If an ordinary average person who survived the second half of the eighties at a conscious age is asked today to briefly characterize this time, then in most cases one can hear something like “perestroika is horror and shame”. Naturally, a young person born (or not yet) in those years needs a more detailed story.
History in Gorbachev's way
Gorbachev's perestroika (namely, he coined this term, although he may not have coined it himself) started in early 1987. What happened earlier, after he was elected to the post of General Secretary, was called acceleration. And before that, stagnation reigned in the country. And even earlier there was voluntarism. And before him - the cult of personality. Before Stalinism, there was a spot, which, against the background of all the abuses of subsequent decades, was bright. This is the NEP.
This is how the majority of Soviet people imagined the history of the USSR since the end of the eighties. This vision was facilitated by numerous articles published in popular publications (“Spark”, “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Arguments and Facts”and many others). Previously banned literary works appeared on the shelves, for the possession of which a few years ago you could make a lot of trouble, and they were swept away in the blink of an eye. Our country was the most read in the world even before, and after 1987 the popularity of books and newspapers completely broke all world records of the past (alas, it is possible that of the future).
Relics of the past
Of course, all the listed sources of knowledge about the history of their native country, with their enormous revealing power, should not have shaken the firm faith of the Soviet people in the highest justice of the socialist society and its ultimate goal - communism. MS Gorbachev and his associates in the Politburo were aware of the unfortunate fact that, due to low efficiency, agriculture and industry needed a significant restructuring. The economy was stalling, many enterprises were not profitable, but rather costly, the number of “collective farms-millionaires” (in terms of the amount of debt to the state) multiplied, the simplest household items became in short supply, and the situation with food was also not encouraging. The young general secretary understood that he had a certain credit of trust, because for so many decades everything was done wrong, so you need to be patient for some time. As it turned out later, the years of perestroika were somewhat delayed. No one could have foreseen this then.
Speed up and co-ops
The renewal course itself was certainly needed. First couple of yearsit was believed that the direction taken was correct, and "there is no alternative, comrades", you just need to move along it faster. This determined the name of the first stage, from which perestroika began. The history of the NEP suggested that if some areas of management were transferred to private hands, then shifts were practically guaranteed. In the 1920s, the country quickly overcame devastation and hunger, with the help of enterprising and active owners who came from somewhere. An attempt to repeat these achievements sixty years later led to a not quite identical result. The cooperators became the "touchstone" in the creation of a new class of Soviet capitalists. They filled certain segments of the domestic market, and the most successful ones swung at the external one, but they could not get the whole economy off the ground. Therefore, the assertion that perestroika is a repetition of the New Economic Policy has no basis. GNP growth did not occur. Quite the contrary.
Personnel
In 1986, almost no one remembered about acceleration (which was joked that it used to be just “bang-bang”, and now “bang-bang-bang-bang”). New structural measures were required, and the leadership of the country began to feel this even earlier. New faces appeared to replace the retired party mastodons, but Gorbachev did not refuse the old cadres, who had a reputation as "advanced intellectuals". E. Shevardnadze began to preside over the Supreme Soviet, N. Ryzhkov took the chair of the presiding minister, the Moscow City Party Committee was headed by B. Yeltsin, then little known but rapidly gaining popularity. A. Lukyanov and A. Yakovlev entered the Politburo, having made a dizzying career. It seemed that success was assured with such a team…
What was the way out
So, the main problems seemed to be revealed. We need to move forward more decisively and boldly. M. S. Gorbachev himself, with his characteristic eloquence, explained to the “ordinary people” crowded around him that perestroika is when everyone does their own thing. A natural question arose: what did everyone do before 1985? But highly experienced Soviet citizens did not ask him.
As in the days before industrialization, the USSR felt a lack of development of mechanical engineering. The 1985 Plenum set the task of increasing industrial production by 70%. By the nineties, it was planned to break through to the world level, quantitatively and qualitatively. There were personnel and resources for this. Why didn't this happen?
XXVII Congress and its correct decisions
In 1986, the XXVII Congress of the CPSU was held, the work of which - in fact, and not just according to the newspaper propaganda stamp - was followed by the whole country. The delegates supported the adoption of a revolutionary law that would empower labor collectives, who could now elect directors, regulate wages, and decide for themselves what products to produce in order to receive the greatest benefit. These were such reforms of perestroika that the working people could not even dream of until quite recently. On the basis of social changes, it was planned to effectively use the state potential in order to increase the productivity of the economy by 150%. It was proclaimed that by 2000All Soviet families will live in separate apartments. The people rejoiced, but … prematurely. The system still didn't work.
