Immediately after the formation of the Soviet Union at the end of December 1922, an all-Union budget was formed in the new state entity, and within its framework, by the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of August 21, 1923, the Union-Republican Subsidy Fund of the USSR was created, funds from which began to be directed to economic and social development of the Caucasian, Central Asian and other union republics, including Ukraine ( Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Sat. documents. M.: 1972. S. 23-24).

This entire Fund was formed from revenues from the RSFSR (there was simply nothing to take from the Union republics). Unlike the RSFSR, turnover tax collections (one of the main sources of budget revenues) were fully included in the budgets of the union republics, and income tax also remained completely in the republics. And although the Russian economy played a decisive role in the formation of the mentioned Fund, it never used subsidies from it. As he openly admitted in the 1930s. G.K. Ordzhonikidze, “Soviet Russia, replenishing our (Georgian SSR) budget, gives us 24 million rubles in gold per year, and we, of course, We don’t pay her any interest for this.... Armenia, for example, is being revived not at the expense of the labor of its own peasants, but at the expense of Soviet Russia" ( See: Kulichenko M.I. Education and development of the USSR. Yerevan: Hayastan, 1982. P. 258).

Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor V.G. Chebotareva, at an international conference in Moscow in 1995, presented calculations that showed how the process of pumping surplus product from the RSFSR to the Union republics proceeded.

Firstly, cash injections in their purest form. Published reports of the USSR Ministry of Finance for 1929, 1932, 1934 and 1935. allow us to conclude that in these years, 159.8 million rubles were allocated as subsidies to Turkmenistan, 250.7 million rubles to Tajikistan, 86.3 million rubles to Uzbekistan, and 129.1 million rubles to the ZSFSR. As for, for example, Kazakhstan, then until 1923, this republic did not have its own budget at all - funding for its development came from the budget of the RSFSR.

But the calculation should include not only purely cash injections. For decades, in addition to purely monetary tribute, Russia gave the union republics “its most precious capital—highly qualified specialists. In 1959, there were 16.2 million Russians outside Russia, in 1988 - 25.3 million. Over 30 years, their number increased by 55.5%, and within Russia - only by 22%... Representatives of the Russian Diasporas created a significant part of the national income in the republics. For example, before 1992, 10% of the Russian population of Tajikistan produced up to 50% of the domestic national product».

This phenomenon also produced another, side, but significant effect. “The Russian people,” said V.G. Chebotareva, “to whom a complex of “historical guilt” was imposed for the atrocities of tsarism, did everything to put an end to the centuries-old backwardness of the fraternal peoples. But in this noble field, the Russian people have lost their elementary sense of self-preservation; under the influence of political propaganda, he fell into unconsciousness and destroyed many national traditions, the environment of his historical habitat" ( Chebotareva V. G. Russia: donor or metropolis // Materials of the international symposium “Where is Russia going?” / Ed. T.I. Zaslavskaya. M.: Aspect-Press, 1995. P. 343-344).

In 1987, in Latvia, revenues from the RSFSR and Ukraine amounted to 22.8% of the total national income generated by the republic. Over the years, the gap between imports and exports has only grown. For example, in 1988, for Estonia this gap amounted to 700 million rubles, for Lithuania - 1 billion 530 million rubles, for Latvia - 695 million rubles. ( Nobody said thank you. Historians have calculated how much the Baltic states and Central Asia owe us... // Izvestia. 10/20/2010).

In other words, all state policy was based on satisfying the interests of the national outskirts, and the interests of the indigenous population of the RSFSR were sacrificed to this absolute minority. While the economy and infrastructure of the union national republics grew fat and plump, the original Russian cities and villages became poor.

In 1997, the famous writer and scientist Alexander Kuznetsov wrote:
“It becomes bitter in your soul when you see old Russian cities. Ancient houses with crumbling plaster, wooden one-story houses sunk up to their windows into the ground, and two-story houses were rickety and smelled like a latrine. The picture is familiar. This is what all old Russian cities look like now, not like those in the Caucasus or Central Asia.
Yerevan was entirely built during the years of Soviet power. Previously, it consisted of adobe and stone one-story houses, but now it is built from comfortable multi-story and, mind you, atypical houses, lined with multi-colored tuff. And not a single old house in the whole city. The Soviet period was a golden age for Armenia. In Tbilisi, one old street was left as a historical monument. It was restored and looks just like the picture. Everything else was built anew, as in other Caucasian cities.
There is nothing to say about the Central Asian republics - palaces, theaters, parks, fountains, all in granite and marble, in stone carvings. The rich people weighed down the edges of the state for 70 years, so that, having had their fill, they would then fall off. Russia remains as poor as it was.”

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR in 1971-1983. M. S. Solomentsev recalled how in the early 1970s. on a trip to the Bryansk region, he saw an entire village living in dugouts since the Great Patriotic War. In his memoirs, he writes: “When Brezhnev recommended me for the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, I set only one condition: to stop making light of Russia. Leonid Ilyich, I remember, did not understand me, asked: “What does it mean to shut up?” I explained: the sectoral departments of the Central Committee and the Union government directly command Russian regions and specific enterprises, guided more by the interests of the Union republics, leaving Russia only crumbs from the all-Union table" ( News. October 20, 2010.).

