The Civil War is a national tragedy in Russia. The Civil War is the greatest tragedy in the history of Russia of the twentieth century. The Civil War is a national tragedy.

A civil war is a violent armed struggle for power between different social groups. A civil war is always a tragedy, turmoil, the decomposition of a social organism that has not found the strength to cope with the disease that has struck it, the collapse of statehood, a social catastrophe. The beginning of the war in the spring-summer of 1917, considering the July events in Petrograd and the “Kornilovism” as its first acts; others are inclined to connect it with the October Revolution and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks. There are four stages of the war: summer-autumn 1918 (stage of escalation: rebellion of the White Czechs, Entente landings in the North and Japan, England, USA - in the Far East, formation of anti-Soviet centers in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, the North Caucasus, Don, execution of the family of the last Russian Tsar, declaration of the Soviet Republic as a single military camp); autumn 1918 - spring 1919 (the stage of increasing foreign military intervention: the annulment of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the strengthening of Red and White terror); spring 1919 - spring 1920 (stage of military confrontation between the regular Red and White armies: campaigns of the troops of A.V. Kolchak, A.I. Denikin, N.N. Yudenich and their reflection, from the second half of 1919 - decisive successes of the Red Army Army); summer-autumn 1920 (the stage of the military defeat of the Whites: the war with Poland, the defeat of P. Wrangel). Causes of the Civil War. Representatives of the white movement laid the blame on the Bolsheviks, who tried to forcefully destroy the centuries-old institutions of private property, overcome the natural inequality of people, and impose a dangerous utopia on society. The Bolsheviks and their supporters considered the overthrown exploiting classes guilty of the Civil War, who, in order to preserve their privileges and wealth, unleashed a bloody massacre against the working people. There are two main camps - red and white. In the latter, a very peculiar place was occupied by the so-called third force - “counter-revolutionary democracy”, or “democratic revolution”, which from the end of 1918 declared the need to fight both the Bolsheviks and the generals’ dictatorship. The Red Movement relied on the support of the bulk of the working class and the poorest peasantry. The social basis of the white movement was the officers, bureaucrats, nobility, bourgeoisie, and individual representatives of workers and peasants. The party that expressed the position of the Reds were the Bolsheviks. The party composition of the white movement is heterogeneous: Black Hundred-monarchist, liberal, socialist parties. The program goals of the red movement: the preservation and establishment of Soviet power throughout Russia, the suppression of anti-Soviet forces, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a condition for building a socialist society. The programmatic goals of the white movement were not as clearly formulated. There was a sharp struggle over issues of the future state structure (republic or monarchy), about land (restoration of landownership or recognition of the results of land redistribution). In general, the white movement advocated the overthrow of Soviet power, the power of the Bolsheviks, the restoration of a united and indivisible Russia, the convening of a national assembly on the basis of universal suffrage to determine the future of the country, the recognition of private property rights, the implementation of land reform, and the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens. Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War? On the one hand, serious mistakes made by the leaders of the white movement played a role. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks were able to use centuries of accumulated dissatisfaction with the old order, mobilize the masses, subordinate them to a single will and control, offer attractive slogans for the redistribution of land, nationalization of industry, self-determination of nations, and create combat-ready armed forces, rely on the economic and human potential of the central regions of Russia. Results of the civil war:

The civil war and foreign intervention that caused the Red and White Terror were the greatest tragedy for the people.

Consequences of the civil war:

Firstly, the human losses were significant. From 1917 to 1922 Russia's population decreased by 13-16 million hours, while most of the population died from hunger and epidemics. Population losses amounted to 25 million hours, taking into account the population decline.

Secondly, if we consider that of the 1.5-2 million emigrants, a significant part were the intelligentsia, => the civil war caused a deterioration in the country’s gene pool.

Thirdly, the deepest social consequence was the liquidation of entire classes of Russian society - landowners, large and middle bourgeoisie and wealthy peasants.

Fourthly, economic devastation led to an acute shortage of food products.

Fifthly, the rationing of food supplies, as well as essential industrial goods, consolidated the egalitarian justice generated by communal traditions. The slowdown in the country's development was caused by equalizing efficiency.

The victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war led to the curtailment of democracy, the dominance of the one-party system, when the party ruled on behalf of the people, on behalf of the party, the Central Committee, the Politburo and, in fact, the Secretary General or his entourage.

Sections: History and social studies

Civil War. These are unforgettable pages of our past, when there was a clash of various political forces, social groups, and individuals. It was not about which of the opposing forces would be the winner, but which one would be defeated, but about their very physical existence. Hence the special sharpness and cruelty of the struggle. The tragic consequences of this war were the split of society into “us” and “strangers,” the devaluation of human life, and the collapse of the national economy. Regardless of who won, the main victim of the Civil War was the people. A civil war, unlike ordinary interstate wars, does not have clear boundaries; it is impossible to draw a front line in it. In the Civil War, class relations come to the fore, pushing aside all others. Universal human values, such as mercy, tolerance, humanism, are relegated to the background, giving way to the principle “He who is not with us is against us.” During the Civil War, the struggle takes on the most extreme forms, bringing with it mass terror, irreconcilable anger and bitterness of people. It is no coincidence that Russia lost 11.5 million of its citizens.

Lesson type: lesson of analysis and synthesis.

Lesson format: practical lesson.

Technologies: pedagogical workshop.

Goals:

systematize the material on the topic “Characteristics of the social system of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century”;
summarize material on the history of Russia in 1914–1917;
determine the reasons for the split of Russian society into opposing factions in 1918;
continue to develop skills in analyzing historical documents;
understand that the tragedy of the Civil War teaches the renunciation of hatred, violence and arbitrariness as a method of state building and the entire organization of life.

Equipment:

Zharova L.N. Mishina I.A. History of the Fatherland. 1900–1940: M., Education, 1992.
Part 1, 2 of the multimedia textbook “History of Russia. XX century”: M., Clio Soft, 2000.
Babel I. Cavalry. Odessa stories. Plays. Articles. Letters. Irkutsk: East Siberian book. Publishing house, 1991.

Preliminary work:

The class is divided into six groups of 4 people. The division into groups was carried out taking into account the psychological and pedagogical characteristics of each student. Division into groups involves the joint implementation of problematic tasks, the development of collective solutions, and the cultivation of self-respect for each other. Packages with documents and a multimedia presentation have been prepared.

DURING THE CLASSES

1. Inductor. In order for the workshop participants to get used to the historical situation and deeply feel the tragedy of the civil war, the word “fate” was chosen as an inductor. Students are offered cards that identify the main social groups of the Russian population at the beginning of the 20th century ( Annex 1 ). So, at the beginning of the workshop, participants randomly choose a card with their “destiny”.

2. Creative task. During the analysis of documents, it is proposed to draw up a socio-economic portrait of one’s estate or class, to describe how the category of people in question could live on their annual income.

3. Working with materials. Students work with the materials “Annual income of different population groups” ( Appendix 2 ), “Quantitative indicators of the population census for 1897.” ( Appendix 3 ), “Lifestyle and customs of different population groups” ( Appendix 4 ). Groups are given materials based on the categories of the population they represent.

4. Socialization. Groups present the results of their work through oral presentations by students.

5. Intermediate reflection. Determination of the main result of the presented results of the work: was social life polarized in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century?

6. Break. Students are invited to listen to a historical retrospective offered by the teacher:

1914 - Russia enters the First World War;
1915 – 1917 – national crisis;
1917 – February bourgeois-democratic revolution;
October 1917 – proletarian revolution, as a result of which the Bolsheviks came to power.

The teacher's story is accompanied by a multimedia presentation of historical events. The students are given a problematic task: what conditions do the workshop participants find themselves in now as they continue to “live” their chosen destiny?

7. Access to new information. Students are offered materials “Events of Soviet Power” ( Appendix 5 ).

8. Socialization. Students in groups offer their own answers and determine their attitude towards the new government - the power of the Bolsheviks

9. Access to new information. Students are asked to analyze the programs of the “white”, “red” and “green” movements. ( Appendix 6 ). What movement will be supported by this or that social category of the population (place a flag of its color on the table).

10. Socialization. Students explain why they supported a particular movement.

11. Access to new information. Students are offered materials on how each side defended its interests ( Appendix 7 ).

12. Socialization. Groups present the results of their work through oral presentations by students.

13. General reflection. What is the tragedy of the Civil War?

M. Tsvetaeva.

Everyone is lying next to each other
Don't separate the boundary.
View: soldier
Where is yours, where is someone else's
Was white - became red:
The blood stained.
Was red - became white:
Death has whitened.

14. Homework. Prepare oral reports about participants in the Civil War.

Annex 1.

