The interest that my previous article on the Belovezhskaya conspiracy aroused in readers testifies that many Russians are still worried about the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the eve of the 26th anniversary of this date, I consider it appropriate to talk about the secret reasons that guided Gorbachev when he decided to start the so-called perestroika, which, as the great Russian philosopher Alexander Zinoviev aptly put it, into a catastrophe.
This topic deserves a whole lot of research. This is what my book “Who are you mr. Gorbachev? History of mistakes and betrayals (Veche, 2016) In this article I will focus only on the landmark events that, in my opinion, led to Gorbachev's decision to rebuild-disaster. I'll start with his biography.
From assistant combine operator to General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU
Mikhail Gorbachev was born in 1931. In 1942, he spent six months in the territory occupied by the Nazis. According to his mother, Maria Panteleevna, Misha was a very hard-working boy. During the occupation, he diligently plucked geese for the Germans and brought them water for a bath.
Misha's father, sapper Sergei Andreevich Gorbachev returned from the front with two Orders of the Red Star and a medal "For Courage" and continued his work as a machine operator at a machine-tractor station. From the age of 15 Mikhail worked as his seasonal assistant on the combine. In 1948 Sergei Andreevich was awarded the Order of Lenin for threshing 8,900 centners of grain with his father, and his son was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Having received the order, Mikhail, a schoolboy, at the age of 19 became a candidate for member. Communist Party. So he got into the elite of the Soviet youth.
I must admit that Mikhail was quick-witted, had an excellent memory. I took science from the raid, therefore, apparently, I did not acquire the skills of thoughtful work with serious materials. Early fame and success developed narcissism in Mikhail. Valery Boldin, an assistant to Gorbachev, and later the chief of staff of the President of the USSR, believed that: "Gorbachev was a provincial in his mindset, habits, spirit, and his early glory turned his fragile head … thanks to the order, he ended up both at Moscow State University and in the apparatus work" (Kommersant -Power ", 2001-15-05).
After graduating from school, Mikhail, a silver medalist, was admitted to the law faculty of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov. There he was elected secretary of the Komsomol organization of the faculty and a member of the party committee of Moscow State University. At the university, Mikhail married Raisa Titarenko, a student of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. After completing his studies, Gorbachev was sure that he would be sent to the USSR Prosecutor's Office. But “at the top” it was decided that it would be risky to appoint young lawyers who do not have life and professional experience to work in the highest echelon of prosecutorial supervision.
As a result, the young couple of Gorbachevs went to Stavropol. In the regional prosecutor's office, Mikhail was offered to go to a provincial area. But Gorbachev, who dreamed of a career, decided to break into the regional Komsomol. Then the staff with higher education in the apparatus of the Stavropol Regional Committee of the Komsomol, there were only six people.
The former first secretary of this regional committee, Viktor Mironenko, told me in December 2008 that before visiting him, Mikhail had secured support in the regional committee of the CPSU in the person of the deputy head of the organizational department Nikolai Porotov. The young lawyer attracted him because he not only had a higher education, but was an order bearer and a member of the CPSU. Well, then Mikhail, with the support of Raisa, "charmed" the first secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee of the CPSU Fyodor Kulakov, then the chairman of the KGB of the USSR Yuri Andropov and even the "incorruptible and dry" Mikhail Suslov, not to mention Andrei Gromyko, who was known in the West, like "mister no" …
M. Gorbachev made the main means of career advancement the ability to gain confidence in his senior comrades, to assent to them in time, to argue convincingly on topical topics, while not forgetting about self-promotion.
Soon Gorbachev in the Stavropol Territory was known as a tribune-propagandist. During the period of Khrushchev, and then Brezhnev, this quality was highly valued by the Komsomol and party leaders.
