by Emmet Sweeney

Nazism has been characterized, rightly, as a form of Social Darwinism, and Social Darwinism can be described as the political application of the Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest.” Darwin himself denied (publicly, at least) that this meant, or should mean, the elimination of the “unfit” in human society. Nonetheless, in the Darwinian system, Natural Selection was indubitably the driving force behind evolution and the development, ultimately, of intelligent human beings — and it achieved this by eliminating the unfit. Some years after the publication of the Origin of Species Darwin was to write:

I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit…. The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. (Charles Darwin, Life and Letters Vol. 1 (ed. Francis Darwin, 1888), p. 316)

If Darwin himself was a bit coy in spelling out the consequences of his ideas in public, his greatest champions and defenders were most certainly not. Racism was almost universal among the early evolutionists, many of whom believed the races had evolved separately. Thomas Huxley, known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” expressed his belief that blacks would not be able “to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival [i.e., whites], in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places within the hierarchy of civilization will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins…” (Thomas Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York, 1870), p. 20)

Ernst Haekel, the great popularizer of Darwin in Germany, wrote:

The mental life of savages rises little above that of the higher mammals, especially the apes, with which they are genealogically connected…. Their intelligence moves within the narrowest bounds, and one can no more (or no less) speak of their reason than that of the more intelligent animals…. These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Australian negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilized Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives. (Ernst Haekel, The Wonders of Life (New York, 1904), pp. 56-7)

Darwin’s theory did not, of course, appear in a political and cultural vacuum, and the intellectual classes of 19th century England (i.e., the wealthy and comfortably off) were happy to believe that the crushing poverty endured by the urban working classes and rural poor of that time — with an average life expectancy of around 35 years — was part of the natural order of things and even beneficial for the future progress and development of humanity. If the poor died off before they could breed, so much the better: they were obviously mentally and intellectually “unfit.”

There is no question that the increasingly post-Christian mindset of the ruling elites in Britain, France and the US during the latter years of the 19th century hastened the triumph of Darwin’s theory, yet by the final years of the 19th century those same elites had a problem: improved medical care, diet and housing meant that more of the “great unwashed” were surviving — and so were their children. Social welfare programs, usually funded by churches and other charitable institutions and eventually, to some degree, by the state, meant that more and more of these “mentally defective” denizens of the slums were living beyond their childhood and they too were having children — large numbers of them. Polite society at the time was full of talk of the danger this phenomenon might pose for the future. What to do? In 1883, one years after Darwin’s death, his half-cousin Francis Galton coined a new term, “eugenics,” (from the Greek words eu “good” and genes “birthing” or “creating”). Galton was an influential polymath as well as an enthusiastic admirer of Darwin. Over the next two decades he applied himself energetically to promoting what he regarded as a new scientific discipline, publishing a plethora of papers outlining and popularizing the concept. His words fell on fertile ground; Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities and received funding from various sources. Organizations were formed to win public support and sway opinion towards what was described as responsible eugenic values in parenthood. Such groups included the British Eugenics Education Society, founded in 1907, and the American Eugenics Society, founded in 1921.

To begin with, the eugenecists contented themselves with trying to encourage the more “intelligent” members of society to have more children, whilst simultaneously discouraging the less intelligent from having children at all. To this end, Britain’s first birth control clinic, founded in the early 20th century by ardent eugenicist and racist Marie Stopes, sought to normalize the use of contraception among the poor. However, it soon became clear that such measures would have little impact, and calls for more coercive measures were quickly heard. Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for exchanging ideas, with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York City. By the early 1920s active and influential eugenics groups in Great Britain, France, and Germany, were calling for the forced sterilization of the mentally “unfit,” and by the late 1920s and early 1930s, similar policies were implemented in other countries including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and Sweden. Frederick Osborn’s 1937 journal article “Development of a Eugenic Philosophy” framed sterilization as a social philosophy. Osborn, who was widely influential at the time, advocated for higher rates of sexual reproduction among people with desired traits (“positive eugenics”) and reduced rates of sexual reproduction or sterilization of people with less-desired or undesired traits (“negative eugenics”).

