PROLETARIAT FIGHTING
Bourgeoisie steals its way to power.
V.I.Lenin
The above date is deeply memorable, deeply significant for all those to whom the Soviet Union is the Motherland, for all those who painfully experienced and are experiencing the destruction of our common Fatherland during the criminal counterrevolution of 1985-1993, organized and conducted by state criminals united under the nickname "Democrats". Honest Soviet people are firmly convinced of the realization of our great dream — the rebirth of a united, free and beautiful Soviet Motherland.
Since the active phase of the counterrevolution of 1985–93, more than a quarter of a century has passed.
The All-Union referendum of March 17, 1991 (hereinafter referred to as the referendum, S.Kh.) is an important point in the chain of processes that ultimately led to the destruction of the Soviet Union.
On the political arena of the country in the days of the referendum was simply a "storm"! This is the "run-up" of the nationalist struggle of the leadership of the union republics with the center, and the "circus struggle" of the union Gorbachev and Russian Yeltsin, and a complete misunderstanding by the broad masses that Gorbachev - Yeltsin is the same as in the saying: "two boots make a pair."
Since 1986 in the USSR, bloody conflicts on ethnic grounds have constantly flared up. First Alma-Ata, then the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad, massacres in the Kazakh New Uzgen, massacres in Fergana, pogroms in Andijan, Osh, Baku. At the same time, the nationalist movements in the Baltic States that seemed to appear out of nowhere rapidly gained strength. From November 1988 to July 1989, the Estonian, Lithuanian, and Latvian SSR consistently declared their sovereignty, soon followed by the Azerbaijan and Georgian SSR.
On June 12, 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR adopted the so-called Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR, which initiated the “parade of sovereignties”, during which all the Union and many of the autonomous republics adopted the Sovereignty Declaration, in which they challenged the priority of all-union laws over republican ones (according to the Constitution of the USSR , article 74, USSR laws have the same force on the territory of all the Union republics. In case of discrepancy between the law of the union republic and the all-union law, the law of the USSR is valid, which means “war for laws ". The “sovereignty declarations” not only proclaimed the supremacy of republican acts, but also established rules according to which union laws could operate in the republic only after their ratification (or approval) by republican authorities.
What methods "democrats" managed to unleash in the "nationalist whirl"? After all, the basis of the Bolshevik national policy has always been the principles of equality of all nations, friendship of peoples, proletarian internationalism. It is by these principles that they are distorted in every way, and the “democrats” beat them, destroying the main bonds connecting the Soviet republics - the friendship of peoples.
In 1989, a movement emerged in Georgia for secession from the USSR. The situation is aggravated against the background of the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts. April 9 in Tbilisi there are clashes with the troops, there are first casualties. In the spring of 1990, Lithuania (11 March), Latvia (4 May) and Estonia (8 May) declared their independence. However, all-Union authorities did not recognize these decisions. The Armenian authorities, which declared independence in August 1990, refused to organize an All-Union referendum.
It is in such a "dilapidated state" that the Soviet Union came to the All-Union referendum. Add to this the crisis state of the economy, interethnic conflicts in many regions of the country, the complete destruction of the defense system associated with the Warsaw Pact. After a stormy debate on December 24, 1990, the IV Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, at the insistence of Gorbachev issued a decree that said: “In connection with the numerous appeals of workers expressing concern about the fate of the USSR, and considering that the preservation of a single union state is the most important issue of state life, it affects the interests of every individual, the entire population of the Soviet Union, the USSR Deputies decides: to hold a USSR referendum to resolve the issue of preserving the renewed Union as a federation of equal sovereign Soviet Socialist Republics with taking into account the results of voting for each republic separately. ”
The final question of the referendum scheduled for March 17, 1991 was formulated and published as follows: “Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed” . The very question of the referendum seemed to hint at veiled plans to use the USSR referendum for bourgeois reform of the country. Responding to questions about the preservation of the Union, citizens had to, of course, bear in mind that this was not about the old, but about the "new, transformed, truly federal" union state. In Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and Estonia, the local authorities, fearing an unfavorable outcome for the national separatists, took the path of blocking the Referendum.