In June 1992, Ivan Silaev, the first prime minister of the Yeltsin government, painted an interesting picture in this regard in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (June 12).

Having become the first chairman of the Council of Ministers of independent Russia in the summer of 1990, Ivan Silaev discovered that during all the years of Soviet power, the RSFSR annually paid 46 billion rubles to the union republics, including Ukraine, and since 1940 to the Baltic republics. in year. Having recalculated this money at the exchange rate that existed in 1990 (one US dollar was equal to 60 kopecks), the Prime Minister in June 1991 reported to the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin that the RSFSR annually spent on the development of the union republics $76.5 billion.

After his report, the independent government of the RSFSR demanded to radically change the practice of depleting Russia’s economic resources and to put only (!) 10 billion rubles into the subsidy fund. And even then, on the condition that the republic that will take funds from this fund will do so not irrevocably, but on credit and undertakes to enter into an agreement with the government of the RSFSR on the supply of its products against the obligatory repayment of the loan within a specified period. Hearing this, republican leaders, including Ukraine and the Baltic union republics, immediately demanded that USSR President M. Gorbachev “put these Russians in their place”...

This Bolshevik line also affected the national personnel policy in the union republics.

In the central committees of the party in the union republics of the USSR, as a rule, a representative of the so-called titular nation was appointed as the first secretary of the Central Committee, and a party worker of Russian nationality was appointed as the second secretary of the Central Committee (mandatorily). The tasks of the latter included, mainly, compliance with the rules for the functioning of a single (union) economic policy. This second secretary could intervene in the political sphere, including the ideological sphere, only in exceptional cases, and then not directly, but exclusively through Moscow.

He could not influence in any way the personnel policy in the republic. Whatever percentage of the non-indigenous population lives in the republic, all key positions in all spheres of the republic’s life are invariably occupied by representatives of the indigenous nationality. Moreover, this applied to absolutely all non-indigenous nations and nationalities. In Tbilisi, for example, an arbitrarily large Armenian diaspora could live, but only Georgians could represent its interests in the leadership of the city or republic.

Before 1917, the tsars of the House of Romanov pursued a completely different national policy.

Investigating this problem, the famous Russian historian Alexei Miller writes that before the revolution, the “imperial nation”, that is, the Russians, were represented in the cadre of the bureaucracy adequately by their numbers, as well as other nations and nationalities that existed at that time. “When examining the composition of the bureaucracy in the western outskirts,” the researcher writes, “it should be noted that representatives of the local population were represented among officials in proportions that generally corresponded to the relative weight of various ethnic groups in these provinces.”

In other words, Stalin, as the sole ruler of the USSR since the late 1920s, in these matters radically departed from the policy of the Russian tsars, who, firstly, carefully ensured that the proportional representation of all was strictly observed in the power structures of the national outskirts peoples and nations living in these territories. And secondly, the viceroy of the “White Tsar” on the national outskirts was by no means such an essentially decorative figure as the Russian second secretary of the Central Committee of the Union Communist Party was in the union republics of the USSR.

As A. Miller writes, after 1917 the Bolsheviks generally created a rather strange empire. In relation to the small nationalities and peoples within it, the USSR was generally a “reverse empire.” This feature of Stalin’s policy towards Russians is noted not only by Russian historians.

Harvard University professor Terry Martin concluded that the USSR was a completely new kind of empire - an empire in reverse, and he characterized Soviet national policy as “a radical break with the policy of the Romanov empire” ( Martin T. Empire of Positive Impact: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism // Ab Imperio. 2002, No. 2. P. 55-87).

Following T. Martin, Professor A. Miller writes: “Within the framework of Soviet policy, the state-forming people, the Russians, had to suppress their national interests and identify themselves with the empire of positive action.” The Bolsheviks even went so far as to deny “the right to national autonomy in places of compact residence of Russians in the Union republics”, the “right to national representation in the power structures of the autonomous republics”, moreover, they condemned “Russian culture as bourgeois-landowner, as imperial culture of the oppressors." “The Bolsheviks, in essence... created national elites where they did not exist or where they were weak. They disseminated and supported various forms of national culture and identity among the masses where this task was on the agenda. They contributed to the territorialization of ethnicity and created national entities at different levels" ( Miller A.I. The Romanov Empire and nationalism. Essay on the methodology of historical research. Ed. 2, rev. and additional M.: New Literary Review, 2010. P. 55, 282, 283).

As a result, all these policies led to the fact that the national elites that emerged at the end of the existence of the Soviet Union created their own national history and, on the basis of the development in their territorial national formations of the processes of industrialization, urbanization, and the spread of literacy, under the slogans of democracy, justified their separation from the Soviet empire .

