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"Holocaust of an ideology" by Lucas Turks

The decadence of the Soviet empire and the perspectives of the nations of the former oriental block.

The beginning of the end

On November 10 1982 died Leonid Breznev. The Soviet Union, which he left in inheritance to his successor, Yuri Andropov, had all the characteristics of a nation in decadence. The Soviet economy gave worrisome signs of stagnation so much to be forced to import cereals from the United States. The iron and steel industry that had been the boast of the real communism for decades lost 5/8% of production every year. Even the alimentary good of first necessities missed in the shops of the large cities. The Red Army had bogged on the mountains of the Afghanistan that was transformed in the true Russian Vietnam. The relationships with the United States and the west powers had decidedly worsened with the employment in the new Soviet nuclear arsenal of the intercontinental missiles SS 20. Finally, the political class had still tied with ’60 and ’70 equilibrium of power, when the Communist Party had every office inside the institutions of the State.

The duty to resolve these and other problems had happened to Andropov, president of the KGB, man of the apparatus and few years youngest of his predecessor. This, however, involved an element of extraordinary importance and that is: for the first time the Soviet Union was conducted by a man of a political lever that was not preceding to the World War 2 and therefore under the direct influence of the Stalinist ideology of the first years after the revolution (Breznev had entered the communist Party in 1931, while Andropov only in 1939). Although he was everything, but not a reformer, the new Secretary of the party was used for resolving the serious difficulties in which his nation was. In July 1983 a campaign of control of the job and industrial management on wide scale was experimented, but above all it was tried to find a point of accord with the NATO. The Soviet Union wanted that, in perspective of a reduction of the ballistic weapons, there were accurate controls on the European arsenals, particularly English and French, admitting implicitly its own numerical superiority of missiles in the region, disowning so all the theories of American aggression that had characterized every preceding negotiation.

The political plan of Andropov was brusquely interrupted from his death happened in February 1984. Kostantin Cernenko got full powers with large majority. He was a conservative man, of the same generation of Breznev and with the same inside bonds to the party. Probably, there would be a strong deceleration of the reforms if he had not also died unexpectedly in March 1985 in circumstances not so clear. On March 11 of the same year the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) named Secretary Mikhail Gorbacev. Introduced in the Secretariat by Andropov, together with Ligacev, he had entered Party only in 1952 and he resulted lacking of the whole Stalinist ideology. In his political squad there were Ligacev, Ryzkov and Eltsin, who admitted in the Politbjuro since November 1985.

Restructuring and transparency

In February and March 1986 at the 28th congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Gorbacev exposed his political design that was founded upon two unshakable pillars: perestrojka (restructuring or new course) and glasnost (transparency).
The perestrojka was referred either to the economic system either to the structure of the relationships between state and the unique party. Gorbacev had in mind a clear vision of the world at the half of the eighties. The opposition was between the two blocks of the superpowers in an economic and political reality that didn't allow no more that the contrasts were still only on the ideological plan, without considering the great interdependence between Soviet Union and the world market.

To avoid a decline that to his eyes appeared inevitable, it had had to intervene in two ways. Indeed, reforming the system of centralized economy that was typical of the Soviet method, through a politics of small footsteps that opened new doors toward the free market, letting emerge from the illegality that submerged and parallel traffic that had developed especially in the regions more exposed for geographical motives to the influence of the west. Secondarily, it had had to avoid that the Unique Party monopolized government activity concentrating in its own hands every position and every power. It was, how it can be seen, a real revolution if analyzed with the fossilized canons of the apparatus of party precedent to his election.

The glasnost was a complementary to the perestrojka. It tried to make more elastic the people participation to the public activity through a greater knowledge of the functions developed from the Party and from the institutions of the state. It was intended to avoid the preventive censorship of the Dissent (understood as popular feeling contrary to the decisions of the government and not as democratic political opposition) and the opponents' repression. In this light, it had also to begin the revision of the history of USSR through the publication of the secret archives of the State. Such revision would not be been due to limit to the Stalinist period, but also to more recent years, inclusive those of Breznev.

To these difficulties due to the vastness of his program other problems were added, tied up to the system that had consolidated in Soviet Union during the years of Communist Power. To oppose to this modernization there were wide layers of the bureaucracy of party and the administration (nomenklatura) that would have given up their own privileges gotten through the identity between party and state. Secondarily, the centralized organization of the Russian economy could not have immediately transformed in a free market with the risk to see inflationary and syndicate crisis. To conclude, the interlacement of power between Party and State was very strong in a lot of provinces of the Federation, mixing with local favoritism that were very more difficult to eliminate in comparison to the Muscovite reality, easier to check.

Two ulterior problems were due to Gorbacev himself who persisted to pursue his own goals preserving as only existing party the communist one, without considering that the not enrolled in the party people that had been elected in the Supreme Soviet, would have naturally tried to form an opposition coalition. In conclusion then, if indeed the reforms had reached their purpose, Gorbacev would have destroyed that political system based on the Communist Party, on which his own power was held up.

Perhaps for these motives, the practical beginning of the politics of the Perestrojka was rather cautious connecting with the Andropov's reforms. An hard campaign was done against the alcoholism (subsequently resumed also by Eltsin) and it was proposed to the managers and the syndicate representatives a great flexibility in the job market that gave impulse to the contractual dynamics, almost unknown in Soviet Union. They were taking some important decisions in the field of the limitation of the ideological repression as the call to Moscow from the confinement of Sacharov that were also followed by less resounding initiatives, but as many important, as a progressive suspension of the censorship that allowed the birth of some independent newspapers. The creation of popular cooperatives was allowed as a first footstep toward the private ownership and in 1988 the mechanical, iron, forest, building and some transports enterprises got full decisional autonomy.

It was, however, in the circle of the constitutional reform that there were greater and very more incisive interventions. In 1987 it had allowed the election at public positions of the "not enrolled” in the Communist Party and to defense the autonomy of the chosen candidates and the liberty of choice of the electors, the votes for the designation of the executives had to happen by secret ballot. In June 1988, Gorbacev let approve to the Party a reform in presidential sense of the position of secretary, transforming himself in a real head of the state. In the same year, in December, the Supreme Soviet, the popular organ of greater importance, voted the change of the electoral system that besides to allow more than a candidacy for district, it made the Congress of the delegates of the People eligible for 2/3 at universal suffrage and for 1/3 named by social organizations, among which the Communist Party, the labor unions and the academy of the sciences.

The concentration of powers in the hands of Gorbacev and his increasing international fame could not do anything else other than creating a strong inside conservative opposition in the Communist Party. The ideological Manifesto of this current was summarized in teacher Nina Andreeva's letter published in 1988 on the Soviet press. In it, it was complained a return to the past preceding the perestrojka that was seen how an attempt to destroy the struggle of the proletariat for the obtaining of the full parity among men in a true communist state. In the important political debate that followed the publication, it was suspected that the letter had been suggested by Ligacev, president of the ideological department of the party. With the purpose to eradicate at the beginning this opposition, Ligacev had been replaced with Medvedev, closer to the ideas of Gorbacev. The intervention of the secretary had been late however, because the inside dissent in the party had found fertile ground where growing and it would come back with more strength in the first nineties.

The relaxation toward the West

In the period between 1985 and 1988 Gorbacev met American President Reagan five times (Geneva November 1985, Reykjavik October 1986, Washington December 1987, Moscow May 1988 and New York December 1988), originating the most intense diplomatic activity between the two superpowers in the whole postwar period. Central Subject of the vertexes was naturally the problem of the intercontinental missiles set by the two nations in Europe (the so-called “euromissiles”). The growth of the destructive potential of both states had brought either Reagan either Gorbacev to the recognition of the impossibility to continue a run to the armaments that it didn't keep track of the fact that all the safety and survival criterions had been overcome in case of conflict.