The Nazi Party assumed power in Germany in 1933, inaugurating there an extremely active eugenics policy. This resulted, by the late 1930s, not only in forced sterilization on a large scale, but killing (euthanasia) of the mentally and physically disabled. These were, infamously, designated as nutzloser Esser (“useless eaters”). In his Mein Kampf, Hitler had outlined his support for an extremely proactive application of eugenics, and made his debt to Darwin and Darwinism in this regard very explicit. Darwin is cited throughout the book. It should not be imagined however that the extreme policies inaugurated by the Nazis, which included stud farms for producing genetically improved Germans, were confined to Germany and uniquely Nazi. On the contrary, as the 1920s gave way to the ’30s, the position of eugenicists everywhere, including in democracies such as Britain and France, as well as in the Communist regime of the Soviet Union, became more and more radical. In 1931 for example, British author and Fabian Socialist George Bernard Shaw argued that “If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight … then clearly, we cannot use the organizations of society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to you.” (BBC interview, 1931). He also noted that, “[I]f we desire a certain type of civilization and culture, we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.” This included a whole range of “defectives.”

The defeat of Nazi Germany and the revelation of the horrors inflicted by the Nazi Party on populations throughout Europe during the War had the effect, by the late 1940s, of discrediting eugenics as a philosophy — though even then Shaw and a few other enthusiasts unapologetically stuck to their position. By the 1960s,however, few public figures dared go on record promoting anything that smacked of forced sterilization or selective breeding. Yet the fundamental premise of eugenicism, the Darwinian interpretation of evolution, was never discarded. On the contrary, it embedded itself ever deeper into the minds of the European and American elites, and as the 20th century came to its close those same elites moved ever further away from the Christian roots of their civilization, whilst embracing utopian scientism. If God is not in control of the world, then Man — meaning of course the ruling elites themselves — must take control. Billionaire “philanthropists” began funding think tanks and pressure groups of various kinds which campaigned for extensive access to both contraception and abortion, especially in poorer parts of the world. In a hugely influential book published 1968 Professor Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University warned that mankind faced a crisis of exploding populations, which would cause, he predicted, devastating famines around the Earth by the 1980s. Eugenicists had of course been warning of “overpopulation” for nigh on a century, but little had been hitherto done to counter population growth. Now however governments in many countries, but especially in Europe and America, began to aggressively promote birth-control programs. These were followed, in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the legalization of abortion in almost all of Europe and North America.

Ehrlich’s predicted famines did not of course materialize, and food production easily outstripped population increases in every part of the world in the decades between the 1960s and ’90s. This did not, however, lessen calls for population control, and in a 1976 book entitled The Final Days, the Nazi term “useless eaters” was once again applied to the sick, elderly and infirm; this time by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger. By the early 1980s the need for massive population reduction became a constant theme of the burgeoning environmentalist movement. Human beings were increasingly portrayed as a plague on the Earth, a plague that needed to be controlled. Despite the fact that birth-rates in Europe and North America (as well as Australia) had dropped below replacement levels by the mid-1990s, and had begun to go the same way in Asia and Latin America by the early 2000s, the calls for population reduction only intensified.

The need to reduce the numbers of “less desirable” humans was of course a long-standing theme of the eugenics movement — as was the need to increase the numbers of the “more desirable” type. In this spirit, the first sperm-banks were opened in 1964 in the US and Japan. Such faculties, which have now spread throughout the world, allow women whose husbands are infertile, as well as single women and lesbian couples, to select genetic material from men who are strictly vetted in terms of health, intelligence, etc. Only men with the highest IQs and in the best health, free of all genetic disorders, are selected as donors. These modern sperm-banks are therefore close cousins to the Nazi Lebensborn stud-farms.

A chief goal of the eugenicists of the 1920s and ’30s was the elimination of all those unfit or unable to contribute economically to society, and this too has its parallel in the modern world, where euthanasia, the deliberate killing of the very old and infirm, has again raised its ugly head. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia (in 2001) and it was followed by several other countries in Europe and Canada, was well as most of Australia. As might be expected, in all these places it is stipulated that the decision to die must be made by the patient him/herself. However, as might also be expected, actual practice in hospitals has moved ever closer to simply killing the patient whethere he or she desires it or not. And just this, as we shall see, has now been put into practice on a truly colossal scale throughout the West.