Based on materials:
V.D. Kuznechevsky. Leningrad case
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Collecting pre-orders for my book "The Dwarf of Peter the Great" ( With a collection of intriguing stories about people of the past, real and fictional) extended for 2 months.New "promotions" have been added, come on over! Page address on the Planeta.ru website

In the USSR, all nationalities and republics were equal. However, the citizens of the USSR, and especially their leadership, knew without any Orwell that in a multitude of equals, some are always “more equal” than others.

Who fed whom

It's no secret that the development of many republics of the Soviet Union was carried out by pumping funds mainly from the RSFSR. The all-Union and republican budgets were established by party directives, there was no public control and independent sources of information, therefore the policy of fleecing Russia in favor of the outskirts almost until the collapse of the USSR was carried out by the communists easily and unhindered. Even some party leaders were outraged by this practice. Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR Mikhail Solomentsev once even said to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev: “Stop shutting down Russia!” But it was the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

However, in what amounts was this subsidization of the economy expressed? Calculations here are complicated by the fact that the prices themselves in the USSR were set prescriptively and did not correspond to real market prices. In addition, the topic “the national outskirts of the USSR milked Russia” has become speculative, and within its framework completely absurd figures are often given, without citing sources. Let us turn to information that there was no need for the publishers to manipulate.

Subsidies and benefits

Yegor Gaidar’s work “The Death of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia” (2006) provides the following figures. In 1989, the RSFSR exported 30.84 billion rubles worth of products to other republics and abroad, more than it imported. In terms of each resident of the RSFSR, this comes out to 209 rubles per year - slightly more than the then average monthly salary. This is where so much was leaving Russia as a result of the policies of the Union Center on pricing, budget formation and foreign trade.

According to the same data, these funds were distributed across all republics, excluding Turkmenistan (another republic, key in the system of oil and gas exports from the late USSR). In absolute numbers, Kazakhstan benefited the most – 6.6 billion rubles. However, the population size in the union republics is not the same.

In per capita terms, the highest figure was in Lithuania, where each resident received approximately 997 rubles in indirect subsidies per year. This was followed by Estonia (812), Moldova (612), Latvia (485), Armenia (415), Kazakhstan (399), Georgia (354), Kyrgyzstan (246), Tajikistan (220), Belarus (201). Uzbekistan (128). Azerbaijan (64) and Ukraine (56 rubles per year per inhabitant) received the least amount of indirect subsidies.

It is not surprising, for example, that a resident of the RSFSR who entered the Soviet Baltic states was always struck by the contrast between the clean, well-groomed streets of the Baltic cities and the shabby, unpaved, littered streets of most Russian regional centers. However, what also mattered, of course, was what the subsidized amounts were spent on, and this is always determined by the culture of the management personnel.

Direct subsidies are not taken into account in these calculations; there is no exact data about them. Therefore, it is difficult to create a complete picture of the redistribution of financial resources in the USSR.

Educational policy

There is another interesting indicator - the percentage of people with education, including higher education. As a result of the state’s de facto serfdom on university graduates, called “distribution,” as well as for the purpose of “indigenization of personnel,” education received preferential development on the national outskirts. At the same time, applicants from other union republics were admitted to the main universities of Russia under preferential quotas.

According to the latest All-Union Population Census, in 1989, Georgia had the highest percentage of people with higher education - 15.1%, then Armenia - 13.8%, Estonia - 11.7%, Latvia - 11.5%, followed by Russia (11.3) . In terms of the share of people with higher, secondary and incomplete secondary education, Armenia was ahead - 90.1%, followed by Azerbaijan (87.8), Georgia (87.7), Uzbekistan (86.7), Turkmenistan (86.4). Russia occupied 11th place in this list (80.6).

Political independence

Economics is not everything. The republics in reality had varying degrees of political independence. Thus, Russia was deprived of even many of the formal attributes that other union republics enjoyed (its republican party organization, the Academy of Sciences); its government institutions only duplicated and executed the decrees and orders of the union bodies.

A characteristic feature of the independence of the union republics was the presence of a state language (and not just the “language of the union republic”). In 1970-1972 three Transcaucasian republics adopted laws on state languages. Their knowledge was mandatory for holding public office. All other republics were allowed to do this only during “perestroika.”

The Communist Party's policies regarding national culture were pursued differently. Few traditional religions were subjected to such persecution in the USSR as Russian Orthodoxy and the Old Believers. The attitude towards the Georgian and Armenian churches, as well as towards Catholicism and Lutheranism in the Baltics, was much more tolerant. The exceptions were the Uniates in Western Ukraine and supporters of the Romanian autocephalous church in Moldova, as they were considered as political agents of the separatists.

In general, Islam was at one time regarded by the Soviet leadership as a means of sparking an anti-colonial revolution in the East. At the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Hajj was legalized, although until 1989, pilgrims underwent special selection by “competent authorities.” Some party leaders in the Central Asian republics openly professed Islam, and after retirement they traveled to Mecca. The author knows how one Tajik said back in the mid-80s, before the start of “perestroika”: “We don’t have Soviet power in our village, our mullah is the main person.”

