European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - December 28, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse The soviet Union collapses from its own weight by Serge Schmemann the new York times the soviet state marked throughout its Brief but tumultuous history by great achievement and terrible suffering died wednesday after a Long and painful decline. It was 74 years old. Conceived in utopian Promise and born in the violent upheavals of the Quot great october revolution of 1917,&Quot the Union heaved its last breath in the dreary darkness of late december 1991, stripped of ideology dismembered bankrupt and hungry a but Awe inspiring even in its tall. The end came with the resignation of president Mikhail s Gorbachev to make Way for a new Quot Commonwealth of Independent at 7 32 . Moscow time shortly alter the conclusion of his televised address the red hag with Hammer and sickle was lowered Over the Kremlin and the White Blue red russian Flag Rose in its Stead. There was no ceremony Only the tolling of Chimes irom the Spassky Gale cheers from a handful of surprised foreigners and an angry tirade from a Lone War Veteran reactions to the death varied widely according to pravda. The Lormer mouthpiece of the Empire Quot some joyfully exclaim a finita la comedia others heaping Ash on their Heads raise their hands to the sky in horror and ask what will be Quot the reaction depended somewhat on whether one listened to the ominous drumbeat of gunfire from Georgia or watched spellbound the bitter if dignified surrender of Power by the last Leader of the Union of soviet socialist republics most people vacillated. The taboos and chains were gone but so was the food. The soviet Union had Given them pitifully Little but there was no guarantee that the strange sounding Quot Commonwealth of Independent states Quot would do any better. As for Gorbachev Public opinion polls indicated a virtually Universal agreement that it was Lime Lor him to move on a not because he had failed but because there was nothing More he could do. It was perhaps a Paradox that the ruler who presided Over the collapse of the soviet Union was the Only one of its ill starred leaders to leave office with a measure of dignity intact. Among Many thoughtful russians it was to his undying credit that he lifted the chains of totalitarian dictatorship. Whether he could also have saved the Economy was another question. Quot Gorbachev was unable to change the living standards of the people but he changed the people Quot Komsomol Skaya pravda wrote in a sympathetic Farewell that seemed to capture the dominant mood. Quot this is his drama and his achievement. To did t know How to make sausage but he did know How to give Freedom and if someone believes that the former is More important than the latter he is Likely never to have either Quot measured against its own ambitions the u r. Died a monumental failure it had promised no less than the creation of a Quot soviet new Man Quot imbued with selfless Devotion to the common Good and it ended up All but crushing the initiative and spirit of the people making Many devoted Only to Vodka it had proclaimed a now humanitarian ideology and in its name butchered 10 million of its own ii envisioned a planned Economy in which nothing was left to Chance and it created an elephantine Bureau Iacy that finally smothered the Economy promising peace and Freedom it created the world s most militarized and ruthless police state. Promising a Peoples culture it created an anti culture in which mediocrity was glorified and Talent was ruthlessly persecuted. In the end promising a new life it created an unspeakably Bleak society a polluted chronically Short of everything stripped of initiative and spirituality. While the bulk of the nation stood in line or guzzled rot gut Vodka the communist elite raised corruption to new Heights the likes of Leonid i. Brezhnev and his cronies pinned endless medals on one another and surrounded themselves with a peasants notion of luxury a grandiose candelabras massive cars vast Hunting estates armies of sycophants secret hospitals filled with the latest Western technology and yet the soviet Union was also an indisputable superpower a state and a people that achieved epic feats in science warfare even culture. Perhaps All this was. A amps Ken George some elderly russians have seen both the Rise of communism and fall of the soviet system. Achieved despite communism not because of it. Yet by some combination of Force and inspiration the system begun by Lenin and carried out by Stalin unleashed a potent National Energy that made possible the rapid industrialization of the 1930s, the defeat of nazi Germany in the 1940s, the launching of the first sputnik in the 1950s, the creation of a nuclear Arsenal in the 1960s and 1970s. Even now for All the chaos in the land two astronauts Aleksandr a. Volkov and Sergei Kri Kalev continue to Circle the Globe. In culture too both the Quot thaw Quot of Nikita s. Khrushchev in the 1960s and the Quot glasnost Quot of Gorbachev offered testimony that the enormous creativity of the nation was As tenacious As the people. And in sport the tangle of olympic medals and International victories were a tacit source of National Pride even among the staunchest critics of the communist regime. It is easy now gazing Over the soldering ruins of the soviet Empire to enumerate the fatal illusions of the marxist system. Yet the irresistible utopian dream fired generations of reformers revolutionaries radicals and rebels Here and abroad helping spread soviet influence to the far Corners of the Globe. In the soviet Union As in the third world communism offered a Handy justification for stomping on democracy and keeping one party and one dictator in Power. Yet it was also a Faith one Strong enough to survive All the injustices done in its name. Lev Kopelev a prominent intellectual now living in Germany recalled in his memoirs How prisoners emerged from the gulag after Stalin s death firmly believing that at last they could Start redressing the Quot errors Quot of stalinism and truly building communism. And Only last March Gorbachev would still declare in Minsk 1 am not ashamed to soy that i am a communist and adhere to the communist idea and with this i will leave for the other the tenacity of the Faith testified to the scope of the Experiment. It was a monumental failure but it had been a grand attempt an Experiment on a scale the world had never known before. Perhaps it was the height of Folly and presumption that Russia a country then Only at the Dawn of industrialization and without a bourgeoisie or proletariat to speak of would have been the one to proclaim itself the Pioneer of a radically new world order. But russians have always had a weakness for the Broad gesture. The greatest czars a Ivan the terrible