How the USSR Collapsed: The Historical Paradox of 1991




In1991, the collapse of the USSR turned out to be an expected but paradoxical political upheaval. The crisis grew entirely out of the Soviet era (and the Soviet authorities did their best to bring it about). Similarly, the Russian Revolution of 1917 grew out of the era of pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia. There is a remarkable similarity between these two revolutions, for in both cases the authorities themselves were pushing the country toward the political abyss. Urban culture as an agent of rapid change in public mood was crucial in both 1917 and 1991.

Not only did the communist elites in the USSR actually dissolve the Union in 1991, but the socio-economic conditions for the revolutionary upheaval were entirely prepared by the Soviet communist nomenklatura. The 1991 anti-communist revolution was carried out by the urban intelligentsia created by the Soviet regime.

The key in this case turned out to be the Soviet policy of industrialization and urbanization of the 1930s-1950s. It changed the social structure of Soviet society and revolutionized the educational system and Soviet culture. Even at the end of the Joseph Stalin era, at the turn of the 1950s, the Soviet Union was a society of yesterday’s peasants, with a corresponding mentality, cultural values and needs. The society consisted mostly of “ordinary people” with primitive needs, who were led by the Communist Party to build a future social paradise. Propaganda worked very effectively under such social conditions.