Conclusion

The degree of privilege of the union republics in the USSR can be assessed by various indicators. In some cases, the republics of Transcaucasia appear to be the most favored, in others the republics of Central Asia, and in others the republics of the Baltic states. In any case, the Russian Federation did not fall into any of these categories, except that the Russian language was required to be studied in all republics of the USSR.

Eighteen years ago, on December 25, 1991, the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered over the Kremlin. Those present on Red Square on that frosty day, many dozens of Soviet citizens (including the author of these lines) and representatives of the embassies of China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos, stood without hats. Many had tears in their eyes.

The destruction of the USSR, caused by interconnected internal and external factors, was accompanied by many interethnic bloody conflicts and socio-economic catastrophe in almost all the union republics. But some of them, even after the collapse of the USSR, took possession of a significant part of Soviet economic funds. The very decision to dissolve the USSR took place, we emphasize, precisely after the actual and, we emphasize, free division of all-Union property was basically completed.

Thus, by the end of December 1989, the bulk of the Soviet merchant fleet in the Baltic ended up in the Baltic countries; in Ukraine and Kazakhstan - up to a third of the USSR freight car fleet. In the Black Sea, Azov and Caspian "post-Soviet" republics - with the exception of the RSFSR-Russia - over 70% of the Soviet merchant fleet of the southern waters of the former Soviet Union ended up...

In a word, even on the eve of the collapse of the USSR and even in the last hours of its agony, the once “brotherly” republics took care of the weight of their share in the property of the destroyed country.

This policy of the last leadership of the Soviet Union stemmed from the Kremlin’s long-term line of establishing the national republics at the expense, mainly, of the RSFSR and the Russian population.

In this regard, it is not surprising that the Baltic countries and Ukraine and Georgia, having already received a lot during the agony of the USSR, over the past 15 years have directly or indirectly made financial claims against Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, “for damage during the period Soviet occupation." Moreover, such bills amount to tens and even hundreds of billions, of course, of dollars.

But, what’s interesting: in July-August 2009, funding was stopped for state commissions in the Baltic countries to clarify the amounts of their claims against the USSR-Russia. The fact is quite remarkable. Moreover: according to a number of Baltic media reports, some economists from the same countries recently calculated that, in socio-economic and foreign trade relations, it was much more profitable for the Baltic countries to be in the USSR and even... in the Russian Empire (!) than to be independent after 1990!

However, on September 30, the Lithuanian Seimas approved a bill according to which the refusal of any Lithuanian citizen (among whom there are many Russians and Belarusians) to recognize the Soviet period as an “occupation” will entail criminal prosecution...

True, in the last months of 2009, the mentioned “plaintiffs” took a break from putting forward official claims against the Russian Federation regarding the Soviet “account.” In any case, the applicant countries know well how and, more precisely, at the expense of which union republic and nation these countries, more precisely, other national regions of the USSR lived and developed, to put it mildly, much better and more comprehensively than the RSFSR.

The fact is that over the last 45-50 Soviet years, it was Russia (RSFSR) that was, literally, the donor of almost all the union and most autonomous republics. They were made into “showcases” of socialism and abundance precisely at the expense of Russia (and, partly, Belarus), and the “showcases” knew this. Therefore, it is not surprising that, unlike the same “showcase” regions, the socio-economic situation was precisely in the RSFSR, according to statistics for official use and other documents, it deteriorated most rapidly. But after the collapse of the USSR, the same dependent republics became so emboldened that they continue to demand Russian support in a different form - provocative and humiliating for Russia. That is, in the form of the notorious financial claims for the allegedly Soviet period of occupation.

In this regard, we cite the opinion of Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor Vladimir Miloserdov: “The centralized planned system of economic management that existed in the USSR allowed the state to concentrate human, financial and material resources in a single “fist.” But the well-being of the population of national regions, which also had political significance, largely depended on revenues from government resources, although, unfortunately, there was no clear relationship between the investments for which the whole country worked and the return on them.

In these conditions The leaders of most republics hid their internal reserves, tried to receive more from the “center” and give as little as possible to the “common pot.”

“It makes no sense to work better,” said the former Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the Estonian SSR, R. Otsason, frankly, “but it makes a lot of sense to write letters for help. It is important to be able to beg for money, food, feed, goods, whatever - this is more important than to be able to make them ". Such a dependent ideology has especially widely entered the minds of the Baltic and Transcaucasian leaders."

According to V. Miloserdov, “despite the fact that the bulk of the gas was produced in other regions of the country, the Baltic villages in terms of gasification were significantly ahead of the Russian ones. By the time the Baltic states left the Union, almost all the villages of the Baltic states, and even Western Ukraine and Transcaucasia, were gasified. And in Russia today, even thousands of villages near Moscow are waiting for gas to come to them. And what can we say about the Russian outback!

A huge differentiation has emerged between the union republics in the size of allocations from the state budget, in the volume of supplies of material and technical resources, in the allocation of currency, imported goods and in other areas. And, as a result, in the standard of living between the republics."