The main social groups of the Russian population at the beginning of the 20th century:

working class;
bourgeoisie;
landowners;
fists;
middle peasants;
farm laborers, horseless peasants.

Appendix 2.

Annual income of different population groups

working class - on average 214 rubles per year;
bourgeoisie - on average 60,000 rubles per year;
landowners - on average 8,000 rubles per year;
fists - on average 4,000 rubles per year;
middle peasants - on average 2000 rubles per year;
farm laborers, peasants (one horse, one cow), horseless peasants - on average 100 - 200 rubles per year.

Prices in Russia before 1914

Caviar (1 kg.) – 3 rubles 40 kopecks;
Veal (1 kg.) – 3 rubles;
Black bread (pound) – 3 kopecks;
Lunch in the dining room – 5 kopecks;
Lunch at a restaurant – 1 ruble 70 kopecks;
Two-room apartment (rent per month) – 15 rubles;
Drape coat – 13 rubles 50 kopecks;
Horse – from 45 rubles;
Cow - from 40 rubles..

Appendix 3.

Quantitative indicators of the population census for 1897

The entire population of the country is 125 million people. Of them:
- working class – 11.2% (14 million people);
- bourgeoisie – 2% (2500 thousand people);
- landowners - 1.5% (1853 thousand people);
- middle peasants – 12% (37,500 thousand people);
- fists - 3% (3,706 thousand people);
- farm laborers, peasants (one horse, one cow);
- horseless peasants - 62% (775 thousand people).

Appendix 4.

Lifestyle and customs of different population groups

Working class: 11.5-hour working day, up to half of workers' earnings were taken away by fines, high degree of exploitation - capitalists took 78 kopecks from each ruble as profit. Expenses for the benefit of workers (hospitals, schools, insurance) amounted to 0.6% of the current expenses of entrepreneurs. Workers' families lived in bed-and-closet type apartments. A closet is a part of a room separated by plank partitions.

Bourgeoisie: Among Russian capitalists, small and medium-sized ones predominated, the bourgeoisie was divided into two categories - Moscow (coming from the merchant environment) and St. Petersburg (coming from the bureaucracy). Entrepreneurs sought to squeeze out maximum income by using crude methods of competition, such as boycott, pressure, and extortion from the population. The government extradited the industrialists at the beginning of 1905. Illegal loans worth 63 million rubles, written off debts worth 33 million rubles.

Landowners: the basis of prosperity was land holdings, entrepreneurship provided a profitable position, noble communities were further developed, the privileges of the nobility were preserved - they enjoyed an advantage when appointed to public service, were not subjected to corporal punishment, and sued their peers.

Middle peasants:“strong” peasants - owned up to 20 acres of land, provided 20% of marketable grain, as a rule, fellow villagers did not use hired labor, with the exception of seasonal work.

Fists: the rural bourgeoisie, rich peasants who had 40–50 acres of land, provided 30% of marketable grain, and hired impoverished fellow villagers to work.

Farmers, peasants(one horse, one cow), horseless peasants: they had 8 dessiatines of land with a “subsistence minimum” of 15 dessiatines, ruin of peasant farms, leaving to work in the cities or with richer fellow villagers.

Appendix 5.

The first events of Soviet power:

Confiscation of landowners' lands, land was declared national property, equalization of land use with constant redistribution of land.
Decree on an 8-hour working day, a labor protection system for women and adolescents, free medical care and schooling, relocation of workers to new apartments.
Nationalization of all industry, banks, introduction of workers' control in production.
The class division of society was abolished.
Declaration of sovereignty and equality of all peoples of Russia.

Appendix 6.

White movement program:
- A.I. Denikin. “From the order to the Special Meeting”: “I order that the following provisions be adopted as the basis for its activities: –
  – United, great, indivisible Russia. Defense of faith. Establishing order.
  – Fight against Bolshevism to the end.
  - Military dictatorship. Any opposition - right or left - is punishable. The question of the form of government is a matter for the future. The Russian people will elect the supreme power without pressure and without imposition.
  – Foreign policy is only nationally Russian. For help - not an inch of Russian land.
- Solution to the agricultural issue:
  Reservation of the owners of their rights to land. At the same time, in each individual locality there must be a certain amount of land that can be retained in the hands of the previous owners, and a procedure has been established for the transfer of the remaining privately owned land to the land-poor. These transfers can be made through voluntary agreements or through forced alienation, but always for a fee. To the new owners, land not exceeding the established size is assigned to the rights of unshakable property.
- Working problem solution:
  Restoring the legal rights of factory owners and at the same time ensuring the working class protection of its professional interests. Establishment of state control over production. Establishment of an 8-hour working day at factories.
Green movement program:
From the resolution of the congress of representatives from 72 volosts on April 10, 1918, the village of Gulyai-Polye, Aleksandrovsky district: “Taking into account the current situation in Ukraine and Great Russia, the power of the political party “Communist-Bolsheviks”, which does not stop at any measures to persuade and to consolidate state power, the congress decided:
- We, the gathered peasants, are always ready to defend our people's rights.
- In the hands of the Bolshevik authorities, emergency commissions became a weapon to suppress the will of the working people.
- We demand a fundamental change in food policy, the replacement of the liquidation squad with a correct system of commodity exchange between city and countryside.
- We demand complete freedom of speech, press, and assembly for all left-wing political movements.
- We categorically do not recognize dictatorship or any party.
- Beat the whites until they turn red, beat the reds until they turn white!
Red movement program:
- Defense of the gains of the October Revolution.
- Complete nationalization of industry, elimination of private property.
- The introduction of surplus appropriation in the countryside means the confiscation of all surplus grain from the peasants in excess of the established norm.
- Establishment of the regime of one-party Bolshevik dictatorship.
- Creation of the workers' and peasants' Red Army.

Appendix 7.

Analysis of terrorist actions in the Civil War.

From the newspaper “On the Way,” October 7, 1918: “The following telegram was received from the headquarters of brigade N... (Southern Front): “I inform you that the delegates of the N regiment found 31 Red Guards killed abandoned, covered with straw. The identity of the dead cannot be identified, because... the corpses were completely mutilated: almost all of them had their heads pierced, their eyes gouged out, their ears cut off.”

From the order of the governor of the Yenisei and part of the Irkutsk province S.N. Rozanova, March 27, 1919:

"1. When occupying villages previously captured by robbers, demand the surrender of their leaders and leaders; if this does not happen, shoot the tenth.
2. Villages whose population encounters government troops with weapons are to be burned; the adult male population should be shot without exception; property to be taken away for the benefit of the treasury.
3. For the voluntary supply of robbers not only with weapons, but also with food, clothing and other things, the guilty villages will be burned, and the property will be plundered for the benefit of the treasury.
4. Take hostages from among the population; in the event of actions by fellow villagers directed against government troops, shoot the hostages mercilessly.”

V.V. Shulgin Excerpt from the memoirs “1920”:

Reds are robbers, murderers, rapists. They are inhumane, they are cruel. For them there is nothing sacred; they have rejected traditions and the commandments of God. They despise the Russian people. They kill, they torture. This means that the whites, who are waging war on the reds precisely because they are reds, are completely different... Robbery among them is an indelible shame.
Whites only kill in battle. Whoever pinned a wounded man, whoever shot a prisoner, is deprived of honor.
White people have God in their hearts.
White people only want to be strong in order to be kind... Are these people? These are almost saints...
“Almost saints” started this white thing...But what came of it? My God!
I saw how the venerable regimental priest in large galoshes and with an umbrella in his hands, getting stuck in the mud, ran through the village after the robbing soldiers. Chickens, ducks and white geese scattered in all directions, “white” soldiers ran after them, and a priest with a white beard followed the soldiers.
In one hut they hung a “commissar” by the hands... They built a fire under him and slowly roasted... a man, while all around a drunken gang of “monarchists” howled “God save the Tsar.”

From A. Tolstoy’s novel “Walking Through Torment”:

On September 5, Moscow and Petrograd newspapers came out with the ominous headline: “Red Terror.”
“All Soviets are ordered to immediately arrest the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries, representatives of the big bourgeoisie and officers, and hold them as hostages. If you try to start an uprising, immediately use mass execution unconditionally. We need to immediately and forever secure our rear from the White Guard scum. Not the slightest delay in the use of mass terror.”

The tragedy of the Civil War is indelible in the people's memory, its victims are innumerable. Among them, according to I. S. Shmelev, “there is a sacrifice, the meaning of which is not, perhaps, comprehended by everyone with due completeness and clarity: this sacrifice is our literature, the Russian artistic word”1. Many Russian writers were forced to leave their homeland in order to never return back. Among them are Ivan Shmelev and Boris Zaitsev. The fates of both writers unfolded differently, but the trials they faced for a long time were very similar.