It is known that the abstracts of Mikhail's speeches were prepared by the philosopher's wife Raisa. Since then, her advice for Mikhail has become an indisputable guide to life. He believed in his lucky star and that he was destined for great things. This confidence, or rather self-confidence and narcissism, was fueled by family stories that he was born on straw in the entryway, as Jesus once did, and his grandfather changed his first name Victor (winner) at baptism to Michael (equal to God) at baptism. This is according to Mikhail Sergeevich himself. Raisa supported this belief. And, apparently, not in vain. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
Her Majesty's Mania
In the life of Mikhail Gorbachev, there were many fateful meetings. But the main thing, in my opinion, should be considered a meeting with Raisa Titarenko in the dormitory of Moscow State University. For the provincial Stavropol youth, she became decisive. Valery Boldin, Gorbachev's longtime assistant, wrote about the role of Raisa in his book "The Collapse of the Pedestal …"
“It is difficult to say how his fate would have developed if he had not married Raisa. The attitude to the outside world and the character of his wife played a decisive role in his fate, and, I am sure, significantly influenced the fate of the party and the entire country."
But back to the future lawyer Mikhail. He had to spend 1.5 years for Raisa Titarenko to pay attention to him. The fact is that before meeting with Mikhail, she experienced a love drama. The mother of her beloved Raisa, the wife of a Soviet high-ranking economic worker, forced her son to abandon her. For Raisa, a purposeful and proud nature, it was both a drama and a humiliation.
Apparently, for this reason, having agreed to marry Mikhail, she set herself the task of making him a successful person who will take a higher position in society than the people who rejected her. I will again refer to Boldin, who noted one feature of Gorbacheva. It consisted in the following: "Raisa Maksimovna, from day to day, persistently and unswervingly could repeat the same idea that had taken possession of her, and, in the end, was getting her way from her spouse."
There is no doubt that the desire to prove that she married a successful person became almost manic in Raisa and she made every effort to realize her. It was she who created Gorbachev as a politician and, as Mikhail himself recalled, all the time pushed him to move up the career ladder.
This is how the tragedy of one person provoked the tragedy of a huge country. It is known that a small pebble that has fallen from the top of a mountain sometimes turns into a huge avalanche at its foot, sweeping away everything in its path …
Gorbachev idolized his wife, which he did not hide. The attitude of Raisa to him can be judged by some episodes of their life. So, in an interview with the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" (2016-23-03). Gorbachev recalled that in their disputes Raisa used to say: “You shut up. You only have a silver medal! " The Orthodox newspaper "Russian Bulletin" (06.06.2003) contains a selection of testimonies about the Gorbachev couple. Among the witnesses there are Valery Boldin, Dmitry Yazov, Maya Plisetskaya and others.
The famous ballerina recalled how Gorbachev was interviewed in Germany. So Raisa Maksimovna answered all the questions addressed to Mikhail Sergeevich. The journalist could not resist and noticed that he was asking the president questions. In response, Gorbachev smiled and said: "We always have a woman in the lead." I note that Plisetskaya incidentally gave a characterization of Gorbacheva, noting that she "behaved like a queen."
The collection of testimonies was completed by the information that Gorbachev never made final decisions on important state issues during the day. He wrote them down and left for his dacha in Novoogarevo.
In the evening, during a two-hour walk in the park with Raisa, Mikhail expounded to her questions of national importance, after which he made decisions on these issues, taking into account her opinion. I learned about this situation back in 1990, when I began to communicate with the staff of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Those are already accustomed to the fact that Gorbachev seems to give his consent during the day, and changes everything in the evening or in the morning.
About the role Raisa played in the Gorbachevs' marriage, Alexander Korzhakov, the former head of Boris Yeltsin's security, told the newspaper Gordon Boulevard (No. 49/137, 2007-04-12): “Once, when Gorbachev came home drunk, Raisa became slap him on the cheeks. Yeltsin would not have allowed this …”. I will again refer to Boldin: “So that you can imagine the scale of her (Raisa's) influence, I will say only one thing. Yakovlev, when he wanted to tell me something about her, took me out of the room and spoke in a whisper in my ear. " ("Kommersant-Vlast", 15.05.2001).
Vladimir Medvedev, the head of Gorbachev's bodyguard, believed that Mikhail Sergeevich was ill with megalomania ("The Man Behind the Back", Russlit, 1994). It is no coincidence that on February 21, 2013, an article appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda entitled “The country was led not by Mikhail Sergeevich, but by Raisa Maksimovna”.
