Popularity of Conspiracy Theories about Demise of USSR Intended to Distract Attention from Real Causes, Tsipko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 22 – Conspiracy theories about the demise of the USSR, associated in the first instance with publicist Yevgeny Spitsyn, are intended to distract attention from the real causes of that event – the way Lenin reassembled the empire after 1918, the way Stalin repressed the population, and the way Russian nationalism undermined the USSR, Aleksandr Tsipko says.

            In a 5,000-word article in which he details the numerous mistakes and misinterpretations Spitsyn and his ilk make, the senior Russian social scientist and commentator makes a large number of points based on his reading of history and on his own experience near the center of power in Gorbachev’s time (ng.ru/ideas/2026-06-22/6_9521_ussr.html).

            But his arguments about the real reasons for the disintegration of the USSR in 1991 are especially important, particularly because all three of them are not only ignored by the conspiracy theorists but also are at odds with the ideological pronouncements of Putin and supporters of his regime.

            First, Tsipko says, one must keep in mind that Russia was reassembled by Lenin in 1918-1921 not as a voluntary union of republics but by military force. It was never the free union of peoples that Soviet leaders insisted and that Putin and company continue to insist existed. Consequently, when the center weakened, the country Lenin established began to fall apart.

            Second, he continues, Stalin was never the hero for most Soviets. Instead,  he was recognized as a brutal dictator from which not only the population of the USSR wanted to escape but also from which the leaders of the CPSU wanted to do as well. Any attempt to restore Stalinism, therefore, will only increase opposition and fissiparousness as it did in 1991.

            And third – and this is Tsipko’s key point, one especially important because it is typically ignored – the USSR “was destroyed in 1991 above all by the ethnic Russians and became a victim of Great Russian separatism” (stress supplied), with Boris Yeltsin playing the key role but others like Aleksandr Yakovlev who earlier warned about this doing so as well.

            According to Tsipko, it was Yeltsin’s drive in 1990 to have the RSFSR declare its laws rather than those of the USSR dominant on its territory that was the proximate cause of the demise of the Soviet state; but it was efforts by Yakovlev and others to boost the study of pre-revolutionary Russia that also contributed to the USSR’s collapse.

            The senior Russian commentator says “we must always bear in mind what Nicholas Berdyaev said about the mystery of Russianness,” specifically his argument that the Russian people made great sacrifices to create the Russian state … but remained without power over their own vast realm.”

            “Imperialism, in the Western and bourgeois sense of the word, is alien to the Russian people and yet they have submissively devoted their energies to building an imperialism in which they were not committed or beneficiaries. Herein,” Berdyaev wrote, “lies the mystery of Russian history and the Russian soul.            “