But here is the testimony of academic economists T.S. Khachaturov and N.N. Nekrasov - an excerpt from their joint letter to the Minister of Gas Industry of the USSR S.A. Orudzhev, November 16, 1977: “Over the last 10 years, the RSFSR has been constantly disadvantaged in the allocation of various centralized resources: an increasing volume of them is allocated to other republics, although control over the use of allocated resources in those republics is weakening and becoming formal. Moreover: even from that , which is allocated for the RSFSR, is then very often withdrawn from its funds. There is also an unfavorable tendency to freeze not only capital investments, but also various natural resources on the territory of the RSFSR, while an increasing amount of both are, accordingly, directed and developed in others. republics. The latter require an increase in both capital investments and supplies through import lines (limits), which, unlike most of the same requests from the RSFSR, is satisfied. The continuation of this situation will entail... irreversible imbalances in socio-economic development and. resource provision for regions throughout the USSR...".

Although this appeal remained without an official response, it, of course, predetermined the corresponding attitude of the authorities towards Khachaturov and Nekrasov.

And it began... after 1917, when the Bolsheviks “delineated” the territory of Russia, including the newly formed RSFSR, into a mass of union, autonomous republics, autonomous regions and national districts. The share of these autonomies in the total territory of the RSFSR, as well as the current Russian Federation, exceeds 65%, although the share of Russian residents in the same autonomies today reaches 60, or even 70%. Since then The newly formed RSFSR, especially the Russian countryside, became a perpetual donor of the “rising outskirts.”

True, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The leadership of the USSR, judging by the then party-government and party documents, relied on socio-economic development in the union republics mainly at the expense of their own resources and capabilities.

This line was emphasized, for example, in the report of G.M. Malenkov, then the de facto leader of the CPSU, on October 5, 1952, to the 19th Party Congress. And in the report at the same congress (October 7), the chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee M.Z. Saburova. Apparently, it is no accident that the materials of this particular congress have not yet been published in Russia, just as they were not published in the USSR as a separate brochure (but the full speeches at that congress and its documents were published in China in 1971-1972, including in Russian ...).

But by the mid-1950s they returned to their previous course: direct and indirect pumping out of Russia forces, means and resources for the well-being of the “showcase republics.” During that period, the Khrushchev leadership planned and already implemented socio-economic, domestic political, foreign trade and foreign policy reversals, as they say, in all directions in comparison with the Stalin period. And the main feature of such reversals was, according to Josip Broz Tito’s definition, “the collapse of the pro-Russian-pro-Slavic-pro-Orthodox policy of the last Stalinist decade.” According to Mao Zedong, “a slide towards cosmopolitanism, nomenklatura bureaucracy and separatism.” By the way, the same Mao, in a conversation in Beijing with foreign journalists in the fall of 1964, predicted: “Nationalists and careerist bribe-takers came to power locally in the USSR after 1953. Covered up by the Kremlin. When the time comes, they will drop their masks, throw away their party cards and they will openly rule their districts as feudal lords and serf owners..." (see, for example, "New China", Beijing, 1964, No. 12; "Materials of the plenum and meeting of the Central Committee of the CPC", Beijing, March 5, 1993) .

This Kremlin policy naturally weakened the presence and influence of the “center” in the regions. But in order to maintain the integrity of the country and the party, the national nomenklatura and the regions governed by it received what is called free hands in internal affairs. From the second half of the 1950s, they began to increasingly receive - at the expense of mainly Russia (RSFSR) - gratuitous grants, subsidies, other cash, as well as commodity flows.

In the 1950-1980s, the level of wages and other social benefits in most union republics was 30-45% higher than in Russia (RSFSR).

Let's say, a cleaner in Lvov or the Baltic cities in the 1970s and 1980s received at least 100 rubles in net, while the “average” Russian engineer in the RSFSR barely earned 120 rubles in net. But the level of retail prices in the RSFSR was higher by 20, or even 40% in comparison with most other union republics...

Another example: on May 21, 1947, a “closed” resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ordered to slow down the pace of collectivization of agriculture in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the former Finnish regions of the Karelo-Finnish SSR. This was carried out until the collapse of the Soviet Union (see "Decisions of the Party and Government on Economic Issues", vol. 3, M., 1968). As a result, by the end of the 1980s, over 70% of commercial agricultural products in these regions, as well as 60% in the republics of Transcaucasia and many regions of Central Asia, were produced and sold legally or actually by private farms.

Let us note, in this regard, that only in the RSFSR did widespread collectivization of agriculture take place. And only the RSFSR in the mid-1950s - mid-1980s experienced, for example, such excesses as the widespread liquidation of religious institutions, mostly Orthodox; widespread elimination of so-called “unpromising” villages; widespread planting of "Khrushchev's" corn and removal of livestock and poultry from the personal use of collective farmers and state farm workers.

Same R The SFSR and Belarus, in comparison with other union republics, received the least amount of agricultural machinery and state budget money for the improvement of rural and urban housing, as well as for the development of other industries. And, let us emphasize, mainly only in the Russian regions of the RSFSR - i.e. not even in the autonomies of the RSFSR - in the literal sense, “Khrushchev” houses were stamped, which, according to all international standards, were initially unsuitable for human life.