The negotiations were at the beginning very difficult for the wish of Gorbacev to also include in the signature of a possible agreement on the limitation of the nuclear weapons the project of American “space shield” that is the creation of a defensive system that allowed eliminating the Soviet ballistic missiles during their run in the high part of the stratosphere. On this point they were gotten bogged down either the Conference in Geneva either that in Reykjavik, but in Washington Gorbacev consented to remove this point from the agreement proposed by the counterpart. The conclusion of an accord was so possible. It involved the dismantlement of nuclear short-range missiles for a total of 860 missiles for the Americans and almost the double for the Soviets. Besides, the Soviets committed themselves to the destruction of the missile SS 20 displaced along the Chinese frontier.

Pushed by the enthusiasm of this first historical step toward the peace, United States and Soviet Union changed their politics in other geopolitical geopolitical scenarios of enormous importance. The SSRU guaranteed the withdrawal of its own strengths from Afghanistan that was completely abandoned during winter 1988. Pressures were made toward the allied Vietnam so that it withdrew from Cambodia, it was also begun the withdrawal of all the Soviet troops from the countries of the Pact of Warsaw and from Mongolia. There was even a meeting with Pope John Paul II that marked a hard hit against the atheism of Soviet State. The Russian disengagement in the Middle East completely transformed the reality of that conflict, removing to the Arabic nations the traditional military and economic restocking. The famous iron curtain foretold by Churchill was finally raising.

The three ways of the independence of the countries of the Pact of Warsaw: Poland

If towards the United States the Soviet Union had a very active behavior, it cannot be said the same for that that it concerns the relationships inside the Pact of Warsaw. While for the whole postwar period, every attempt to detach from Moscow had been punished with the military intervention (Czechoslovakia 1948, Hungary 1956, still Czechoslovakia 1968), with the advent of Gorbacev and his perestrojka, there was a general indifference toward the destinies of the allied European nations. In the period between 1987 and 1990 all the states of the Pact of Warsaw had a change of regime and a progressive leaving from the Soviet politics and affairs. The modalities with which these changes were developed varied from country to country, but they can be described in the example given from Poland, that is: a change gotten under the popular pressure. Exceptions to this rule, for different motives, are the Romanian and German-Oriental experiences. To fully understand every tone, it is useful to recapitulate what it happened in the three mentioned nations.

Poland had lived in the first 70's a big economic boom that had let forget the lack of democratic liberty under the Giarek's regime. However, the 1977-78 serious financial crisis put on knees the whole nation that started to open the eyes on the difficulties to which it was forced by a government that maintained the narrowest observance of the directives of Moscow. The first to oppose to the communist Party were the intellectuals that were organized in circles, which were also supported by some exponents of the communist nomenklatura. In a second time, they organized some parallel universities through courses held by important teachers that professed publicly their political faith. They warned the government about the serious crisis of trust that had struck Polish people, but nobody wanted to listen. In 1978, the archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla was named pope with the name of John Paul II and the event was largely underestimated by the Polish executives, so that it was allowed the pontiff to do a pastoral trip in his homeland in 1979. The exceptional reception reserved to the pope in that occasion gave the first sign of a Polish religious renaissance that was again and guiltily ignored by the government.
1980 opened with a worker crisis without precedents. The shortage of alimentary goods let increase the prices and the malcontent of the population. On July 1 1980 a new preannounce increase of the price of the meat instigated a national protest. A general strike in Lublin was proclaimed that well soon was followed from other workers protests in the shipyards of Danzica and Szczecin. To drive the struggle there was a former electrician, Lech Walesa, dismissed some months before to have tried to create an independent labor union. The yards of Danzica became the center of the Committee of all the Polish strikers, reunited in an only labor union denominated Solidarnosc (Solidarity). The government of Gierek, despite it had had a lot of time to get ready to an answer; it didn't know how to find suitable measures to limit the protest. It was tried to increase the salaries locally in different factories and yards but this solution, adopted with success in 1970 failed in that summer for the extreme cohesion and unity of the new labor union that did not accept any makeshift.

With no other possibility to let the demonstrators recede, the government decided to sign the accords of Danzica in August 1980. The concession gotten by Solidarnosc reached all the purposes that had established before the beginning of the collective protest. Firstly, its own recognition as labor union independent from the communist on, secondarily an increase of the salaries that were at least partially tied up to the inflation, finally the publication of a magazine as first example of press freedom. It doesn't have to seem strange that there were not in the accord any political claims. Solidarnosc was born with goals limited to the workers' claims, without ulterior pretensions. As shrewdly affirmed by Timothy Garton Ash: “it was the beginning of a worker revolution against a worker state.” The victory in the summer of 1980 could be considered full, but it would have lasted for little time.

Gierek, judged by the vertexes of Moscow too submissive, was replaced by Kania, real man of party that showed immediately his own wish to oppose to Solidarnosc. The negotiations with the independent labor union continued, but it was evident that they had not any future. The popular dissatisfaction started to grow again. The possibility was hypothesized to restart with the general strike but a possible violent answer of Moscow made insecure this road. Kania in the fear to fall in a bath of blood was prudent in the repression of the syndicate motions, giving ample space to the reactionary movement that was created inside Poland. During the night between December 12 and 13 1981 general Jaruzelski who on preceding October 18 gathered in his hands the position of minister of the Defense, secretary of the Communist Party and president of the government, performed a putsch, proclaiming the martial law on the whole Polish territory. In a discourse held on the following morning, he affirmed that the necessity of a military intervention had done impelling in the same moment in which Solidarnosc had transformed itself from popular movement in organization with political finality. The danger of a counterrevolution had been seen imminent.

The transformation of Solidarity had happened for the impossibility of communication with Kania's government and it had not passed unnoticed even in Moscow. Already on December 5 1980, 500.000 soldiers of the Pact of Warsaw garrisoned the Polish frontiers waiting for an order of invasion that never arrived. In fact, that same night was done a Conference, where Kania and Breznev were present, to decide the fates of Poland. The precise reasons are not known for which was definite to entrust the normalization of the Polish situation to the Polish general, but everything was decided in that reunion. It can be seen that Jaruzelski had one whole year to prepare the action, but as in precedence the government of Gierek had done, so Solidarity did not realize anything. Many important exponents of the labor union had been put to the domiciliary arrests and among them Walesa. The proclamation of the martial law allowed the new regime to try an attempt of return to the past.

The following seven years were contradictory. Jaruzelski combined in his own government the greatest personalities of Communist Poland. It can be affirmed with certainty that the Baltic nation didn't have a so prepared and intelligent executive since the times of the World War 2. However, so much talent had voted only and entirely to the cause of the restoration. This was immediately evident to the people that unlike the Czechoslovak one in 1968 didn't accept in silence the will of Moscow. In all the public occasions in which the regime wanted a patient presence of the population, it let feel more openly its own dissent. Solidarnosc, harshly hit in 1981, had not been suppressed and it had entered the secretness. Its leader Walesa had received the prize Nobel for the peace in 1983, transforming the syndicate struggle in resistance to the communism. The industrial backwardness of Poland made the rest. The continuous worsening of the conditions of workers' life brought to new strikes in 1985 and 1986. 1987 started with a situation of maximum tension. The vertexes of Solidarnosc pressed for a new general strike in the 1980 style but Walesa (free since1982 and forced to hold out of the political fight) knew that the answer of the government would have been a hard repression, also with the weapons if necessary. He used his own personality to succeed in avoiding the direct clash.

The Jaruzelski's government reinvigorated by this partial victory, thought that the moment had come for an opening toward the workers. It served a public comparison between the exponents of Solidarnosc and the Communist Labor union. It only owed to choose the independent exponent to put in front of the communist Miodovicz. The moderate position held by Walesa in the events of Danzica was valued as a sign of weakness and therefore, he was selected with extreme safety. The committed error was clear only after the television debate between the two syndicate delegates. In it, Walesa ridiculed his opponent, still showing the same dialectical strength of 1980. The acceptance of the democrat political game through the public dialogue had to have two important consequences: 1) a return to the previous tensions, for the desire of the people of a radical change 2) a certain ambiguity of Solidarnosc that in some moments was seen as a tool of the government to realize that “normalization” that had not succeeded with the strength.