In the RSFSR, the Byelorussian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Uzbek SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR, the Kirghiz SSR, the Tajik SSR, the Turkmen SSR, a referendum was held. In the country as a whole, 185 million citizens were put on the voting lists; 80 percent of those who had the right to vote took part in the referendum. In accordance with the USSR law on nationwide voting (USSR referendum) of December 27, 1990, the voting results were to be summarized for the country as a whole, which was done by the USSR Central Referendum Commission. According to her data, 77.85 percent of the citizens of the USSR said: “Yes” to the union state. In accordance with the resolution of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, the results of voting for each republic separately were summed up. They looked as follows: in the RSFSR 75.4 percent of the adult population participated in the voting, 71 percent answered “Yes”, in Ukraine, respectively, 83 and 70 percent, in Belarus — 83 and 83, Uzbekistan — 95 and 93.7, Kazakhstan 89 and 94, Azerbaijan - 75 and 93, Kyrgyzstan - 93 and 94.5, Tajikistan - 94 and 96, Turkmenistan - 97.7 and 98 percent.
About 50 thousand people expressed their will in the South Ossetian Autonomous Region of Georgia, 300 thousand in Estonia, more than 500 thousand in Latvia, more than 600 thousand in Lithuania, and more than 800 thousand in Moldova. The absolute majority of them left the word "Yes" in the bulletins. A referendum was also held in some autonomous republics that were part of the “refusers”. In particular, the overwhelming majority of residents of Transnistria and Gagauzia (part of Moldova), as well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia (part of the Georgian SSR; voted for the preservation of the USSR; on the day of the referendum, Georgian troops attacked the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinval.
Kazakhstan (almost 10 million voters) submitted its question to the referendum: “Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a Union of equal sovereign states?” And Ukraine (almost 38 million voters) with its additional question: “Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of the Union of Soviet Sovereign States on the basis of the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine”? - specified the conditions under which it is ready to join the “renewed Union”. A similar process is taking place in Russia - at the congress of people's deputies of the RSFSR, a decision is made to supplement the referendum with the issue of introducing the institution of presidency.
Summing up the All-Union referendum, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in a resolution of March 21, 1991, emphasized that the decision of the people adopted at the referendum was final, binding, and should be fully reflected in the draft of the new Union Treaty. Taking into account the results of the referendum, three versions of it were prepared. In general, they proceeded from the idea of preserving the federal structure of the state. In these projects, the exclusive powers of the Union were clearly defined, the priority of union laws was affirmed, the problems of preserving allied property and the budget, the territorial integrity of the country and single citizenship were solved.
The results of the referendum were a bright and unambiguous indicator of the desire of the majority of Soviet people to live together, to preserve the Union. However, the leaders of a number of republics openly urged not to reckon with its results. As early as January 1991, representatives of Democratic Russia, meeting at the Democratic Congress in Kharkov, decided to abolish the Union and replace the Federation with the Commonwealth of States. In February, shortly before the referendum, it was reported that the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan sent their representatives to Minsk to consider, without the participation of the allied leadership, proposals for the creation of a Commonwealth, meaning essentially the transformation of a single union state into an amorphous confederative Community of Independent States
Having met on April 23 in Novo-Ogarevo with the leaders of nine republics, Gorbachev signed with them the so-called “Statement 9 + 1”. A new body, not envisaged by the Constitution and actually opposing the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was formed and began to act - the Novo-Ogarevsky meeting of the leaders of the republics. On July 12, 1991, the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted another Resolution, in which it indicated that it was possible to sign the Treaty only after serious revision and agreement between the republics with the participation of an authorized Allied delegation formed at the Supreme Soviet session.