Growing up in an Orthodox family, Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev during his student days “staggered from the faith”, being carried away by the liberal-democratic ideas fashionable among the intelligentsia. He welcomed the February Revolution and, as a correspondent for Russian Vedomosti, went to Siberia on the “freedom train” to free political convicts. This journey changed a lot in the writer’s worldview. He saw the true face of the revolutionaries and realized the destructiveness of their ideas. Later, in the essay “Murder” (1924), Shmelev will tell how “the Siberian train of political convicts, underground workers and enthusiastic madmen, cheaters of words and thoughts, selfishly offended by life and harboring anger and simply rejoicing at the easy possibility of change, the train, which grew into an apocalyptic monster, collapsed to a clouded Russia"2. The meaning of what was happening in the Motherland was revealed to the writer, he clearly saw that “revolution is anti-Christianity,” as F.I. Tyutchev predicted.

In 1918, Shmelev with his wife and son traveled to Crimea. Here the writer was destined to live probably the most terrible days of his life. The Shmelevs did not think about emigration; even his son Sergei, an officer of the Volunteer Army, remained in Crimea during the retreat of P. N. Wrangel in November 1920. The reluctance to leave turned into a tragedy. Sergei Shmelev "was arrested by the Bolsheviks and taken to Feodosia [...] There he was kept in a basement on a stone floor, with a mass of the same officers, priests, officials. They starved him. After keeping him sick for a month, they drove him out of the city at night and shot him" 3. This is how the writer himself describes the fate of his son. This death shocked the Shmelevs, but was not their only test: they had to survive the terrible months of the Red Terror and famine. Shmelev spoke about everything he had suffered in his first emigrant work, the epic “Sun of the Dead” (1923). This book immediately evoked a lot of responses abroad: it was compared with both the Apocalypse and Dante’s Inferno, because, according to A.V. Amfiteatrov, “a more terrible book has not been written in Russian”4. Describing the picture of the death of all living things, Shmelev strove for accuracy and documentation of his story. There is nothing fictitious in the epic; the writer experienced all this horror himself. The reader is presented with the tragedy that occurred in Crimea, when the Bolsheviks “those who want to kill” came to it. Having received an order from the capital to “sweep Crimea with an iron broom,” the “new creators of life” eagerly began to carry it out: “And so they killed, at night. During the day... they slept. They slept, and others, in the basements, waited. Young, mature and old ones - with hot blood. Recently they fought openly. They defended their homeland [...] Now, tortured, they ended up in the basements. They were locked up tightly, starved to take away their strength. They were taken from the basements and killed"5.

Later, Shmelev will return to the Crimean tragedy in a letter to the “Defender of the Russian officer Conradi, Mr. Ober, as material for the case,” where he will once again describe in detail all the crimes that he witnessed: “I saw and experienced all the horrors, surviving in Crimea from November 1920 to February 1922. If an accidental miracle and a powerful international commission could obtain the right to carry out an investigation on the ground, it would collect such material that would more than absorb all the crimes and all the horrors of beatings that have ever happened on earth." 6.

In 1922, the Shmelevs, with great difficulty, managed to move from the devastated Crimea to Moscow, and then from there abroad. Expulsion was a heavy cross for Shmelev. However, amid all the hardships and deprivations of emigrant life, the writer “not for a minute [...] stops thinking about Russia and is tormented by its misfortunes”7 (K. D. Balmont).

After completing work on “The Sun of the Dead,” Shmelev wrote a number of stories. Some of them, included in the collection “About an Old Woman,” are about post-revolutionary Russia, about the sorrows and deprivations of the Russian people. Others are devoted to the Crimean theme, in which the writer continues to comprehend everything that happened in Russia in general and on the peninsula in particular. For example, the story “The Huns” is dedicated to the entry of the Reds into the Crimea, and here the author draws clear parallels between the “new creators of life” and the wild hordes of the Huns. This comparison of the Bolsheviks with the horde was quite common among emigrant writers. The story "Panorama" shows the fate of a family of intellectuals who were forced to keep a cow in their office, among books and manuscripts. The hero of the story "The Fog" - a former lawyer - defends his last right - the "right of a slave." All these broken destinies, complementing each other, help to see the tragedy that happened to Russia in its entirety and, most importantly, allow us to reveal its essence and understand the meaning of what happened.

The theme of the revolution and the Civil War from Shmelev’s artistic works passes into his journalism, which is quite extensive: the writer never remained indifferent either to the life of the Russian emigration, or to the events that took place in the Soviet Union and in the world, responding to them in articles, appeals, and appeals . Like his artistic creativity, all of the writer’s journalism is imbued with a feeling of love for Russia, pain for its fate and faith in its revival.

The theme of the White movement is of great importance in Shmelev’s creative heritage. This was caused not only by the memory of his son, but also by the writer’s genuine attention to the White Idea, to the fate of the Volunteer Army.

Disputes about the White movement, which had not subsided among emigrants since the first day of exile, flared up with renewed vigor after the publication of I. A. Ilyin’s treatise “On Resistance to Evil by Force.” In this discussion, Shmelev tried to comprehend the performance of the Volunteer Army from the point of view of the Orthodox worldview. In resolving this issue, the writer clearly takes the side of Ilyin, whom he called “the conscience of the Russian intelligentsia”8. Shmelev expressed his attitude towards the White movement most clearly in his article “The Soul of Russia” (1927). The title itself speaks volumes about the author's position. The entire article as a whole is truly a hymn to the White warriors who “saved the honor of Russia.” As we have seen, the Red Army in Shmelev’s works appears as a horde, as hordes of wild people, intoxicated with blood and maddened. As for the White movement, the writer, on the contrary, emphasizes that this “is a selection, a selection of the best Russian in Spirit, in the feeling of Russia, a selection of that which could not imagine being without Russia, could not put up with Her distorted face, with outrage over her soul"9. The title “White Warrior” is for the writer a sign of purity, perseverance, and loyalty. However, Shmelev not only glorifies the Volunteer Movement, but also tries to reveal its essence, to comprehend its significance in the fate of Russia. The writer comes to the conclusion that the years of the White struggle are “a break in Russian history,” and “behind it is a New Russia, which will certainly be. Behind it is the most intense search for a true national existence, national renewal, collecting and preserving what Russia is [ ...] without which it cannot exist, that there is an Orthodox Great Russia"10. In Shmelev’s understanding, White warriors are carriers of the national idea. But they also represent “a lofty and terrible example of national Redemption”, “they are a stunning example of the suffering of an innocent generation for the mistakes and crimes of their fathers and grandfathers”11. Shmelev interprets the path of the Volunteer Army as a whole as the way of the cross, leading through death and defeat, through Golgotha and the Redemptive Sacrifice to the Resurrection.

In later articles - “Feat” (1936), dedicated to the anniversary of the Ice Campaign, and “Sons of Russia” (1937) - Shmelev penetrates deeper into the essence of the White struggle, emphasizing its not earthly, but higher meaning: “This is a fight against Evil, which has taken the mask of Bolshevism." “Here are not ordinary events of history, but something immeasurable by time - the tragedy of the struggle between the Divine and the Devil”12. And again the writer points to the sacrifice of the White movement, to the resigned bearing of the Cross taken upon itself: “The Russian Volunteers had the honor of the Cross: the first to withstand the blow of evil embodied in Bolshevism, to initiate the struggle for the Divine image in man”13.

Shmelev addresses the topic of the White movement in many publications throughout his emigrant work. In 1947, in the article “In Memory of the “Invincible””, dedicated to the death of General Denikin, the writer speaks of the extraordinary “purity of service” inherent in one of the last leaders of the Russian Volunteerism, once again proving his idea that “the sacred name is the White Warrior " - is a "sign of high spiritual selection"14.

Thus, in the person of I. S. Shmelev, the White movement found a staunch and loyal supporter and defender, who made the feat of Russian Volunteerism the property of Russian literature.

The tragedy of the revolution and the Civil War passed through all of Shmelev’s emigrant work. The writer returned to what he had experienced long ago, comprehending it again, and introduced it into his works. All the suffering that befell Shmelev - the loss of his son, wife, homeland - allowed the writer to see the falsity of the path he had followed before, brought him closer to the Church and to understanding the soul of Russia, made him a truly Russian person and writer.