This second point seemed to be confirmed by the signature on April 6 1989 of an accord with the government, where it was foreseen that 35% of Parliament was chosen with universal suffrage and a new branch of the parliament (Senate) was created at brief term. The new gotten concessions were very inferior to the contractual strength that possessed Solidarnosc at that time, therefore it seemed evident to many international observatories that it had been reached a compromise with the communist power. The peasant population thought the same. It had gotten in 1956 to preserve the private ownership of the lands and therefore it had an individualism more accented in comparison with the workers. Thinking to be abandoned by an agreement between a typically worker labor union and the government, the agrarian class started a series of agitation that culminated in a general strike. It was just organized against the exponents of Solidarnosc that had gotten an overwhelming victory in the first free Polish elections.

The motives for the agrarian protest also resided in the decision of Walesa to support the candidacy for president of the republic of Jaruzelski. The reasons for this choice can be found in the fear, still founded, that a too violent separation from the past would have been able to push the Soviet Union to an armed intervention. When, however, it was tried to set to the Presidency of the Government another man of the regime (Czeslaw Kiszczak), the popular indignation forced the deputies of Solidarnosc to modify their own strategy. The Peasants Party till that moment was allied with the communists, but with an extraordinary turnaround it changed the alliance, joining Walesa's squad, promising its own support in the eventuality of a government of coalition. The move toward the Democratic parties of the peasants group can be explained with the fear of the agrarian exponents to be absorbed inside the communist majority, exactly as it had happened in 1945 with the risk to lose the privileges that had so laboriously preserved for all that years. Once excluded by the government, the communist faction shouted that such behavior was a real scandal, not realizing that they had been victims of a normal political game of the democratic parliamentary life.

The charge to form the new government was entrusted to Tadeusz Masowiecki, a faithful adviser of Walesa who started to understand how much life would have been hard at the power just in the moment to get the nomination. In fact, more than two weeks were necessary before the Parliament the confirmed his nomination. The installation of the first Polish democrat government since 1945 also coincided with the disappearance of the Communist Party. Not being more necessary to belong to this formation to get some social advantages, the largest part of the members decided to move on more moderate positions creating the presuppositions for the definitive death of the party. The accords signed directly with Gorbacev allowed definitely systematizing either the role of Poland inside the Pact of Warsaw either the diplomatic relationship with USSR. Gotten this reassurance, the attainment of the democracy was definitive, even if the economic and difficulties inside Solidarnosc were everything else other than next to a solution.

The fall of the wall in Berlin

The true symbol of the ideological opposition between Democracy and Communism can be quietly seen in the Wall in Berlin. Erected practically in a night, it had the conceitedness to divide in two besides the city of Berlin, also a state and that that it is worse, a people. Although risen as a extemporaneous measures, extrema ratio of the oriental German attempt to limit the continuous exodus of its own citizens toward the west, it had tightly assumed also political meaning. The wall didn't represent only a practical tool, but also ideological to stop the advance of the capitalism. Overcoming that construction meant passing the border between two completely different and in opposition among them worlds. The defense of this idea had complied with the maximum diligence from the border police of the DDR that paved the land of nobody between the two zones in Berlin of corpses.

Well, in the country of the symbol of the European division, 1989 seemed to pass exactly as every preceding year since the construction of the Wall had passed. The SED, the unitary socialist party of Democratic Germany, had won the town elections in May, getting 95% of the votes. Certainly, some groups of opposition had grown, but nothing that could worry the Sicherheitdienst, the safety service of the Stasi, the feared secret police. The newspapers desultorily signaled the problems that there were in Hungary and in Poland, but with a rather picturesque accent, as if it dealt with events of another world and perhaps, it was also true.

The fact that the other European communist parties, overall the Bulgarian one, started to change in “Democrats”, didn't seem to notch the regime in East Berlin. The reformers inside the SED could be counted on the fingers of an hand and its official position ca be well understood seeing the full satisfaction publicly pronounced by the oriental German Parliament for the Deng Xiao Ping's action during the facts of Tien An Men. However, the safety displayed by the government of Berlin had well soon to compare with the “vacations” of the oriental Germans. In fact, the summer of 1989 would have been as much upsetting as that of two centuries before in the revolutionary France. Passing some days at the Lake Balaton had become a consolidated habit for all the citizens of the Democratic German Republic and when with the arrival of the beautiful season exit visa for Hungary were demanded in great number, nobody had the suspect that something different was happening from what happened every summer. The month of July started with the first caravan of false excursionists that in their small Trabant (the entirely autarkic autos that would be cut out a place in the history as symbol of this mass exodus) crossed the Hungarian frontier, moving toward Budapest or directly to the Austrian border. Hungary had, in fact, chosen to demolish the iron curtain just in direction of this neutral nation.

Those people who were been about to escape were in maximum part technical professionals or specialized workers with their family. They were looking for fortune in the west with the hope that their specialization allowed finding a new job easily. Also the diplomatic centers of West Germany in East Berlin, Prague and Budapest were assaulted by hundreds of escaping desperates. Extraordinarily, on the principle they were really the authorities of Germany West to worry mostly about this uncontrolled tide of fugitive. Fearing a deterioration of the relationships with the DDR, it was definite to close the embassies of the three quoted above cities and to strengthen the patrol along the Austrian frontier. Everything was useless, because at half August, Hungary, in front of the great precariousness of the conditions of these refugees, maintained open the frontiers with Austria for different hours a day, allowing the outflow of the population toward West.

Only then, Honecker, the strong man of the regime in East Berlin, seemed to realize that his nation was slowly bleeding. Threatening diplomatic retaliations, he forced Czechoslovakia to close the frontiers to the oriental German citizens, preventing the transit toward Hungary. This hard taking of position didn't do anything else other than embittering the refugees' determination. The Evangelical Church that for more times had spoken in favor of liberal reforms, organized in Leipzig a series of pacific demonstrations that would have had to be only religious processions, but that well soon they became true people revolts. The Hungarian decision not to hold back in its own territory anymore the citizens of the DDR, allowing on September 10 65.000 oriental Germans to depart for Austria and Western Germany made worse the situation. On its behalf, the government of Bonn had assumed a very obliging position arriving to deliver the passport of the Federal Republic to everybody.

As already in Poland, so also in Oriental Germany, the Communist Party (the SED was anything else other than this), waited with anxiety a support in Moscow to face with great safety the situation. On October 6 Gorbacev in person arrived in East Berlin East, but contrarily to the expectations, his journey confirmed the fears that had already spread inside the SED: Russia would not have supported the DDR leaving liberty of maneuver to its government. Or better still, Gorbacev underlined, as it was dangerous not to satisfy the legitimate expectations of the population. Honecker declared himself disgusted by this defeatist and yielding to the capitalism vision. Still believing to have faithful armed forces, he organized the repression of the demonstration in Leipzig on October 9 that would have seen the participation of 70.000 persons. But since a lot of time, the SED had chosen his successor: Egon Krenz, Secretary of the central Safety Committee who annulled of own initiative the order, taking power with the placet of the vertexes of the party.

The new government hypothesized a new political reform project denominated “Die Wende”, "the turn", that would have had to bring Oriental Germany toward a form of more equitable system, a kind of alternative between the Popular Republic and the Democracy. Despite this formulation had some merits, it had two undeniable defects that mined its existence. Firstly, it was applied in practice in a chaotic way, confusing the population and secondarily, it came too late to halt the desire of liberty that sprout among those people that you/they had still remained at East. Even the concession of the freedom to travel for one month a year served to anything. On October 31, Gorbacev was again in the DDR for a vertex with Krenz that didn't bring to any change. On November 4 there was the largest demonstration East Berlin with a million persons who claimed free elections. The times were mature to create some independent political formations that didn't delay to be revealed with names as “New Forum” that had increases of registrations in the 1000% order in a month.