Economic socialism
Two years have passed since perestroika began. Gorbachev apparently began to be tormented by doubts about the correctness of the very direction in which the country was moving. Many years later, already in 1999, speaking in Turkey at a seminar held by the American University, he would call himself a staunch anti-communist, who fought all his life for the triumph of democracy. In a sense, he may be right, but today it is difficult to assess the expediency of his actions in 1987. Then he spoke about something completely different, blaming the mysterious representatives of the "command-administrative system" and no less mysterious mechanisms that slow everything down. Nevertheless, it was during the second (and last) period of perestroika that the crown of impeccability was removed from socialism and systemic flaws were discovered (quite unexpectedly). It turns out that everything was conceived well (by Lenin), but in the thirties it was greatly distorted. The concept of economic socialism arose - as opposed to stupid party administration. Theoretical substantiation was provided by the articles of professors and academicians L. Abalkin, G. Popov, N. Shmelev and P. Bunich. On paper, everything went smoothly again, but in reality, the usual socialist cost accounting was preached.
Nineteenth Party Conference
In 1988, the last line of defense of the party-nomenklatura omnipotence was surrendered. Civil society and limiting the influence of the CPSU on state and economic processes, giving the councils independence in decision-making were declared the goal to be strived for. Discussions arose, and for all the revolutionary nature of the approach, it turned out that these tasks again had to be solved under the leadership of the party. Simply because there was no other driving force. The delegates decided on this, supporting Gorbachev with all their hearts. It seemed that the previous years of perestroika were spent uselessly, but this is not so. There were consequences, they concerned the composition of the Soviets, in which a third of the deputies now represented public organizations.
Material crisis, spiritual crisis
After the conference something happened, reminiscent of the split of the RSDLP. The party has its own democrats and radicals representing irreconcilable ideological trends. Meanwhile, the country, accustomed to peace and stability, became agitated. Brought up on communist ideas, representatives of the older generation painfully perceived the collapse of their ideas about a just society. Mature people, accustomed to social guarantees and respect for their labor achievements, experienced material difficulties, aggravated by the apparent financial superiority of cooperators - often ignorant and rude people. The youth in the period of perestroika also felt a spiritual crisis, seeing that the education received by their parents by no means guarantees a decent life. The foundations were crumbling.
Someone loses and someone finds
Destruction of the dominant ideology,no matter how close it is to universal human values, it is always accompanied by large-scale incidents, most often extremely hard to bear by the majority of the population. Strikes of industrial workers and miners began. Food and consumer crises arose unpredictably, either tea, or cigarettes with cigarettes, or sugar, or soap disappeared from the shelves … At the same time, it was perestroika in the USSR that gave the holders of some posts the opportunity to get rich big. Briefly, it can be characterized as a period of primitive accumulation. The state monopoly on foreign trade activities fell victim to democratic changes, people with experience in foreign markets and with the right connections immediately took advantage of their potentials. Loans were a great opportunity. Soviet banknotes were rapidly losing their useful qualities, it was not difficult to repay debts by investing the received amounts in almost any product. Granted, however, not all. And not for nothing. But these are trifles…
About the national question
Not only impoverishment, but also bloody events marked the period of perestroika. The USSR was bursting at the seams from serious interethnic conflicts in the B altic States, the Ferghana Valley, Sumgayit, Baku, Nagorno-Karabakh, Osh, Chisinau, Tbilisi and other geographical points of the recently friendly Union. Massively created "popular fronts", called differently, but had one nationalist root. Demonstrations, rallies and other acts of civil disobedience swept the country, the actions of the authorities were tough,but behind them one could also guess the weakness of the authority of the leadership, and its inability for a long-term forceful confrontation. The perestroika of 1985-1991 caused the collapse of the Union into separate national state entities, often hostile to each other.
Five hundred days…or more?
By 1990, two main concepts of further development dominated the economic horizon. The first, one of the authors of which was G. Yavlinsky, assumed almost instantaneous (in five hundred days) privatization and the transition to capitalism, which, as then it seemed to almost everyone, was much more progressive than obsolete socialism. The second option was proposed by the less radical Pavlov and Ryzhkov, and provided for a smooth movement towards the market with a gradual release of administrative state restrictions. So, gradually raising prices, the country's leadership began to act. However, it turned out that such a slow movement has a devastating effect.
Coup - unexpected and inevitable
In the same 1990, Soviet citizens suddenly had a president. This has never happened before in the history of the state - both tsarist and Soviet. And in June, Russia declared its independence, and now Gorbachev could lead anywhere in the USSR, but not in Moscow, where Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, chairman of the Supreme Council, became the owner. Mikhail Sergeevich, of course, did not leave the Kremlin, but the conflict arose and continued until the very end of the USSR.
The referendum held inMarch 1991, demonstrated two important things. First, it became clear that the majority of Soviet citizens (over 76%) wanted to live in one big country. Secondly, they can be easily persuaded to change their mind, but it turned out a little later.
After the actual collapse of the union state (what does the USSR mean without Russia?), new subjects of international law began to prepare an association, for which they assembled a committee in Novo-Ogaryovo. In June, Yeltsin won the election, becoming the first Russian president. He was supposed to sign the union treaty on August 20. But then the putsch happened, literally a day earlier. Then there were three days full of excitement, the release of Gorbachev, who was languishing in Foros, and many other things, different and not always pleasant.
Thus ended perestroika. It was inevitable.