As noted earlier, the modern iteration of the eugenics movement ties it closely to environmentalism (note; the Nazis were also enthusiastic environmentalists), which views humanity as something close to a destructive plague on the Earth. One of the most vocal voices in this regard is Microsoft CEO and billionaire “philanthropist” Bill Gates. In a TED Talk speech delivered in 2010, Gates argued that the Earth could comfortably support half a billion people (500 million) but that the world’s population was on the way to nine billion. It was necessary, he said, for the good of humanity, to drastically reduce that number. This, he felt, could be achieved by the use of vaccines in the poorer parts of the world. Gates of course always claimed that what he meant by this statement was that vaccination campaigns would produce better health for children and that, sure of the survival of their existing children, poor couples would not feel the need to have large families. Yet it is curious that as early as 1993 the World Health Organization had announced the development of a “birth-control vaccine,” whilst in the same year the Catholic Church in Kenya announced that such a vaccine was already in use there. This claim, it should be noted, resurfaced again in 2014.

Gates is of great interest. He is an influential member of the rather sinister World Economic Forum, a talking-shop for the super-rich and super-powerful; a body which, like Gates himself, actively campaigns for population reduction and de-industrialization in the name of the environment. The two goals are inseparable. Bill’s father, William H. Gates, was an outspoken and unapologetic eugenicist, and there is unambiguous proof that Bill has adopted core principles of his father’s beliefs. Through the “charitable” “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” Gates has helped fund research into developing new forms of biotechnology aimed, allegedly, at alleviating disease in poorer countries and improving the quality of life. The Foundation also funds genetic engineering of foods and Gates himself has been a keen supporter of and investor in Moderna, a pharmaceutical corporation which was founded specifically for the purpose of developing mRNA technology. The latter is a gene-altering process aimed at humans which, as Gates and others have repeatedly stressed, could help mankind eliminate hereditary incurable illnesses such as Cystic fibrosis and Type-1 diabetes. Such has always been one of the primary goals of the eugenicists. In fact, an mRNA-based “vaccine” was finally rolled out by Moderna and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in late 2020, and the use to which the mRNA jabs were put would confirm that only with difficulty can we defend a benign interpretation of Gates’ 2010 claim that vaccination could help dramatically reduce the Earth’s population.

Which brings us onto what will surely be seen by future historians as the biggest event of the past 70 years: the alleged “COVID pandemic.” Along with his good friend Anthony Fauci, Gates was extremely influential in facilitating the totalitarian and completely unprecedented “lockdowns” in the US and throughout much of the world. These two of course by no means acted alone: It seems that the entire billionaire and trillionaire class, who own all the media (and all the politicians), co-ordinated efforts to produce what can only be described as a deliberate campaign of deception and terror in order to deprive billions of people of their freedom and millions of their lives. There was of course no deadly virus around in 2020, a fact proved by the failure of this alleged “killer” to produce mass deaths in countries such as Belarus and Sweden which did not lock down and which did not implement any special measures. In fact, both the latter countries had negative excess deaths in 2020, meaning that COVID-19, whatever it was, was not even as dangerous as an average ’flu. However, in many countries which did lock down, including much of Western Europe and North America, there were many excess deaths in 2020. It is now clear that the vast majority of these deaths were of elderly and frail people who were actually euthanized in hospitals and care homes. This was effected by refusal to provide proper and effective treatments for respiratory illness (such as vitamins D and C, as well as Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine), and instead subjecting patients to doses of such lethal drugs as Midazolam (in UK and Europe) and Remdesivir (in US and Canada). These two drugs, plus improper use of ventilators, deprived millions of the elderly and sick of their lives in the Spring of 2020, in what can only be described as the largest act of mass murder in modern history. But the modern totalitarian eugenicists were by no means finished.

Throughout the first year of the COVID “emergency,” Gates, as well as Fauci and other spokespersons for the new tyranny, proclaimed continuously that the “pandemic” would never be over until a vaccine could be developed to control it. I will not go into the utterly unscientific nature of such as statement, as it has already been dealt with at length by others much better qualified than me. Suffice to say that it is now perfectly clear that the coordinated campaign of terror in the media throughout 2020 and 2021 was designed to frighten as many people as possible into taking the mRNA “vaccine” which Moderna and other pharmaceuticals had already, it seems, developed.