On November 9, there was the turning point. The Western and Oriental Berliners, assembled on both the sides of the wall, in a mass whose consistence was never calculated with reliable precision, but that surely it overcame two or three time the figure reached on November 4. The authorities of the DDR frightened by that enormous assemblage that seemed to presage a popular insurrection, rather than to react with the strength, decided to allow the passage through the wall, without consulting Russia. The definitive step had been made and there was no possibility to come back. Of the hundred thousand of persons who passed through the Gate of Brandeburg that evening, taking advantage of the 100 DM offer made from Western Germany, a lot of them reentered the following morning, bringing, however, with themselves the awareness that an era was concluded.

In fact, a reality that had been neglected by Krenz and by the whole apparatus of the SED was that Oriental Germany was the only state devoted to the real socialism that didn't exist before adopting that form of government. The German Democratic Republic had a possibility to exist only as communist. Disappeared the ideology, it was impossible to hold separate a people that spoke the same language and that it had a millennial common history. It was the new Prime Minister of the DDR, Hans Modrow, to understand it first, offering to a bewildered Kohl an economic plan for a “contractual community”, prelude for a political integration. The visit of Kohl in Dresden in the December 1989 was welcomed by hundreds of thousand of persons that waved the flag of the Federal Republic. The foundations for the reunification of Germany had been set by now.

Romania: the anger of a betrayed people

At the end of 1989 only two nations of the Pact of Warsaw still preserved their communist soul. One was Albania that would have had to pass through long and hard sufferings to come to an appearance of democracy in the nineties. The other one was Romania. The nation of the Carpathian Mountains was the most tenacious supporter of the idea of the Leninism in Oriental Europe, not because the population was enthusiastic of it, but for the effective work of propaganda of the system created by Nicolae Ceausescu. This man at the power since 1965 had assumed the role that is typical in every totalitarian nation. With the name of Conducator (that is a variation of the sadly famous führer, duce and caudillo) he had established a cult of the personality that gave consistence to a dictatorship more real than the ideas that wanted to spread among the people.

The securitate, Rumanian secret police, had well few to learn from the Stasi or from the KGB, rather for the efficiency with which the inside dissent was repressed it could be said that it was a perfect tool of containment. The safety so gotten by this regime allowed its leader to present himself to the international public opinion as a skilled statesman so much to be appreciated from all the governments of the European Community that saw benignly this man who was called in his country “the custodian of the Party and the Nation.” Romania, in effects, in 1989 had succeeded in eliminating the heavy foreign debt of 21 billion dollars, but only letting weigh on the shoulders of the people the terrible burden of a galloping inflation and the chronic shortage of alimentary goods.

The information checked by the state didn't succeed, however, in hiding what was happening in the rest of the socialist countries of East Europe. The news on the reforms in democratic sense that Bulgaria and Hungary had undertaken filtered in Rumania. It was really the turn happened in Hungary that gave a way out to the dissidents and the Rumanian poor people. Traditionally, the region of Transilvania, lived by a majority of Magyar origin, furnished a large number of emigrants toward Hungary. In the first half 1989, tens of thousand of Rumanian citizens joined these traditional fugitive that ran away in that direction with every means. This first signal of crumbling of the communist state was hidden with a skilled campaign of misinformation that seemed to repair everything.

However, the opposition to Ceausescu was also expressed among the members of the Rumanian nomenklatura. On March 10, it was delivered to the international service of the BBC a letter signed by six characters that had had important part in the Communist Party and in the Unique Labor Union. In it was criticized the political myopia of the Conducator that didn't see how the world was changing with speed. They arrived to declare his incompetence and incapability to govern even. The answer of the recipient of these criticisms was very hard, so much to provoke also a protest of the intellectual class, disgusted by the fascist methods with which it was kept the silence among opponents. In another letter addressed this time to Radio Free Europe some famous intellectuals shouted their own suffering for Romania, by now transformed in a “Biafra of the spirit” as it had been defined by Louis Aragon.

The lukewarm initiative of the culturally elevated classes did not graze the safety of Ceausescu and so it was also for the criticisms that arrived from the near nations, that same allies by now "former communist" that could not bear having at their borders a political men who raised his own person and that of his wife on a votive altar to obtain the adoration of his. (This was the definition of the Croatian liberals who also defined him a “socialist Nero”) The certainty of his strength was such to also allow him an arrogant tone in the talks with Mikhail Gorbacev who with wisdom postponed his nationalistic aims on Bessarabia and Moldova. The passage from the sureness to the arrogance is always brief and for Ceausescu it was even faster. They didn't even serve as warning the sentences of the UN and EU Committee for the Rights of the Man to let understand him the danger toward which danger he was directing his nation. Rather on November 21 in the discourse for the new confirmation at the command of the party he had the boldness publicly to affirm that Romania would not have accepted the accords on the Bessarabia anymore.

Gorbacev, as in all the other occasions, was not so worried by the Conducator's haughtiness probably confiding on the fact that Romania depended for 30% from the importation from USSR and that if he had gone too far, Ceausescu would be been able to have brought on more conciliatory positions from economic pressures. Unfortunately, what had to be under control, that is the consent of the Rumanian people, it was not and this was manifested in its dramaticism with the facts that happened at Timisoara in the Rumanian Transilvania. A vast crowd of demonstrators, mixed of citizens of Hungarian and Romanian origin, had assembled for protesting against the decision of the government to estrange from the city the Calvinistic minister Laszlo Tokés, symbol of the Magyar community. It was the first time that the popular dissent was manifested so gamely and the Conducator decided that it had to be also last one. He ordered to special units of the Securitate to repress with the strength every resistance and the order was complied shooting at the defenseless citizens. The victims, according to western respects (probably blown up by the opposition to create a greater number of martyrs) were between 2.000 and 5.000.

Satisfied by the demonstration of strength, Ceausescu considered concluded the accident and departed to Iran, where he had programmed a visit of routine. The serious underevaluation of what happened is underlined from the precipitation with which he hastened to reenter on December 20, when he had news that some factions of the communist party were plotting. In fact, it can be hypothesized that already on December 16 there were some exponents of the Securitate and of the party ready to the putsch, delayed to the period of his absence only for motives of convenience and interrupted by his unexpected reentry. Ill-omenedly for him, Ceausescu was absolutely out of the reality of the political situation of his country. Thinking enough his presence to bring the order, he organized a public reunion in Bucharest to glorify once more his own person. When he was introduced to the crowd, assembled in the plaza of the Presidential Palace as usual, groups of students and workers, regardless of the weapons of the Securitate, whistled sonorously him, forcing the President to retire for the shame.

It was at that time that he opened the eyes, timorous to lose the power. In a last reunion with the vertexes of the party (another similitude with Mussolini) he demanded an all strengths' support to repress the revolt, by now widespread anywhere in Bucharest. The answer was positive, but nobody really moved. What followed that last meeting it was nothing more than the agony of a tyrant. Pursued by the furious crowd, Ceausescu and his wife they tried to run away firstly in helicopter and then in automobile, but without any support they finished gasoline in the open country, forced to ask help to an auto driver, a worker named Petrisor. He conducted them in a botanical center with an excuse, where as private citizen become in a day a revolutionary man, he put them to the arrests in a locked room. This was enough to get the title of popular hero. Just as an ancient Roman emperor, so Ceausescu ended his own days abandoned by the faithful guards (the Securitate was pursuing him after an extraordinary betrayal) forced to the surrender by a simple worker.

The popular anger for long years repressed had to have his blood and finally had it. Some authors (between which Fejtö) have criticized the formalities with which was celebrated the trial of Ceausescu, painting it as a farce. They proposed a most balanced end, with a trial in the style of Nuremberg or a more visceral one, under the hits of the furious people as Mussolini, but Revolutionary Romania had to give an appearance of legality. The struggle was for the liberty and the Law State, but with the desire to destroy the symbol of the dictatorship. They reached both purposes through a procedure of urgency with popular judges, driven by a dragger of people called Gelu Voican, a professional geologist, that served as accuser, defender and after the execution even as orthodox Pope to give a Christian tomb to the bodies of the Conducator and the consort. In this way the Rumanian national radio announced the death of its president on Christmas Day 1989:

“December 25 1989, Nicolae and Helen Ceausescu have been judged by a military special court. The accusations were:

1. Genocide of more of 60.000 persons.
2. Threats to the power of the State through organization of armed actions against the people and the government power.
3. Destruction of public ownership through demolition and damage of buildings, explosions, etc.
4. Damage of the national economy.
5. Tried escaping abroad and exploitation more of a billion of dollars deposited in the foreign banks.

