On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist on the geopolitical map, becoming 15 independent states. How did it happen that a superpower that once competed in the political arena with the United States, won the Great Patriotic War, had an impact on other countries of the world, in an instant ceased to exist? Who is to blame for the collapse of the USSR, and why it turned out so – these and many questions for decades trying to answer not only political scientists, journalists, economists, but also ordinary citizens who became residents of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and other CIS countries.
In 2011, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NTV TV channel released a documentary project "USSR". The collapse of the empire. During 7 episodes, the author and presenter of the project Vladimir Chernyshev with the participation of a number of famous figures of Perestroika tried to understand the causes of one of the main tragedies of the XX century.
The main advantage of the project, in my opinion, is a huge number of interviews (which occupy most of the screen time) with prominent figures of the time. Among them: Nikolai Ryzhkov, Egor Ligachev, Anatoly Lukyanov, Pavel Voshchanov, Alexander Korzhakov and others. All of them, in one way or another, have something to do with the tragedy, but most surprisingly, they do not plead guilty. The main “gravedigger” of the USSR, according to most people, is only Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (but Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin, the first President of the Russian Federation, avoided the fate of being branded). Unfortunately, some of the respondents will die before the series airs (Leonid Abalkin, Vladislav Achalov), and someone after the show (Eduard Shevarnadze).
The weak spot of the series seemed to me the musical accompaniment, represented only by the composition “Gypsy” performed by VIA “Singing Guitars”, the song by V. Vysotsky “The crown flew into pieces ...” (playing in the credits in almost every issue) and the march “Farewell to the Slavic”.
“USSR. Although the collapse of the empire turned out to be a typical NTV project, where scandals, intrigue, investigations come out on top, it was interesting to watch it. Each series was devoted to one specific problem (“race on the carriage”, the Chernobyl disaster, the clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the “parade of sovereignty”, democratization), a number of which, taken together, resulted in the State Emergency Committee, the Belovezhsk Agreement and the farewell speech of the first and last President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev from the TV screen.
Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the collapse of the USSR (1 episode aired on August 19, 2011 - 20 years after the start of the State Emergency Committee), the project, nevertheless, has not lost its relevance, and left a pleasant impression.
9 out of 10