In 1991, on Christmas Day, Soviet President Gorbachev gave the United States the best Christmas gift. He announced the disintegration of the Soviet Union in a televised speech to the people of the country, and the superpower instantly split into 15 countries.
The Soviet Union disintegrated, and the red flag fell.
After 31 years, even though Gorbachev has passed away, people have never stopped thinking about the Soviet Union. People have been thinking that such a powerful red giant will collapse and disintegrate in a few years? Some people say that Gorbachev is a stupid and stupid doctor, and Yeltsin is a bad and stupid careerist. People also tell some Soviet jokes, talk about the Great Purge, the Katyn Massacre, etc. Nowadays, the mainstream impression is that the Soviet Union is a country that is strong on the outside and inflexible on the inside, and is tyrannical and autocratic. But please think about it, if this is really the case, how can it become a pole and have been at odds with the United States for 46 years? Could it be that the United States is also guilty of internal weakness? Is it possible to become the big brother of socialist camp just by relying on arrogance? Let the red flag fly in Asia, Europe, and America. The strength of the Soviet Union lies not only in its hundreds of thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of nuclear bombs , tens of thousands of fighter jets and other powerful forces. These are the appearance of the Soviet Union's strength, because before its disintegration, it still had the power to destroy everything.
The essence of the strength of the Soviet Union lies in communism
What we have to think about is why, in 1917, as the weakest and weakest country among the imperialists, it transformed from an agricultural country cultivating with wooden plows to a torrent of steel that frightened the fascists? Become the pole in the world that leads the socialist camp to challenge the capitalist camp ? To be honest, since its birth, the United States has never been afraid of the British who suppressed the uprising during the independence period, the crazy Nazis in World War II, or the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor. It is only afraid of the Soviet Union! Up to now, the main villains in American movies are still the Soviets (Russians). Even though Russia is already several levels behind the United States, it still spares no effort to smear and smear it, because the Soviet Union is the devil and the lingering nightmare that scares the United States!
What the United States is really afraid of has never been the Soviet Union's steel torrent. It can directly threaten only Europe, and the United States' nuclear power is no weaker than that of the Soviet Union. What the United States really fears is the ideology of communism. This is the real threat from the Soviet Union. Some people like to compare the Soviet Union to a large Russia. In fact, this is not the case. Since its establishment, the Soviet Socialist Union has been an alliance without distinction between nation-states. This is unique in human history, and communism is the foundation of its founding.
Soviet Socialist Union
It is this red heat that makes tens of millions of people willing to sacrifice their lives for it. On the plains of China, in the cities of Western Europe , in the forests of Latin America, and on the plateaus of Africa, comrades of different languages and nationalities can sing the same song. Because they have a common belief and goal - communism. They can travel thousands of miles to support comrades in another country. Bethune, Camus, Hemingway and our most lovable people, worked tirelessly to save comrades and died in the North China Plain, and dared to fight the fascists with bayonets in Spain for comrades they had never met before. It is difficult for us to understand this spirit, but this is a true story in history!
After the end of the Cold War, the United States became the global talker, and American-style liberal democracy became a universal value. As everyone knows, fighting for equality was the slogan shouted by workers after World War I, and freedom was the goal that colonial countries fought for during the Cold War when they sought liberation. However, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed. Democracy and freedom have become the patents of the United States, and American democracy and freedom have become the only universal values.
It is hard for people today to imagine how intense the dispute between the two ideologies was during the Cold War. You must know that the United States' institutional self-confidence was not achieved overnight. It was a step-by-step process. After World War I, the United States gradually realized its institutional advantages.You can laugh at the chaos and turmoil in American society, but no one dares to laugh at Americans' liberal and democratic values. They will definitely explode. And when freedom meets fairness, when universal values meet human liberation, that is the moment Americans fear most.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was no less attractive than the United States, at least until the 1970s. In 1917, the October Revolution was victorious, and a country was born in Russia that was created by the working people and was the masters of the country. There was no exploitation or oppression and everyone was equal. This was a great country that had never existed in the thousands of years of human history. Later, it developed under the enemy's blockade, and five-year plans turned a backward industrial country into the world's second industrial country. It was the only country to maintain rapid economic growth during the global economic crisis. What kind of change of destiny is this? Moreover, since then, it has been out of control, crushing the arrogant German with a torrent of steel, sweeping across Europe, liberating tens of millions of people, and planting the red flag all over Eastern Europe.
It was the liberation of Berlin by the Soviet Red Army, not the Cold War period of the United States, Britain and France. It also achieved rapid economic growth. Rockets went to the sky, submarines entered the sea, mankind's first manned rocket, artificial satellites , space stations , lunar probes , 15 Nobel Prizes , and 440 Olympic gold medals. No matter how hard the West tries to smear it, no one can deny this ironclad fact. Gagarin is not only a hero of the Soviet Union, he is also a hero of mankind. He still enjoys unprecedented popularity in Europe and the United States. It is difficult for us now to appreciate the great inspiration that the Soviet Union brought to working people around the world, and that workers and farmers can become the masters of the country, that the workers and peasants can sit in the magnificent Great Hall and vote for national development plans, and that they can build a world power with their own hands. After the establishment of the Soviet Union, countless left-wing intellectuals around the world regarded the Soviet Union as a paradise created by workers. Countless senior European and American intellectuals yearned for communism and willingly provided intelligence to the Soviet Union. At the Yalta Conference, Truman told Stalin that the United States was developing powerful weapons, and Stalin laughed. Truman thought that Stalin, a country bumpkin, knew nothing, but in fact Stalin had already known about Manhattan Project through intelligence, even earlier than he did.
