In the year of the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, of course, society turns to reflection, to understanding its consequences: from cultural to socio-economic. And the collapse of the Soviet Union became such a distant consequence. The significance of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist system from the standpoint of the present day is difficult to assess. At the same time, an unambiguous negative or positive assessment of the collapse of the USSR has not yet been given both by the Russian state itself and by society, which continues to be the official successor of the USSR, its historical continuation.
Turning to the problem of the international community's assessment of the significance of the collapse of the Soviet Union, we do not set ourselves the task of outlining the geopolitical transformations of the international system and Russia's prospects in geopolitics. The stated problem is considered by us based on the presentation of a range of assessments that illustrate public opinion and attitude to this problem in the international community.
The largest amount of research and analysis devoted to various aspects of attitudes towards the USSR and the reasons for the collapse was carried out by Russian and international research organizations in 2009, timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The topic was updated in 2011 in connection with the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Belovezhskaya agreements. It should be noted that the majority of research organizations, conducting polls, relied on the public opinion of Russia and the CIS countries, which is objectively logical. The share of research on this issue in the international aspect is small, as a result of which we consider it possible to turn to this topic.
In 2011, the year-long project of the BBC Russian Service, dedicated to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was completed, in which the events of 1991 and their impact on the world today were analyzed in detail. Within the framework of this project, commissioned by the BBC Russian Service, GlobeScan and the Program for the Study of Attitudes towards International Politics (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, from June to October 2009, conducted a comprehensive study in all regions of the world “Wide Dissatisfaction with Capitalism - Twenty Years after Fall of Berlin Wal The results were published on the official GlobeScan website in November 2009. The survey was conducted in 27 countries of the world: Australia, Brazil, Great Britain, Germany, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Spain, Italy, Canada, Kenya, China, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Poland, Russia, USA, Turkey, Ukraine, Philippines, France, Czech Republic, Chile, Japan.
The poll contained two questions that can be conditionally viewed as an analogy of the alternative: the problems of free market capitalism and “the collapse of the USSR - evil or good”, as an assessment of socialism. Let us turn in the framework of the primary problem of our article to the second question.
On the whole, the global trend turned out to be quite predictable - on average, 54% of those surveyed consider the collapse of the USSR to be a blessing. Less than a quarter of the survey participants (22%) called the collapse of the Soviet Union evil and 24% found it difficult to answer. Note that, despite the cultivated from the late 1980s - early 1990s. In the mass consciousness, the ideological myth according to which the Soviet Union was an "empire of evil", the aggregate of respondents in 46% (the sum of% of those who do not consider the collapse of the USSR as a blessing and those who have not decided) cannot unequivocally assess the collapse of the Soviet Union as a blessing. In addition, a positive assessment of the collapse of the Soviet state is characteristic of the majority in only 15 of the 27 countries in which the study was conducted.
The percentage of negative assessments of the collapse of the USSR is predictably high among Russians (61%) and Ukrainians (54%). Actually, these data are confirmed by practically similar percentages of studies on a similar problem conducted by Russian organizations. The majority in these countries believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union had a negative impact on the development of all countries of the former Union.
Among those surveyed in the former countries of the Warsaw Pact Organization (and this is Poland and the Czech Republic), the majority of respondents gave a positive assessment of the collapse of the USSR: in Poland - 80% and 63% of Czechs agreed with this opinion. This circumstance is undoubtedly connected with their negative historical assessment of their stay in the zone of socialist influence. One should not forget the fact that these countries were most of all under the ideological pressure of "Western democracy", the first countries of the former socialist camp were admitted to NATO (1999), which explains the share of opportunism and bias in public opinion.
The EU countries showed similar results in assessing the collapse of the USSR as a good: a very large majority in Germany (79%), Great Britain (76%) and France (74%).
The strongest consensus is in the United States, where 81% say the end of the Soviet Union is certainly a blessing. Respondents from major developed countries such as Australia (73%) and Canada (73%) have the same view. The same percentage in Japan.
Outside the developed countries of the West, the unambiguity in assessments is much weaker. Seven in ten Egyptians (69%) say the collapse of the Soviet Union is mostly evil. Note that only in three countries - Egypt, Russia and Ukraine - those who consider the collapse of the USSR evil made up the majority of the respondents.
In countries such as India, Kenya, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, the highest percentage of those who find it difficult to answer this question.
