Soviet empire self-destructed 20 years ago (Feature)

By Ulf Mauder Feb 25, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Moscow - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once described the Soviet Union's breakup as 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe' of the 20th century.

This year, Russia and the other 14 ex-Soviet republics mark the 20th anniversary of the demise of the communist superpower, which was formed in 1922 and came to be known in the West as the 'evil empire.'

Some people are sorry it is gone. Others, for example in the Baltic states and Georgia, are glad to be rid of domination by Moscow and celebrate their independence.

Little has changed in Belarus and the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Though no longer tied to Moscow's apron strings, they remain under authoritarian rule. The policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) initiated in the 1980s by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev have borne no fruit there.

Political observers and human rights activists see Russia, too, as backsliding into its authoritarian, pre-Gorbachev ways, rather than moving forward towards democracy.

In a series of articles analyzing the fallout from the Soviet Union's disintegration, the Moscow-based news magazine The New Times, which is often critical of the Kremlin, noted that the collapse of communion had led to a life of freedom in the European Union for millions of people in the former Eastern Bloc and ex-Soviet Baltic nations.

But hopes for a better life free of tutelage have remained unfulfilled for millions of others, the magazine wrote.

Ukraine, which is largely dependent on imports of Russian gas, has made a U-turn following its pro-Western 'Orange Revolution' in 2004 and years of chaos. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, in office for a year now, has taken flak from around the world for rolling back democratic freedoms.

The year 1991 was filled with protests, sporadic bloodshed, declarations of independence by Soviet republics and skirmishes in regions of conflict.

Among the high points in the dissolution process of the Soviet Union was the abortive coup in Moscow in August, after which then Russian president Boris Yeltsin permanently sidelined Gorbachev, the first and last Soviet president. Signing the document on December 8 that ended the Soviet Union was by then just a formality.

Territorial disputes have remained unresolved, such as the one involving the separatist enclave of Transnistria, under Moscow's control, in the ex-Soviet republic Moldova.

Another open wound is Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory held by Armenia with Russian backing but belonging, under international law, to Azerbaijan.

And after a brief war with Georgia in August 2008, Russia defied Western protests by recognizing the independence of the breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has long accused Putin of wanting to establish a confederation of states modelled after the Soviet Union. Adherents of this disputed theory cite the customs union, pushed by Putin, that links Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

On the other hand, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose association of former Soviet republics, as well as other supranational structures, have very little political clout.

Twenty years after the Soviet Union fell into history's dustbin, traces of the old empire are ubiquitous in Moscow. Communist monuments still stand, souvenirs sport red stars and the hammer and sickle, and cafes with interiors harking back to Soviet standards are in vogue.

According to a recent survey by the Moscow-based Levada Centre, an independent polling and sociological research organization, two-thirds of the Russian population hold the Soviet political system to have been the best.

For these Russians, remarked Levada sociologist Boris Dubin, memories of stability and calm trump those of shortages and standing in line. But he added that young Russians, in particular, longed to live like people in the West.

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