Even the official standards for living space in the RSFSR were less than for the Baltic states, Transcaucasia, Western Ukraine, capital cities of the republics of Central Asia, the North Caucasus, Tataria, Bashkiria...

It is also noteworthy that rent in the RSFSR has always been more expensive than in most other union republics. And first of all, collective farms and state farms, along with their personnel, equipment, seed fund and livestock, were transferred from the RSFSR, as well as from Belarus, to other republics. According to available data, over 150 collective and state farms were transferred to the Kazakh virgin lands of exclusively Russian territories - that is, not from the autonomies of the RSFSR, but also from Belarus and Eastern Ukraine(see, for example, D.I. Korkotsenko, V.I. Kulikov “CPSU in the struggle for further development of agriculture (1946-1958), M., “Higher School”, 1974). In addition, almost for All Union republics - except the RSFSR and Belarus - were publicly and secretly reducing their planned targets.

As for the saturation of the USSR with consumer imports, the corresponding decisions of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1959, 1963, 1978 and 1983. provided for a strict priority: imports of consumer goods should be directed primarily to non-Slavic union republics and Western Ukraine; then to Belarus, the rest of Ukraine, the autonomous republics of the RSFSR, and primarily to the North Caucasus. Then - to the national autonomous regions and districts of the RSFSR. Exactly in the mentioned sequence. And only after all this, i.e. according to the “residual principle” - to the rest, officially Russian territory of the RSFSR...

So is it any wonder that Moscow, Leningrad, and other large Russian cities in the 1960-1980s were besieged by “sausage”, “fish”, “confectionery” and other “landing forces” of residents of the Russian, or more precisely, Russian outback? And that the capitals and most cities not only of other union republics, but even the cities of the autonomous republics of the RSFSR were, as a rule, overflowing with a varied assortment, including Russian?..

I remember the spring of 1985. Center of Moscow, area of ​​Gorky Street near Pushkinskaya Square. A long queue for pastry sets - only 2 sets were sold to one buyer - transformed into a fight with visitors. Then there was no police, but how many such excesses were there in Russian stores, and not only in confectionery shops? In the same year and later (before the collapse of the USSR), the author of these lines had a chance to visit Latvia, Estonia, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Grozny, Makhachkala, Baku, Tashkent. The same, for example, candy sets, including Moscow, Leningrad, Kuibyshev, Kursk, Pskov, Ukrainian, Belarusian, even Yugoslav and Bulgarian ones, were available there in amazing abundance and at low prices. Not to mention, for example, Yugoslav, Polish, Hungarian, Chinese knitwear, imported shoes, household appliances and plumbing fixtures from the GDR, Yugoslavia and Finland.

So, from the second half of the 1950s - in connection with the deterioration of the internal and external economic situation of the USSR and, as a consequence, socio-political protests in a number of republics, the bet was made on the Kremlin to interfere as little as possible in the affairs of the “non-Russian” union republics and non-Russian autonomies of the RSFSR. To avoid the development of separatism there. As a result, the local authorities finally merged with the local mafia clans and, naturally, began to almost directly blackmail Moscow: they say, if you don’t release any more money and will often check our affairs, we can take “our” peoples out of the USSR.

I remembered: back in 1973 in Baku, a relative of the author of these lines said that when applying for a job for her son, she was asked: “Do you know that this place is for sale?” She answered adequately: “I know this place is being bought.”

That same year, in Kirovabad (western Azerbaijan), I accidentally heard a song that some seventh-graders were singing in the courtyard of a nearby school: “My name is Mirza, I can’t work. Let Ivan work and carry out the plan”...

The situation is illustrated by the following economic and political fact: since the mid-1960s. Transcaucasian, Central Asian, Western Ukrainian, Moldavian vegetables and fruits were sold in the RSFSR mainly only in markets. Naturally, at high prices: at least twice as expensive as state retail. The authorities of those regions achieved this from Moscow (see, for example, “Issues of improving the transportation of perishable products,” M., Institute of Complex Transport Problems under the USSR State Planning Committee, issue 28, M., 1972). For all goods of the “allied” Baltic states and Transcaucasia, the Soviet state always set the highest prices in the RSFSR, including government procurement prices...

Yes indeed modern economic powers of the same Baltic states were created, for the most part, during the Soviet years. For example, not Kaliningrad, but namely Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian ports became the main foreign trade gates of the USSR in the Baltic. And even today their share in Russia’s foreign trade transportation exceeds 25%.

Moreover, as in other industries of the Baltic Union republics, at least 60% of the revenues of the port industry remained at their own disposal. This figure was at the level of 40-55% for ports and other industries in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Moldova and Western Ukraine. But the RSFSR and Belarus did not have such benefits, however, with the exception of the North Caucasus autonomies of the RSFSR.

In a word, if we “take into account” the same Baltic and not only with it, the result will not be in favor of the former Soviet republics.
But it is obvious that it is not so much voluntary as forced, prescribed extravagance of Russia, especially in the last 40 Soviet years, that has become, in a way, a magnet of constant attraction for other republics.