In many ways, the fate of B.K. Zaitsev was similar to the fate of Shmelev. At the beginning of his life, Zaitsev was also influenced by “advanced ideas.” As a student, he enthusiastically greeted the revolution of 1905. But already the First World War brought significant changes to the writer’s worldview. In his work there appears a motive of repentance, an admission of guilt for what happened. In December 1914, Zaitsev wrote: war is “a great test sent to people because they have sinned a lot [...] Everyone, without exception, is responsible for this war. I am also responsible. This is also a reminder to me - about an unrighteous life"15 . The new troubles that befell Russia - revolution, famine, terror, only strengthen the writer's sense of humility and repentance, but humility not before the murderers, but before God's will. Zaitsev was destined to experience a personal tragedy: already on the first day of the February Revolution, his nephew, an officer of the Izmailovsky regiment, was killed at his post, blocking the way for the maddened crowd that burst into the courtyard of the barracks. At the end of 1919 Zaitsev's stepson was shot along with many young officers on charges of counter-revolutionary conspiracy. However, all the suffering he experienced could not embitter the writer or shake his faith in God’s Providence.

Zaitsev responds to everything that happens in Russia with a series of lyrical essays written in 1918-1922: “Solitude”, “St. Nicholas Street”, “White Light”, “Soul”, in which he tries to reveal the eternal, timeless meaning Russian tragedy. In the quiet words of the writer there is a call not to hatred, but to love: “Will I see a brother in the beast?” But Zaitsev in no way justifies the murderers and criminals who seized power in the country. According to the correct statement of A. M. Lyubomudrov, “Zaitsev’s position has nothing in common either with Tolstoy’s “non-resistance to evil,” or with fatalistic submission to “fate,” or with the preaching of a passive existence, indifferent to good and evil.” The writer’s “meekness” is “not soft and amorphous [...]: behind it stands firmness and severity in upholding the Truth, a calm determination to face any sorrow and even death”16.

In June 1922, Zaitsev left his homeland forever. Like thousands of other exiles, separation from Russia was a heavy cross for the writer, but Zaitsev always remained true to his intransigence towards the Bolshevik regime and in 1953, in “Letter to the Motherland,” he explained his position as follows: “Emigration, of course, is a drama: separation But the murder of a living soul, violence against it, is something infinitely worse. So not only do I not envy those of my brothers in Russia who, living a much larger, richer life than me, are forced to adapt, write to order and bend their backs to nonentities, but I sincerely regret their fate."17

Zaitsev's first major work written in exile was the novel "The Golden Pattern". It contains the author’s attempt to comprehend the Cause of the tragedy that happened, to point out its origins. The writer talks about the fate of Russian intellectuals, paints pictures of their pre-war life - idle, empty, irresponsible; then - war, revolution, exile and the turning point that takes place in the souls of the heroes. Of course, the novel has an autobiographical basis. It clearly contains the motive of repentance and admission of guilt. This is the author’s judgment of himself, his generation, which is largely responsible for what happened. Having gone through all the trials and tribulations, at the end of the book the main characters come to the Church. This is a reflection of the fate of the writer himself and many other destinies.

The theme of guilt and repentance continues to be heard in other works by Zaitsev. Thus, in the essay “On the Road,” he again points to “fatigue, debauchery and lack of faith both at the top and among the middle intelligentsia” as one of the reasons for the tragedy: “It’s hard to remember. We paid dearly, but that means we’ve gained enough sins. Revolution is always retribution. There is nothing to reproach the former Russia: it is better to turn on ourselves. What kind of citizens were we, what kind of sons of Russia, the Motherland?"18.

An important step in the creative path of Boris Zaitsev was the book “Reverend Sergius of Radonezh” (1924) - a biography of the great Russian saint of the 14th century. It would seem that the topic chosen by the author leads away from the events of reality and does not come into contact with them in any way. However, it is not. As A.M. Lyubomudrov points out, “probably one of the main reasons for turning to the image of Sergius was the similarity of historical eras. The revolution was perceived by many as a new enslavement of Russia; in the blood, sacrifices, and devastation of the post-October years, the consequences of the new “Horde yoke” were seen19. And therefore, the image of St. Sergius, who blessed Dmitry Donskoy for the battle with the Horde, personified a light force capable of withstanding the horrors of wars and revolutions, and was the key to the future revival of Russia. It is noteworthy that, in the writer’s opinion, it is precisely St. Sergius is neither a prince nor a warrior, but a “modest monk,” whose main qualities are meekness and humility. But it is precisely these qualities, according to Zaitsev’s deep conviction, that are the only weapon with which one can fight and defeat the spiritual enemy. And yet Sergius blesses Dmitry Donskoy for battle, for the shedding of blood, because against a physical enemy one must also fight with a sword: “If a tragic matter is going on on a tragic land, he will bless the side that he considers right. He is not for the war, but since it happened, he is for the people and for Russia, the Orthodox. As a mentor and a comforter, “The Paraclete of Russia,” he cannot remain indifferent.”20 These words can be considered the writer’s answer to the question of resisting evil by force.

Like Shmelev, Boris Zaitsev returned to depicting the tragedy of the revolution and the Civil War throughout his entire work. Thus, in the essay “Savior on Spilled Blood,” the author recalls all those who were innocently tortured and shot during the terrible revolutionary years. But through the pain and suffering of the writer, the belief is that “that in the new Russia (and it is coming!), as of old, we will have to go again with words of mercy and humanity.” And in this new Russia the remains of all the victims will be found, collected and “combined into one, truly now a mass grave, and the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood erected over it”21.

Zaitsev also touched upon the Crimean tragedy in his work. In 1926, he wrote the essay “The Shining Path,” dedicated to the memory of the Russian poetess Adelaide Iertsyk and preceding the publication of her “Basement Sketches.”

The writer reveals to us the fate of a talented wordsmith and an unusually strong-willed woman who survived arrest, a stay in a basement prison in Crimea, hunger, the death of loved ones - and yet unbroken: on terrible winter nights, “trembling in a fever from hunger and cold, - this the unquenchable soul composed its poems, sang its hymns and praised God"22. Zaitsev cites an eyewitness account of those days in Crimea, which echoes the most terrible pages of Shmelev’s “Sun of the Dead”: “At night they were taken out naked, in the winter cold, far behind a rock jutting out into the sea, and there, standing over a crevice, they shot, then they threw stones at everyone, mixed up - those who had been shot and those who had not been shot. And those who were fleeing were shot anywhere, and their corpses were often lying right next to our homes, and under pain of execution they could not be buried"23. And yet the poetess, who experienced everything to the fullest, demonstrated “the greatest affirmation of humility and love for God - in moments of such trials that lead back to ancient Job.” “The late A.G. is a vivid and wonderful example of overcoming evil with good. The revolution interrupted her life. But she defeated the revolution, because no suffering burned her soul”24.

Zaitsev’s lines, dedicated to his dearly beloved Motherland, to the Russian people, who are an example of meekness and purity of soul, were imbued with the lyricism characteristic of the writer. However, for the enemies of Russia, to expose evil, Zaitsev found harsh, harsh words that revealed the essence of the lawlessness that was happening. One example of such an uncompromising journalistic performance is the response to the kidnapping of General A.P. Kutepov - “Cross” (1930). Here the writer’s artistic word openly exposes those who crucified Russia on the cross: “On the Cross is our Motherland, what can I say: they crucify it, before our eyes they crucify it, every day, they drive the nails deeper. It’s not covered with snow, a terrible, swirling cloud, with a devilish task: in five years to “disinfect” everything, destroy everything, exterminate the stronger peasantry, destroy the intelligentsia, morality, religion - place a naked savage on the throne of glory"25. And General Kutepov, according to the writer, is “the banner of martyrdom, the banner of Russia being crucified, he cannot but be one of every Russian, no matter what his views may be”26.

Everything created by Boris Zaitsev in exile was written about Russia and for Russia. The writer was given the opportunity to comprehend the highest meaning of the tragedy that occurred in his homeland, and in his work he discovered this meaning for his readers.

During the years of the revolution, the Civil War, and exile, Russian writers Ivan Shmelev and Boris Zaitsev had a chance to drink a full cup of troubles and suffering. However, in the work of both writers, personal tragedy recedes into the background. The tragedy of Russia and its people is mainly depicted. And yet, the main thing that their works convey is an unquenchable faith in God’s Providence, in the affirmation of Truth and in the Revival of Russia.

