Criticism as Crisis,or Why the Soviet Union Collapsed

Abstract

Criticism as Crisis, or Why the Soviet Union Still Collapsed

Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika was the response to a crisis? Historians who believe in progress provided clear answers to this question: Soviet socialism was a promise aimed at eliminating all human suffering, fulfilling all material desires and making world history. However, because of the deficits of the Soviet shortage economy, this promise of salvation was neglected every day. Those who promise paradise on earth but only administer deficits lose their legitimacy, and consensus disintegrates. In the end, the Soviet Union experienced a deep crisis. But the contemporaries did not feel that way. And if people do not experience a crisis in their hearts and minds, there is no crisis. It is not so much the times that change but rather the circumstances and how they are perceived. The perestroika was not an expression of crisis. Rather, it triggered the crisis. What is currently taking place in authoritarian Russia and in most of the successor states of the former Soviet Union is only understandable if one considers it as a response to the crisis that was actually generated by the collapse of the Soviet Union.