Servant of the People in Kyiv

Gorbachev and Shevardnadze's words on Gorbachev's behalf represented a change in the Soviet Union's foreign policy.

From then on, the Soviet Union completely gave up resisting NATO and began to commit chronic suicide.

In less than four years, the Soviet Union had gone from "one wrong step" to "every wrong step", and had made a huge mistake. At this point, even if Andropov and Chernenko were resurrected, they could no longer save the Soviet Union.

As the only person in the world who knows the future, Haniyev deeply regrets the impending tragic fate of the Soviet Union, but he is powerless to change the country and can only complain at home. At the same time, he tries every means to improve his plan, strive to seize the highest power in Ukraine as soon as possible, take advantage of the chaos to make some contributions to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian people, and try his best to save all the Soviet Union's legacy.

A few days later, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gerasimov gave an in-depth interpretation of Foreign Minister Shevardnadze's speech and the new diplomatic requirements of Gorbachev's reforms in an interview with reporters from Reuters, AFP and AP.

"You have a singer in the United States named Frank Albert Sinatra, who has a song called 'My Way', which we translated into Russian as 'I Go My Own Way'. I think the meaning of this song is very good.

Our General Secretary has reached a consensus with the United States. Last year, our two countries signed a peace treaty to eliminate all short- and medium-range missiles. Our joint exploration of peace will only deepen. Abandoning competition with NATO is the general trend. Respecting the will of each country and allowing them to choose their own path is also the future direction of development.

The American reporter asked, "Do you mean that in the future Moscow can accept regime change in any country within the Warsaw Pact, or even a multi-party system?"

Gerasimov responded: "Maybe... The political structure of any country must be determined by the people living there, and we respect the choice of every country and its people.

No matter what, we must respect the people's pursuit of democracy."

……

Chapter 207: Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine

Starting from the end of October 1988, the Soviet Union's foreign attitude became completely clear.

The Soviet Union's Brezhnev Doctrine towards the Warsaw Pact countries will soon turn into Sinatra Doctrine, and the Warsaw Pact will eventually exist in name only.

As the true leader of the Ukrainian national forces and the vast majority of intellectuals, Haniyev felt that he could not watch the Soviet Union be destroyed in vain and that he had to do something.

On October 30, Haniyev convened the second management committee of the "Ukrainian People's Movement" in the meeting room of the People's Daily at the Institute of International Relations of Kyiv National University.

The first management committee several months ago established the organization and leadership structure of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee, including the Secretary-General and Deputy Secretary-General. This meeting will review the organizational development and publicity work over the past few months, and revise and establish a more complete and precise management mechanism.

This conference was agreed upon by Haniyev, Drak and others a month in advance. The participants included not only Executive Committee member Haniyev, but also the Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General and more than 30 newly established members.

The Ukrainian People's Movement Committee is an officially recognized environmental protection organization established by Haniyev, but in essence it is a formal organization established by absorbing the loose organization of Drak, Ivanov, Gonchar, Makar and others that has grown to 100,000 people.

Since August, Haniyev's work focus has been on the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee.

In the past three months, Haniyev led Drak and others to formulate the charter of the Development and Management Committee, establish the guidelines and specific measures for vigorously developing new members, and personally oversee the editing, printing and publishing of the weekly "People's Daily".

Working together, Haniyev and his team achieved extraordinary results.

"People's Daily" has now become the most important newspaper in Ukraine's academic, educational and even cultural circles. In some areas, its influence is almost comparable to that of the national news agency's newspaper.

Relying on the "People's Daily" and the "Ukrainian National Historical Perspective", the "Ukrainian People's Movement" has become the most admired organization of hundreds of thousands of college students and young people in Kyiv. More than 60 people in the entire city of Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Odessa and other places have participated in the "Ukrainian People's Movement"'s call for the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and compensation for the victims.

If we include private propaganda activities on Ukrainian national culture and the history of Ukrainian national development, the number of students and personnel participating in the "Ukrainian People's Movement" should have exceeded one million, or even close to two million.

These people are just propaganda targets and the high ground of public opinion that Haniyev wants to occupy. Those who can truly be controlled by the organization are the intellectuals absorbed into the "Ukrainian People's Movement Committee" and the "Youth Association" established by students from various universities in Kyiv.