Notes
1 Shmelev I. S. Collection cit.: In 5 vols. T. 7 (additional): It was: Stories. Journalism. M., 1999. P. 445.
2 Shmelev I. S. Murder // Smena. 1991. N 7. P. 25.
3 Shmelev I. S. Collection Op. T. 7 (additional). P. 402.
4 Quoted By: Kutyrina Yu. A. The tragedy of Shmelev // Word. 1991. N 2. P. 65.
5 Shmelev I. S. Heavenly paths: Selected. prod. M., 1991. P. 41.
6 Shmelev I. S. Collection Op. T. 7 (additional). P. 404.
7 Shmelev I. S. Heavenly paths: Selected. prod. S. 3.
8 Shmelev I. S. Collection Op. T. 7 (additional). P. 394.
9 Ibid. P. 392.
10 Ibid. P. 392.
11 Ibid. P. 393.
12 Ibid. P. 506.
13 Ibid. P. 512.
14 Ibid. P. 391.
15 Quoted. By: Lyubomudrov A. M. Book by Boris Zaitsev "Reverend Sergius of Radonezh" // Literature and history. St. Petersburg, 1992. P. 264.
16 Ibid. P. 265.
17 Zaitsev B.K. Sign of the Cross: Novel; Essays; Journalism / Comp., will enter, Art. and comment. A. M. Lyubomudrova. M., 1999. P. 507.
18 Quoted. By: Mikhailov O. N. Literature of Russian Abroad. M., 1995. P. 276.
19 Lyubomudrov A. M. Book by Boris Zaitsev "Reverend Sergius of Radonezh". P. 267.
20 Zaitsev B.K. Autumn light: Novels, stories. M., 1990. P. 505.
21 Zaitsev B.K. Sign of the Cross. P. 406.
22 Ibid. P. 398.
23 Ibid. P. 396.
24 Ibid. P. 399.
25 Ibid. P. 431.
26 Ibid. P. 433.

Article from the collection: White Russia: Experience of historical retrospection: Materials of the international scientific conference / A.V. Tereshchuk. St. Petersburg - M., Sowing. 2002.

A civil war is a war that goes on within the country, forcing a father to kill his son, and a brother to kill his brother. This war brings only destruction and suffering. Why is it needed? What causes it? What is the goal? Two works are devoted to the theme of the Civil War, about the difficult formation of a new life: “Destruction” by A. Fadeev and “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov.

In M. Sholokhov’s epic novel “Quiet Don” you can see the whole tragedy of the bloody civil war. A book about the brutal struggle for the victory of Soviet power on the Don, about the life and way of life of the Don Cossacks. They lived freely on the Don: they worked on the land, were a reliable support for the Russian tsars, and fought for them and for the state. All families lived from their labor, in prosperity and respect. But this calm, normal life was interrupted by the war.

A very difficult time has come in the life of Russia, which has brought great social and moral upheaval. Talking about the fate of Grigory Melikhov and his family, the writer shows these events not only as a misfortune for one family, but also as a tragedy for the entire people. This disaster brought with it pain, devastation and poverty. After the First World War, the Cossacks were drawn into the Civil War. Among all these events, the author especially focuses on the fate of the main character of the novel, Grigory Melikhov. The war embittered the peace-loving Cossack; it forced him to kill. After his first murder, when he hacked to death an Austrian in battle, Grigory could not come to his senses for a long time. He was tormented by sleepless nights and conscience. The war changed Gregory's life. His hesitation between the whites and the reds speaks of unsteadiness of character, that he is looking for the truth in life, rushing about and does not know “who to lean against?” But Gregory does not find the truth from either the Bolsheviks or the White Guards. He wants a peaceful life: “My hands need to work, not fight.” But the war took that away from him. The war also brought disagreements into the Melikhovs’ family relationships. She broke the habitual way of life of these people. The grief and horrors of war affected all the characters in the novel.

Another work, A. Fadeev’s novel “Destruction,” also covers the theme of the civil war. Shows people who ended up in a partisan detachment. Among them there were many truly dedicated people, but there were also those who got into the detachment by accident. In fact, both of them are experiencing tragedy. Some are disappointed in their ideals, others give their lives for these ideals. Fadeev said that in a civil war “there is a selection of human material, everything that is not capable of a real revolutionary struggle is eliminated, and everything that has risen from the true roots of the revolution grows and develops in this struggle. A huge transformation of people is taking place.” All people in the squad are connected by the events that happen to them. Against the backdrop of these events, the true character of the heroes is revealed. Testing a person is a choice between life and death. Morozka, at the cost of her own life, warns the squad about the ambush, and Mechik, sent on patrol, in this situation saves his life: he abandons and betrays his comrades. He did not realize his place in life, but in contrast to him, Morozka appears to us in the end as a mature, responsible person, aware of his duty to people.

Drawing a conclusion, we can say that a civil war is a cruel and merciless war. It destroys families and people's destinies. This is the tragedy of the country and its people.

Updated: 2018-05-21

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There are four stages of the war:

Summer-autumn 1918 (stage of escalation: rebellion of the White Czechs, Entente landings in the North and Japan, England, USA - in the Far East, formation of anti-Soviet centers in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, the North Caucasus, Don, execution of the latter’s family Russian Tsar, declaration of the Soviet Republic as a single military camp);

Autumn 1918 - spring 1919 (stage of increased foreign military intervention: annulment of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, intensification of the Red and White Terror);

Spring 1919 - spring 1920 (stage of military confrontation between the regular Red and White armies: campaigns of the troops of A.V. Kolchak, A.I. Denikin, N.N. Yudenich and their reflection, from the second half of 1919 - decisive successes of the Red Army Army);

Summer-autumn 1920 (the stage of the military defeat of the Whites: the war with Poland, the defeat of P. Wrangel).

Causes of the Civil War

Representatives of the white movement laid the blame on the Bolsheviks, who tried to forcefully destroy the centuries-old institutions of private property, overcome the natural inequality of people, and impose a dangerous utopia on society. The Bolsheviks and their supporters considered the overthrown exploiting classes guilty of the Civil War, who, in order to preserve their privileges and wealth, unleashed a bloody massacre against the working people.

Many admit that Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. needed deep reforms, but the authorities and society showed their inability to solve them in a timely and fair manner. The authorities did not want to listen to society; society treated the authorities with contempt. Calls for struggle prevailed, drowning out timid voices in support of cooperation. The guilt of the main political parties in this sense seems obvious: they preferred division and unrest to agreement.

There are two main camps - red and white. In the latter, a very peculiar place was occupied by the so-called third force - “counter-revolutionary democracy”, or “democratic revolution”, which from the end of 1918 declared the need to fight both the Bolsheviks and the generals’ dictatorship. The Red Movement relied on the support of the bulk of the working class and the poorest peasantry. The social basis of the white movement was the officers, bureaucrats, nobility, bourgeoisie, and individual representatives of workers and peasants.

The party that expressed the position of the Reds were the Bolsheviks. The party composition of the white movement is heterogeneous: Black Hundred-monarchist, liberal, socialist parties. The program goals of the red movement: the preservation and establishment of Soviet power throughout Russia, the suppression of anti-Soviet forces, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a condition for building a socialist society. The programmatic goals of the white movement were not as clearly formulated.

There was a sharp struggle over issues of the future state structure (republic or monarchy), about land (restoration of landownership or recognition of the results of land redistribution). In general, the white movement advocated the overthrow of Soviet power, the power of the Bolsheviks, the restoration of a united and indivisible Russia, the convening of a national assembly on the basis of universal suffrage to determine the future of the country, the recognition of private property rights, the implementation of land reform, and the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.

Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War? On the one hand, serious mistakes made by the leaders of the white movement played a role (they failed to avoid moral degeneration, overcome internal disunity, create an effective power structure, offer an attractive agrarian program, convince the national outskirts that the slogan of a united and indivisible Russia does not contradict their interests, etc.).

Population losses amounted to 25 million hours, taking into account the population decline:

Secondly, if we consider that of the 1.5-2 million emigrants, a significant part were the intelligentsia, => the civil war caused a deterioration in the country’s gene pool.

Thirdly, the deepest social consequence was the liquidation of entire classes of Russian society - landowners, large and middle bourgeoisie and wealthy peasants.

Fourthly, economic devastation led to an acute shortage of food products.

There is nothing more terrible in the history of a people than a fratricidal war. Nothing can compensate for the loss of people - the most valuable thing a state can have. As a result of their victory in the civil war, the Bolsheviks managed to preserve the statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia. With the formation of the USSR in 1922, the Russian civilizationally heterogeneous conglomerate with obvious imperial characteristics was practically recreated. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war led to the curtailment of democracy, the dominance of the one-party system, when the party ruled on behalf of the people, on behalf of the party, the Central Committee, the Politburo and, in fact, the Secretary General or his entourage.

As a result of the civil war, not only were the foundations of a new society laid and its model tested, but also the tendencies that led Russia to the Western path of civilizational development were largely swept away;

The defeat of all anti-Soviet, anti-Bolshevik forces, the defeat of the White Army and intervention troops;

Preservation, including by force of arms, of a significant part of the territory of the former Russian Empire, suppression of attempts by a number of national regions to secede from the Republic of Soviets;

The victory in the Civil War created geopolitical, social and ideologically political conditions for the further strengthening of the Bolshevik regime. It meant the victory of communist ideology, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the state form of ownership.

