Putin has always regarded the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a huge geopolitical disaster, and has often published his own analysis of the causes of the disintegration of the Soviet Union at multiple public openings.
What is noteworthy is that at a meeting of journalists in 2019, Putin had some intriguing comments about Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union.
He bluntly pointed out that Russia was originally a unified country with a history of more than 1,000 years.
It just so happened that in the hands of Lenin, in the name of national self-determination, Russia was transformed into a loose alliance of states, and each member country had independent power.
It was precisely this mine, which Lenin personally planted, that finally provided the legal basis for the independence of the allied countries of the Soviet Union, and became the key factor that finally fell with a bang of the Soviet Union. This was also the biggest mistake in Lenin's political life.
Putin held that there was no doubt that Lenin's national self-determination was more like the work of a revolutionary, and as a politician, what he did deeply hurt Russia.
In February this year, in a televised speech, Putin once again focused his attention on Lenin and the allied republics he established.
Leninism's principle of state construction is not just a mistake, it is worse than a mistake! ”
Putin believed that modern Ukraine was completely cut off from Russia by Lenin in an unusually rude way, and a large amount of land that originally did not belong to Ukraine was added by the Bolsheviks.
This conception of Lenin is completely divorced from reality and historical tradition!
Putin's remarks can be said to represent the hearts of Russian nationalists, and in his historical view, nothing is the most painful thing than the fact that the process of Russification painstakingly promoted by successive tsars was vividly interrupted by the Soviet Union.
( Pujing )
(i) Putin: Lenin's national self-determination is divorced from Russian historical traditions
Historically, Russia before the Soviet Union was basically a unified country, and although successive tsars granted a certain right of self-government to a small number of peoples, Even in other regions, special countries within a state have been established according to the distribution of local nationalities.
(Expansion of the Imperial Russian Territory)
For example, the Grand Duchy of Finland in the 19th century (with extensive self-governing powers, with the Tsar concurrently serving as king), briefly existed in the Polish Assemblies (puppet states).
However, on the whole, the vast area including the Ukrainian, Central Asian, and Baltic seas has not established a country with theoretically independent power like the Soviet Union.
In particular, after the middle of the 19th century, Tsarist Russia, which had hundreds of alien nationalities, was completely developing toward becoming a "Russified" country.
Russia has taken "Greater Russianism," which includes such means as coercing a minority of ethnic groups to learn the Russian language and suppressing pagan cultures, as the main tool to push the country toward great cultural unification.
(Guifu Saint Sophia Cathedral)
It is worth noting that although these Russian policies have met with fierce resistance in Poland and the Baltic maritime region.
However, in Ukraine, it was quite successful, and the difference between Ukraine and Russia gradually narrowed.
When the German army prepared to restore Poland's model after World War I to foster an independent regime in Ukraine, they found that the people's independence aspirations here were far weaker than those of Poland. Finland, Litauwan and other places.
A German military officer said: In fact, Ukraine is a product created by us, and it is not fundamentally the will of the local people themselves.
(October Revolution)
However, after the October Revolution, the process of Russification in the Russian frontiers was dealt a heavy blow, and the old Russian Empire not only "fled" Poland, Finland, and other countries on the territory, but was also divided into more than a dozen independent republics within its borders.
What the Russian nationalists cannot tolerate the most is that Ukraine, which is the birthplace of Russian culture, believes in Orthodoxy and has achieved 10 points of success in Russianization, has actually established a member republic.
(Changes in the territory of Ukraine)
Moreover, Russia, as the main body, has not yet "given generous charity," including the allocation of land from Croatia, Kharkov, and Odessa to Ukraine.
The Russian nationalists pointed out that as early as 1 654, the Gorsak Emirate, the Gorsack Emirate, had signed a peace agreement with Russia when the Ukrainian government, which was bullied by Poland, Ukraine is willing to merge with Russia as one country.
The Soviet Union's initiative to upgrade Ukraine obviously promoted the resurgence of nationalism in the region and made the efforts of successive tsars go down the drain.