This delegation was again, for the third time, instructed to proceed primarily on the basis of the results of the All-Union Referendum. By giving instructions to the Allied delegation, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR unequivocally defined the procedure for signing the Union Treaty, stating that it means “to sign it at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR”.
The final meeting of the leaders of the republics in Novo-Ogarevo took place on July 23. There was practically nothing to agree on, except for one thing: the meeting participants came to the conclusion that it would be expedient to sign the Treaty in September-October 1991 at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR inviting all plenipotentiary delegations. Thus, the signing of the Union Treaty was scheduled not for August 20, but for the fall of 1991.
We will hardly ever find out in full detail what was actually said at the secret meeting on July 29 and 30 in Novo-Ogarevo, which Gorbachev had with Yeltsin and Nazarbayev. We only know about the official consequences of this meeting. Firstly, the text of the Union Treaty was changed significantly towards defederalization. The concept of allied property has disappeared from the project. With regard to all-union taxes, an unclear formulation appeared. The annexes on the mechanism for implementing the Treaty were withdrawn. But the most important thing: after the signing of the Treaty, the Constitution of the USSR and to a large extent the Constitution of the RSFSR should have ceased to operate. Secondly, the signing of the Union Treaty was postponed to August 20, 1991. Third, the signing was planned to be carried out in several stages by representatives of individual republics, and not at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, which was seen as an obstacle to the fulfillment of the intended plan. Moreover, the draft Treaty proposed for signing and substantially modified at the secret meeting of the troika was not published in the press until August 6, since it would undoubtedly cause objections from various sides. Understanding that such provisions are, to put it mildly, illegitimate, the drafters confined themselves only to sending the text of the draft to the heads of plenipotentiary delegations.
All of this together - global betrayal, deception of the population and deputies, the monstrous violation of the rule of law and the will of the people, expressed in a referendum on March 17 - became the reason for the creation of the Emergency Committee. And finally, after the August counterrevolutionary coup two weeks before the Belovezhsky conspiracy, on November 27, 1991, Gorbachev promulgated his last document - the draft “Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States”. There is no mention of the referendum on March 17, and the state structure of the union states: “The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a confederative democratic state ... The states that make up the Union retain the right to independently decide all the issues of their development .. As we see, the peoples of the Soviet Union were offered instead of the federation for which they voted, even if not fully aware of its meaning, an amorphous confederative entity. That is, this project can be considered as the last step on the way to the signing of the Belovezhsk agreement that destroyed a great country.
The negative course of events that led to the disintegration of the Union was the result of the actions of those forces who sought to seize power in any way ... It was the lust for power that explained the extreme intolerance and aggressiveness of national elites in the former Soviet republics. More than a quarter of a century ago, citizens of the Soviet Union voted for the preservation of the USSR at a special All-Union referendum. They believed that they were voting for that, but the reality turned out to be much more complicated ...
Under the conditions of that time, it did not occur to the majority of Soviet citizens that conflicts on the periphery could inflame could mean the rapid collapse of the country. The union seemed unshakable. There were no precedents for secession from the Soviet state. People waited for restoring order and normalizing the situation. In December 1991, another referendum was held in Ukraine - already on independence. 90% of those who took part in the voting were in favor of “independence”. The people who had just voted for the collapse of the country were completely sure that they would still live in a single Union, with common production and economic ties and a single army. Absolutely paternalistic citizens of the disintegrated USSR believed that the leadership knew what it was doing.
Much later, in 1996, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution “On legal force for the Russian Federation - Russia on the results of the USSR referendum on March 17, 1991 on the issue of preserving the USSR”. And since there was no other referendum on this issue, it declared illegal the 1991 decision of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR "On Denunciation of the Treaty on the Establishment of the USSR" and legally recognized the USSR as an existing political entity. That is, even the deputies of the Russian State Duma, five years after the referendum, still believed that it was “about preserving the USSR”. That, as we saw at least from the wording of the question, does not correspond to reality. The referendum was about "reformatting" the country.
S.V. Khristenko
