On this day, 30 years ago, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as President of the Union, the red flag with the sickle and the hammer had been lowered above the Kremlin, the dissolution was accomplished.
In this winter 1991-1992 the situation was catastrophic. Mass unemployment, shortages, hunger, lack of means, deficit of all goods, the impossibility of heating oneself in winter… But one thing remained: hope. Because many Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, etc… had this hope in their hearts that at least now it was over. That the future could only be bright. Because now civil and political liberties were acquired, economic opportunities would flourish, and with the end of the Cold War, peace and disarmament would take place. If the situation was catastrophic, it was after all only because the Soviet Union had been unable to build an economy in the service of the majority and not only in the service of an elite and the army. Now that the red giant was wiped out, the future would be full of promise. It was only necessary to survive these few difficult years that were looming on the horizon.
And those years were extraordinarily difficult indeed. Civil wars, economic disasters, ethnic and religious conflicts, rampant criminality, unparalleled corruption … The 1990s were a veritable purgatory for the whole of the post-Soviet space. Perhaps all these decades of inaction, of communist dictatorship, of frozen conflicts had to be purged…
But what about now, 30 years later? Have the promises of the fall of the USSR been kept? Does this space correspond to what the populations hoped for?
Unfortunately no. Conflicts have never been so numerous and dangerous. The economic dislocation of space is more glaring than ever. The shadow of the economic crisis lurks permanently and new dictatorships have replaced old ones. Corruption is rampant.
In other words, we sacrificed the achievements of socialism (free healthcare, high-level education, a form of internal stability) to keep the worst of the old regime: dictatorship, corruption, political police, etc ...
I don't mean by that that the Soviet Union was perfect, much less that we have to come back to it. I'm just asking the question of what did we pay with and what did we get in return? What is the balance sheet of these 30 years spent in the post-Soviet space? Is this really what we wanted? Is this really the expected result of so much suffering endured by our ancestors, our grandparents and our parents?
Because it seems to me that the fall of the USSR did not benefit the populations but a certain category of people. If the nomenklatura reigned before, it has been replaced by a new caste of oligarchs. And at their head we see new Tsars, each playing on nationalism, hatred, and the supposed danger from outside to maintain power and continue to steal.
The USSR was certainly imperfect, but at least it had an ideology, objectives and overall cohesion. Now there is no cohesion, no strength, no value. The theft has become the main purpose of the Government. And to hide this fact are invoked such absurdities as the fight against “non-traditional practices”, the defense of the faith or the domination of man over woman. Women's rights have fallen sharply in recent years and the Russian regime maintains itself in part today on the blood of victims of domestic violence. Drugs have invaded the streets. Youth is wasting away in a context in which it has no future. Russia has never been so weak.
In short, we have lost the successes of socialism and are suffering martyrdom, but at least the oligarchs are getting richer, weapons of mass destruction are maintained, political repression is rife and there is a Palace for Putin ...