In addition to Ukraine, the division of peoples in Central Asia is also regarded by many people as a kind of manipulation created out of nothing.
For example, Lenin initially only calculated that Central Asia would be divided into three countries: Girgis, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and later forcibly increased to five countries.
Among them, the present-day Kazakh region was called Gilgis in the early days of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, and the present Gilgis region was called "Girkkamengirs". We can see the confusion of ethnic discrimination.
(1 9 2 2 Central Asia, northern Kazakhstan and Gilgis were confused)
So, was Lenin's transformation of Russia into a union of states really a simple way of doing it full of revolutionary numerology?
Can the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Russia and the former Soviet Union be attributed to Lenin's policy?
Leninism's Reality in National Self-Determination: Uniting 5 7 percent of the population as "aliens"
In fact, Lenin was an exceptionally mature politician, and the national self-determination and division he pondered was by no means a utopian ideal built in the void, but a realistic move to promote the success of the Russian revolution.
During the period of Tsarist rule, "aliens" in Russia accounted for 57 percent of the total population, and many of them lived in economically developed border areas.
(Soviet Civil War Propaganda Poster)
Under the policy of radicalizing "Russification," these people have become the potential main force in resisting Tsarist Russia's rule, and winning the support of these aliens is of great significance to whether they can win the revolution or not.
After the October Revolution broke out, Russia successively faced armed interference from the Allies and the Entente countries involved in aggression, and a large part of the country fell into the hands of foreign armies.
Domestically, national separatism, which had been suppressed by Tsarist Russia for several decades, gushed out, one nation after another sought independence, and the Red Army was also facing a crazy counterattack launched by the White Army, composed of the widows of the previous regime. The new Soviet political situation is in jeopardy.
In terms of the strength of the Red Army at the time, it is fundamentally unrealistic to think of building a single unified state on the territory of Tsarist Russia in a short period of time, and Lenin must do his best to unite "aliens" and "aliens." Only by dividing and dismantling the White Army camp can the resistance of the Red Army be lightened.
(Tolotsky gives a mobilization speech in the Red Army)
However, if we want to carry out united front work, it will not work by relying on rhetoric alone, and after all, these foreigners have accumulated deep grievances with Russia.
Therefore, "in order to eliminate the distrust of all peoples in the Soviet Union against the Russians," the Bolsheviks formally established four independent Soviet republics (Russia, Russia) in 1922 Ukraine, Belarus, Transcaucasian Federation, and later successively added to form the Soviet Union.
(3) Lenin's Technique of Divide and Rule: Resist the self-determination of large nations with the self-determination of small nationalities
Contrary to the impression of many people, Lenin's policy of national self-determination also contains a layer of the idea of attacking local separatism and safeguarding Soviet unity, especially in the five Central Asian countries.
Beginning in the 19th century, a pan-Turkist trend of thought began to rise in Central Asia in imperial Russia, fervently declaring the establishment of a powerful Turkic national state on the vast land of Turkey and Central Asia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire, the sworn enemy of the Russians, became the center of the pan-Turkic movement, and actively sent people to infiltrate Central Asia and spread Turkic culture.
(Pan-Turkic Movement Center Figure—Envir Pasha)
Especially during the civil war in Russia, Enver Pasha, who came from Turkey, cooperated with the local Turkic elements to launch a huge uprising of resistance, which posed no small challenge to the stabilization of Soviet political power in Central Asia.
Turkic separatism has left Lenin and others with palpitations, and how to resolve this extreme trend of thought will become the most important task of the Soviet Union's rule in Central Asia.
Against this background, Lenin specially issued instructions on this basis and established relevant committees to study the issue of ethnic classification.
From 1920 to 1924, the national identification plan has been revised several times, from the original Uzbek, Kyrgiz, and Turkmen projects to the five Central Asian countries in modern times.