For these crimes against the Romanian people and Romania, the guilty Nicolae Ceausescu and Helen Ceausescu have been condemned to death and to the forfeiture of their wealth.

The sentence is final and it has been executed.”

If someone had thought that the death of the dictator would have served to forget 40 years of communism he had to change his mind well soon. In Bucharest, the conspirators of the putsch, even if they have not participated to the popular revolt, took advantage of the victory, leading off that “forfeiture of the popular revolution” that would have been the center of the Rumanian politics of the nineties. The securitate, as already said, had passed to the service of new masters reunited in the Front of National Liberation, where among true liberals and democrats some communists were recycled, inclusive the same members of the Party that had sworn fidelity to Ceausescu on December 21. To calm the rebels some reforms were done that allowed political liberty and agrarian and salary reformations. The private ownership and freedom of association were restored, but the leading problems were unchanged. The traditional xenophobia towards the Hungarians was concretized in the isolation of Tokés and his allies, while the economy, damaged by the revolt, entered a serious crisis. Seen with the eyes of the western nations, the trial of Ceausescu was incompatible with a full democracy, inhaling only mistrust. Romania had lost a Conducator, but it had not gotten an international virginity that allowed a fair relationship with the other nations of the European union and the former oriental block.

The Russian puzzle loses the pieces

The behavior of Gorbacev during 1989 events cannot be considered in line with his political idea of “little steps”, but an intervention of the Red Army in the countries of Oriental Europe would have jeopardized his international figure as reformer and pacifist. It was so that he maintained in all occasions a neutral detachment, permitting that it was the carrying out of the events to delineate the future of those countries. Doing so, however, he had to meet a hard reality: down there, the people, after the changes, had not wanted to opt for a model that had still tied to the real socialism, the third way, which was liked by Gorbacev, but it had asked and gotten a full democratization of the institutions.

The idea to continue in the moderate reforms at a reduced rhythm in Soviet Union would have been able to survive after 1989 events if there had been only of some favorable economic conditions. The maximum peak of the Soviet industrial and agricultural production was reached in 1987, after that year, as in the other nations of the world, there was a fast decline that was particularly serious for the countries of the east. The reforms of decentralization effected until that moment had allowed to overcome the quinquennial plans pre-arranged in the first period of the government of Gorbacev, enriching the local private initiatives of a liberty that didn't possess since the Revolution of October anymore. However, it started to emerge those regional particularisms that although calmed, they were not entirely disappeared under the dominion of Moscow. In principle, it was the same economy to be damaged from them. The careful planning of state that had served to make up for the Russian productive backwardness was abandoned with the consequence to get dispersion at local level of the wealth of the country. This influenced the politics of the consumption that was penalized by the dizzy increase of the prices either in the regular market either in the more and more florid black market.

Gorbacev had so to encounter with a reality that didn't reconcile with the idea of a “socialist” market, but that it extended toward a moderate or Social Democratic capitalism. Not corresponding this model to his personnel vision, the Soviet leader continued to maintain tight contact with the Communist Party and his directives of moderation, allowing the creation of radical and liberal currents that found their commander in the figure of Boris Eltsin. Become president of the Russian Federate Republic, this man had to reveal the greatest personal opponent of Gorbacev. He, in fact, let coincide the figure of the general secretary with all the financial and political problems that were gripping USSR, but with shrewd intuition, he avoided carefully to keep company with the supporters of the most unbridled liberist model, understanding the enormous difficulties that the Russian state would have had to face to pass from an absolutely centralized economy to another totally deprived of ties. Instead, he maintained liberal, nationalist and, generally speaking, moderate positions.

The localization of the economy also had soon consequences on political level. The great difficulties in the life of every day had always let revive the nationalistic feeling of those populations that had been incorporated in USSR during the twentieth century. The first to let hear its own voice was the executives of the Baltic nations, annexed during the Second World War. Estonia in November 1988 and Lithuania in May 1989 were declared sovereign and independent nations, while Latvia already in September 1988 had restored the Latvian as official language. Initially, these movements were also hindered with the dispatch of troops of the Red army, but in front of the peaceful refusal of whole countries to still undergo to Moscow, Gorbacev ordered the withdrawal of the forces of occupation and the juridical recognition of the independence.

The first three months of 1990 were decisive for the destiny of USSR. With the U.N ultimatum in Iraq, Gorbacev had to decide which position to take towards that friend country. If he had maintained the traditional position of proximity to the Arabic countries he would have disavowed the model of the perestrojka, while if he had supported the intervention of the United Nations (that it was perfectly legitimate, because Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait represents the most evident example of international aggression legally sanctioned in the UN Chart) he would have displeased either the international allies either the inside conservatories. Therefore, it was opted for a withdrawal from the scene, leaving everything in the hands of the United States and their allies. The loss of the status of world superpower was loaded of inside consequences. All the nationalities that had still remained tied in Moscow for fear of retaliations took courage and they declared independence one by one.

In the second half of 1990 it was declared sovereign states Moldavia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Bielorussia, Kazakistan and Kirghizistan. On even more extreme positions they were positioned Armenia, Tagikistan and the Turkmenistan that were proclaimed independent. The following year was the time of Georgia, of Dagestan, of Azerbaigian and of Cecenia-Ingušcecija. Once open this vase of Pandora, every single population that considered itself submitted to the Russian domination took advantage of this relative liberty to complain autonomy. It was so that some autonomous regions of the Russian Republic promoted themselves in autonomous republics (among these Chakassia, Jakuzia and Burjatia), while some already autonomous republics pretended the title of federate republics inside USSR (the Baškira and the Tartarian Republic). To avoid the breakup of the Soviet Union, Gorbacev intervened in replacing the government Ryzkov with another presided by Pavlov and summoning a popular referendum with which to decide on the survival of USSR. The popular consultation (March 1991) was favorable to the maintenance of the federal constitution, but it was not enough to halt decadence. In April in Novo Ogarevo, 15 republics (included the Russian Republic of Eltsin) signed an accord for the transformation of USSR in a confederate republic of independent states.

The Communist Party in July 1991, taking conscience of the economic and political difficulties of the nation, proposed a “Program”, with which 70 years of Leninism were denied with the pretension to draw near to the Social Democracies already present in other European nations. It was, in practice, the last action of life of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union). The conservative factions that had already opposed to the work of reform with Ligacev, had not spent the last years in the idleness, but rather they had earned consents really among the collaborators of Gorbacev, acquiring to their cause Pavlov himself. With the support of the maximum legal representative of the government, on August 18 1991, they organized a putsch with which to start a “Restoration.” Although they were enough strong to declare the state of emergency and to occupy the centers of power in Moscow, the plotters signaled themselves above all for their unpreparedness. Gorbacev was surprised in his dacha in Crimea and kept to the domiciliary arrests for three days. Pavlov believed to be able to force him to join them, getting so a definitive legitimization of their plan of return to the past. The resistance of Gorbacev allowed the organization of a popular resistance that was expressed under the guide of Eltsin. The same soldiers that would have had to repress the demonstrations of the people ended throwing the weapons. It is famous an image of Boris Eltsin who after having climbed upon a tank, harangued the crowd to convince it to defend the democratic institutions.

