Chronicles of New Russia

Searching for God

It so happened that the author was an eyewitness of cardinal points of our history – starting from the Chechen war up to SMO. And I guess, now it’s time to rethink these events.  And we will start of course right from Michail Sergeevich Gorbachev coming to power.

Searching for God.

In lieu of the foreword.

Back in 1986 the Soviet Union was already seriously ill. One could feel it everywhere. The most important thing was that everyone lived “flipping the bird” behind their backs. My father— a modest worker, a miner, order bearer, who was raised in orphan house with a seventh-grade education— often said: 

“You know son, the main thing is to live consciously and honestly…”

I didn’t know what he meant, but I could perfectly see that my dad— an ideal proletarian who spent most of his life being honored, was stealing more than it seemed he could carry. The state gave him the opportunity to buy a Volga GAZ2410 (the very dream of any Soviet man) and my father decided it was his duty to fuel it with stolen gasoline only, despite gasoline costing next to nothing. The garage was stocked with all kinds of metal stuff he snatched from his work. And then he bartered with his “neighbors-in-garage" (joint owners in a garage cooperative, an area similar to a parking place near multi-story buildings but with individual, one-car garages. It was typical for the USSR and still present in post-USSR countries) as they have also been stealing materials from the factories for which they worked. And it was like that everywhere.

Once I tried to tell my father about that. He flinched as if I slapped him…real class-hatred sparkled in his eyes and with sincere, proletarian spite he hissed, “Brought up my own problem…”

In a nutshell, people snatched everything and everywhere and I’m not just talking about “deficit” goods here (goods considered scarce in the USSR)—everything. My mom worked as a barmaid at factory canteen, and she passionately exchanged smoked sausage for shoes and Romanian furniture.

I was a bookish boy who sincerely dreamed of blue cities by my favorite writer Alexey Tolstoy. I was embarrassed by the surrounding duality of my dream and the real world, but at the same time when I had an opportunity, I too speculated in small-time “enterprises” in the apartment complex yard (it used to be a criminal offense, by the way). Once I even managed to peddle a plastic bag with an advertisement of American jeans printed on it. So I wasn't being honest myself and that made me feel frustrated.

I couldn’t understand back then that it was a major internal problem of Soviet intellectuals— trying to be both the conscience of the people and prosper financially at the same time.

In other words, by the time Gorbachev came, the people were already fully ripe for change. We couldn’t understand that we had stopped loving our state already. Being a patriot was considered to be something laughable or even indecent. Probably those real “reinforced concrete” communists who were living righteously and honestly still dwelled somewhere, but I had seen none of them around.

Everyone lived “flipping the damn bird” behind the back and considered it normal. That’s why we received such a leader as Mikhail “Misha” Sergeevich Gorbachev—a man who was inwardly dishonest.

There is a good story that portrays the internal state of this man, Misha: He worked as a combine operator on a “Kolkhoz” (collective farm) when he was a schoolboy of sixteen years. He managed to thresh such an amount of grain during the summer holidays, that this boy was granted an order of distinction. The director of the kolkhoz coincidentally happened to be Gorbachev’s grandfather and had certainly nothing to do with the order—young Misha was a very capable combine operator.

But it was not even the main issue that Mikhail Sergeevich (as Russians say) had such a clever and smart grandfather who secured his grandson such wonderful career-starting conditions. The problem was that since those times, primordial dishonesty had grown inside Mikhail Sergeevich. He perfectly understood that he didn’t earn the order and someone else’s harvested grain was assigned to him. He at the same time knew that it was due to this initial fraud that he had become what he had become. So, right from his young age he was sure that by acting against his conscience, he would get all the goodies from life—career, material wellbeing, glory and even honor.

Furthermore, every time a person faced another fork on the path of life, he acted exactly as he was used to—not honestly. He was making a choice in favor of his personal convenience and comfort.

However it was like many of us back then, and it has cost us a great country. At least I think this is what lies beneath. And so about this internal honesty, will we speak here.

Why it is so important?

Because, in the end this is that only thing makes a difference between a great man and a mediocrity. And then, God willing, in our future releases we will compare how for example, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin acted in similar situations.