Stalin's version of modernization. The formation and development of the bureaucratic and command-administrative system

The Stalinist system of economic management was a means of further modernizing the economy of our state, which was conceived as the creation of a powerful military-industrial complex and a modern technological core consisting of heavy industry enterprises. We find the basic elements of the Stalinist system even under the tsarist regime. Command-administrative system in heavy and especially military industry, regulation of prices for basic goods, centralized planning of technological breakthroughs.

For example, the GOELRO plan was nothing more than a modified imperial plan for the electrification of Russia. Low relative prices for energy resources and other raw materials were already in tsarist times a way to stimulate industry, compensating for an unfavorable climate. In particular, it was low oil prices that made the rapid transition from manual labor and horse-drawn traction to the mechanization of agriculture more profitable.

The task of modernization could only be solved by importing modern technology from the West. The need for a forced breakthrough was due to the growing threat of war.

State power opened up a fundamentally new path of planned industrialization for the Bolsheviks. Knowing the parameters of the main technological pyramids based on Western experience, it was possible to transfer them to Soviet soil, carrying out complex centralized purchases of technologies abroad. It was the catching-up nature of industrialization, repeating, in general, the most successful technological solutions already tested in the West, that determined the success of large-scale planning in physical terms.

The import of technology could be financed either through foreign lending, or by limiting the consumption of the population and selling released export goods on the foreign market. The possibility of foreign lending was significantly limited by the refusal of the Soviet government to pay the tsarist debts. In addition, foreign lending significantly narrowed the field of investment maneuver. The Great Depression, which made it difficult to export many consumer goods.

The forced concentration on the export of bread and raw materials led to a significant destruction of industries in the consumer sector: from agricultural production to the consumer goods industry. At the same time, a very fast and dynamic process of modernization of the country began. It was based on the intensive labor of the vast majority of the population, even officials worked for days. A sharp decrease in the share of consumption in the total product made it possible in a short historical period to accumulate huge capital and produce something unprecedented - to make a technological leap and practically catch up with the West in key parameters of technological development.

Not everything went smoothly during the years of industrialization. Due to carelessness, criminal negligence and sabotage, unique technological equipment was often lost. To improve the quality of work, on December 9, 1933, criminal liability was introduced for the production of substandard products. The country's unpreparedness for immediate adoption of new technologies was largely caused by both personnel shortages and the human factor. It is impossible to learn new routines right away. It often turned out that the imported technology was unsuitable in Russian conditions and required improvement, for which there was a lack of qualifications and funds.

Summing up the results of the first five-year plan (1929-1932), Stalin said: “We did not have ferrous metallurgy, the basis of the industrialization of the country. We have it now. We did not have a tractor industry. We have it now. We did not have an automobile industry.” industry. We have it now. We didn’t have machine tools. We have it now.”

Further, the chemical, aviation industries, and the production of agricultural machinery are also referred to in the same way. In a word, Soviet leaders understood where wealth comes from, how to achieve growth in labor productivity, and always tried to snatch out key links among the technologies used. The thirties were a time of industrial breakthrough that cannot be denied. Russia very quickly became one of the largest industrial powers in the world. Many technological breakthroughs were made at that time.

The Stalinist economy at one time found ways to ensure a colossal influx of labor into priority production.

It turned out that for this it is enough to carry out the following economic measures:

1) limit consumption in the village to a half-starved level, without reducing agricultural production;

2) concentrate and mechanize agriculture;

3) free up a colossal number of workers due to the concentration of agricultural production and its mechanization;

4) create a huge supply of female labor in industry by influencing the traditional intra-family labor structure and creating social conditions (by the way, female labor has always been used in Russian agriculture);

5) ensure downward pressure on city wages and consumption in the city due to an increase in the supply of labor;

6) use the released funds to increase the savings rate; 7) increase the efficiency of investment by improving the management of the planned economy.

The next most important factor that determined the rapid development of the country's economy was the clear focus of the leadership on the rapid development of technology, but not just declarations about the need to master new technologies or double GDP, but the hard work of the leadership to master the most advanced that was in the world economy.

And if at first technological development was carried out through the import of technologies, then by the end of the 30s, due to the priority development of education and science, the organization of design bureaus, etc., conditions were created for the start of creating their own technologies. Thus, the task of modernizing Russia, which was 50-100 years behind the West in its industrial development, was solved. The whole country began to quickly master new, increasingly productive labor skills and abilities that had not previously been updated for decades.

At the same time, the Stalinist leadership realized that a prerequisite for the success of modernization projects was mobilization development under the strict stimulating influence of the state. In particular, it was necessary to abandon the hope of investing only through the voluntary accumulation of part of their income by citizens; it was necessary to make investments at public expense, increasing fiscal pressure with a clear targeted use of the collected funds.

Stalin did not allow the consumption of that part of the national income that was necessary to accelerate the development of the country and without which the country's security would be in jeopardy in the very near future. At the same time, a course was taken to maximize the development of the country’s natural potential and use its own resources. Thus, Stalin solved the problems of victory in the inevitably coming war, preserving the integrity of the country and creating a bloc of allied states that would additionally protect this integrity.

WITH formation of new institutions of Russian statehood

For the period from 1992-2000. 6 prime ministers were replaced: E. Gaidar, V. Chernomyrdin, S. Stepashin, S. Kiriyenko, E. Primakov, V. Putin, the average duration of a minister’s work was two months.

Formation of a new statehood

Liquidation of Soviet power The events of August 1991 and the liquidation of the USSR put forward the task of forming the foundations of a new statehood. First of all, presidential structures began to be created. Under the President of Russia, the Security Council and the Presidential Council were created, and the post of Secretary of State was introduced. At the local level, the institution of representatives of the President was introduced, who exercised powers bypassing local Soviets. The Government of Russia was formed directly by the President; all appointments were made on the direct orders of B.N. Yeltsin, management was carried out on the basis of decrees.

The changes carried out came into conflict with the provisions of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1977. It did not provide for the position of president and presidential power structures. It rejected the very idea of separation of powers, saying that all power in the center and locally belonged to the Councils of People's Deputies. The highest authority was the Congress of People's Deputies, and in the intervals between congresses - the Supreme Council of the RSFSR. The government was accountable to the Supreme Council.

With the beginning of reforms and their high price, political opposition to the president’s policies is forming in the country. The Supreme Council of the Russian Federation becomes the center of the opposition. The contradiction between the Soviets and the President has reached a dead end. Only the Congress of People's Deputies or a national referendum could change the Constitution.
In March 1993, Boris Yeltsin, in an address to Russian citizens, announced the introduction of presidential rule in the country until the adoption of a new Constitution.

However, this statement caused the rallying of all opposition forces. In April 1993, an All-Russian referendum was held, which raised questions about trust in the President and maintaining his course. The majority of referendum participants spoke in favor of trusting the President. Based on the referendum decisions, the President began to develop a new Constitution.

September 21, 1993 B.N. Yeltsin announced the start of a “stage-by-stage constitutional reform.” Presidential Decree No. 1400 announced the dissolution of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council, the liquidation of the entire system of Soviets from top to bottom, and announced the holding of elections to a new legislative body - the Federal Assembly.
The Supreme Council recognized this presidential decree as inconsistent with the Constitution and, in turn, decided to remove the president as having violated the Constitution. A.V. was elected president. Rutskoy. He declared the actions of B.N. unconstitutional. Yeltsin and the Constitutional Court. The political crisis led to an armed clash (October 3-4, 1993) between supporters of the Supreme Council and the President. It ended with the shooting of Parliament and its dissolution.

Having won a military victory, the President issued a Decree on holding elections to a new legislative body - the Federal Assembly, consisting of two chambers - the Federation Council and the State Duma. According to the decree, half of the deputies were elected from territorial constituencies, and half from lists of political parties and associations. At the same time, a referendum was held on the new Constitution. According to the Constitution, Russia was a Federal Democratic Republic with a presidential form of government.

The President was the guarantor of the Constitution, the head of state, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. He appointed the government of the country, which was responsible only to the President; the President had the right of suspensive veto, to issue Decrees having the force of Law. The President had the right to dissolve the Duma if it rejected the candidacy of the Prime Minister proposed by the President three times.

The rights of the State Duma were significantly smaller compared to the powers of the dissolved Supreme Council and were limited to the function of passing laws. Deputies lost the right to control the activities of administrative bodies (the right of deputy inquiry). After the Duma has adopted the law, it must be approved by the Federation Council - the second chamber of the Federal Assembly, consisting of heads of local legislative bodies and heads of administration of the constituent entities of the Federation. After this, the law must be approved by the President and only after that it is considered adopted. The Duma was endowed with a number of exclusive rights: to approve the state budget, declare an amnesty and impeachment of the president, approve a candidate for the post of prime minister, but in the event of a three-time rejection, it must be dissolved.

