Kim Hjelmgaard , USA TODAY
MOSCOW — Twenty-five years ago
this Christmas Day, the Soviet Union disappeared.
Collapse of the Soviet Union 25th anniversary. (Photo: USA TODAY)
A superpower was suddenly gone
and 15 new countries appeared in its place: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Armenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
"The Soviet Union broke
up without a civil war, thank God,” says Yevgeny Roizman, 54, a historian
and mayor of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s third-largest city, which
borders Siberia. "But huge empires always go down with a lot of
noise. The process is not over. It will be many years before all the damage can
be undone."
Indeed, political systems,
economies, cultures and military alliances have undergone varying
transformations that continue in some countries and have stalled or
reversed in others. "Now, it’s like the Soviet era is a phantom
pain," Roizman adds.
People who remember living
under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — the USSR — have mixed
feelings whether those were the good old days or the bad old days.
In Kazan, in central Russia,
Alexander Andreev, 64, a retired oil worker, recalls the end of Soviet
life as a time of chronic food shortages. His his wife would wake him
at 5 a.m. so he could stand outside the store near their home in hopes of
buying an item before it ran out. "It was only a few minutes’ walk away
and it didn’t open until 6 a.m. Most days there would be a long line. If I was
in the first 10 we would get cottage cheese or sour cream. If not, only milk," he says.
"I cried so
much," says Andreev’s wife, Tatiana, 65, of this period. "I was
worried about the children. We were constantly adding things to the food to
make it go further," she says. "Now, within reason, we can buy
anything. Different kinds of cars. We can travel. We don’t want to go
back."
But her husband is a bit
nostalgic. While Communism was not a political system he admired, the Soviet
Union was a place where there was "real unity" between the
people of the different republics. "In this way, (Russian President
Vladimir) Putin was right," Andreev says. "The breakup was the
worst thing that happened to us."
Here are seven things
that have happened since the 1991 breakup:
1. WEALTH GAP GROWS
After 74 years of
authoritarian communist rule in which supposedly everyone was equal, Russia is
one of the world’s most unequal countries, according to a 2016 Credit
Suisse global wealth report: 75% of its wealth is controlled by the
richest 1%. In 1991, there were no billionaires in Russia. Today, there are
77 with a combined net worth of $283 billion, according to Forbes’
list of richest people.
2. CHANGE IS TRAUMATIC
The transition to new systems
was cataclysmic. "It wasn’t the collapse of the Soviet Union that
was the problem," says Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to
Russia from 2012 to 2014. "It was the economic dislocation. It
created an economic depression that was far harsher than what was experienced
in the United States in the 1930s."
3.
BALTICS LOOK WEST
The tiny Baltic nations of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania have joined the European Union and NATO and
adopted a Western liberal democratic order. But they are nervous about their
vulnerability to Russian expansion, fearing they would be easiest to swallow up
and wondering if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will uphold
NATO members' commitment to defend any other member that is attacked.
4. SATELLITES VEER OFF
Former Soviet-sphere nations
in Europe have gone their own way. Poland, free of Soviet dominance, has turned
western to become the largest economy in Central Europe. It is now a member of
the EU and NATO, along with former Soviet satellites Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, Slovenia and Romania.
5. REPRESSION PERSISTS
Belarus is one of the world’s
most repressive regimes, where criticizing the president can lead to a lengthy
jail term. Uzbekistan and other ex-Soviet Central Asian
"Stans" have enjoyed stable leadership and big oil revenues, but
corruption and human rights abuses remain endemic. "It’s becoming harder
and harder to speak out against these crimes and it is worse now than it’s been
at any point since Soviet times," says Svetlana Gannushkina, 74, a
former Russian lawmaker, now a human rights lawyer. Gannushkina is regularly
named as a potential Nobel peace prizewinner.
In Russia's predominantly
Muslim and restive province of Chechnya, "there is no law, no
constitution, only the order of (Chechnya leader) Ramzan Kadyrov,”
Gannushkina says of Russian President Vladimir Putin's ally. Human
Rights Watchand Amnesty International say Kadyrov uses public
shaming, torture and abductions to keep a tight grip on the province, which
waged a guerrilla war for independence against Russia for more
than a decade before conceding defeat in 2009.
6.RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY FADES
Russia embraced democracy
after the Soviet breakup but has been sliding back toward
authoritarianism. Putin, who has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the
"greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century," has
undermined civil liberties as he tightens his grip on power. He has jailed
critics, imposed restrictions on news and social media, reclaimed Crimea from
West-leaning Ukraine, abetted pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine,
cracked down on foreign non-profit groups and stoked the flames of
right-wing nationalism.
After years of neglect, the
military has been restored and has taken a lead role in Syria to help
President Bashar Assad win a 5-year-old civil war. "Putin thinks
the state is legitimate because it is the state," says Alex Kliment,
a Russia specialist at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
"He has a philosophical belief that popular revolutions against state
power are always illegitimate, and always end in tears."
7. RUSSIA TILTS TO TRUMP
Russia has developed one of
the world’s most sophisticated cyber-warfare networks — one that the
CIA believes interfered in America’s election to help Donald Trump. The
president-elect has dismissed the allegation, but Congress vows to look into
it. Whatever the outcome of that investigation, Russia and Trump seem to
be on a path toward friendship and international cooperation that would have
been inconceivable after Russia reclaimed Crimea in 2014. Trump has spoken
positively about Putin and his choice for secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex
Tillerson, who has negotiated energy deals with Russia, said he has "a
very close relationship" with Putin.
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