Peter the great a were those with the grandest schemes. The greatest writers Dostoevsky and Tolstoy explored ultimate themes in immense novels. The russian orthodox Church embroidered its churches and its Liturgy in the most elaborate gilding and ceremony. Nothing happened Small in the soviet Era either. Twenty million died in the War 10 million More in the gulag. And the Pride of place was always Given to grandiose construction projects a the world s biggest hydroelectric Plant at Bratsk the world s biggest truck factory Al Kama the trans siberian Railroad. The czarist merchant wrapped in Coats of Gold and Sable racing in his Sleigh through wretched my Zhits in Birch bark shoes translated into the Ham listed party Boss tearing through Moscow in his Long Black limousine. Many theories have been put Forward to explain these traits. Above All was a nation straddling two continents and two cultures forever torn and forever fired by the creative clash at the fault line of East and West. Russians have Ever split into "westernizers�?T1 and Quot slav philes Quot and the death of the soviet Union had everything to do with the struggle Between the Quot Western zing Quot democrats and free marketeers and the anti Western champions of powerful statehood and Strong Center. The West has always been deemed both attractive and dangerous to Russia. Peter the great campaigned desperately to open his nation to the West but westerners remained suspect and isolated. Communism found nourishing soil in the russian spirit of collectivism but its Western materialism proved alien. Western democracy is foundering Here on the same ambivalence. The soviets plunged wholeheartedly into the plethora of new councils and parliaments inaugurated by Gorbachev. But their endless debate and inability to organize into cohesive interest groups soon diminished Public attention and at the end the parliaments readily transferred most of their Powers to Gorbachev Yeltsin and other powerful men. Quot what remains after the soviet Union is this eurasian essence this unique interplay of Europe and Asia which will continue to amaze the world with its culture and totally unexpected actions Quot said Viktor a Erofeyev writer and literary critic. A. S Tkv s. Vav. In 1931, collective Farmers marked the launching of a new season under the five year plan. Quot what was imported in Western marxism will vanish Quot he continued. Quot but communism will not disappear inasmuch As the spirit of collectivism is at the heart of this nation. The nation will always say we rather than the Anglo Saxon Quot this was Lenin a deftness that he realized Russia was ready to accept communism but needed Only class struggle for everything to fail into place. As soon As it had an enemy the collective consciousness became that spirit was forever captured in the revolutionary posters with their capitalists in top hats dripping with workers blood or the muscular Young communists crushing Bourgeois vipers. Lenin s successors understood this equally Well that it was easier to fire soviets to enormous feats and extraordinary sacrifice than to organize them for sustained work and steady growth. The capacity for suffering and sacrifice whether in the War or in the endless lines today is something that still awes foreigners. The ability to focus enormous Talent and Energy on a grand project is equally impressive and from this came the great achievements in science weaponry and construction. Yet the sloppiness and inefficiency of everyday life make an even stronger impression on visitors. The Sho Diness of even the newest apartment Block or hotel is shocking. Old houses seem to list precariously in the mud. Wreckage litters every Yard. Cars come off the Assembly lines half broken. The planned Economy served Only to intensify the soviet leaders since the revolution squalor. It made volume not Quality or inventiveness the primary measure of production and it put a prom my on huge factories Over flexibility or distribution. The system also gave consumer goods the lowest possible priority thus institutionalizing shortages and reducing Ordinary people to a permanent state of dependence on the state and rude salespeople. Whether Lenin would have built the soviet state this Way is not certain. Three years before his death in 1921. He replaced Quot War communism Quot with what became known As the Quot new economic policy Quot but was in fact a return to a measure of old Raissez Faire. The National income Rose to pre revolutionary Levels but that failed to dissuade Stalin irom starting the first five year plan. Nonetheless it was Lenin who became the first deity of the new order. He was a convenient hero he had died while still enormously popular and to loft behind enough writings on every topic to support what Voi position his successors Odiose 1o take thus his Goatee visage soon became the mandatory Toon in every official building or every town Squario. And his words became scripture the cult seemed Only to Gam strength with the passing years As his successors denounced one another and struggled to portray themselves As the one True interpreter of Lenin Stalin set the trend killing most of Lenin s comrades As he perfected the machinery of repression All the while a claiming to act in the name of the great founded next. Khrushchev dismantled the Stalin cult and halted the worst of the terror in the name of res tonne Quot True continued on Pago f i 1 notional geographic tha cult of Lanin died in 1991 and Gorbachev who brought h Down was forced to wave goodbye. Vladimir Lanin i led the bolshevik revolution in 1917. Premier of Council of people s commissars until he died in office Jan. 21, 1924. Georgl m. Malenkos i took Over Stalin s Post As Premier from March 1953 until february 1955. Ala Sal Kosygin i Premier from october 1964 until october 1960. Nikolai a. Bulgarin i Premier from february 1955 until forced out by Khrushchev in March 1958. Mikhail Gorbachev named general Secretary of soviet communist party Central committee in March 1985 upon death of Chernenko added title chairman of the presidium of the supreme soviet october 1988. On dec. 21,1991, 11 soviet republics proclaim a new Commonwealth of Independent states putting a formal end to the soviet Union and paving the Way for Gorbachev a resignation. Joseph l Stalin longest ruling soviet Leader succeeded Lenin. General Secretary of the communist party from 1922 to 1953. Named chairman of Council of ministers or Premier May 1941. Died in office March 5. 1953. Nikita s. Khrushchev Hook Over Stalin a Job As party Leader in september 1953 also became Premier in March 1958 upon resignation of Nikolai Bulgarin ousted in october 1964 Leonid Brezhnev i communist party Leader from oct. 1964 until death in nov. 1902. President from june 1977. 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