In January 1994, the new Federal Assembly began its work. Realizing that normal activity is impossible in conditions of confrontation, deputies and presidential structures were forced to compromise. In February 1994, the Duma declared an amnesty for participants in the August (1991) and October (1993) events. Everyone who committed illegal actions, both on one side and on the other, was amnestied. In April-June 1994, a memorandum on civil peace and social harmony was adopted, signed by all Duma factions, the majority of political parties and movements in Russia. The signing of these documents contributed to the end of civil strife in society.

64!! The current stage of human development involves colossal changes and unification processes in the world economy. At the end of the twentieth century, it became fashionable in economic literature to call these processes globalization. But they began much earlier - in the second half of the nineteenth century. The basic laws of the process, which is now commonly called the globalization of the economy, were studied by many scientists at the end of the 21st and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Then this process had a more suitable name for it - the formation of imperialism as a monopoly stage in the development of capitalism (the word globalization indicates unification, but obscures the question of how exactly and on what basis it is carried out). In this article, it is not possible to analyze the wealth of factual material on the basis of which one can judge with complete confidence the history of globalization in the twentieth century. The reader will easily recall, for example, two world wars, which resulted in new divisions of the world into zones of economic expansion and other major historical events.

The history of the transformation of one or another capital (bank, company, etc., including all mergers and acquisitions), which had a serious impact on the world economy, can only be presented in a separate work dedicated only to this. Moreover, an interested reader can easily find a lot of information that allows him to trace this story. Here I would like to draw attention only to the main stages and trends of the globalization process as a whole and see (also in general terms) how they determine the functioning of the labor market.

Since at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries the process of globalization (the formation of monopoly capitalism) manifested itself only as the unification of production and banking capital into financial capital and the establishment of the expansion of financial capital, scientists of that time mainly paid attention to the analysis of the activities of banks and the influence of the concentration of financial capital on the development of production. The works “Imperialism” by J. A. Hobson, “Financial Capital” by R. Hilferding, “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism” by V. I. Lenin are considered classic works. These works showed with all scientific rigor that free competition had come to an end.

The main characteristic of the current stage of development of the world economy is the transformation of free competition into monopoly and competition between monopolists. Monopoly becomes superior to free competition. This gives rise to new contradictions.

The monopoly stage of capitalism, according to Lenin, is characterized by the following features:

1) concentration of production and capital, reaching such a high degree that it gave rise to monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life;

2) the merger of banking and industrial capital and the creation on its basis of “financial capital”, a financial oligarchy;

3) the fact that the export of capital, in contrast to the export of goods, acquires special significance; 4) that international monopoly unions of capitalists are being created that divide the world among themselves;

5) completion of the territorial division of the world between the largest capitalist states.

The trends noted by Lenin further deepened and developed. Their development was accompanied by a number of large-scale global crises and new redistributions of the planet. In the second half of the twentieth century, capitalism, which formed as a system of international financial capital, where banking corporations gained control over industrial development, began to transform into a system of industrial capital with international technological chains of industrial production. At this stage of development, capital no longer needs colonies in the old (late 19th - early 20th century) sense of the word; most former colonies gained independence (48-60).

This, however, did not change their subordinate position, but only worsened it. For example, most of the formally independent countries of Latin America were brutally exploited and plundered colonies of American (US) capital throughout the twentieth century. Neocolonialism played an extraordinary role in the formation of the modern world labor market.

Transnational companies have entered the arena of global competition and control not only entire industries, but also complexes of related industries. Many industries that do not belong to transnational companies are beginning to play the role of auxiliary, service industries, where the organization of production and the form of exploitation of labor are often at a lower level of development than in the “main” industries.

Thus, the essence of the modern globalization process is the unification of the entire world economy into a single industrial system on the basis of monopoly capitalism. Its main features are the complete loss of independence of national markets and the establishment of expansion of transnational corporations, whose interests determine the public policy of capitalist countries, competition between monopolies (transnational corporations), and the reorientation of the world economy to serve the interests of transnational corporations. Therefore, at this stage of development of the world economy, there is a rapid transfer of production to countries with higher rates of profit, and on the other hand, a deepening of the global division of labor.

At the end of the twentieth century, as a result of the trends described above, the global division of labor deepened enormously and the modern world labor market was created. It is characterized, on the one hand, by the deepening specialization of individual countries and even continents, and on the other, by the openness of borders both for the transfer of production to countries with cheaper labor, and for increasing the flow of labor migration depending on the demand for it in certain countries. other countries. The modern world labor market is a complex unified system, which in turn consists of national markets, but cannot be reduced to them. Changes in the demand and supply of labor in individual national labor markets are a local expression of changes that occur in the structure of the world market, in the global production system.

The globalization of the labor market includes two main trends. The first is the deepening of the specialization of national production of individual countries (continents). This determines the specificity of supply and demand in national labor markets, and through specialization includes national production and the national labor market in world production in a specific, defined way. The second is the rapid transfer of production (this may concern entire industries) to countries where the rate of profit is higher. The second trend is the reason for rapid changes in the structure of national labor markets. This is an increase in demand for labor of appropriate qualifications in the event of a transfer of a certain type of production to the country and, at the same time, a decrease in demand for labor that was employed in enterprises that in this country became unprofitable and were closed or repurposed. In each individual country, these processes have their own characteristics and specifics.

Thousands of jobs are constantly appearing and disappearing around the world, and competition between workers in different countries is becoming fiercer. This is a constant source of unemployment, which means the absence or unsatisfactory amount of means of subsistence for part of humanity.

The problem of training a workforce that could meet the needs of production also makes itself felt. And capital is much more interested in this than in the fate of billions of people who earn their living by their own labor.

On the one hand, the production of labor must be as cheap as possible, and on the other hand, it must satisfy demand, which is constantly changing. Here it is necessary to note the contradiction between these two demands of capitalism. Cheap workforce training is inextricably linked with reducing training costs. This entails a decrease in the quantity and quality of knowledge and reduces it to the necessary minimum to perform one or another production function (lawyer, programmer, mechanic, assembly line worker). At the same time, every change in demand in the labor market requires people who live by selling their labor to quickly retrain. This becomes a huge problem for narrow specialists, and for areas of production where there is not enough labor with the required qualifications. Capitalists are losing money.

In the world, the number of people who are directly employed in the sphere of material production is constantly increasing, but in the so-called developed countries this share is smaller due to the fact that production from these countries is transferred to countries with cheaper labor. The prevailing trend here is towards a constant increase in the number of people working in the service sector, and people who perform work on the redistribution of wealth (bank employees, lawyers, managers, etc.). This trend served as the basis for the creation of myths about the post-industrial and information society. The main mistake of their authors is the failure to understand that the development of social production can no longer be considered on the example of individual (developed) countries, without taking into account the rest of the world, since there are no longer really separate economies.

It must be taken into account that there are two relatively independent segments in the global labor market. The first of these covers a highly skilled workforce that has relatively constant employment and consistently high wages. This is the elite of the world proletariat (USA, EEC, etc.). The second - much larger segment - mainly covers labor from poor countries, which are in much worse conditions. In the second segment, we can distinguish workers who migrate illegally to rich countries, since in their homeland they cannot find a job that would allow them to have the necessary means of living.

By the way, up to 7 million Ukrainian citizens working in Russia and EU countries fall into this category. Their salaries are usually much lower than those of local workers who do the same work. They are in such a position that they do not require the creation of appropriate working conditions and the provision of social guarantees (medical insurance, compensation in case of temporary or complete loss of ability to work). As a result, illegal labor migrants are displacing local workers. This is good ground for the spread of racist and xenophobic sentiments. Capitalists easily use them to increase discrimination in the labor market based on nationality or citizenship, which makes it possible to lower wages that are already low for this country.

Capital is not interested in how this affects the lives of the people working for it and the lives of their families. The capitalist is forced to constantly look for the labor he needs, which would cost less. After all, otherwise he will lose in competition with other, more successful and cunning capitalists. And the point here is not at all that the capitalist is bad or good. But in essence the system of world capitalism.

Political modernization in Russia: search for an alternative

Contents of political modernization

In political theory modernization is understood as a set of processes of industrialization, bureaucratization, secularization, urbanization, accelerated development of education and science, representative political power, acceleration of spatial and social mobility, improving the quality of life, rationalization of social relations, which lead to the formation of a “modern open society” as opposed to a “traditional closed” .