To this I will add that Mikhail's mother, Maria Panteleevna, was never able to accept her daughter-in-law. Apparently, the mother's heart felt something unkind in the character of Raisa. Note that the above is not just a word of mouth. This information is of direct importance for clarifying the question of when and why Gorbachev had the idea of perestroika-catastrophe.
Fateful meetings
The Czech Zdenek Mlynarzh, with whom Mikhail shared a room in the Moscow State University dormitory, had a significant influence on the worldview of the young Gorbachev. This is confirmed by Gorbachev himself. Mlynarz already at the age of 16 (1946) became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Having become a communist by conviction, Zdenek was quite familiar with Marxist ideas and was a supporter of democratic socialism. Having found himself in the USSR in 1950, he was somewhat disappointed with the implementation of these ideas in practice. Indeed, according to the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by K. Marx and F. Engels, as a result of building communism, a society should be created, which is: "an association of free producers, in which the free development of everyone is a condition for the free development of all."
But in the USSR, socialism was built, as it is often said now, of the barracks type. I don't know if Mlynarj understood that the distortions of Soviet socialism were due to the fact that the first socialist revolution took place in agrarian Russia, and not in all industrialized countries (England, Germany, France and the United States), as Marx and Engels assumed.
As a result, the hostile capitalist encirclement determined the peculiarities of building socialism in Soviet Russia. The country had not only to build socialism, but to fight and prepare to repel an enemy attack. Therefore, Joseph Stalin turned the Bolshevik Party, the main driving force in the building of socialism, into a party built on the model of the medieval Order of the Swordsmen, centralized and with the strictest discipline. For the first time about such a party, Stalin announced in 1921, in the article "Sketch of the brochure plan."
The Stalinist party in the shortest possible time ensured a solution to the problem of the country's industrialization, victory in the Great Patriotic War against the entire capitalist Europe, led by Nazi Germany, and then, in a matter of years, ensured the restoration of the national economy destroyed by the war.
Unfortunately, the transformation of the party into a kind of order led to the degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the leader and the party apparatus. It was this dictatorship that allowed General Secretary Gorbachev in 1985-1991. experimenting with the Communist Party and the country with impunity.
However, it is groundless to believe that Mlynarz inspired Gorbachev with the idea of the collapse of the USSR as an unsuccessful model of building communism. Yes, Mlynarz became the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and was one of the main ideologists and organizers of the Prague Spring of 1968. He, as they said, defended the idea of democratic socialism or socialism with a human face.
Mlynarzh in his memoirs "Frost struck from the Kremlin" (1978) argued that in 1968 the Czechoslovak communists were only trying to create "a new system of managing the national economy … gradually eliminating bureaucratic centralization and freeing up the independent economic activity of state-owned enterprises …". This reminded me that in 1978, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, Peter Masherov, proposed at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus to develop socialist enterprise and initiative at the enterprises of the republic.
But in 1968 Czechoslovakia, Mlynarz had few supporters. There were more of those who proposed abandoning socialism and leaving the Soviet bloc. Most likely, they would have won then, which was confirmed by the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989. But for the USSR, their victory in 1968 meant that NATO would have received direct access to the borders of the USSR. That is, the situation of 1939-1941 would be repeated. Therefore, the Prague Spring was terminated by the introduction of troops from the Warsaw Pact countries.
After the defeat of the Prague Spring, Mlynarz emigrated to Austria. He returned to Czechoslovakia after the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989, when the Communist Party was ousted from power. Mlynarz became the honorary chairman of the "Left Bloc" - a coalition of communists with socialists. But the right-wing liberals who seized power in Czechoslovakia did not even want to hear about democratic socialism. As a result, Mlynarzh chose to return to Austria. In this regard, there is no reason to believe that he managed to set Gorbachev anti-socialist.
When Gorbachev was the second secretary of the Stavropol regional committee of the CPSU, it was fateful for Gorbachev to meet with Yuri Andropov, a member of the Politburo and chairman of the KGB of the USSR. It is known that although Andropov was a native of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was not favored there. Especially in the Politburo. Andropov also understood that the elders from the Politburo would "leave" only on gun carriages and they would die with bones, but would not allow him to become General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Thus began the secret war of the head of the KGB for the post of general secretary.