It is a fact that the introduction of the COVID-19 “vaccines” was accompanied by an immediate increase in death rates in every country with large uptakes in the injections. Countries which tended to reject the “vaccines” had no significant increase in death rates. In the West (Europe, North America, Australasia, Japan and South Korea), where “vaccination” rates were highest, most of the huge increase was blamed on COVID. However, there was also an immediate and quite dramatic rise in heart-related and cancer-related deaths. These, however, were ignored by the controlled mass media. There was also — and this calls to mind Bill Gates’ chilling words in 2010 — a massive increase in miscarriages among women and a dramatic decrease in the birth rate.

And thus it has remained since the spring of 2021. The death rates in all Western countries have continued to be far above average, and it is now admitted that the vast majority of these have nothing whatsoever to do with COVID-19. Almost all are heart- or cancer-related. The numbers dead, throughout Europe, America, Australasia, and the Pacific Rim, is now in the tens of millions. In those same regions the birth rates, already well below replacement level, have dropped noticeably, and it is clear that the “vaccines” are acting as a sterilizing agent. The eugenicists have done their work well.

(Note: The author of this article accepts that “natural selection” or the “survival of the fittest” does indeed operate in the natural world. Sick or frail animals die quickly in the wild. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this can produce new species, and it needs to be stated that the rise of new species throughout Earth’s history is as much a mystery now as it was in the time of Darwin. Finally, it should not be forgotten that the protection of the sick and the frail is one of the defining characteristics of civilized humanity; one of the remarkable features differentiating us from the savage beasts).

Emmet Sweeney is the author of several works dealing with problems in the ancient history of Egypt and the Near East.

By Alexander Nepogodin, an Odessa-born political journalist, expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Exactly 100 years ago, on December 30, 1922, the largest country in world history was created. At the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, representatives of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian Federation all signed Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the USSR.

The huge country left an ambiguous legacy, and most of the Bolsheviks’ promises were never fulfilled. However, despite its collapse in 1991, to this day the history of the Soviet Union remains relevant for residents of Russia and the former Soviet republics. In fact, it was the beginning of Bolshevik rule that marked the national revival of minorities and the creation of republics that received not only autonomy, but also the right to secede from

RT recalls how the decision to create the USSR was made and why its structure was determined by a dispute between the “red chiefs” – Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

According to Lenin’s original plan, the USSR was not really meant to be a “state” from the point of view of “state structure.” It was supposed to be a free confederation of independent states (republics), each having nearly full sovereignty. That’s where the phrase “self-determination up to secession” came from. The unity of this formation was ensured not by “state” or “supranational” mechanisms, but by a single ruling Communist party.

Such a model assumed the possibility of the USSR’s unlimited expansion, up to a global scale. Any country could merely recognize the Communist Party as a “ruling and guiding force” and integrate into the Soviet Union as a new republic. That is why the formula of self-determination up to secession did not particularly concern the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Lenin. After all, if communism won over the whole world, where and for what reason would its republics secede? “We still have to conquer five-sixths of the earth’s landmass to have the USSR all over the world,” proclaimed chairman of the 5th Congress of the Comintern, Grigory Zinoviev, in June 1924.

This logic applied not only in the 1920s, but also after the end of World War II, when the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR became co-founders of the UN, having their own foreign policy departments. When the “global growth” model was transformed during perestroika, it became apparent that the Soviet republics were held together within the Soviet Union only by a bureaucratic management system. The concept of a single space was doomed. As a whole, the USSR could only exist within the framework of its historical mission, “the construction of communism.”

FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik

Autonomy or federalization?

In June 1919, the RSFSR, Belarusian SSR, and Ukrainian SSR officially united their armed forces, economy, finance, transport, and mail services. The role of national authorities was assigned to the Russian people’s commissariats – analogues of ministries. Republican communist parties joined the Russian Communist Party-Bolsheviks, or ‘RCP(b)’ as territorial organizations. A paradox then arose: the entire territory controlled by the Bolsheviks was governed as a single state, while the republics formally remained independent.

For the Bolsheviks, this meant little – the Communist Party held a monopoly over politics and decision-making anyway. However, following the end of the acute phase of the Civil War, the problem of external representation arose. On the eve of the international debut of the new government, at the Genoa Conference in April-May 1922, it was decided that a delegation of the RSFSR would speak for all the republics. But in the future, foreign partners wanted to clearly see who they were dealing with. Moreover, the country’s own population had to understand where they lived.