On August 21, by now isolated and abandoned from the supporters inside to the army, the authors of the putsch surrendered and were arrested (the sentences were light however, confirming so the real strength of the movement of which they were expression). During the subversive attempt, the Communist Party had maintained an ambiguous silence not lining up with any of the two parts in struggle. The popular indignation for a similar doubleness convinced Gorbacev to resign the office of Secretary, losing all the powers. On November 6 1991, Eltsin uttered a decree that officially closed the party. The new leader of the Soviet area had become the president of the Russian Republic. Soviet Union itself survived little time after the disappearance of the Communist Party. Already in December 1991, Eltsin signed with the presidents of Ukraine and Bielorussia an agreement for the constitution of a “Confederation of Independent States" to which stuck in rapid succession all the nations that had declared independent, except Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that created a “Confederation of Baltic States.” On December 25 Gorbacev, also definitely resigned the office of president of USSR that stopped its own existence beginning from that date. The seat in the Security Council of the UN that had been of the Soviet Union was entrusted to the newborn Russian Federation (denomination assumed from the Russian federal republic at the end of November 1991), canceling in few days a reality that had shaken the foundations of the world political equilibrium of the twentieth century.

Economic and social politics in former communist Russia

The Russian Federation besides a new name gave itself also a government composed by new faces: Silaev Prime Minister, Gajdar vice Prime Minister, Cubais minister for the recognition of the private ownership, Burbulis and Šakraj influential advisers of Eltsin. The reality of the new Russian state immediately expressed itself in the difficulties that the government met to apply the economic reforms that had been previewed at the moment of the failed putsch. Already few days after the installation of the executive, the Congress of the Russian Federation gathered more than 40% of votes for no-confidence motion towards the Silaev 's government. In July 1992 the Constitutional Court declared illegitimate the provision of Eltsin that had brought to the breakup of the Communist Party. This way doing, local and federal formations started to reorganize for then joining the political formation of Zjuganov in February 1993 . Eltsin didn't remain to look the evolving events, but he tried to race to the shelters modernizing his own party that in that summer assumed the name “Democratic Choice.” Two collaborators of his got during the presidential elections of the June 1991 the deputy presidency of the Russian Federation (Ruckoj) and the presidency of the Supreme Soviet (Chasbulatov).

The change of the parliamentary vertexes didn't serve to dissolve the tones of the opposition that was bearer of a vast popular feeling that pretended a deceleration in the economic reforms for a painless passage toward the market economy. Eltsin thinking that his position was weakening , decided to maintain iron rigidity toward the Parliament, while contemporarily he was making some concessions to the popular dissent. Gajdar had been dismissed for having replaced by Cernomyrdin, a powerful exponent of the dawning industrial middle class, deriving from the powerful government consortium denominated Gazprom that furnished oil and natural gas to the whole oriental Europe. These alternations were not enough, however, for hiss the bad moods, particularly after the leaving of the popular manager of the federal television Jakovlev who had not respected the presidential imposition to maintain the media silence on the increasing military attrition with the republic of Cecenia.

Eltsin opted for a presidential figure that had great powers, in the American style, openly asking an institutional reform to the Supreme Soviet that disdainfully refused it. In the same way of the greatest rethors of every time, he turned to the people that through a referendum confirmed him either personal trust either liberty in the economic reform. The fact that the victory difference in this last part of the referendum had been of only three per cent points, it showed with clarity as there was still a strong opposition to the power of Eltsin that was organizing around the same men set in power by the president himself: Ruckoj and Chasbulatov. To weaken their formations, Eltsin let return to the power as deputy Prime Minister Gajdar and announced new parliamentary elections in December 1993, after having closed the Congress letting prevail the popular nomination of the President of the republic over the indirect legitimization of the parliamentary institution. Logically, both Ruckoj and Chasbulatov could not remain inactive in front of a real putsch and so they activated a resistance that was not limited to the rooms of the politics. They declared dismissed Eltsin from the office of president, naming Ruckoj as his provisional successor, after that, protected from an armed militia they barricaded in the Palace of the Parliament waiting for a line up of the army in favor of one of the two parts. Contrarily, the federal military vertexes maintained a neutral position, leaving in practice free field to Eltsin that let the Russian Armed Forces shell the parliamentary building forcing the surrender of the rebels. Ruckoj and Chasbulatov were arrested, together with the largest part of their supporters.

The elections were held as programmed on November 12 1993, but rather than seeing an overwhelming victory of the Eltsin 's party (that however had the relative majority of the seats in the new Duma with 23%), it let assemble the malcontent of the electorate in the ultranationalistic party of Zirinovskij that can be considered the true winner with 21% of the votes. This man, already next to the plotters of August 1991, had gotten the consent maintaining the distances from every initiative of the government and looking for support in every social formation, from the Hebrews to the new communists, from the workers to the new riches of the wealthy classes. The Communist Party of Zjuganov (14%) and the Agrarian Party (10%) confirmed their position, showing that also without the arrested parliamentary leaders, the opposition to the government of Eltsin didn't lose its own strength.

In the same elections it had also voted the new Russian constitution that had been attended for more than two years. The Russian state changed completely face. It was created a Duma elected directly by the people in democratic way as the government and the president of the republic. The Russian state was denominated “Social State” to gain the approval of the workers' and farmers' classes , terrorized by the possibility more times hypothesized by Gajdar to delete all the welfare tools that burdened on the government budget. The private ownership had been recognized as that of that government and of the municipal community, officially enacting in definitive way the sunset of the communist utopia. Although the Parliament had ample powers, it was immediately clear that it was subordinate to the executive and to the president: a total victory for Eltsin. To protect national identity, the Russian was declared language of state but all the minorities had not anymore to do the public profession of affiliation to the state that instead was obligatory in the Soviet Union.

Near these changes that can be considered useful for the stability of the Russian Federation, the constitution also contained some dark points, especially in the part that concerned the hierarchy of the federal and local institutions that was entirely neglected leaving the determination to the contingent activity of the federal governments to determine the real equilibrium of strengths between Moscow and the regional governments. This involved an embitterment of the relationships with the border realities that were seeking ulterior autonomy. While in the period immediately following the fall of Gorbacev the in requests of Independence had been received without protesting, since the end of 1993 the level of patience had been reached and every new claim for autonomy was seen as an attack to the integrity itself of the Russian Federation, contributing in wide measure to foment the discrimination of the ethnic minorities and an accented xenophobia that would have insinuated itself as powerful mean of propaganda in the dawning Caucasian conflicts.

The Caucasus and the degeneration of the ethnic nationalism

The territories around the mountains of the Caucasus, among the last to be incorporated inside the Russian Empire, have always had a strong separatist tradition. Having different language, culture and very often also religion in comparison to the rest of the country, the populations that live the lands between the Black sea and the Caspian Sea had already gotten a certain autonomy under the Soviet regime, but the cohabitation with the Russians and even among the same Caucasian population often tied up to traditional almost tribal enmities had not always been easy. The incorporation of the transcaucasian region happened in 1817, when the czar got, after a new war against the Ottoman sultan, the dominion over these provinces rich of raw materials, but difficult to govern. The contrasts were nearly immediate. To administer the new subjects was envoy a general that was set in light in the Napoleonic wars: Ermolev.

A very interesting anecdote is told that describes fully the national feeling of the Caucasian people. The general, during a visit in Grozny, informed the population of the passage of sovereignty between the czar and the sultan, defining the transfer as a gift from the Ottoman ruler. At that time, an old man present among the crowd would have lifted a hand in direction of a bird that was flying above them and he would have shouted: “I give you it, test to pick it up!” Ermolev immediately understood that it would have been difficult to govern that people and, in fact, he gave communication of it to the czar that, however, didn't respect his opinion, starting with methodicalness the repression of the rebels that would have cost to the Russian army in the following 50 years more than 70.000 victims, while the civil losses are not known. Also in the second half of 19th century, the Russian occupation was always sight how such and therefore, the national feeling of the Caucasian people never died.