In this war, Andropov needed a loyal assistant. But not just an assistant, but a person who is able to gain confidence in people, if necessary, create a support group in defense of the patron, split the camp of opponents, be his eyes and ears - and at the same time give the impression of an independently thinking politician.
Gorbachev seemed to Andropov to be just such a figure against the background of other regional party leaders.
At the same time, according to Valery Legostaev, a former assistant to the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Yegor Ligachev, the head of the KGB was well aware of the negative personality traits of Gorbachev: pathologically ambitious, mentally shallow, boastful, arrogant, a rare hypocrite and a liar. I met people of this type in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania (Soviet). Moreover, as a rule, they were always "spinning" surrounded by high-ranking party leaders. In a word, “necessary and convenient” people.
Yuri Vladimirovich also relied on the "convenient" Stavropol citizen. He needed an effective and manageable support in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. It can be argued that Andropov's confidence that only he is capable of directing the USSR along the right path, and therefore must lead the party and the state, was the spring that threw Mikhail Sergeevich to the very top of the power pyramid of the USSR.
Under the supervision of the CIA
Well, what about the foreign special services, about which so much has been written and who allegedly recruited Gorbachev? I am sure that he got into the card index of the Western special services when he was still a high-ranking Komsomol leader. At the time, even they were in the focus of Western intelligence. This is evidenced by my experience of foreign trips when I was a Komsomol functionary of a fairly high rank.
Gorbachev, who in 1958 (at the age of 27) became the first secretary of the Stavropol regional committee of the Komsomol, was a very suitable candidate for development by the Western special services. Well, when in 1970 (at the age of 39) he took the post of first secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee of the CPSU, who gave two members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee - M. Suslov and F. Kulakov, then, of course, he should have been interested in the American CIA and the British MI- 6.
For foreign intelligence services, it was no secret that the first secretaries of the Stavropol Regional Committee of the CPSU had contacts with members of the Politburo on vacation.
In 1994, in Minsk, the former deputy head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Vladimir Sevruk, in a conversation with me, claimed that the Gorbachev couple came to the attention of CIA experts working on the Harvard Project program and the related plan for the training of Liotte agents of influence, in September 1971 in Italy.
Then Gorbachev, already the first secretary of the Stavropol regional committee of the CPSU, arrived with Raisa in Palermo (Sicily) for a symposium of young left-wing politicians. According to Sevruk, the CIA was attracted not so much by the suggestible, talkative and selfish Mikhail as by Raisa with her tough character, unbridled ambition, desire for power and unlimited influence on her husband. The "Raisa & Mikhail" tandem was considered by Western experts to be the most promising for pushing "upward". They weren't wrong.
The moment of truth of the final formation of the worldview of the Gorbachev couple was their trip to France in 1977. The Central Committee of the French Communist Party provided them with a car with a driver and an interpreter, and, as Gorbachev recalls in his memoirs "Life and Reforms". They “drove 5 thousand kilometers in cars in 21 days. It was a magnificent journey that firmly tied me to this great country and its life-loving people … ".
The Gorbachevs in France visited a dozen cities. Probably, more than once they met on the way married couples who speak Russian decently and who know how to arrange for a sincere conversation. Mikhail Sergeevich only needed this. He dumped on the listeners a lot of information, which, undoubtedly, was carefully listened to and recorded. Then, in Western special laboratories, psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists and other specialists on human souls, on the basis of this information, tried to recognize the nature of the Gorbachevs and their vulnerabilities.
It was then, I believe, that the Buratino complex was identified in Gorbachev, which was most clearly formulated by the fox Alice: “You don’t need a knife for a fool;
Of course, you cannot call Gorbachev a fool, but he clearly suffered from the Buratino complex. As it turned out later, the Western leaders - Thatcher, Reagan, Bush - were trained for meetings with Gorbachev by highly qualified Western psychologists who knew Mikhail Sergeevich's weaknesses.
