simple – to achieve his ambitious aims of ousting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and become master of the Kremlin. These aims were disguised in rhetoric about an independent Russia and slogans about sovereignty.
The CIA may also have had a hand in the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is no coincidence that former U.S. President George Bush said that its fall is "in U.S. interests."
What followed the collapse of the Soviet Union is well known. The Commonwealth of Independent States that succeeded it was stillborn. This can be seen just by looking at its most recent January summit at which, apart from praise heaped on Putin and his election as head of the CIS, not a single important political or economic document was signed.
It is against this background that the peoples of Russia and Belarus have initiated a unification process. It took a long time to reach this point. The union treaty between the two countries was signed in January 2000, giving it a legal foundation. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko called this the beginning of building a new state. This new union is not just a product of political will, but represents the will of the Belarussian and Russian peoples to build a voluntary union.
An analysis of the treaty enables us to answer three fundamental questions on political life in the post-Soviet area. First, creating a new union does not mean restoring the Soviet Union. The new union is built on democratic principles in the economic, defense, information and other spheres. This is particularly emphasized by Putin who called the union a "union of peoples and not of bureaucracies."
Second, the treaty is open to other countries that wish to join and share the union’s principles. The Yugoslav parliament voted to join the Russian-Belarussian union, but it’s not yet known who else will sign up.
The leaders of other former Soviet republics have their own ambitions. Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan see the union as something positive but are not currently planning to join Russia and Belarus. But Uzbek President Islam Karimov could change his stance as a result of the increasing activity of Islamic extremists who pose a threat to his country’s sovereignty.
Third, Western reaction to the new union has been negative. Lukashenko sees union as inevitably strengthening Russia and Belarus. The union gives rise to a new competitor for the West and is a breach in the U.S. policy of a single-pole world. It’s no coincidence that NATO is currently making overtures to some former Soviet republics.
So, on the ruins of the Soviet Union, a new union has arisen and now needs to be given specific content if it is to cope with the years ahead.
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