After dividing into five ethnic states, it is equivalent to saying that the original pan-Turkist forces have been hit like a salary from the bottom of the cauldron, and the local people have begun to replace the "Great Turkic Recognition" with "small ethnic recognition." Therefore, it is all the more beneficial for the Soviet Union to effectively manage this region.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union ran counter to Lenin's national self-determination
There are still many opinions on the reasons for the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the self-determination of the Lenin nation as providing independent legal basis for each country is regarded as an important statement.
In particular, after Gorbachev came to power, and in the face of the surging national secession movement, he continued to publicly reaffirm his support for Lenin's policy of national self-determination, "We are faithful to Lenin's principle of national self-determination and secession", This encouraged separatists to use their right of self-determination to step up the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a weapon.
However, the view of blaming the disintegration on national self-determination, like Gorbachev, made the mistake of dogmatism and mechanically distorted Lenin's viewpoint.
First of all, Lenin has always been clearly opposed to the kind of nationalism that is self-determination for the sake of self-determination and separation for the sake of separation, and recognized the right of peoples to self-determination. ”
In Lenin's view, national self-determination has never been the CPC's primary task goal, and it is his core goal to awaken and unite with the proletariat and safeguard socialism.
He reiterated many times: "The interests of socialism are higher than the interests of the nation's right to self-determination." ”
If national self-determination is regarded by the bourgeoisie as a weapon against socialism, or if national self-determination goes against the will of the majority of the people, then Lenin will never agree with it.
In fact, looking back at the process of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we will find that the majority of the people of the Soviet Union tend to preserve the alliance rather than independence from it.
In a referendum in 1991 with a vote rate of more than 80 percent, the 9 republics supported more than 70 percent of the votes retained in the Soviet Union.
Ninety percent of the people of the five Central Asian countries, which are dominated by minority nationalities, are more willing to remain in the alliance than Russia.
That is to say, apart from the Baltic maritime states, the disintegration of the Soviet Union did not enjoy the support of the majority of the people, and the decision to disintegrate just ran counter to Lenin's principle of national self-determination.
Instead of attributing the cause to national self-determination, it is not as important as believing that the "betrayal" of the Russian elite was the leading factor in the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Famous scholar Roman Sporuk hit the nail on the head by saying that if there was no selfish desire of the group represented by Yeltsin to seek independence and independence for the Russian Federation, it is still very difficult to say whether the national movement could destroy the alliance.
It is also true that in the last years of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia's "defection" directly made the situation unmanageable.
(In 1 9 9 1, Soviet troops entered Taowan)
In 1991, the Soviet Red Army marched into Vilnius to prepare for the independent movement to suppress Taowan.
Yeltsin, then the highest Soviet chairman of the Russian Federation, was in a position with the three Baltic countries and jointly issued a statement opposing the actions of the Soviet Union.
He also instructed the Mosco and Leningrad television stations to wantonly attack the Soviet army that had entered Taowan in public opinion, so that the CPSU Central Committee was forced to press the pause button in public opinion. After abandoning military action, the first domino of the disintegration of the Soviet Union has since fallen.
(Gorbachev and Yeltsin)
The root cause of Ye Liqin and others' hatred of the Soviet Union lies in the fact that these elites believed that Russia had been treated unfairly within the Soviet Union.
In order to help the "little brothers" in the backward areas raise their living standards, Russia, which has been the "big brother" for many years, cannot but accept the policy of the central authorities of "pumping fat to make up for the thin, robbing the rich and helping the poor." Allocate a large amount of resources and human resources to other republics that are not rich.
On the one hand, Russia sells resources to "little brothers and brothers" at low prices, and on the other hand, it has to buy their consumer goods at high prices.
Over time, Russia became more and more dissatisfied with its role in the alliance, and "Russia has undertaken too many obligations for the alliance."
Therefore, many people in Russia advocate that "if the alliance is not conducive to the overall progress of Russia's economy and society, it is better to throw off the burden and go it alone." ”
In short, Lenin's national self-determination was a real move against the background of special history and had its own unique significance at the time.
( Ye Liqin )
At best, its existence only provided an excuse for those supporters of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and in the final analysis, it was caused by the failure of economic reform within the Soviet Union and the uneven distribution of benefits.