But, for example, in China more than 30% of the participants regret the collapse of the USSR, but at the same time 80% call on the PRC to learn the relevant lessons. In China, this problem was studied independently: here are some results of a study of the attitude in China to the collapse of the USSR. The Center for the Study of Public Opinion at the English-language Chinese newspaper "Global Times" from December 17 to 25, 2011 conducted a survey in seven large cities in China [3], according to which more than half of the respondents believe that the reasons for the collapse of the USSR are mainly rooted in the mismanagement of the country. a harsh political system, corruption and loss of people's trust. According to the results of the survey, the attitude of the respondents is very different. 31, 7% of the respondents regret the collapse of the USSR, 27, 9% - have "difficult" feelings, 10, 9%, 9, 2% and 8, 7% of the respondents feel "sadness", "joy" and "jubilation", 11, 6% - do not harbor any feelings. Almost 70% of respondents do not agree that the collapse of the Soviet Union was evidence of the mistake of socialism. Experts are also inclined to believe that the collapse of the USSR does not lead to the conclusion that socialism has no vitality.
This is confirmed by the results of the study we are considering regarding the attitude of various countries to the problems of the development of "free capitalism". Recall that this is the first question asked of respondents in the GlobeScan study we are considering. Recall that this survey was conducted during a severe economic crisis in the United States and Western Europe. The deepest reason for this was the contradiction between the aggravating problems of the West (deindustrialization, hypertrophy of the role of financial capital, the movement of world centers of economic activity from the North Atlantic space to the Asia-Pacific region, the emergence of the phenomenon of "Eastern neo-colonialism", etc.) and the desire of Western elites to continue " to live in the old way "in the conditions of the progressive loss of vitality of the once" reference "economic and political systems. In fact, a new world-system quality suddenly emerged - the “post-American” world, as Farid Zakaria described it figuratively and succinctly.
In fact, the question fell into three parts: the presence of problems in the development of "free capitalism", the attitude towards state control in the economy, the attitude towards the state redistribution of goods.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, dissatisfaction with free market capitalism is widespread: on average, only 11% in 27 countries say the system is working well and that increased government regulation is not the answer. Only in two countries does one in five respondents believe that capitalism is able to cope with economic problems in an untransformed form: in the United States (25%) and Pakistan (21%).
In the system of modern capitalism, the economic life of society is regulated not so much by the state as by the market. In this regard, the indicator is the distribution of the opinions of the respondents about their attitude to government regulation. The most common opinion is that free market capitalism is faced with problems that can only be solved through government regulation and reforms (51% of the total number of respondents). On average, 23% believe that the capitalist system is deeply flawed and a new economic system is needed. In France, 47% believe that the problems of capitalism can be solved through government regulation and reforms, while almost the same number believe that the system itself has fatal flaws (43%). In Germany, almost three quarters of those surveyed (74%) believe that free market problems can only be solved through regulation and reform.
43% in France, 38% in Mexico, 35% in Brazil and 31% in Ukraine supported the transformation of the capitalist system. In addition, the majority in 15 out of 27 countries supported the strengthening of direct state control over the main industries. Such sentiments are especially widespread in the countries of the former Soviet Union: in Russia (77%) and Ukraine (75%), as well as Brazil (64%), Indonesia (65%), France (57%). Actually, these countries have a historical inclination towards statism, so the results do not look unpredictable. The majority in the United States (52%), Germany (50%), Turkey (71%) and the Philippines (54%) opposed direct state control over the main industries.
The majority of the respondents support the idea of an even distribution of benefits by the state (in 22 out of 27 countries), on average two-thirds of the respondents (67%) in all countries. In 17 out of 27 countries (56% of respondents) believe that it is the state that should make efforts to regulate the economy, business: the highest percentage of those who support this path is in Brazil (87%), Chile (84%), France (76%), Spain (73%), China (71%) and Russia (68%). Only in Turkey, the majority (71%) prefer to reduce the role of the state in regulating the economic system.
The most active supporters of a strong role of the state in the economy and an even redistribution of funds are Hispanics: in Mexico (92%), Chile (91%) and Brazil (89%). This region is followed by India (60%), Pakistan (66%), Poland (61%) and the USA (59%). The idea of equal state redistribution enjoys the least support in Turkey (9%). There is widespread opposition to this point of view in the Philippines (47% against state redistribution), Pakistan (36%), Nigeria (32%) and India (29%).
Thus, when analyzing the trends of international public opinion about the development of capitalism, the conclusion necessarily suggests itself that there is an increase in dissatisfaction with the negative features of the development of capitalism and the search for a different system of socio-economic relations at the level of the global community, which is generally characteristic of periods of economic crises and depressions. At the same time, a bias towards such typical socialist features in the economy as state regulation, state redistribution, strengthening of state control over the main industries and an increase in the share of state ownership is recorded.
It is obvious that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was not a victory for "free market capitalism", which was especially clearly demonstrated by the consequences of the crisis of this economic system, recorded in the public consciousness.
