Something to remember: 13 years ago we said "yes" to USSR

A referendum regarding the issue of USSR took place on March 17th 1991.

Members of the referendum tried to decide whether the country should be kept as a union of republics. Despite the fact that majority of the members had answered positively on the posed question, several months later the union has crumbled.

13 years ago, Soviet citizens were addressed the following question: “Do you consider preserving the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics in a form of renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, with guaranteed human rights and personal freedom of people of various nationalities?”

Some republics and regions have also included some of their own questions. Based on the official soviet data, 147 million people (80%) voted. Among them, 112 million (76,4%) voted for preserving the USSR. Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, and Estonia ignored voting altogether. In 1996, Russian State Duma passed a specific resolution thus admitting legal power of those results of the referendum of March 17th, 1991.

Interestingly, Russians already started to forget those results of the referendum. When asked who they voted for, 40% turned out to vote “For”, another 40% could not remember, 13% had troubles answering the question.

At the same time, amount of those who do not regret the USSR’s collapse has reduced almost in half. While in 1992 32% of Russians did not wish for the collapse, today there remain only 15%. 80% of people think that USSR should have been preserved. 58% of Russians however consider it impossible to reconstruct former Union. Only 30% still believe in the possibility.

Here is a reminder for those who do not remember:

An agreement entitled “Belovezhskoe Soglashenie” was signed on December 8th 1991 between Belarus and Ukraine. The agreement ascertained the fact that the Union of Soviet Republics had ceased to exist and a new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been formed. The agreement was signed by the following parties: Boris Yeltsin, Stanislav Shushkevish and Leonid Kravchuk.

“Belavezhskoe soglashenie” has later been referred to as the conspiracy of the traitors and the three men were called names to their faces. All three of them are still alive; none of them is at power; all of them have a rather controversial reputation in their  now-independent countries.

In conclusion, one's role in the history has been acknowledged even by the Bolsheviks, even though according to their theory, even the most gifted individual is nothing without the support of the masses. Based on numerous examples from the history of our nation, our geniuses were capable of doing pretty much anything…They could easily make a mess and have future generations clean up after them, or they could simply give away a significant portion of the country's vast territory to a neighbor…for free.