It seems likely that it was during their trip to France that the Gorbachev couple were “recruited”, not by the special services, but, as they said at the time, by “decaying” capitalism. France, with cozy towns and colorful villages where people seemed to enjoy life, amazed the Gorbachevs. This was strikingly different from Russia. As Viktor Kaznacheev, the former second secretary of the Stavropol regional committee of the CPSU, told me, Raisa constantly repeated after France: we need to live the way the French do. Let me remind you again of Boldin, who argued that Raisa knew how to achieve what she wanted.
It is also known that Raisa's attitude to the Soviet regime was darkened by unpleasant memories. Her paternal grandfather, a railroad worker, spent four years in prison on false denunciation in the 1930s. The maternal grandfather was shot as a Trotskyist, and the grandmother died of hunger during the collectivization period. Gorbachev's ancestors also suffered from the Soviet regime. Mikhail's grandfathers, on father and mother, were repressed in the same 1930s. And only the orders of their son, front-line soldier Sergei, covered the grandson of Mikhail, and then he himself, as already mentioned, received the order.
Meetings, meetings, meetings …
Another defining foreign trip for Gorbachev was his flight to Canada in May 1983. I wrote about this in a previous article, but an addition should be made. V. Sevruk, whom I mentioned, speaking about the Gorbachevs, emphasized that Raisa was allegedly the channel of communication between the Western "patrons" with Mikhail Sergeevich. I didn’t agree. Although, in fact, how did Gorbachev know in 1983 that he was expected in Canada? And Raisa spoke excellent English and, being the wife of the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee for agriculture, enjoyed relative freedom when traveling to the city, as well as when meeting with a wide range of people. But…
There could be another option. Let me remind you of the statement made by KGB General Yuri Drozdov in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta (No. 4454, 31.08.2007).
He cited the revelation of a drunken American intelligence officer, which he said during a friendly dinner in a Moscow restaurant: “You are good guys, guys!.. the very top."
In this regard, let me remind you once again that by the beginning of perestroika, there were 2,200 agents of Western influence in the leading echelons of power in the USSR. In short, Gorbachev had someone to communicate with and from whom to receive important messages.
It should be borne in mind that Gorbachev was awaited in Canada not only by the agent of influence of the West and the USSR Ambassador Alexander Yakovlev, but also by the Prime Minister of Canada, Elliot Trudeau. Otherwise, how to understand that Trudeau met with Gorbachev three times, although according to diplomatic regulations one meeting was enough. Moreover, as I was told in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU, every time there were new people at the meetings. In fact, these were Gorbachev's bride.
A. Yakovlev, the former secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Gorbachev's adviser on perestroika, in an interview with the weekly Kommersant-Vlast (March 14, 2000) said: “The first Western politician who sympathized with Gorbachev was not Thatcher, but Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau … Mikhail Sergeevich came to Canada when I was an ambassador there. With his free-spirited behavior, he amazed Canadian leaders. Instead of one scheduled meeting with Trudeau, there were three."
Some researchers believe that Gorbachev was recruited by Western intelligence services in Canada. However, given that he was extremely willing to make contact with Western politicians, there was no need for direct recruitment. The Americans, and especially the British, in addition to recruiting, possess methods of direct and indirect influence on a person, in addition to his consent.
Gorbachev made a good impression on Trudeau and the Canadian prime minister immediately informed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about it. She became interested in Gorbachev and in February 1984, having flown to Moscow for the funeral of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Yuri Andropov, she tried to get to know Mikhail Sergeevich.
After his visit to Canada, the then US Vice President George W. Bush also showed interest in Gorbachev. He, as the head of the Soviet delegation at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament Viktor Izraelyan recalled, during his stay in Geneva in April 1984, said that he would like to meet with M. Gorbachev. But failed. However, Bush, in a one-on-one conversation with Israel, said: "Your next leader will be Gorbachev!" (Failed meeting. AiF, №25, 1991). Strange confidence!..