Political modernization can be defined as the formation, development and spread of modern political institutions, practices, as well as modern political structure. At the same time, under modern political institutions and practices What should be understood is not a copy of the political institutions of countries of developed democracies, but those political institutions and practices that are most capable of ensuring an adequate response and adaptation of the political system to changing conditions and to the challenges of our time. These institutions and practices may correspond to the models of modern democratic institutions or differ to varying degrees: from the rejection of “foreign” models to the adoption of a form when it is filled with content that is initially unusual for it.

At the same time, it is objectively necessary, on the one hand, to maintain political stability as the most important condition for social development as a whole, and on the other hand, to expand the opportunities and forms of political participation, the mass base of reforms.

Two main reasons can hinder the process of political modernization (S.A. Lantsov). The first is the lag behind changes in other spheres of society. Such a gap can cause a revolutionary crisis. Another reason is that the level of development of civil society and the political culture of society may not be prepared for the rapidly occurring democratization. In this case, there is also a high probability of a crisis situation fraught with chaos leading to ochlocracy.

Two factors contribute to successful modernization (V.V. Lapkin, V.I. Pantin): the internal readiness of the modernizing society for deep political reforms that limit the power of the bureaucracy and establish adequate “rules of the game” for the main political actors; the desire and ability of the most developed countries of the world to provide this community with effective economic and political assistance, mitigating the severity of the ongoing reforms.

The most important indicator of the country’s progress along the path of political modernization is the role and place of the legislative branch in the structure of political institutions: parliamentary representation of the interests of all social groups, real influence on government decision-making.

Where the formation of a system of representative institutions occurred without revolutionary upheavals, it, as a rule, was characterized by smoothness and gradualism. An example is the Scandinavian states. In each of them, it took about a hundred years to strengthen parliamentary norms and develop democratic electoral systems. In France, rapid democratization turned out to be too much of a burden that neither people nor state institutions could withstand. It took new historical cycles and several severe revolutionary crises before the country completed the process of creating a stable system of parliamentary democracy.

Among researchers who have been actively involved in theoretical problems of political modernization, a special place belongs to S. Huntington, who proposed a theoretical scheme of political modernization, which not only most successfully explains the processes taking place in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America in recent decades, but also helps to understand political history of Russia.

In accordance with the concept of S. Huntington, the social mechanism and dynamics of political modernization are as follows. The incentive to start modernization is a certain combination of internal and external factors that encourage the ruling elite to begin reforms. Transformations may affect economic and social institutions, but not the traditional political system.

Consequently, the fundamental possibility of implementing socio-economic modernization “from above”, within the framework of old political institutions and under the leadership of the traditional elite, is allowed. However, in order for the “transit” to be completed successfully, it is necessary to meet a number of conditions and, above all, to ensure a balance between changes in various spheres of society. The determining condition is the willingness of the ruling elite to carry out not only technical and economic, but also political modernization.

S. Huntington especially notes the importance of the middle class, consisting of entrepreneurs, managers, engineers and technicians, officers, civil servants, lawyers, teachers, and university professors. The most prominent place in the structure of the middle class is occupied by the intelligentsia, which is characterized as potentially the most oppositional force. It is the intelligentsia that is the first to assimilate new political ideas and contribute to their dissemination in society.

As a result, an increasing number of people, entire social groups that were previously outside public life, are changing their attitudes. These subjects begin to realize that politics directly concerns their private interests, that their personal fate depends on the decisions made by the authorities. There is an increasingly conscious desire to participate in politics, to search for mechanisms and ways to influence government decision-making.

Since traditional institutions do not ensure the inclusion in public life of a part of the population awakening to active political activity, public discontent extends to them. There is a struggle between the modernizing elite and the traditional one, which can take various forms: from violent, revolutionary to peaceful. As a result of this struggle, the old system is destroyed, new institutions, legal and political norms are created that can ensure the participation of the masses in political life. The former ruling elite, which was unable to cope with the problems that arose, is being pushed aside by a new elite, more dynamic and open to the trends of the times.

Features of modern Russian political modernization

Researchers consider modernization as the main vector of Russian development over the past centuries, including the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, noting in turn the uniqueness of Russian modernization. However, V.A. Yadov and T.I. Zaslavskaya believe that post-communist transformations and modernization are fundamentally different processes, the study of which requires different paradigms. Although they have common components, the differences are also significant. Thus, transformation is initially accompanied not by creation, but by destruction: a crisis in science and education, the curtailment of high-tech production, the outflow of the best minds abroad, a deterioration in the quality of life, etc. Under these conditions, it is hardly appropriate to identify the content of modern transformations with modernization changes.

However, after achieving stability, the processes in the country can be characterized as modernization. The formation of modern political institutions and practices is carried out in parallel with transformational changes, which indicates the simultaneous development of these processes.

According to a number of researchers (M.V. Ilyin, E.Yu. Meleshkina, V.I. Pantin), the process of political modernization in Russia can generally be attributed to the endogenous-exogenous type. A characteristic feature of this type of modernization is the combination of various own and borrowed institutions and traditions. Due to the weakness of civil society and the exceptional role played by the state in Russia, the modernization of society is constantly being replaced by the modernization of the state - its military-industrial power, bureaucratic apparatus, repressive bodies, the public sector of the economy, etc. As a result, the tasks of accelerated military-industrial modernization of the state and strengthening it as a world power were often solved through anti-modernization, partial archaization and degradation of society.

Reformers, as a rule, cannot count on popular support, since the population for the most part is always conservative and treats any change with caution, because the usual way of life is changing. Only the most socially active part of society, sharing its goals, can become the support of reformers. Therefore, the reform of post-Soviet Russia in the early 1990s. was carried out in conditions of crisis. The “first wave” reformers were unable to create a strong social support for reforms or establish contact with society. The effectiveness of the reforms themselves, their ability to change life for the better, was also overestimated. As a result, the very concept of reform and the values on which they tried to base it were discredited.

The Russian authorities, having sharply limited government intervention in various spheres of social life, expected a sharp increase in the activity of citizens. However, the egalitarian mentality of Russian society, prone to paternalism, did not contribute to the emergence of a large number of energetic, enterprising people capable of organizing their lives on new principles. The economic and political activity of people turned out to be insufficient to bring Russian life in line with European standards.

Political modernization in the early 2000s. carried out in more favorable conditions: sustainable economic growth, political stability, gradual increase in living standards. However, for further progress along the path of political modernization, it is necessary not only an awareness of the need for reforms, the political will of the reformer, but also a profound transformation of the mentality of Russian society associated with the assimilation of the experience of modern European civilization.

One of the difficulties in analyzing modern Russian political reality is that the vital activity of civil society is influenced by contradictions that arise in the process of public administration in conditions of a protracted structural crisis.

Crisis development of Russia in the 1990s. identified the following main problems, the lack of progress in solving which can further increase tension in society and the political system:

Development of a medium- and long-term strategy for the development of society, the goal of which will be the sustainable transformation of the existing socio-economic structure and the creation of prerequisites for the organic integration of Russia into the world economy;

Establishing a balance that meets the conditions of modern Russian society between the principles of private initiative and state intervention in the economy when determining and implementing a socio-economic course;

Bringing the professional and intellectual level of the ruling groups into line with the requirements of managing society in the context of its transition to a higher level of socio-economic development, to a political system with a more complex organization;

Qualitative renewal of the main political institutions and the content of their activities, as well as the development of a set of principles and norms of public administration.

A feature of domestic civilizational development is the fact that Russian society has not experienced such fundamental spiritual and intellectual revolutions as the Renaissance, Reformation, and human rights movement experienced in the West, which laid the foundations for rationalistic forms of economic activity and the modern system of political representation. In addition, some segments of the social structure of post-Soviet Russia have specific features that arose as a result of the complex interaction of historical-psychological, ethnic, demographic and cultural-religious factors.

Russian society reacts accordingly to modernization impulses coming from above. Among the main characteristic features are rejection, passive resistance to innovations, the slow accumulation of contradictions and the potential for discontent, a crisis of self-identification, and popular protest facing the past.

Today's Russia is collapsing traditional society , but no one is sure that the goals, identities and standards of behavior proposed by the political elite correspond to the requirements of modernity. Today we have new, democratic in form, but weak and not yet fully established political and economic institutions. V.V. Lapkin and V.I. Pantin believe that political modernization in Russia will be largely determined by the elections of 2007-2008. and 2011-2012, which will subject the Russian political system to a serious test of strength.

The institutional system emerging in Russia does not guarantee the creation of stable democratic political institutions, since without mass support they are not only not democratic, but also not viable. Therefore, the built “power vertical” must be complemented by a “social horizontal” - the interaction of public and political organizations representing the interests of various layers and groups. This combination of vertical and horizontal connections, accompanied by the social responsibility of officials and business representatives, who, in the words of V.V. Putin, “we must remember that the source of Russia’s well-being and prosperity is the people,” can become the basis for the successful development of political