Joseph Stalin was the party’s specialist in interethnic relations (although, according to rumors, Nikolai Bukharin could have been involved in writing his main work “Marxism and the National Question”). As the RSFSR People’s Commissar of Nationality Affairs responsible for working out the issue, he proposed to include the remaining republics in the RSFSR as autonomous entities. In autonomization, Stalin saw a means of solving several problems at once. Firstly, it could strengthen a single national space and create a rigid vertical alignment of power. And secondly, it would weaken local nationalists and “social-independents” who advocated the full sovereignty of the Soviet republics and were annoyed by the interference of the central government in their affairs. At the same time, the central power and the all-Russian legislation would extend to new territories. Essentially, the plan did not envisage the unification and formation of a new state, but an absorption of the national Soviet republics by the RSFSR.

In September 1922, Joseph Stalin sent his project to Vladimir Lenin and soon presented the program of “autonomization” before the preparation commission for the Central Committee Plenum on the Relationship Between the RSFSR and Other Soviet republics. The commission, chaired by Vyacheslav Molotov, met on September 23-24, 1922, and managed to approve the plan developed by Stalin. Now it had to be approved at the plenum of the Central Committee, which was scheduled for October 5. However, Lenin, who was in an unstable condition at the time due to deteriorating health, refused to accept the project and demanded the creation of the USSR according to the model of maximum federalization – that is, with semi-independent Union republics.

Vladimir Lenin.

His proposal would not only create tension within the party, but also show the world an example of a “fundamentally new solution to the national question.” Lenin insisted on the creation of equal treaties between the republics with the possibility of other non-capitalist countries around the world joining the Soviet Union in the future. This included creating a new constitution and forming federal authorities with representatives from all republics. The Soviet Union was conceived by its ideologists as a global communist project, open, among other things, to the accession of those countries that were never part of the disintegrated Russian Empire. This was a serious argument for those who criticized Stalin’s plan of autonomization. After all, focusing on the world revolution as a global project, the federation was seen as the most convenient structure of the state, since it would be easier to include new subjects.

At the same time, appeasing some of the nationally oriented Bolsheviks was also an important issue. Some influential national communists, who were especially strong in the Ukrainian SSR and Transcaucasian SFSR (especially among Georgians), opted for the prospect of confederation since they wanted a greater degree of freedom.

This is most clearly evidenced by the so-called “Georgian incident.” On October 20, 1922, at a meeting of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the RCP(b) a dispute arose between Grigory (Sergo) Ordzhonikidze and the Georgian Bolsheviks on whether Georgia should enter the USSR as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR or independently. When Ordzhonikidze called his opponents “chauvinistic rot,” one of them, Akaki Kabakhidze, called Ordzhonikidze “Stalin’s donkey,” and Ordzhonikidze hit him in the face.

The central power had to intervene, and a Central Committee commission headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky headed to Transcaucasia. Without even talking to the other side, its representatives sided with Ordzhonikidze. Lenin, however, no less strongly supported the Georgian Bolsheviks and demanded that Ordzhonikidze be expelled from the party for assault. At the same time, both Stalin and Lenin understood that the incident, spurred by feelings of nationalism, was a serious issue that could have consequences for the future of the state.

FILE PHOTO. Leaders of the Russian revolution, from left to right, Joseph Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Ordzhonikidze and Janis Rudzutaks from reviewing stand in Red Square, circa 1930 in Moscow, Russia. © Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

A ticking time bomb

Discussions on autonomization and federalization lasted throughout the autumn of 1922 and ended with the victory of Lenin’s project. Shortly before the signing of the treaty, Lenin summoned Stalin to his Gorki residence near Moscow and demanded he change the first paragraph. Soon, he wrote the note “On the formation of the USSR” to politburo members in which he expressed the opinion that the RSFSR should recognize itself as equal with other republics and enter the union “together and on an equal footing with them.” Lenin made concessions, and both political and territorial compromises.

This was motivated by the fear that a single administrative apparatus would lead to bureaucrats discriminating against peoples in remote parts of the union. “It is necessary to distinguish between the nationalism of an oppressive nation and the nationalism of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a large nation and the nationalism of a small nation. In relation to the latter nationalism, almost always in historical practice, we, the nationals of a large nation, find ourselves guilty of an infinite amount of violence. Moreover, we commit an infinite amount of violence and insults without noticing it,” he wrote. Stalin, however, stood by his opinion and in a note to the members of the politburo called Lenin’s position “national liberalism.” Yet the authority of the leader of the world proletariat, despite his serious illness, remained unquestionable.

