Status: 12/30/2022 10:33 am
The Soviet Union was founded 100 years ago. Russian President Putin has lamented his collapse more than once. Although he excludes a new edition, he still has Union plans.
By Christina Nagel, ARD Studio Moscow
It was a historic moment when, on December 30, 1922, representatives of the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics and the Transcaucasian Federation signed the Treaty establishing the Soviet Union in Moscow. On the big stage: at the Bolshoi Theater.
WDR Logo Christina Nagel ARD Studio Moscow
“The unstable international situation and the threat of new attacks make it imperative to create a unified front of the Soviet republics in the face of the capitalist environment”, says the text of the declaration laying the foundations of the USSR. The – as the anthem later put it – “the unbreakable union of free republics that united the great Rus ‘for eternity”.
The fact that it broke in the end was and is “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
For him, the current situation, the war in Ukraine, is the continuation of an endless cultural war between West and East: “Over decades, the idea of the collapse of the Soviet Union, historical Russia and Russia itself has always been cultivated in the western countries.”
Repressive laws, revived traditions
The Kremlin feels called to preserve not just Russia, but the entire Russian world. With the help of repressive laws against dissidents and anything that might have a supposedly corrosive foreign influence. With sermons and propaganda about traditional family values and patriotism.
And with a revival of Soviet traditions and achievements that were believed to have been outgrown. Starting with a new all-Russian children’s and youth movement, which is now called the “Movement of Firsts” instead of “Pioneers”, to the old Soviet cult car Moskvich, rolling off the assembly line in former Renault workshops.
The Kremlin finds itself in an all-or-nothing hybrid war waged by the “collective West” – and one that also justifies military force.
“Today we are fighting to ensure that no one ever thinks that Russia, our people, our language, our culture can be erased from history” – even if the anthem now has a different text: Putin is about the “eternal Great Rus’, which includes Ukraine and Belarus – regardless of their own history and development.
dream of former greatness
In the Kremlin, people keep stressing that this is not a new version of the Soviet Union, which finally walked off the big stage in December 1991. But the dream of former greatness is not over yet.
The aim remains to tie as many former Soviet republics together as possible. As if to emphasize this, Putin gave gold rings to the heads of state and government of the Commonwealth of Independent States formed after the collapse of the USSR at a recent informal meeting in St. Petersburg. Which made some think of a lifetime bond, others of Tolkien’s fantasy trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”, in which ring bearers are powerful but become mindless servants.
Back to the USSR: 100 Years of the Soviet Union
Christina Nagel, ARD Moscow, 12/30/2022 9:15 am