They want everything mentioned to continue. Now, we repeat, this is in the form of “sovereign” financial claims against Russia. But we have more than enough grounds for counter, and well-founded, accounts. For all the years of the existence of the Soviet Union. So isn't it time to finally draw up these bills and present them?

In connection with the myth that often arises in the minds of some historians and representatives of the intelligentsia about how the poor and unfortunate national republics were robbed by the Russians and the RSFSR, how, working for days, starving, they fed the Russians with all their might, I decided to put an end to their speculations . What is this usually based on? I don't know. They themselves do the same, but they always answer that: “Everyone knows that!” Everything, but not everything. Let’s take for example “the most tortured by the Russian occupiers” - the Estonians.

As you know, the Estonians themselves were actively involved in bringing the communist ideology to life, and there were a huge number of communists among the Estonians, if compared with some other republics of the USSR, only Georgians had more communists per capita than the Estonians...

So maybe because of their adherence to communist ideology, they took the last shirt off their child and gave it to the occupiers? Or did a Russian surplus appropriation agency come from Vladimir or Saratov and slaughter the last pig or cow on an Estonian farm, taking away every last crumb from Estonia? The Russians lived fat under the USSR, while the national republics starved?

Actually, that’s how it was…. Only exactly the opposite. Just as the communists began with the destruction and enslavement of the Russian peasantry and workers, they continued until the collapse of the USSR...

Read and compare the reality that you saw with your own eyes and the statistical facts from the statistical collections of the USSR, which I will now give you! Well, as they say - relax and enjoy! Go!

Balance of interrepublican and foreign economic trade in world prices in 1988 (billion rubles) (Gaidar E.T. Death of the Empire. Lessons for modern Russia.- M.: ROSSPEN, 2006.- 440 pp.- P. 299 (*))

Already impressive? From the table, I will explain in order to immediately dismiss any insinuations of the Baltic comrades and their sympathizers, we see that the RSFSR produced 30,840,000,000 rubles more than it consumed. From year to year, 45 years... And also, for 45 years, Estonia consumed at least 1,390,000,000 rubles more than it produced...
Somehow the myth is not confirmed... Or maybe the damned Russians took everything clean out of Estonia? Moreover, bypassing statistics? Wow! It turns out that the State Planning Committee knew since 1940 that the Estonian separatists would gain strength with the help of the communists and, having grabbed a significant piece of Russia, would illegally secede from the USSR and therefore falsified the statistics! Something I don’t really believe...

And here’s what it looked like in the distribution of money PER RESIDENT of the republic from the general budget of the USSR, to which, as we saw, the main contribution was made by the RSFSR:

We lived well, huh? Each Russian was deprived of 209 rubles per year, and each Estonian was paid a free 812 rubles, which he did not earn enough. The damned communists robbed, of course... But just who?
An interesting fact is that the table shows that the LESS Russians lived in the republic. the BIGGER subsidies the republic received per person. Russians and their needs were assessed on a different scale. According to “fair” - communist.

Interesting tables? And most importantly, truthful. Taken from official statistics of the USSR...
Here are a few more facts that EVERYONE in the USSR knew:

1. “It makes no sense to work better,” said the former Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the Estonian SSR, R. Otsason, frankly, “but it makes a lot of sense to write letters for help. It is important to be able to beg for money, food, feed, goods, whatever - this is more important than to be able to make them.”
Estonia still practices this principle today. The truth is already milking Germany. How long? The Germans are not such fools as the Russians. And they lost the war, they have to pay for some time, gritted their teeth, until they gain geopolitical strength and independence...

2. Doctor of Economic Sciences V. Miloserdov says: “Despite the fact that the bulk of gas was produced in other regions of the country, Baltic villages were significantly ahead of Russian ones in terms of gasification. By the time the Baltic states left the Union, almost all the villages of the Baltic states, as well as Western Ukraine and Transcaucasia, were gasified.A huge differentiation has emerged between the union republics in the size of allocations from the state budget, in the volume of supplies of material and technical resources, in the allocation of currency, imported goods and in other areas. And, as a result, in the standard of living between the republics »
A fact that does not require proof. Just look around - in Estonia, even free-standing doghouses were gasified under the Soviets, and in Russia today, even thousands of villages near Moscow are waiting for gas to come to them. And what can we say about the Russian outback...

3. And here is what academic economists T.S. wrote. Khachaturov and N.N. Nekrasov - excerpt from their joint letter to the USSR Minister of Gas Industry S.A. Orujev, dated November 16, 1977: “Over the past 10 years, the RSFSR has been constantly disadvantaged in the allocation of various centralized resources: an increasing volume of them is allocated to other republics, although control over the use of allocated resources in those republics is weakening and becoming formal. Moreover: even what is allocated for the RSFSR is then very often withdrawn from its funds. There is also an unfavorable trend of freezing not only capital investments, but also various natural resources on the territory of the RSFSR, while an increasing volume of both, respectively, is directed and developed in other republics. The latter require an increase in both capital investments and supplies through import lines (limits), which, unlike most of the same requests from the RSFSR, is satisfied. The continuation of this situation will entail... irreversible imbalances in the socio-economic development and resource provision of regions throughout the USSR...”