In the fall of 1984, an offer came from London to Moscow, initiated by Thatcher. Allegedly, in order to strengthen interstate British-Soviet relations, it is desirable to send a delegation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to England, but only led by M. Gorbachev. On December 15, 1984, Gorbachev, accompanied by Raisa, A. Yakovlev and a delegation of the USSR Armed Forces, arrived in London on an official six-day visit.
The first meeting of M. Gorbachev with M. Thatcher took place in the special residence of the prime minister in Checkers in Buckinghamshire, where only the first persons of other states were received.
There, Gorbachev amazed Thatcher by unfolding in front of her a top-secret map of the General Staff of the USSR Ministry of Defense with the direction of nuclear strikes against England and said that "this must be done with." This fact was described by A. Yakovlev in the "Whirlpool of Memory". He was also honored to be at the Checkers meeting!..
MI6 (British intelligence) undoubtedly explained to Thatcher that Gorbachev's map could not be genuine (it could only be provided to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee), but the prime minister realized that Gorbachev could go to great lengths in his desire to impress Western partners and stated that with him "can be dealt with." She reported this conclusion to US President Ronald Reagan. Thatcher's message to Reagan was declassified in December 2014.
I would like to emphasize that on December 18, 1984, Gorbachev made a speech in the British Parliament, the essence of which was "Europe is our common home." There is no doubt that Thatcher gave Gorbachev the idea of a common European home. Meanwhile, Mikhail Sergeevich did not have the authority from the Politburo to announce such a statement. But Chernenko, apparently extremely ill, did not react to such a serious misconduct by the secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. Ustinov, the Minister of Defense and the de facto head of the Politburo under Chernenko, died suddenly on December 20, 1984 for some unknown reason. Well, the then chairman of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, preferred to remain silent.
As a result, on March 11, 1985, Gorbachev took over the chair of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. On the same day in New York, a very impressive biography of Gorbachev was published in a separate brochure. Not a single General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU was awarded this. But it's not only that.
It is known that the time difference between Moscow and New York is 8 hours. The plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, which elected Gorbachev as General Secretary, ended at about 5 pm. 30 minutes March 11, 1985 In New York, it was the beginning of the day, 9 o'clock. 30 minutes. In order for a pamphlet with a biography of Gorbachev to appear in sufficient quantities on the shelves on the same day, it had to start printing a few days before the Plenum of the CPSU. That is, American publishers had to be absolutely sure that Gorbachev would be elected!
Restructuring plan
The question of whether perestroika had a plan is of concern to many researchers. Some believe that Gorbachev, out of habit, without a plan "got involved in the battle", hoping to then sort out the situation. Others, primarily those from Gorbachev's entourage, argue that there was a certain amount of ideas about perestroika, but not a specific plan of action. Gorbachev himself, in an interview with the Svobodnoye Slovo newspaper in 1996, said that there was a concept of perestroika, but there was no specific plan, such as a train schedule.
However, on December 14, 1997, in an interview with the American newspaper Minneapolis Star - Tribune, M. Gorbachev stated that “the general meaning of perestroika was: the elimination of the monopoly of state property, the emancipation of economic initiative and the recognition of private property, the rejection of the monopoly of the Communist Party on power and ideology., pluralism of thought and parties, real political freedoms and the creation of the foundations of parliamentarism”. These were the real goals of Gorbachev's perestroika, since they ensured the transfer of the USSR on a capitalist track. Gorbachev's statements about reforming the USSR, the CPSU, and the socialist economy were empty verbiage.
There is no doubt that M. Thatcher pushed Gorbachev to such a restructuring. This smart and insidious woman used the Gorbachev complex of Buratino to the maximum and in December 1984.gave Gorbachev the idea of "let's live together."
By this time, Gorbachev was psychologically ready to abandon socialist values. A trip to France, a flight to Canada, resentment against the Soviet regime and the influence of his wife played a role here. As a result, Gorbachev fell for Thatcher's proposal.
Undoubtedly, the prime minister told Gorbachev that the question of the Soviet Union's entry into the European Common House could be raised on a practical plane only if the USSR freed itself from Marxist ideology and socialist approaches to the economy. The idea is interesting, as the characters of the famous in the USSR "Zucchini 13 chairs" said. She was the guide for Gorbachev during the perestroika period.