Set at the crossroad between the Russian Empire and the Turkish one, the region was upset by World War 1, transformed in battleground from the troops of the czar in struggle against the army of Istanbul. With the Russian revolution and then the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus fell under a short and deleterious British protectorate that had as only consequence the transfer of the Armenian Nagorno Karabach to the Azerbaigian. This was considered an effective way to subtract a source of raw materials to a population thought too much unstable after the Turkish deportation happened in the first world conflict, but it would also have been the origin of many of the actual contrasts. After the strengthening of Turkey of Kemal and the consequent loss of thousand of square kilometers of territory returned to the Turkish sovereignty, the republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaigian were united first in a Caucasian Confederation for then to enter as federal Republics in the Soviet Union of Stalin. He was aboriginal of the zone, been born by Georgian father and mother of the Ossetia. This detail was, however, not favorable evolving in a true adversity during the World War 2.

With the German invasion of the Cecenia and the neighboring provinces, in the vain attempt to deprive USSR of the rich oil wells of Baku, there were episodes of collaborationism that were harshly punished after the leaving of the Nazi threat. Although what happened it was not more serious than what was already verified in Ukraine, where the repression was surely less hard, in the Caucasus during 1944 a million persons among tartars of Crimea, Ingushi, Checens and Calmuks were deported in the Asian republics of Kazakistan and Kirghizistan with the official excuse of protect them from the enemy, when the German troops had been already repealed up to Poland and Hungarian border. Stalin had taken advantage of this favorable moment to complete an ethnic cleaning that allowed him of free the Caucasus from that warlike stock of mountaineers. Even still in 1994, few of the deported had gotten the permission to reenter in their own land.

The period between 1945 and 1991 was of relative calm, but with the breakup of the Soviet Union, all the present nationalities complained their own independence and they started to appear inside tensions for a long time calmed. Georgia, the nation with the culture nearest to the Russians, of which it was a protectorate since the dawns of the empire, had to his inside two important minorities, the abkhasian and the ossethian one. Both pretended to have a nation for itself, this provoked the spreading of a civil war that ended only with the intervention of the Russian forces as units of interposition between the parts in war. Shevarnadze, former minister of foreign affairs of Gorbacev's government, become president of the Georgian Republic in that years of crisis, had not only to face the separatists, but also his own supporters that didn't hide their racial depreciation for the rebels.

The clash between Armenia and Azerbaigian was almost immediate and as remembered in precedence it had distant in the time origins. The struggle of the Armenian inhabitants of the Nagorno Karabach to reunify with their homeland had its apex in 1994 and 1995 when there was a war between the two nations. Also after the cease-fire, the contrasts didn't finish at all. The Azerbaigian, strong of the strategic position in which was found (on its territory it passes the longest part of the southern section of the important Caucasian pipeline) imposed an energetic embargo on Armenia, whose capital Erevan was forced to survive with only 40 thousand of meters cubes of gas and oil, enough for few daily times of light. Running water became a mirage and the few times when it was available it was rigorously cold. This added to the complete lack of heating can help us to understand as the winter was feared in a state situated upon some of the highest mountains of the world.

The history of Cecenia has become by now a reissue of the Afghanistan for Russia. Proclaimed Independent in 1991 under the presidency of Dudayev, former officer of the Russian Air Force, it was immediately object of strong pressures from Moscow to reenter in the Federation. Grozny, the capital city of the new state, was also the most important center of oil refinement in whole Russia. Through its refineries 4 million tons of gasoline and gas-oil pass every year, a quantity comparable to that produced by Kuwait. The intervention of the Russian army was so inevitable as answer to the chechen indifference to the requests to recede from the intents of independence. The first chechen war started at the end of 1993 it lasted for several months, with the Russian advance up to the mountains of Cecenia, where welcomed by the local population of different race, but always hostile to the Russians, the chechen soldiers could withstand until the stipulation of the peace forced by the increasing popular protest in Russia, caused by the increasing popular worry for the high losses provoked by the chechen tactics of the guerrilla. The agreement recognizing as principle the independence of Cecenia, didn't set the bases for a lasting peace, avoiding to specify the terms of such independence, so much that the new war of this year cannot be said other than a prosecution of the preceding one, even if the motivations of the new president Putin are said well different.

Often, the reasons for a so difficult cohabitation in the Caucasus are found in the diffusion in these countries of the Moslem religion unlike Russia that it is Christian orthodox. If it is true that Azerbaigian has been influenced strongly from the Islam, so much that in the last times inside movements act for a return to the tradition of the Sha'ria (the Islamic law) and for the maintenance of the religious order in communion with that political, in Armenia and in Georgia the situation shows some notable differences. In Armenia a strong Christian community exits that has its own origins in ancient times, straight before the crusades, when the Armenians constituted a strong kingdom firstly vassal of the Byzantine empire and then autonomous and contrasted to the increasing Arabic and finally Turkish power, until the subjugation of the 16th century to the Ottoman sultan. Despite in more recent times the Islamic religion also gone spreading in the state of Erevan, Christian identity has not put in danger allowing Armenia to consider a small island in the Moslem sea. Religious difference has also allowed a different approach to the problems of the post-communism. Not having neighbors of the same religion as instead Azerbaigian has, Armenia has had to look to West, to the European union and the Balkan countries, tightening trade alliances that make up for the less commercial exchange with the countries of the COMECON. Georgia doesn't possess a memory so ancient of his own Christian religiousness, but having always maintained nearer relationships with the Russian world than the other republics , it has been notably influenced by it. Additionally, during the 1944 deportations, nearly 100.000 Moslems were deported in central Asia, creating a homogeneous concentration of orthodox population that still today is majoritarian.

So, the Moslem infiltration is less important than how much it could be believed. In fact, although the media put the accent on the affiliation to this religion of the chechen people, the only nation that can be considered in everything and for everything belonging to the Islamic world is Azerbaigian. However, the diffusion of the Islam doesn't owe to be underestimated as sociological and, considering the almost natural evolution of the Islamic states, political phenomenon. In the void provoked by the collapse of the communist ideology, the increasing religious Moslem fervor (but also orthodox), has allowed to overcome the initial difficulties of a social tissue deprived of its philosophical foundations (“Russia is a special world, a special type of civilization. It's hostile to the west that cultivates an extreme individualism and it shows absence of soul, religious indifference and predilection for the mass culture” Zjuganov said). It has passed from the socialist assistance to the neediest (official politics of the Soviet Union) to an individual charity that belongs as dogma of faith to both religions. If under this point of view the spiritual refoundation has had positive effects, because it has not increased an already traumatic passage from the communist reality to that of the free market, on the other one it has put in evidence all the existing differences between the identity "state-church" of the Moslems and the division of the circles of competence between politics and ecclesiastical apparatus that it is common in the Christian nations. In truth, states that have population of Islamic majority and can be defined secular exist (for instance, only to quote its most evident expressions, Turkey and Tunisia), but in all the most recent cases of advent to the power of Moslem exponents a contemporary change of the institutions of the State has happened to conform to the Koranic law (it is superfluous to point out that Iran is the peak of this transformation).

Now thinking about this, it doesn't have to appear strange that some nations proud of their own cultural identity as those Caucasian are, they result reluctant to return under the protecting wing of mother Russia that assumed the role of peace guarantor in the region, while are incontestable the affairs that it still preserve in defending its own presence in lands that have essential wealth for the tired Russian economy.

The last five years and the future perspectives.

The bloody war in Cecenia had had the collateral effect to let forget, at least for the time of its duration, the serious economic crisis that had struck Russia after 1991. The rosy perspectives that Eltsin had repeated once more during the 1995 electoral campaign were anything else other than expectations or better, only political promises that even if pronounce in good faith, they had well few possibilities to become true. The industrial production, already in crisis at the times of Gorbacev had decreased of 40%, bringing the annual gross inside product per person from 6930$ a year of 1991 to 1995/96 4158$ and the situation was still worse for the retired people with more than 60 years that could count on a figure corresponding to less than an half of that money.

The great reform of the agriculture that was preannounced with the legalization of the private ownership delayed to arrive, so that still at the end of 1994 34% of the kolchozy and sovchozy had maintained their own cooperative social statute, while 47% of the total precedent 1991 had transformed in limited responsibility corporation. In the first months of 1996 the Russian banking system could be said working, but certainly not efficient. Some observatories affirmed that it was already a miracle that the banking executives had understood the mechanisms of discount of the free market.

