In the first half of the eighties in the USSR there was a frequent change of party leaders: Brezhnev, Andropov, then Chernenko. The reason why the general secretaries left their post was respectful, death, and the causes of death, in turn, were also respectful - old age and the numerous ailments associated with it. And so, in 1985, at the plenum of the Central Committee, a new General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, was elected. By the standards of the then leadership, he was defiantly young; only recently, nine days before the meeting, he turned 54 years old.
The new leader of the party, and therefore the country, understood that the world socialist system, and, in particular, the Soviet Union, had big problems. The economy is inefficient, people drink a lot of alcohol, and in general, everything is somehow wrong … And he began to act.
A month later, citizens of the USSR learned that acceleration is not only what the cause is strength, but also such a way of working.
Soon, an anti-alcohol company began, as a result of which they did not drink less, but the wine industry and viticulture suffered. Then began the policy of publicity. First things first.
So, acceleration, a policy of glasnost and democratization were summarized by the word "perestroika", which was touched by the leaders of Western countries without translating into their native languages, like the word "satellite" in 1957.
Such rapid turns could not but have a devastating effect on the decrepit socialist system, but it was Gorbachev’s glasnost policy that ultimately led to its complete collapse.
Of course, it was not for this that the next party term was invented in order to destroy the country. The initial idea of the reformers from the Central Committee was different, it was just necessary to tint the history, identify certain shortcomings, but do not touch the fundamental foundations, act on the principle of "Stalin is bad and Lenin is good." If under Stalin, Bukharin was shot, for example, because the latter was very clever. And as proof, a quote from Lenin’s Blue Notebook. Yezhov does not count, his case.
But even such a policy of publicity caused great irritation among some members of the Central Committee and even ordinary citizens, and the famous article by Nina Andreeva in Pravda became their manifesto.
Trying to bring the information flow under control, one of the leaders of the CPSU, I. Polozkov, agreed even to the point that a policy of publicity is, of course, good, but only communists have the right to it.
Feeling the weakness of power, many leaders of opposition movements, most often nationalists, began to bend their line, sowing destruction and death. This happened in Nagorno-Karabakh, Tbilisi and other points of "elevated temperature". Attempts to restore order by force led to even worse results. Ultimately, the majority of the population realized that there could be no “socialism with a human face”. His face does not change. This explains the collapse of the coup attempt in 1991 and the victory of Yeltsin.
Thus ended the communist era, and at the same time the policy of publicity. Achievements and costs can now be analyzed. The first can be attributed to the population’s interest in the printed word that arose suddenly in the late 80s, albeit for a short time. And to the second - the unthinkable chaos into which the country was plunged for twenty years, and to feel the consequences of which we will all be for a long time …