He decided that he had the opportunity to become the head of the Eurasian community, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After all, who in Europe could compete with the USSR politically, economically and militarily? Moscow would become the center of a huge Eurasian community. But this idea was only a bait for Gorbachev, with his help to remove such a powerful competitor as the USSR from the world political and economic arena.
Western partners made for Gorbachev a rejection of socialism and its replacement with capitalist ideals as a kind of "carrot". It is known that a stubborn donkey runs well after a suspended carrot, which remains inaccessible to him. It was this "carrot" that led to Mikhail Sergeevich's unilateral surrender of the main positions of the USSR in the world.
Gorbachev was confident that a great future awaited him. Therefore, he began perestroika, the main tasks of which were: to remove the CPSU from the political arena, as the main bond of the USSR, and to prove the inefficiency of the socialist economy.
Everything else, as was said, the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the reorganization of the management system, the democratization of the CPSU, etc., were only distracting elements.
Meanwhile, John Kennan, US ambassador to the USSR and author of the famous doctrine of world containment of communism in the 1950s, characterized the role of the CPSU for the USSR: to be quickly transformed from one of the strongest into one of the weakest and most insignificant national communities”.
There is no doubt that the events that were taking place in Europe at that time reinforced Gorbachev's resolve to begin perestroika-disaster for the USSR. It is known that in March 1985 the European Council took the first step towards the creation of the European Union with a single economic and political space. In February 1986, the Unified European Act was signed, which assumed the gradual creation from January 1, 1987 of a "single space", in which the internal borders between the states of Europe were to be eliminated and the free movement of capital, goods and individuals was to be ensured.
Europe is our common home
Gorbachev began implementing his perestroika plan by meeting with Friedrich Wilhelm Christians, chairman of Westminster Bank, one of the world's largest banks. It took place in the Kremlin on April 18, 1985, and the full record of their conversation is still classified. But from an interview with F. Christians, one can understand that the new General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU introduced his foreign interlocutor to some of the plans regarding the "restructuring of the Soviet economy." That is, literally a month after "accession to the throne" the informal head of the Soviet state began to discuss the concept of perestroika-catastrophe with a representative of a foreign bank.
On October 5-6, 1985, Gorbachev was in Paris, where he met with President François Mitterrand. The meeting was held under the motto "Europe is our common home". Mitterrand listened with interest to Gorbachev's views on the USSR's entry into the "common European home", although he was somewhat puzzled by the intentions of the head of the USSR to critically review the main political and economic mechanisms of the Soviet system.
Therefore, Mitterrand told Gorbachev: "If you manage to carry out what you have in mind, it will have worldwide consequences." And in his entourage, the French president spoke like this: "This man has exciting plans, but is he aware of the unpredictable consequences that an attempt to implement them can cause?"
Returning from France, Gorbachev decided to throw a "trial balloon". On October 13, 1985, the editorial “Europe is our common home” appeared on the pages of Pravda. But it did not cause much reaction in the USSR, since the majority in the country did not understand what changes were behind it.
Gorbachev and his Western patrons summed up the first results of perestroika in the Kremlin at a meeting with representatives of the Trilateral Commission (one of the economic and political instruments of the so-called "world government"). On January 18, 1989, the Commission was represented in the Kremlin by its chairman David Rockefeller, as well as Henry Kissinger, Joseph Bertouin, Valerie Giscard d'Estaing and Yasuhiro Nakasone. On the Soviet side were Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev, Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgy Arbatov, Yevgeny Primakov, Vadim Medvedev and others. All Gorbachev's army.
Summing up the results of the meeting, Gorbachev said that the integration of the USSR into the capitalist world economy can be considered fundamentally resolved. (M. Sturua. "Izvestia", 19.01.1989). I believe that the above is enough to understand what plans Gorbachev was hatching when he announced perestroika-disaster.