And it seems to me, that if first two persons were simply honest and made their choice guided by honesty, not by selfish mercantile interests, history might have taken a completely different route. This is the great responsibility of those who guid—simply being honest and acting accordingly.

Some call it conscience, some call it God. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but the most important thing for me now is the search for a God within, the God who cannot be fooled and who will not agree with quiet internal lies which cannot be seen by others. So, stating this, let us begin and, as we say, may God be with us.

Chapter 1

A Tragic Mistake - Gorbachev

The process of destruction of the USSR – the largest country in the world had it’s specific performers. Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yakovlev – right hand of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was the most remarkable representative of the process on the USSR side. He is often referred to as “foreman of Perestroika”. In the context of political research, he is the key figure who initiated the process of the USSR’s destruction.

Back in 1982, the former long-term ambassador of the USSR to Canada, Alexander Yakovlev, was appointed director of the Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Study of International Economic Relations. And in this capacity, Yakovlev brought a special note to the recently elected Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev. The note warned of the ever-increasing lag of the USSR behind capitalist countries. In order to eliminate this lag, Yakovlev directly proposed to introduce “elements” of capitalism into the USSR. Initially this note was not acted upon.

In 1985, Gorbachev occupied the highest position in the USSR after the series of deaths of general secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee. He immediately appointed Yakovlev to a key post, the head of the department of the CPSU Central Committee responsible for ideology and propaganda. For your understanding, this post equals the modern Head of the Internal Policy Department of the Presidential Administration of Russian Federation.

In 1986 Yakovlev became the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (this post now equals to Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in a branch of economic policy) and right away he began working out and implementing internal political reforms of the USSR which would later result in death of a great country in some three-four years.

Here let us make a reservation, that all the things we are going to say further are the testimonies of contemporaries and expert assessments. Many of these testimonies are documented. And, by the way, majority of them—by the Americans.

In the next part we will take a closer look at this phenomenon, and we will call the names of certain US citizens, who were managing the dismantling of the USSR directly. Unfortunately, official Russian historical science has not started to research these topics. Or, to say more, many facts are passed over with demonstrative silence or even openly defamed.

But let us continue. The background of this reform is briefly as follows: with Gorbachev’s coming to power, the famous “policy of détente” immediately began – in November 1985, just six months later, his first meeting with Reagan took place. And it looks like that during this meeting at the suggestion of Yakovlev, Gorbachev asked Reagan for direct help from the US in transforming the economy of the USSR, and, particularly in redirecting it into the capitalism track. Here we must add that back in 1985, the chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, gave Mikhail Sergeevich the now famous note about “agents of US influence in the USSR”. Yakovlev was also listed there. Gorbachev disregarded the note and then everything went as it went.

However, it is not that simple—don’t be in a hurry to call Yakovlev the traitor of the USSR, at least we are not going to do that, as events were not as apparent as they look nowadays.

The matter is, that despite agreeing with Kryuchkov in assessment of that person, we must say that Vladimir Aleksandrovich most likely failed to offer any other adequate alternative—everyone understood that the USSR was in crisis and that it needed modernization, but there were no other plans, only the one by Yakovlev.

In general, the elites and all the people were charmed by the West, they simply wanted to gain the same prosperity level and moreover, immediately. But no one knew for sure how to get into this Garden of Eden. At least Yakovlev’s group and the few figures behind him had some kind of the ideas and Gorbachev decided to rely on them.

As we see now, there were alternatives of course…

As to Yakovlev’s plans, most likely the author was inspired by example of Deng Xiaoping's reforms which were launched in 1978. He wanted the same fate for the USSR—US companies coming as investors and turning the USSR into a global factory. By our parameters, we were quite suitable for this role and even more, as the starting conditions were much better in the USSR than in China.

And here our leaders had made two tragic mistakes:

First of all, the role of global factory was already assigned to China and the US had no need for one factory more. The only thing USSR could offer in this situation was enormous amounts of raw materials.

And the second important thing: Deng Xiaoping's reforms were preceded by 10 years of difficult negotiations, which were led by Mao Zedong personally. Maybe we will make a documentary on this topic someday, but now we will only conclude that the main results of such negotiations were guarantees of non-interference of the US into political systems of China, a documentary movie and commitments to facilitate the flow of huge investments into the country's economy. The first step was to grant China Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) status in foreign trade with the United States. Mao Zedong was a controversial leader of China, and some of his actions and decisions are disputed, but he had won the main chess competition of his life, making a deal with the US in the best interests of his own people. And that’s why modern Chinese society is thankful to Mao.

