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Main enemy of nostalgia for USSR. Op-Ed by Victor Pelin


https://www.ipn.md/en/main-enemy-of-nostalgia-for-ussr-op-ed-by-victor-7978_1093078.html

„...regarded through this angle, the antigovernment protests of the Shorist, Socialist and Communist or ostensibly Marxist-Leninist supporters are nothing bur cynical manifestations of servilism towards the regime of Vladimir Putin, even if they are aware that Putin profoundly hates what is Soviet, Marxist-Leninist etc...”
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Correction of Leninist mistakes – restoration of empire

On the eve of the centenary of the USSR, the efforts to soothe the people who are nostalgic for the late Soviet empire should be continued. It’s regrettable for those who are nostalgic but the Soviet inheritance can no longer be revived. On the contrary, the Soviet inheritance continues to cause serious problems, to undermine regional security and to destabilize the political and economic situation in the ex-Soviet republics. Moreover, as long as Russia continues being managed by President Vladimir Putin, there is no even small probability that the USSR will be restored and only the revanchism caused by the dissolution of the USSR can be manifested. The goal of Vladimir Putin is to restore the Russian empire but no way its Soviet version.

From Putin’s viewpoint, the ideas of the founder of the USSR, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, were mistaken and “these ideas ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and that’s the way it was. There were many such ideas: autonomy and so on. They put an atomic bomb under the construction called Russia, which later exploded. And we didn’t need a global revolution…”.  Respectively, President Putin aims to return to the expansionist imperial policies, especially those of Tsar Peter the Great. He admits that the pursued goal is to reconquer and strengthen the territories of the former tsarist empire: “we also have the task of restoring and strengthening. If we start from the fact that these are fundamental values of our existence, we will definitely manage to solve the experienced challenges”.

After invading Ukraine, President Putin admitted that he wants to repair the mistakes made by Lenin, who purportedly created Ukraine: “It (Ukraine) should bear the name of Lenin, who pushed by force Donbas there. And the monuments to Lenin are now taken down there and the de-communization is performed. Do you want de-communization? This perfectly matches us. We are ready to show what real de-communization is”. The thesis about the liberation of Donbas is propaganda fiction. The supporters and promoters of the ideas of Russian imperialism admit that namely they provoked the rebellion in Donbas in 2014. And they not only provoked this but during eight years, in 2014-2022, struggled against the Ukrainian armed forces on behalf of the so-called separatist people’s republics, ostentatiously violating provisions of the constitution of the Russian Federation. This was confirmed by the head of the private army that carries out delicate tasks by Putin’s order in Syria, Africa and Ukraine: “From that moment, since May 1, 2014, a group of patriots appeared and these were later called BTG “Wagner”. Only due to their courage, the liberation of the Luhansk airport and many other territories became possible, while the fate of the LPR and the DPR changed radically”. This confession perfectly matches Putin’s stratagem for reconquering territories that Putin considers presents of the Russian nation that were allegedly made by Lenin and his successors to the former Soviet republics.

So, the fundamental question: Where have you been during eight years? by which they tried to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, can be answered by anyone this way – we have been looking for unchallengeable proofs that namely Russia inspired the conflict in Donbas and this fact was confirmed by multiple factors and by imperial protagonists from the FSB and the close company of Putin. Respectively, the Resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to recognize the regime of Putin a terrorist one is absolutely correct. That’s why those who are nostalgic, either for the Soviet empire or for the tsarist empire, should take this into account as Vladimir Putin, who challenges the ideas of Lenin, uses similar terrorist methods elaborated by the founder of the theory of violence.

Cause of collapse of Soviet empire – economic inconsistency of USSR

The manifestation of President Putin’s hatred of the USSR is amplified by the ascertaining of the economic decline of the former Soviet empire. There has never been a more offensive characteristic with regard to the Soviet economy presented before the deputies of the State Duma: “The USSR had an undiversified economy that had been constituted during 70 years. No one needed what was going on in the USSR as no one bought our galoshes, if only the Africans who purchased them to walk on hot sand. This is what the problem consists of. Yes, we had a powerful military complex and we are gatefold for this to our predecessors... But the consumer goods... were absent. That’s why we should not lie to each other and should not lie to the people who know what they could buy and what they could not buy”.

