A word to the people
A word to the people ( Russian Слово к народу ) was a publication ( open letter ) that was published by several Soviet politicians, writers and others. a. was signed. The appeal was published on July 23, 1991 in the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya (the paper was critical of perestroika ). The appeal was signed by, among others, Yuri Bondarew , Valentin Warennikow , Gennady Zyuganov , Alexander Prokhanov and Valentin Rasputin .
The authors opposed the reform policy of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and pleaded for the continued existence of the Soviet Union.
“Dear residents of Russia! Citizens of the USSR! Compatriots!
A tremendous, unheard-of misfortune has occurred. The homeland, our country, the great state, entrusted to us with its nature, with the glorious ancestors, it perishes, falls apart, sinks into darkness and nothingness. And this case comes with our silence, forbearance and agreement [...]
Brothers, what happened? Why have the cunning and grandiose rulers, wise and cunning apostates, avaricious and rich ruffians, mocking us, mocking our faith, taking advantage of our naivete, seized power, plundering riches, robbing the people of their houses, factories and land, dismembering them State, incite us, alienate us from the past and future, determine us in pathetic vegetation and in slavery and submission to the almighty neighbors? [...]
Brothers, we wake up too late, we notice the misfortune when our house is already on four corners burns, and you can no longer extinguish this with water, but with your own tears and blood. […]
We turn to parties, large and small, liberals and monarchists , centralists and regionalists, to singers of the national idea. We turn to the party - the Communist Party , which is responsible not only for the victories and failures of the last seventy years, but also for the last six tragic years when the party first led the country but then surrendered power and gave them to the reckless and clumsy parliamentarians who oppose us, to pass thousands of stillborn laws, of which only those are alive who drag the people into slavery, divide up the tortured body of the land. Communists, whose party is destroyed by their own leaders, who have now thrown away their party books, run one after the other into the opponent's camp - boasting, betraying, demanding the gallows for their former comrades - may the communists hear our call! ]
Let us unite to prevent the chain reaction of a catastrophic collapse of the state, economy and human personality; in order to contribute to the consolidation of the Soviet power, to its transformation into a real power of the people, and not into a crib for the greedy nouveau riche [...]
The Soviet Union, that is our house and bulwark, built by the tremendous efforts of all peoples and nations, which saved us from shame and slavery during the terrible raids ! Russia - unique, beloved! - it calls for help. "
The publication was attacked by supporters of reform, for example Alexander Jakowlew , the initiator of Gorbachev's reform policy , labeled perestroika, the publication as "demagogic" and a work of "maddened places and at the same time desperate sighs of the soul" and also as "a vulgar work".
The publication was later taken as a call to arms in the days leading up to the August coup .
However, the appeal also marked the transition of the “more conservative” layers of the CPSU leadership from Marxist-Leninist to state - nationalist positions, which also determine the policy of the KPRF after the end of the Soviet Union . In the “Word to the People” there are hardly any references to a “ class struggle ”, instead they called for “saving the fatherland ”.
Web links
- Cabinet of the Armaments Czars , article in the newspaper Die Zeit , issue No. 35 of 23 August 1991
Individual evidence
- ↑ Original text and signatory
- ↑ Сумерки России // Лебедь, № 450, 6 ноября 2005
- ↑ Wayne Allensworth: The Russian question: nationalism, modernization, and post-Communist Russia . Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, ISBN 978-0-84769-003-9 , p. 164 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ "The manifesto 'A word to the people', which the putschists used in August 1991 as an ideological platform against Gorbachev", quotation from Back to Communism? In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1996 ( online ).
- ^ A. James Gregor, Allesandro Campi: Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time , Transaction Publishers, 2001, ISBN 978-0-76580-855-4 , p. 153 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Kevin O'Connor: Intellectuals and apparatchiks: Russian nationalism and the Gorbachev revolution , Lexington Books, 2006, ISBN 978-0-73910-771-3 , pp. 258 ff. ( Limited preview in Google book search)