Chapter 2

Divine Punishment - Hyperactive Fool

The tragedy of our people was that at the key moment, there were no such strong leaders as Comrade Mao at head of the USSR. Gorbachev and Yakovlev not only failed in negotiating with Americans despite the reality that they had possibilities available to them. The problem here is much deeper and much more tragic. They wanted “all at once,” which was absolute foolishness. The road that China made in 20 years, Gorbachev and his comrades wanted to make in one moment. And that’s why he surrendered almost everything—NATO expansion, German unification, Warsaw Pact, Baltic states and so on. They were hoping for the West to favor them. Instead the outcome was the opposite. As soon as Gorbachev turned for them for help, everything had been done to corner a weakened opponent. 

Americans didn’t even cancel the notorious Jackson-Vanik amendment, although Jews have long ceased to be discriminated against in our country. In other words, Gorbachev had surrendered the country and got nothing in return.

But what is most important, is that it looked like Gorbachev and Yakovlev agreed to the dismemberment of the USSR right from the start, or that it could even have been their proposal—to turn the strong and centralized Soviet Union into an amorphous confederation. While negotiating with Reagan, this idea was couched in some formulations that were agreeable for Gorbachev—he was a master at this kind of demagoguery.

But we must admit that George H.W. Bush, who was US Vice President then and former CIA chief, was very much against it—he believed that this would lead to global chaos. And the US, as the one and only superpower left, would not be capable of single-handed control of the whole world. Now, this looks like a bitter irony.

Anyway, Yakovlev’s political reform was designed with the purpose of the collapse of the country—the entire subsequent course of events confirms this. Moreover, there is much indirect evidence that Gorbachev and Yakovlev were ready for such scenario right from the start.

For instance, the position of Gorbachev’s two main advisers on economics became known—academics Georgy Arbatov and Abel Aganbegyan believed that the USSR was wasting too many resources on supporting Soviet Republics and the satellite countries. Without them the USSR would have had a much higher living quality.

The political aspects and consequences of this were not considered by these figures.

Yakovlev too was a passionate supporter of this idea, and this resulted exactly in the collapse of the country. Using his political reform, Yakovlev managed to destroy a state which was built by generations of Soviet people who sacrificed their own lives and comfort in everyday labor feats, fought in the crucible of the Civil and Great Patriotic War—all in less than three years.

But the most terrible of Yakovlev’s mistake was cooperating with the Americans while creating a new political system of the USSR. As a result, we were forced into “shock therapy” —economic reforms imposed in a very tough way.

It was like letting a pack of hungry predators into a peaceful and unarmed town. And that’s what it was— stupefied by blood, the predators began to kill everything within their reach. Once again – it was the main mistake of Yakovlev and Gorbachev. Possibly their intentions were good, but the result speaks for itself.

But we are running ahead of ourselves, let us not discuss now whether Gorbachev and Yakovlev had done that on purpose or not. The People of Russia have already sentenced these two figures and sooner or later they will be sent to the oblivion as a nightmare.

Before moving on to certain points of Yakovlev’s political reforms, we need to mind one very important thing: that is Mikhail Sergeevich’s fantastic incompetency. As soon as he became the leader of the country and received nearly absolute power, he began making terrible mistakes, especially in terms of internal economics.

Let us recall that his advisers on economic issues were the same Honored Academicians Arbatov and Aganbegyan. All the events that took place in the economy of the USSR during Perestroika were the embodiment of their recommendations.

I guess everyone knows about the anti-alcohol campaign. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

For example, during the first year of his reign, Gorbachev literally managed to destroy the well-established system of managing agriculture in a giant country. For some reason he destroyed the regional centers of the agricultural industry management in the Union Republics, creating a single State Agricultural Industry of the USSR. This alone had severely hit the country's agriculture and it began to suffer; food production fell by a third in just one year time.