So, we have confirmation from Vladimir Putin that the order economy of the USSR was inefficient and that namely this fact caused the collapse of the Soviet empire. In fact, the economy cannot be efficient if private property is destroyed by building collectivist economy that fully ignores the inborn characteristics of the human being. The Soviet regime claimed yet that it wants to build the new Soviet man for whom “work is a matter of honor, courage and heroism”. According to the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, “collective work should be based on workers’ enthusiasm, subject to monitoring and control... To clean the Russian land from all the harmful insects, from fleas – swindlers, from bedbugs – the rich ones, a dozen of rich people, a dozen of swindles and half a dozen of the workers who avoid work will be jailed. They will made to wash the toilets… will be given yellow tickets until they correct their behavior. Each tenth of those to blame for parasitism will be shot dead on the spot…, a combination of these means being necessary”.

This was the manifestation of communist humanism in the process of increasing the enthusiasm of collective work. But the revolutionary ideas didn’t work and the GULAGs had to be constituted, with over 15 million Soviet citizens being reeducated in these by forced labor, significantly contributing to the strengthening of the USSR’s potential. It would be interesting for sociological researchers to determine if those who are nostalgic for the USSR also long for the GULAGs or they possibly forgot about them?

Parasitism and nostalgia for USSR

Despite the Leninist methods and revolutionary élan, many Soviet citizens lacked motivation to work with devotion. The conditions to even out work remained deeply imprinted on the workers’ mind. Respectively, the phenomenon of parasitism in the state appeared. This was due to the fact that all the workers were remunerated with differentiation, almost equally, despite the made efforts, and the almost equal distribution of goods surely had a negative impact on the commodities market. Respectively, on June 2, 1962, a rebellion of the hungry workers arose in the Soviet city of Novocherkassk under the slogan – Meat from Khrushchev (leader of the USSR in that period). That uprising was suppressed with total ruthlessness. The event took place in a year of the introduction of Article 209 – Parasitism – into the Penal Code of the USSR, on May 4, 1961. No other democratic, non-Communist state ever had such an article in the penal codes.

The irony of fate is that the great Russian poet, Joseph Brodsky, a laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987), was condemned for parasitism in 1964 and had to emigrate to the U.S. in 1972 so as to avoid admission to a psychiatric hospital. This example should be illustrative for those who are nostalgic for the USSR so as to realize what the Soviet equalitarianism among workers led to. Currently, we convince ourselves of the fact that poet Joseph Brodsky wasn’t simply mega-talented but was even a visionary. In 1968 he wrote the poem A Letter to General Z, at a distance of over half a century, forecasting Operation Z of the Russian generals in Ukraine. There are not many doubts that if the visionary poet had been alive, he would have been stigmatized foreign agent by the regime of Putin.  

Conclusions

The current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, is the main enemy of the USSR. The declared goal of this is to repair the mistakes made by the Bolshevik leaders by restoring the Russian empire that was nothing but a prison of the nations. Ukraine does not want to return to the prison of the nations and is therefore subject to terror by the Russian army that destroys its civilian infrastructure, primarily the energy one, so as subdue Ukraine. 

In the same development, the multiple crises experienced by the Republic of Moldova – security, energy, inflation – were generated by the imperial policy of the regime of Putin. Regarded through this angle, the antigovernment protests of the Shorist, Socialist and Communist or ostensibly Marxist-Leninist supporters are nothing bur cynical manifestations of servilism towards the regime of Vladimir Putin, even if they are aware that Putin profoundly hates what is Soviet, Marxist-Leninist etc. In fact, the so-called protesters who were promised the restoration of kolkhozes and accept to be paid by the fugitive Shor with people’s money, which is from the stolen billion, are nostalgic for undue gains – the parasitism that destroyed the Soviet empire.