Currently, the number of members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee has exceeded 300, but there are only more than 30 members who can participate in management. The student backbones of dozens of youth associations have a total of 700 to 800 people. In total, the number of organizational members that Haniyev can directly control has exceeded 1,000.

For a private organization that was only established in August, Haniyev is satisfied with the development of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee to its current size. Drak, Ivanov, Gonchar and Makar are also satisfied.

After several months of operation and adjustment, the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee has gradually developed into a mature organization. Haniyev also promulgated the adjusted organizational rules and salary benefits of leadership positions and full-time staff within the organization at the conference.

As the Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine has matured and its membership has grown, it needs some full-time staff to better manage and operate the Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine.

Because the People's Daily brings in some substantial income for the organization every month, it is enough to use a portion of it to pay salaries.

Therefore, after discussing with Drake and others, Haniyev developed a set of internal management frameworks for the committee and its corresponding various offices and staff.

At this conference, the new management rules of the management committee and the recruitment of full-time staff to participate in the work were passed unanimously. Haniyev handed over the right to recruit personnel and set up various offices to several deputy secretaries-general, and then took the initiative to talk about Gorbachev's policy changes towards Eastern European countries.

The secretary-general and three deputy secretaries-general of the committee are Haniyev’s closest comrades. They participated in editing the new edition of the textbook and the History of the Development of the Ukrainian Nation.

, who had experienced too many things and were people who cared deeply about the future and destiny of Ukraine and the Soviet Union.

The 30 new members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee in the past two months are all elites selected from professors of major universities and poets and scholars in Kyiv. Many of them were recognized or even familiar to Haniyev before. The members who were absorbed later were also people who Haniyev personally talked to and confirmed that they were people he admired and believed in. It can be said that the more than 30 people on the Rukh Management Committee who currently manage the millions of people participating in the Ukrainian People's Movement are all people who are completely under Haniyev's control.

It was precisely because he was confident that he could fully control the Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine that Haniyev pushed for the organization of the Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine, and the organizational framework of the Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine was also modeled after the mature framework of the CPSU over the past 80 years.

The more than 30 members were all intellectuals who were interested in politics and worried about the future of Ukraine. After listening to Haniyev's proposal on Gorbachev's policy changes toward Eastern Europe, they immediately started discussing.

The Soviets have been talking about this issue a lot recently. The members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee are essentially high-level intellectuals who care about the world. They may not have the confidence to govern and serve as officials, but when asked to make suggestions on state affairs and criticize current ills, these people are more active than each other.

Intellectuals who admired Western systems and culture admired Gorbachev's actions because they were very disgusted with the Soviet Union's violation of human rights and control of other countries' internal affairs. Many people even hoped that Ukraine would become independent from the Soviet Union after the Warsaw Pact countries broke away from Soviet control.

Apart from this group of radical intellectuals, more people maintained a wait-and-see attitude or opposed Gorbachev's reforms.

Cautious intellectuals believed that most of the countries in Eastern Europe were socialist countries. If the Soviet Union gave up its control over them, these countries would also promote Westernization. At that time, the Soviet Union's influence would be seriously reduced, and the development of the situation might not be in the interests of the Soviet Union.

However, no matter which attitude they held, intellectuals could not influence Gorbachev's national policy and could only discuss it in private.

The same was true of the members of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine.

Chapter 208: Unified Thought (1)

The members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee also had different attitudes towards Gorbachev's abolition of Brezhnevism, but because of their different identities and lack of political vision, they did not see the problem thoroughly. They basically could not think of how many disadvantages and advantages there would be in doing so, so most of them took an indifferent attitude towards the situation.

But Haniyev is different from them.

Haniyev directly expressed his dissatisfaction with the actions of Gorbachev and others.

"The Warsaw Pact is the foundation of our Soviet Union's confrontation with NATO. Even if we want to embrace peace, we cannot unilaterally shrink our influence. Why doesn't NATO withdraw its troops?

If we get all the Warsaw Pact countries to leave the Soviet Union, our influence in Europe will be greatly reduced...

Gorbachev's ideas are simply childish. If we don't influence the Eastern European countries, these countries will definitely be influenced by NATO. By then, I will have fewer and fewer friends. Do you think it is possible for the Soviet Union, which has no strength, to be on an equal footing with NATO, led by the United States, and seek peace?

