Reunification of the USSR. Economic reunification of the republics of the former USSR can bring a trillion dollars

In his well-known article in Izvestia, Vladimir Putin spoke in favor of creating a single integration zone on the territory of the former USSR with the subsequent formation of a supranational Union.

This quite logically follows from many of his previous statements about the fate of the USSR.

It was Putin who was the first statesman of post-Soviet Russia to characterize the collapse of the USSR as a global geopolitical catastrophe. It was Putin who formulated the principle of self-determination, fundamentally new for modern Russia: “We preserved the core of the territory of the USSR and called it the Russian Federation.”

If earlier modern Russia was defined by official propaganda as "non-USSR" - something opposed to the USSR - then Putin fundamentally changed the interpretation to "the preserved territory of the USSR."

When drawing up documents on the Customs Union this summer, he spoke of it as "the first real step towards reintegration on the territory of the USSR."
At the end of August, at a bike show in Novorossiysk dedicated to the reunification of disunited peoples, it was Putin, speaking from a cruiser with the meaningful name Mikhail Kutuzov, who repeated the slogan of the marines holding a bridgehead on Malaya Zemlya: “Movement - only forward!” The media did not attach much importance to this then, but it was almost obvious that the slogan was not uttered by chance.

And the continuation followed - in a program article reminiscent of the program article "Russia at the turn of the millennium", published on December 30, 1999, a day before Yeltsin's resignation and Putin took office. about. the President of Russia.

Then Putin wrote about the need for strong state power and the consolidation of society, an economic policy aimed at combating poverty, ensuring the growth of the welfare of the population, sovereignty, patriotism and justice.

Now he raised the question of the reunification of the country.

Some criticize this goal, declaring it "the restoration of the USSR", which in their understanding is a deliberate evil. At the same time, the impossibility of solving such a problem is declared.

Others also see the option of restoring the USSR, but since they treat it differently, they positively assess the goal itself.

Putin stipulates that we are not talking about the restoration of the USSR. But the question in any case is the creation of a deeply integrated interstate union with supranational governing bodies.

One can argue whether this will be a single state or not. But it is obvious that it cannot be anything other than a single country.

In this case, how the powers of the levels of power will be correlated and how they will be called is a question of the next order.

The fact that the peoples support this can be seen from the polls. In Russia, say, 62% regret the collapse of the USSR and would like to restore the Soviet socialist system. In Ukraine, 52% of citizens today are in favor of returning to the USSR. In Tajikistan, back in the mid-90s, two-thirds of the population put their signatures in favor of reunification with Russia.

In Armenia, under Ter-Petrosyan, they passed a law banning a referendum on this topic, initiated by the Communist Party, which proposed to answer whether citizens support joining the Union State with Russia. It was obvious to everyone that the referendum would give a positive result.
Even in Latvia, among businessmen one can hear the words: "Latvia dreams of a Russian protectorate."

Of course, all the republics of the USSR are in a different situation and, to varying degrees, are ready for active inclusion in the integration processes.
But two points are important here. First, the idea is based not only on the general and unconditional political and historical need for the reunification of the country, but also on its mass support by the majority of citizens of almost all republics. The second is that it is not only beneficial for the republics, but also interesting and necessary for their business.

But both in the foreign, which is understandable, and in the Russian press, the idea of ​​reintegration as a goal of Russian policy was met with both skepticism and criticism.

If we discard the fundamentally principled ideological nationalists, we can single out three conditional groups for whom the reunification of the country is unprofitable or undesirable.

The first is a certain part of the local republican elites. In the autumn of 1991, it was they who played a key role in the dismantling of the USSR. And not even because they were his ideological opponents: they tried to defend themselves against the destructive policies that both Gorbachev and Yeltsin were conducting in Moscow. The failure of the State Emergency Committee confirmed them in the opinion that the forces and resources capable of stopping the catastrophe are no longer in the Center. The local elites tried to protect themselves and their republics from the consequences of Gorbachev's return from Foros and Yeltsin's impending dictatorship.

But, like the Russian republican authorities, they liked the idea of ​​"dividing the inheritance", the prospect of being in the position of the highest rulers of the regions, not being accountable to anyone. And having felt themselves as such, they quite predictably began to consider the power and the proclaimed sovereignty of their republics as their most significant asset.

The advantages of sovereignty were felt not by ordinary residents - they received the disadvantages of being separated from the common country - but by local elites and rulers. They got:
- economic resources: in one case - gas and oil, in the other - an area attractive for tourism, in the third - drug routes;
– power and right to decide the fate of citizens without restrictions;
– an independent entry into world politics: from a pleasant opportunity to directly, personally meet with the leaders of countries and speak according to the international protocol in the highest status, to the opportunity to trade the fate of one’s country and thus sovereignty, which gave one the right to do so.
Not to mention the possibility of taking loans, joining certain cooperation programs, and receiving financial support for certain aspects of one's policy.

But if not only the citizens, but also the business of these republics are interested in reunification, but the political elites are not, then the interests of these elites are contrary to the interests of the nation, they at least cannot be considered national elites. Their upholding of what is declared "independence" cannot be considered upholding the interests of the nation - it is only upholding a kind of "neo-feudal privileges".

Even if only ordinary citizens were in favor of reunification, and they were opposed by both the interests of business and the interests of the political class, this would be enough to prefer the interests of the majority of citizens. And the subjects of reunification and reintegration should take into account not the interests of a privileged minority, but the interests of the majority interested in reunification. While maintaining a real opportunity for the elites themselves to successfully fit into the new relations of the united country.