4. In the 1950-1980s, the level of wages and other social benefits in most union republics was 30-45% higher than in Russia (RSFSR). Let's say, a cleaning lady in Tallinn, in the 1970-1980s, received at least 100 net rubles, while the “average” Russian engineer in the RSFSR barely earned 120 rubles net. But the level of retail prices in the RSFSR was higher by 20, or even 40% in comparison with most other union republics...

5. On May 21, 1947, a “closed” resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ordered to slow down the pace of collectivization of agriculture in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the former Finnish regions of the Karelo-Finnish SSR. This was carried out until the collapse of the Soviet Union (see “Decisions of the Party and Government on Economic Issues”, vol. 3, M., 1968). As a result, by the end of the 1980s, over 70% of commercial agricultural products in these regions, as well as 60% in the republics of Transcaucasia and many regions of Central Asia, were produced and sold legally or actually by private farms. Let us note, in this regard, that only in the RSFSR did widespread collectivization of agriculture take place. And only the RSFSR in the mid-1950s - mid-1980s experienced, for example, such excesses as the widespread liquidation of religious institutions, mostly Orthodox; widespread elimination of so-called “unpromising” villages; widespread planting of “Khrushchev’s” corn and removal of livestock and poultry from the personal use of collective farmers and state farm workers. The same RSFSR and Belarus, in comparison with other union republics, received the least amount of agricultural equipment and state budget money for the improvement of rural and urban housing, as well as for the development of other industries.

6. Rent in the RSFSR has always been more expensive than in most other union republics. Even the official standards for living space in the RSFSR were less than for the Baltic states, Transcaucasia, Western Ukraine, the capital cities of the republics of Central Asia, the North Caucasus, Tataria, Bashkiria... And first of all, collective farms and state farms were transferred from the RSFSR, as well as from Belarus, along with their personnel, equipment, seed stock and livestock to other republics. According to available data, over 150 collective and state farms were transferred to the virgin lands of Kazakhstan exclusively from Russian territories - that is, not from the autonomies of the RSFSR, but also from Belarus and Eastern Ukraine (see, for example, D.I. Korkotsenko, V.I. Kulikov “CPSU in the struggle for further development of agriculture (1946-1958), M., “Higher School”, 1974). In addition, for almost all union republics - except for the RSFSR and Belarus - plan targets were publicly and secretly reduced.

7. Regarding the saturation of the USSR with consumer imports, the corresponding decisions of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers in 1959, 1963, 1978 and 1983. provided for a strict priority: imports of consumer goods should be directed primarily to non-Slavic union republics and Western Ukraine; then to Belarus, the rest of Ukraine, the autonomous republics of the RSFSR, and primarily to the North Caucasus. Then - to the national autonomous regions and districts of the RSFSR. Exactly in the mentioned sequence. And only after all this, i.e. according to the “residual principle” - to the rest, officially Russian territory of the RSFSR...

8. For all goods of the “union” Baltic states and Transcaucasia, the Soviet state always set the highest prices in the RSFSR, including government procurement prices... Moreover, as in other industries of the Baltic union republics, at least 60% of the income of the port industry remained in their own disposal. This figure was at the level of 40-55% for ports and other industries in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Moldova and Western Ukraine. But the RSFSR and Belarus did not have such benefits, however, with the exception of the North Caucasus autonomies of the RSFSR.
see, for example, “Issues of improving the transportation of perishable products,” M., Institute of Complex Transport Problems under the USSR State Planning Committee, vol. 28, M., 1972)

Facts, facts, facts…. Each of us saw all this with our own eyes. Everyone remembers what the Estonian slackers on the payroll answered when they were asked “When will you work?”... We remember - “Let the Russians work, gee.” - answered the communists - Estonians...

So, gentlemen, Estonians, why invent stupid myths when you have something to be proud of? You can safely say that we not only occupied all the leadership and party positions, we infiltrated the Communist Party en masse, milked Russian suckers for decades and didn’t give a damn! And you continue to do this with success now... That’s how cunning, smart and dexterous you are. And Russians are idiots and suckers. As they were, so they remain. Why is this not a national idea for you to be proud of?

It can be said with absolute certainty that no republics during perestroika times fed anyone except themselves, and before Khrushchev’s budget changes, most of the budget was the same for the entire country and could not be attributed to any one republic. So the myth “about one republic feeding others” can be considered destroyed.

The budgetary policy of the second half of the history of the USSR was flawed and anti-socialist, contributing to the disunity of the country, rather than its planned and unified development. Whether the creation of such a policy was an evil intent to destroy socialism or an illiterate imitation of capitalism (which uses such a budget model) is unknown, but one thing is for sure - this policy was one of the reasons for the slowdown in the development of the USSR and its further degradation to capitalism.