If that’s not a fairy tale, then what is it…”

After Haniyev made it clear that he was not optimistic about Gorbachev's behavior, many members thought deeply along the lines of Haniyev and felt that Gorbachev was just messing around. Giving up control of the Warsaw Pact countries was not only not a reform that benefited the country and the people, but was destroying the foundation of the country and would seriously affect the future quality of life of the Soviet people.

However, there are still many members who admire the United States. They think that the Soviet Union's reforms are good, at least the general direction is not wrong. Economic reforms have transformed the planned economy into a market economy, which is the economic system used by the richest countries in the world. The political system must also gradually learn from the advanced Western system.

Wouldn't it be better not to interfere in Eastern European countries, not to fight or compete with NATO, and instead focus on our own reforms?

Haniyev knew that unifying people's thoughts and cognition was the most difficult thing, so he did not show any emotion, but just analyzed the international situation and the Soviet economic system, and told everyone that if Eastern European countries moved away from the Soviet Union and turned to the West, the Soviet Union, which promoted the market economy, would lose the market of nearly 100 million people in many Eastern European countries. This would be very unfavorable to the Soviet Union's emerging and fragile market economy. The inability of the Soviet economy to grow rapidly would also affect the quality of life of the Soviet people.

Haniyev spoke from the perspective of the intellectuals' immediate interests, and the members finally began to worry about the adverse effects of the abolition of Brezhnevism.

Haniyev was well aware that Gorbachev's policies could not be changed, and that it was only a matter of time before Eastern European countries broke away from Soviet control, and that these countries would become socialist countries, as they had been before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Haniyev does not feel sad about the change of the red regime in these countries, because even the Soviet Union will disintegrate in a few years.

He just wanted to guide the current one-sided public opinion and make Ukrainian intellectuals more rational, so that they would not become enemies with him in a few years.

Regardless of whether the members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee support Gorbachev's change in attitude towards the Warsaw Pact countries or oppose it, in order to prevent the team he personally built from going against his own consciousness in a year or two, Haniyev must express his true thoughts now. Even if they do not understand now, he will make them wake up in the future.

Haniyev clearly told the members that if the Soviet Union gave up its control over the Warsaw Pact countries now, the whole of Eastern Europe would undergo tremendous changes within two years. By then, these countries would be continuously infiltrated by NATO, and the communist regimes in various countries would be overthrown. Perhaps the communist regime was not the best, but the Eastern European countries would definitely not be better after switching to the so-called multi-party system.

In order to make it easier for people to understand, Haniyev made a vivid metaphor:

"For example, if we are sick, we should go to the hospital and take medicine on our own, rather than refusing treatment and letting the body heal on its own. If our General Secretary has confidence in the Soviet Union's reforms, he should maintain traditional friendship and help Eastern European countries move towards reform together, rather than relaxing control and assistance over them, which will only harm them..."

The Soviet Union's reforms were aimed at improving people's lives and bringing new vitality to the already ossified Soviet Union. Therefore, since Gorbachev came to power, most Soviet people have been very supportive of his reforms and have held high hopes for them.

But in fact, the reform has been going on for four years, and the so-called reform results are not obvious. The people have not improved their already material-scarce lives because of the reform, and their living standards and status have not improved. Many people have already had some complaints about the so-called reform and can only hope that the upcoming political system reform can completely reverse the backward appearance of the Soviet Union.

Facts have proved that the political system reform was also a failure. Gorbachev's reform was a farce. Then after 1990, the Soviet people were extremely disappointed with the reform, which led to the disaster of disintegration.

As senior intellectuals in Ukraine, Drak and others claim to be the most far-sighted people in the Ukrainian nation, so they have long been dissatisfied with Gorbachev's reforms. Not only them, but many senior intellectuals in Russia are also dissatisfied, so they turned to support Yeltsin, who advocated more radical ideas.

Because the Soviet Union's old path had reached a dead end, the only way to revitalize it was to reform. However, Gorbachev's reforms were ineffective, so everyone had no choice but to support the reforms advocated by Yeltsin. After all, the wealth and strength of the United States was well known to the world, and the gap between East Germany and West Germany had also proved the superiority of the Western system.