Scarcity as a weapon of disaster
After his visit to France, events in the USSR developed in the direction Gorbachev needed. In order not to tire the reader with an analysis of Gorbachev's disastrous reforms, I will refer to Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to US President George W. Bush. On December 5, 2011, he gave an interview to Radio Liberty, in which he stated that “Gorbachev Was Doing Our Work For Us” (Gorbachev Was Doing Our Work For Us). That says it all.
Nevertheless, I would like to touch upon the problem of the shortage of food and essential goods in the USSR during the perestroika period. She most clearly showed the treacherous and destructive nature of Gorbachev's reforms.
It was the total deficit that largely determined the growth of separatist sentiments in the union republics, and in Russia itself. Today it is absolutely clear that the deficit and the accompanying sabotage were deliberately planned acts of sabotage, which were supposed to confirm the flawed socialist economy and the rejection of socialism.
Let me remind you that for the USSR, a deficit and queues for it were commonplace for the union republics, except for the Baltic ones. But at the same time, as you know, the volume of food and consumer goods production in the Union was constantly growing.
Mikhail Antonov, head. sector of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, argued that according to the FAO (UN Food Organization), the USSR in 1985 - 1990, with a population of 5.4% of the world, produced 14.5% of the world's food. I would like to emphasize that the USSR provided 21.4% of the world production of butter, but most stores in Russia did not have it!
According to statistics, in 1987 the volume of food production in the USSR compared with 1980 increased by 130%. In the meat industry, the increase in production compared to 1980 was 135%, in the butter and cheese industry - 131%, fish - 132%, flour and cereals - 123%. During the same period, the country's population increased by only 6, 7%, and the average monthly wages throughout the national economy increased by 19%. In short, the situation is - do not believe your eyes.
And the fact was that the agents of influence, relying on the enriched mafia figures who took control of the key points of Soviet trade and supply, skillfully, as before the February Revolution of 1917, in 1988-1991. organized a total shortage of food and consumer goods in the USSR. A significant part of the deficit was hidden for sale in a free market, while the other part was illegally exported. Boris Yeltsin's entourage at that time took an active part in this.
Nikolai Ryzhkov, former chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers in the NTV TV program “USSR. The collapse of the empire”(2011-11-12), told how in the summer of 1990 a shortage of tobacco products was artificially created in the country. It turns out that at the direction of B. Yeltsin, 26 of 28 Russian tobacco factories were suddenly closed for repairs …
In the same TV program, Yuri Prokofiev,. The 1st secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU in 1989-1991, reported that at the Interregional Deputy Group (MDG - the "democratic" faction of People's Deputies of the USSR), Gavriil Popov, the MDG co-chairman and chairman of the Moscow Council, stated that "we need to create such a situation with food, so that food was given out on coupons. It is necessary to provoke the indignation of the workers and their actions against the Soviet power … ". ("Pravda", 1994-18-05).
The newspaper "Pravda" on October 20, 1989 published photographs of railway freight stations in Moscow, which were packed with carriages with medicines, condensed milk, sugar, coffee and other products. O. Voitov, Deputy Head of the Container Transportation Service of the Moscow Railway, reported that 5,792 medium and large-sized containers and about 1,000 wagons had accumulated at the sites of the freight stations in Moscow. But…
Let me also remind you of the TV show “600 Seconds” by the Leningrad TV journalist A. Nevzorov, which regularly showed stories about the barbaric export of fresh meat products to landfills. Writer Yuri Kozenkov in the book “Calvary of Russia. Struggle for Power”recalled that:
“In 1989, at the first session of the USSR Armed Forces, writer V. Belov handed a note to V. Kryuchkov, chairman of the KGB of the USSR, who was speaking from the rostrum at that time, with the question:“Is there sabotage in transport, in industry, is there economic sabotage?” From the tribune of the session, Kryuchkov did not have the heart to answer, and during the break he gave Belov a positive answer."
Comments are superfluous. Naturally, Gorbachev's perestroika should only be called a catastrophe. It is no coincidence that the Soviet people, having seen enough of the atrocities perpetrated by Gorbachev and his entourage for 6, 5 years, on December 25, 1991 calmly and indifferently accepted his farewell speech and resignation from the post of President of the USSR, which marked the collapse of the Soviet Union.