The morning of December 29, 1922, was lively outside the Bolshoy Theater in Moscow. Figures in overcoats, commissar’s leather uniforms, and national costume floated out of the frosty fog. Delegates of the First All-Union Congress of Soviets were gathering to establish a new state. On the same day, the delegations of the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Belarusian SSR, as well as the Transcaucasian SFSR signed an Agreement on the Formation of the USSR. A day later, it was approved, and December 30 became the day of the formation of the Soviet Union, which existed for almost 69 years.

Except for issues concerning foreign policy and foreign trade, finance, defense, and communications, which were transferred over to the Union authorities, each republic had jurisdiction over all remaining areas. The All-Union Congress of Soviets became the supreme body of the country. Between its convocations, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, consisting of two chambers – the Union Council and the Council of Nationalities, was established.

Soviet poster reading “The USSR is a new type of state”

The adopted declaration outlined the reasons, principles, and goals for the unification of the Soviet republics. The most important principle was the right of peoples to self-determination, and the ultimate goal was the creation of a World Union of Communist Republics.

“Access to the [Soviet] Union is open to all socialist Soviet republics, both existing and future. The new Union State will serve as a stronghold against world capitalism and a decisive step towards uniting the working people of all countries into a World Socialist Soviet Republic,” stated the first Constitution of the USSR, adopted on January 31, 1924.

The new state was deliberately given supranational character, so that in the future any “Soviet socialist republic” could be accepted into it. Advocating the liquidation of the state as such, the Bolsheviks saw only a temporary solution in such a state structure. Initially, Lenin even proposed to call the state the “Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia,” but eventually it was decided to avoid geographical references. The USSR coat of arms is the only example of its kind where the entire globe is depicted but state borders are not marked in any way.

A failed project

However, the hopes of the “Old Bolsheviks” for a world revolution were not fulfilled, and the system created with this perspective in mind could not resist the onslaught of new realities. The thesis of “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world was established soon after the Second World War in the mid-1950s, although Vyacheslav Molotov found it “disorienting” until the end of his long life. This wasn’t incidental, since Molotov saw the USSR enter into another race with the United States, in addition to the “arms race” – the race for “quality of life” – also lost by the Soviet system. It turned out that outside of the task of spreading communism in the world, the Soviet Union, as a whole, was an impossibility.

FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov

Ultimately, the practical fulfillment of the right of nations to self-determination played out as a cruel joke. Shortly after the creation of the USSR, a process of nation-building was launched in the new Soviet republics. The 185 nationalities of the Soviet Union were divided into union republics directly subordinated to the central authority. These included autonomous republics within the Union republics, autonomous regions within the territories, and national districts. At the same time, it was determined which of the subjects should have rights and privileges, and which should not. For example, each national republic had its own Communist Party and academy of sciences, but Russians were not allowed to have these. Following the foundation of the USSR, the RSFSR was entirely sterilized of state infrastructure.

The new borders between the republics, largely drawn up with economic needs and Communist rationality in mind, also caused discontent. For example, Abkhazians and Ossetians did not want to be part of the Georgian SSR, and the Russians who lived in Donbass did not want to be governed by the Ukrainian SSR. Some majority Tajik regions became part of the Uzbek SSR, and Nagorno-Karabakh, with a predominantly Armenian population, was included in the Azerbaijani SSR.

Subsequently, all these issues caused the aggravation of interethnic conflicts and the implementation of the republics’ right to secession, preserved in all Union constitutions. This right was first invoked in 1990 by the Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Georgian SSRs. Their example was eventually followed by almost all the other republics, of which there were fifteen in the “classic” composition of the USSR. The attempt made in 1991 by the first and last President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, to prepare and agree on a new version of the Union Treaty was unsuccessful not only because of the attempted coup by part of the leadership in August, but also because of cardinal disagreements on the division of powers between the central authority and the republics, including the budget issue.

In December 1991, the Supreme Soviets of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia announced the denunciation of the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. The corresponding resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR was canceled by the State Duma of Russia in March 1996, but the deputies clarified that their decision did not affect the sovereignty of Russia and other former Soviet republics.