Haniyev certainly knew that most members of the Committee of the People's Movement of Ukraine also supported thorough reforms, but they were more in favor of giving Ukraine more autonomy in this reform, so they were not supporters of Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

Haniyev was previously a hero in Chernobyl, and later became an advanced model of reform and a master of economic development. In recent months, he has been promoting Ukrainian national culture. Although he has not publicly expressed support for Ukrainian nationalism, as the founder of the Ukrainian national historical view, he has already gained the highest prestige.

With several layers of buffs stacked on top of each other, Haniyev has become the savior of Ukraine in the eyes of most Ukrainian intellectuals.

With such a mass base, Haniyev must guide Ukrainians to establish their own independent understanding, and neither be fooled by the United States nor blindly believe in the reforms of Gorbachev and his faction.

Criticizing Gorbachev's decision to abolish the control over Eastern European countries at the conference was the first step for Haniyev to unify the ideological understanding of the "Ukrainian People's Movement".

Chapter 209: Unified Thought (2)

Intellectuals have many thoughts and are not easy to change their minds. If Haniyev wants to ensure that the "Ukrainian People's Movement" is an obedient sword in his hands, he must find a way to unify the organization's thoughts.

Regardless of whether the committee members agree with his ideas, Haniyev will always express his views in the hope that future events will prove him correct.

Here, Haniyev clearly pointed out that the Soviet Union would only get worse if it followed Gorbachev's reforms. Starting from this month, the Soviet Union would relax its constraints on the Warsaw Pact countries and its control over Eastern Europe, and these countries would soon have their socialist regimes overthrown.

Poland and Hungary would be the first countries to lose communism, followed by Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, all of which would become capitalist countries by 1989.

The most important thing is not the change in the fundamental system of the country. The most important thing is that these changes will completely damage the interests of the Soviet Union. No matter how the Soviet Union reforms, it should not harm the interests of the country and the people...

Haniyev's firm words silenced the more than 30 members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee.

Many people were skeptical about Haniyev's words, but they could not refute them publicly, so they could only plant a seed in their hearts.

It would only take a few months for these countries to have their socialist regimes overthrown one by one as Haniyev had predicted, and these committee members would be completely convinced by Haniyev.

At this time, the members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee were already quite convinced of Haniyev. In order to ensure that Ukraine would not be infiltrated by the US ideology again, Haniyev issued an order at the end of the meeting.

That is to mobilize all the power of the People's Daily and the committee to criticize the so-called reforms of the Soviet Union both inside and outside the people's movement, with the focus on the changes in the policy towards Eastern Europe.

The members of the Ukrainian People's Movement Committee were all Haniyev's confidants, and they all had opinions about the reforms that Gorbachev had been pushing for several years without any results, so this order was passed without any resistance.

A few days later, the People's Daily revealed the truth that Gorbachev's reforms had not made any progress over the years. The report was supported by a lot of data and information to prove that the People's Daily's report was true.

The intellectuals who were already dissatisfied with the results of the reform regarded the reports of the People's Daily as the truth and consciously promoted them.

So since November, almost everyone in Kiev has been talking about the Gorbachev reforms that have been implemented for four years, and they have given them a very low evaluation.

Haniyev did this to enable Ukraine to look at the so-called Western-style reforms rationally, and also to prepare for the next step of helping conservative leader Shcherbitsky to make a comeback.

As a representative of Ukraine's political interests, Shcherbytsky has always suppressed Ukrainian national independence elements and related public opinion, and did not support Gorbachev's reforms. If you want Shcherbytsky to come back to power, you must make the Ukrainian people completely disappointed with Gorbachev's reforms and disgusted with them, so that everyone will remember the good things about the old secretary.

But it is not easy for you to come back, Sherbitsky. At least Haniyev can lay the groundwork first.

Thanks to the help of senior officials of the Sherbitsky faction, the Ukrainian People's Movement's propaganda campaign against reforms, which began in early November, was very successful.

In less than a month, millions of members of the Ukrainian People's Movement were firmly convinced of the failure of Gorbachev's reforms.

After reaching a consensus, Haniyev launched a second round of propaganda offensive.

This time, Haniyev's target was the so-called advanced institutional culture of the West, led by the United States.