Gorbachev had the same plans for mechanical engineering. It was announced that the worldwide quality level of production had to be reached within one year’s time. To understand the level of idiocy which was overwhelming in those times, I must add that it was (literally) ordered to the factories, to start producing the best cars in the world within a year. It sounds like a joke now, but then, to accomplish this task, Gorbachev ordered the introduction of the so-called State Acceptance at all enterprises. And this abruptly stopped assembly lines across the country.

At the same time, during the first months of his leadership, Gorbachev, literally with one order, destroyed one-and-a-half dozen specialized ministries and departments that managed the most complex strategic engineering complex of the USSR. Those who knew how to make literally everything—from rockets to computers and lithographic machines for the production of chips were destroyed.

It was definitely the best production system in the world at that time, controlled by the way, by the world’s only unified automation-intelligent system in the State Planning Committee. Perhaps it was the world's first globally-networked and multi-layered industrial supercomputer, or, if you prefer, a computer network that operated as a single system. This complex mechanism was created by the sweat and blood of generations of Soviet people. And the only thing this advanced system needed was fine tuning, but Gorbachev broke into it with a sledgehammer, destroying everything.

But this didn’t seem enough for Mikhail Sergeevich—within his framework of fighting bureaucracy, he ordered the reduction of document flows in the Gosplan system by 40%, which only added up to chaos. And so on.

The Soviet system of government began to collapse in the very first months of Gorbachev's rule.

Figuratively speaking, Mikhail Sergeevich was not just a fool, to our misfortune he was an overactive fool and malicious energy was literally boiling within him.

It must be added here that all these destructive steps were taken by Gorbachev without any research or calculations. Literally, spontaneously and blindly. This precisely was a consequence of the fact that all the power in the USSR was held by one person. And when such a fantastically incompetent man as Mikhail Sergeevich got this ultimate power, it led us to a national disaster. A believer will probably say that the accession of such a person at the head of a great country was certainly a real punishment from God for all of us.

To understand what Gorbachev did to the economy during the few years of his rule, it is enough to see just a few figures.

In 1985, the USSR had only $25 billion in debt, and the State Storage Reserve held more than 2,000 tons of gold, not counting other reserves. By the time of the collapse and resignation of Gorbachev, the country already had more than $200 billion dollars debt and less than 25 tons of gold. Mikhail Sergeevich literally let a prosperous country go down the drain in just over five years. This is the price of his incompetence.

But all of this had to happen in the nearest future, but in year 1985, during the first round of negotiations, smart Americans immediately understood the perspectives and they made the best of it—seizing a very rare historical chance.

And when Mikhail Sergeevich offered friendship to the United States, they opened their arms as if for a friendly hug. But in reality, they began cornering the former enemy according to rules and laws of merciless politics.

For example, in 1986 they convinced Saudi Arabia to drastically reduce oil prices by increasing production—prices fell from 30 dollars per barrel to 13. This step had an immediate and horrible effect on the USSR which received more than 50 percent of foreign earnings due to the sale of energy resources.

Those days, major parts of the country's foreign earnings was spent to purchase food on the international markets.

Digressing a little, let's say that this was one of the main shortcomings of the USSR, making its economy a lame duck. Despite all its power, the Union was catastrophically dependent on capitalist countries for five categories of food products—grains, vegetable oil, sugar, meat and dairy. The country’s leadership should have worked to eliminate this imbalance. This was obvious, but Gorbachev, apparently simply did not notice it. And most importantly, he did not understand how to find a solution to this problem.

Despite the fact that he was in charge of the agricultural sector in the Central Committee, he lacked basic knowledge, let us emphasize, at that time modern knowledge, or, as they say today, competencies. We will return to this topic in a while.

The actions of the American “friends” overlapped with Gorbachev’s outright steps to destroy the national economy of the USSR and caused food shortages already in the first year of his rule. Subsequently, this problem only grew bigger, bringing the country to the brink of famine in the early 90s. In other words, Gorbachev created the conditions for the collapse of a great country himself, and the Americans, as experienced hunters, had only to drive us into this trap.

One can only guess whether he did it inadvertently or on purpose. The version of recruitment is supported by the fact that everything turned out too logically: having collapsed the economy of the state, Gorbachev began to destroy its political system. We'll talk about this in the next part. To be continued.