The Soviet Union may not be good enough, but it greatly promoted the progress of mankind
The United States and the Soviet Union competed for hegemony What they competed for was the future of mankind. The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union cannot be eased as some people think, and it cannot be a one-goal, two-system, long-term coexistence. They are two sharply opposed futures for human civilization. In the 1950s, revolution and war pushed mankind to a crossroads of destiny. Both the United States and the Soviet Union believed that their route was right and that they had an obligation to lead all mankind towards the light. As the twins of human civilization, the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for hegemony is not just a competition for interests. If this is true, the Soviet Union could not catch up with the United States in the 1980s, and also proposed a new path of peace. With the subsequent development, the United States will become the only superpower. Why should the Soviet Union be killed in the end? Because this is a contest of civilizations.
The period from 1947 to 1991 was the fastest-growing half-century in human history. During this period, the two major camps engaged in an unprecedented competition to prove which social system was better. This also greatly promoted human progress from another perspective. It can be said that in the history of human struggle for thousands of years, there was no greater struggle than the Cold War. The Cold War was a struggle to see who was better. In order to prevent the spread of communism, Western countries worked hard to narrow the gap between rich and poor, constantly improve social welfare and improve workers' living standards during the Cold War. As Che said: "After we leave, they will build schools and hospitals for you and raise your wages. This is not because of their conscience, nor because they have become good people, but because we have been here."
Che. Guevara, international communist fighter, please respect him!
The Soviet Union may not be good enough, but it is precisely because of its existence that it has pushed the entire capitalist world and human civilization forward.In order to compete for space superiority, the United States formulated the Apollo program. Americans were the first to land on the moon, and they have not done so since the Cold War. In order to break through and lead, various inventions have been approved, and investment in de-domain technology has been continuously increased, including the Internet, which is an important component of US military technology. In order to win the kitchen war, various new household appliances were invented to improve people's lives. The United States and Britain continued to dismantle the colonial system in order to promote humanism . While the United States and Europe were gradually establishing universal welfare societies, the living standards of the Soviet people were also improving by leaps and bounds. Taking people's health as an example, the sanatorium system became a way of life in the Soviet Union, and sanatoriums all over the country became a major feature of the Soviet Union. While ensuring an 8-hour working day, the Soviet Union turned a large number of high-end hobbies into national hobbies, such as , ballet, and , which became national culture. Many workers have second hobbies in their spare time. The Soviet Union guaranteed an 8-hour working day for most of its peacetime years, and even considered a 7-hour working day before its disintegration.
The problem with the Soviet Union was not that it didn’t exist but that it wasn’t good enough. Compared with Europe and the United States, the Soviet Union's choice of daily necessities is relatively limited, but its living standard is definitely not bad, because during the Cold War, the Soviet Union ranked first in the world in wool textile production, cotton production, shoe sugar production, dairy product consumption, and beer and ice cream consumption. From the perspective of social life, the living standard of Soviet people is lower than that of the United States, and also lower than that of Western Europe and Japan, but other than that, no one can compare with it.
The Khrushchev Building became a symbol of the Soviet Union in the Cold War era
Although the Khrushchev Building is ugly, everyone in the Soviet Union does not have to worry about housing. Everyone can be allocated a house provided by the state for free, while the poor in the United States can only sleep on the street. The United States can supply more and more abundant goods, and may be more efficient in economic development, but the Soviet Union has almost no unemployment, no economic crisis, , and no one sleeps on the streets. Due to the planning system, although the quality of goods is inferior, most of the time the supply is sufficient. In terms of fairness, the United States cannot compare. A large number of nation-states gained independence, and the number of countries in the world increased from more than 50 to nearly 200. The independence of these countries was inseparable from the support of the United States and the Soviet Union. People around the world began to take up arms to resist the colonizers. In short, the Cold War era caused by the strength of the Soviet Union was an era of rapid technological advancement, the gradual shrinking of the global rich and poor, the improvement of people's living standards, the capitalists did not dare to exploit wantonly, and the third world was developing rapidly.
The power of the Soviet Union is undeniable, and the true spirit of the Soviet Union will always be great.
This is the worst era, and it is also the best era, an era full of contradictions. The Cold War has ended. The superpower that dared to speak for workers is no longer there. Military aggression has become commonplace around the world. Capital has become more and more wanton and unscrupulous, harvesting people's wealth again and again. Whenever "Katyusha" is played, people who don't know its lyrics and background are inexplicably excited, because the Soviet Union was once a great existence, pushing a great era forward and calling on hundreds of millions of people to fight for it. At the same time, there are so many things to criticize about it, such as the privileged class being separated from the people, betraying the people, lack of faith, etc. These lessons are worth remembering, but the power of the Soviet Union is undeniable, and the spirit of seeking liberation for mankind will always be great!