In early December, Haniyev published an article in the People's Daily under the pseudonym "Hetman", which caused an uproar within the Ukrainian people's movement.

“Lenin has been gone for 64 years, and we have forgotten the essence of struggle! - Hetman

Lenin is a great mentor in the history of the international communist movement. He let the world know the great power of the united proletariat, and also let the world know that great goals are not affected by people’s culture, nationality, or hell. Everyone can work hard for a goal!

……

Comrades, the Soviet Union was the first country established by communism, a newborn baby in world history. Using communism to build and govern a country is a skill explored by generations of our ancestors and fathers. Facts have proven the Soviet Union was great, and it achieved countless remarkable achievements, such as Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, the world's first person in space...

But as time went on, the Soviet Union lost its youth and problems began to arise...

Over the past decade or so, we have heard about or witnessed the material prosperity of the people in the United States, Britain, France, and even West Germany. We have also personally experienced the pain and fatigue of the Soviet people who had to queue up to buy the most basic black bread.

So we gradually came to believe that the capitalist path that the West had been exploring for hundreds of years was correct, while the communist path that the Soviet Union had taken on behalf of all mankind for nearly 80 years was wrong.

But is this really the answer?

I don’t dare to say whether capitalism is correct, but it is an indisputable fact that capitalism is mature, because capitalism...

But communism and socialism are a newborn. We, the Soviet Union, have taken the lead in embarking on the most advanced communist path on behalf of all mankind. There are no precedents, no lessons learned, no role models to learn from, and no failure cases to learn from.

We had to figure everything out on our own. Finally, decades of history made us realize that the Soviet Union had taken the wrong path, but when and where it went wrong, our people didn't know, and neither did the Soviet cadres.

So the country's leaders began to promote reforms, hoping to bring the Soviet Union back on track...

The author is a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and has also studied the socialist system. Here I would like to share my simple views.

The author believes that the current prosperity of Western countries led by the United States and the decline of the Soviet Union are not entirely due to the political or economic systems, but are caused by the different objects of exploitation.

To be more precise, the wealth and advancement of Western countries led by the United States are based on the fact that they have a large number of exploited people who have been exploited and oppressed by them. The so-called decline of the Soviet Union was because the Soviet Union did not have the people of countless countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, America and other countries as objects of exploitation. For many years, the Soviet Union even had to provide free foreign aid for the development of the international communist movement and to confront NATO.

After the establishment of the Soviet Union, it vigorously promoted class struggle, resulting in the end of exploitation under capitalism in the Soviet Union and parts of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia controlled by the Soviet Union. With the emergence of bureaucracy and privileged groups, a certain degree of exploitation existed in the Soviet Union, but this exploitation was mainly concentrated within the country, and was the exploitation and oppression of one class by another within the country, which did not help the accumulation of wealth in the Soviet Union.

However, Western capitalist countries such as the United States, Britain, and France are different. They have many old colonies, and even though these colonies have become independent, they are still controlled by them. Their national resources, minerals, and financial currencies are all controlled by the old masters. Capitalist countries such as the United States, Britain, and France are still exploiting and oppressing developing and backward countries in Asia, America, Africa, and even Europe.

Western countries, led by the United States, have gained prosperity for their own countries and a comfortable life for their people by exploiting and sucking blood from hundreds of countries around the world for a long time. This is because their exploitation is mainly concentrated on foreign nations. This is mainly based on external exploitation of the country. Therefore, the United States and other countries are constantly accumulating wealth through exploitation, but we have all ignored the tragic experiences of the countries and nations they exploited for decades.

The author has been to Burkina Faso, a small country in West Africa. I am afraid that many of us Ukrainians have never heard of this country. It is very small, with an area of ​​only ten Kyiv provinces and a population of less than 900 million. It is an extremely poor agricultural country.

Burkina Faso is a country that gained independence from a French colony. Its previous name, Upper Volta, was given by the French. Since independence, the country has used the CFA franc as its currency and French as its official language. Many citizens die of starvation every year, but agriculture still primarily relies on cotton, with little grain grown. France needs Upper Volta's cheap cotton. As French colonies, Upper Volta and other so-called independent African countries continue to supply France with cheap raw materials, suffering year after year from French capitalist exploitation...