This reality was common to many of the countries of the former communist area that just in 1996 they to found the bases for a return to a narrower collaboration with Russia. Principal craftsmen of the reproaching were Ukraine and Bielorussia (the latter also arrived up to the limit of a political reunification before receding from the intent under the push of a strong opposition of the authoctonous community of White Russia). In the middle of so many difficulties, it seemed to come as a bolt from the blue the news of serious health problems health of Eltsin who was hospitalized a first time for cardiac problems in June 1996. Despite it was let notice that the president had already overcome of several years the mean life of an adult Russian male, not conducting a moderate life at all, the perspective of his premature disappearance let instigate an inside struggle in his faction to gain the succession.

While Cernomyrdin was wisely preserving the office of Prime Minister standing aside, two collaborators of Eltsin were fighting with hits of public denunciations. The first one was Anatolij Cubais, 41 years old, personal friend of the daughter of Eltsin Tatjana and one of the first man to believe in the political possibilities of the president since the times of his entrance in the political elite of Gorbacev. To his favor there were the narrow bonds that it entertained with all 89 regional realities that composed the Russian Federation acting as medium with the local exponents of the party of Eltsin. The other important figure in the presidential entourage was the general Lebed. Veteran of the war in Afghanistan he had met Eltsin in a casual and curious way. As we have remembered, during the 1991 failed putsch, Eltsin had risked his life, climbing upon a tank to harangue personally the crowd. Well, that tank belonged to a unit commanded by Lebed himself that since that moment had become the right arm of Eltsin. The enmity between the two probable successors went beyond the simple political competition reaching the personal plan. Already at the times of the armistice with Cecenia, Lebed had accused Cubais to have removed his honor to be the promoter of the peace. In fact, while the general had been taking care of all the diplomatic passages that had conducted to the definitive stipulation of the peace agreement, overcoming not indifferent difficulties, the official signer of the action had been Cubais who had received all merits in front of the public opinion.

In the summer 1996, even if Cubais had strong supports inside the managing spheres of the Democratic Party, nobody doubted that in case of death of the president Lebed would have been the successor. It remained to establish the relationships of strength that had to exist between the two factions and to determine them, a real public battle started with not veiled accusations of connivance (and therefore corruption) with the greatest men of the dawning Russian capitalism. Cubais, in effects, had chosen the support of Berezovskij, powerful banker that had affairs in common with Vladimir Gusinskj, magnate of the private televisions who had been in a first time contrary to the political line of Eltsin, but who then had been “convinced” (with rather heavy warnings) that the “Crow” constituted the smaller evil for new Russia. Lebed, intelligent and cunning, but distant person from the economic powers because of his military career had found a powerful allied only in the person of Korzakov, former commander of the bodyguards of Eltsin and his trusted adviser until the first months of 1996 when his bonds with the emergent Muscovite Mafia became something more than a simple gossip, making inevitable his dismissal from the Kremlin. Lebed had given up his own seat in parliament so that Korzakov earned parliamentary immunity and they had reached a tacit accord of mutual protection that let decrease Lebed's reputation, but it strengthened his power.

The urgency with which it had looked out upon an operation to the heart of Eltsin had reduced, postponing more times the intervention that had been procrastinated until the first days November 1996, but already at half October the power equilibrium had changed. Eltsin, bothered by the hurry with which Lebed wanted to change from deputy president in president and by the support given by his former friend Korzakov, was already meditating Lebed's dismissal. Nothing of this was known in the high spheres of the western military commands, so much that when it was necessary to invite somebody in Brussels to discuss a widening of the NATO toward East, the choice was Lebed. However, also the general was to the dark of the changes of Eltsin's idea and so he studied for the following two weeks to prepare an explanation that showed as Russia didn't want to make pressure on the former Soviet nations, but only to make sure that their military choices didn't damage the Russian foreign politics. Reached a compromise that postponed in the time the widening (then partially occurred just before the war in Kossovo), Lebed had returned in Russia believing to be able to be shown to the people as the new hero that had rejected the new American threat. To his great surprise, a dry denial had responded to the request to meet Eltsin that had been already hospitalized waiting for the surgical operation. It was so that he knew to have been dismissed.

The five coronary bypasses that were applied to the heart of Eltsin didn't arouse as much terror as the pneumonia that he had in January 1997. After the operation, all the pretenders to the succession, Cubais for first, had resigned to a return in great style of the old ruler and therefore they had abandoned every brief term planning. The new illness had taken everybody by surprise and completely unprovided of whatever plan. What that in Breznevian style had been defined a simple “cold”, it had been transformed in a “bronchitis” and then, when evidence could not be anymore denied, in a “pneumonia.” The danger of a void of power was avoided only by the iron fiber of Eltsin's physique that once more knew how to recover with amazing speed, disappointing those people whom hoped that that was the right moment to see his disappearance from the political scene.

Telling the last three years of the Russian history would be rather difficult without having a full knowledge of which the real changes of the Russian society in the same period are. Changes that cannot be judged after so little time. However, not leaving to the dark the reader is useful to narrate a fanciful theory brought by a famous Italian journalist (Volcic). He, good expert of the Russian circumstances, delineating some scenarios of “political fiction” (as he personally has defined them), had enunciated a won hypothesis. It consisted in seeing behind these games of power a real dramatization created by a so-called “cupola” (term that in Italian means "dome" and remembers the phantom political system that would command the Sicilian Mafia) that just as it was done at the times of the Unique Communist Party, it decides not only who has to command, but also who owes to be at the opposition and who has to estrange from the centers of the power, everything in full harmony among the protagonists who perfectly know that, however, at the end they will have their guaranteed slice of "cake" just because of the precision and condescending with which these rules of the game are accepted.

It is difficult to establish If this is or not “political fiction” , but some facts appears to bring us really in this direction. Lebed, once dismissed founded his own party, but he doesn't directly go against Eltsin , disappearing slowly. Cernomyrdin finally leaves the government despite his supporters finances the electoral Eltsin's campaign with million of dollars. Clinton has always seen in Eltsin a correct correspondent with whom to treat from a position of parity if not of strength and nobody can deny that in 1995 a “task force” of American marketing experts has flight to Moscow to help Eltsin in his electoral winning rush and that once the scandal has been discovered, the thing can be repeated other times in more hidden way. The judicial investigations that have touched the daughter of Eltsin for the presumed irregularities in the distribution and the use of the money of the International Monetary Fund, seem to confirm the “division of the cake” hypothesized by Volcic. Finally, the abandonment of Eltsin, sudden and not certain influenced by his health conditions, not worsen of five years ago, effected with the stipulation of a “contract” with his successor Vladimir Putin that protects from every accusation for the activities developed during his mandate, it leaves also in the doubt the most tenacious supporter of the purity and honesty of the old president.

However it is, the new century continues in the same way as it was closed the precedent, at least for Russia. The war in Cecenia is restarted with formalities equal to 5 years ago. The economy has crossed a crisis that would have destroyed whatever nation and though it is still weak, Russia has the support of the nations of G7 and of the IMF. The monopolies of the oil and the natural gas have been sold to private investors without other losses than the thousand of dismissals that have exhausted the working class. The army, the glorious Red Army, has accepted without opposition the condition least wealthy than the past, without never concretizing that revolt that has taken the sleep off to many American presidents. It is now up to Putin to pick up the heavy inheritance of Eltsin, but a thing is sure, Russia is still here. It has crossed thousand difficulties making lever on the spirit of patience of its people and perhaps, this resistance frightens the western world very more than the military power of once.

Sources: “History of contemporary Russia” by Francesco Benvenuti, “Gone and return in the former communist countries” by Demetrio Volcic, “The end of the popular Democracies” by François Fejtö, “1985-1990. From the chronicle to the history” by Francesco Traniello, “Caucasus, people's melting pot” by Ornella Rota

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