More importantly, in the conditions of support for reunification by the majority of the people, disagreement with the reunification of the elite or part of the elites, in principle, cannot be considered as a factor forcing them to refuse reunification.

The second group, not interested in reunification and, of course, focused on opposing it, are those who have adopted the self-name "liberals". And those of them who, to one degree or another, established themselves in the other republics of the USSR (in the West - more, in the East - less) - and those who continue to exist in Russia.

It was they who benefited the most after the catastrophe in the country twenty years ago. They gained freedom, access to the media, support for Russia's political and economic competitors, and opportunities to lobby various financial and industrial groups (especially in the 1990s).

Considered liberals, and therefore opponents of nationalism, proclaiming themselves to be supporters of international integration and globalization, overcoming national isolation, they should have supported the reunification of the country. But with certain exceptions, they are already and will continue to act as its critics.

The first reason is that if Putin and the Russian authorities succeed in achieving this goal, this will lead to increased support in society and strengthening both within the country and in the world. But they don't want any of Putin's successes. In the 2000s, the profession of “liberals” became criticism of Putin for any reason. And what is more important - presenting themselves in the West as defenders of democracy and the last stronghold on the path of "authoritarianism and Russian imperialism." Their task is to scare the world with Putin and earn political and other dividends in competing countries, creating the image of freedom fighters from themselves: “They are restoring the USSR! Russian imperialism is preparing to jump!”

But there is another important point that predetermines the unfavorability of the reunification of the country for them: they no longer feel like its citizens, do not identify themselves with it. They have a different self-determination, connected with the fact that it is actually more comfortable and convenient for them to live in the West - or, at least, to have the opportunity to constantly visit there.

But even living in Russia, they want to see it as a kind of continuation of the West. They need a protectorate regulated by Western norms, in which, if possible, they should play the role of EBCE commissioners, watching from the West, informing it in time of all the problems that are being committed in Russia.

They do not need the strengthening of Russia, they do not need its ability to be independent. A single integration space - and through it the reunification of the country - is for them an obligation to live according to the norms of this world, and not that world. The reunification of the country is an obstacle in their personal integration into a system of a different self-identification.

Formally, they are all citizens of Russia. But they are not its citizens in the proper civil, and not in the legal sense of the word. They are citizens, if not subjects, of other countries, of another system. Countries and systems of your dreams.

The word "cosmopolitan" was previously applied to this type of people. But this is false and overly complimentary. The classical cosmopolitan considered himself a citizen of the world, not identifying himself with any city, state, ethnic group. These are not like that. They do not care where they live - they want to live where it is good, comfortable and rich.

They only say that they are citizens of the world. Their dream is to be citizens of the USA (England, France, Switzerland, etc.). They do not aspire to be citizens of the world - they work out the right to citizenship in the countries that are the masters of this world.

The reunification of the country is the strengthening of its position in competition with other countries - and its definite confrontation with them. And for people of this type - this is a violation of their usual comfort and the inevitability of choice. Which, however, they have already done - and which they are unlikely to forgive the people and society.
The third and most unexpected group, focused on confronting the task of reintegrating the country, are the communists. More precisely, a certain, not even nationalist (everything is clear with this), but an internationalist, left, but dogmatic part of them.

To a certain extent, this is unnatural: it was they who did not let us forget about the USSR for twenty years. It was they who carried his banner and forced to hide their eyes in shame and make excuses for those who forgot in which country he was born. But today, when the idea they saved begins to turn into a possible political will of Russia, they begin to fall into dogmatic reasoning, arguing that this is not at all what they had in mind. Speaking for the USSR, they agree to the reunification of it and the country only if it is created exclusively according to their drawings: as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics proper. With socialism and the Soviet power of the working people.

The problem is that these are different tasks, tasks of different stages.

If a person is a supporter of socialism and Soviet power, he must defend these goals and these ideals. But within the framework of the ideology he professed, it is customary to call it the tasks of the socialist revolution.

But in the same ideology there are tasks of the democratic revolution - which include overcoming the fragmentation of the country, its reunification. What system should be in a reunified country is an important question. Very important. But in order to solve it, you need to have this association.

And the named groups of communists, in fact, put the question this way: either the country will be socialist, or let it be fragmented.

This could be understood if they themselves were ready for real action to reunite the country and said: we do not need a single integration space. We ourselves have enough strength, resources and determination to restore precisely our Soviet Union. But they don't. They hold the banner, which is more than worthy, and stand still with it, without taking a single step forward. And when someone takes this step forward, even without this banner, they go berserk.

They can be understood - they saved and preserved this idea and this banner. But now they are being intercepted and moved on. They are offended. But they should be offended only at themselves, that they could not take advantage of the almost universal support of this idea - and lead the people along.

And above all - because they generally remained in the world of words, not actions, they argued about programs for twenty years, and when someone tried to start acting on the principle: "Each step of a real movement is more important than a dozen programs," they could not even remember that these are the words of Marx.

Today they assert that the reunification of the country not in the form of the USSR "will become a bourgeois yoke around the neck of all peoples", and therefore today "the communists do not want and cannot carry out the reunification of a capitalist country."

The reunification of the country is a natural political and historical task. Like the one solved by the Spaniards during the Reconquista, the Italians by Garibaldi during the Rissorgimento, Abraham Lincoln and the Unionists during the civil war for reunification, Germany under Bismarck.
This applies to the peoples of the USSR, divided during the largest geopolitical catastrophe twenty years ago, in the same way as to any other peoples in

Reunification is not possible.
The collapse of the USSR could have been prevented
Exactly 15 years ago, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich, who gathered in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, concluded agreements on the termination of the existence of the USSR as a subject of international law and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The political leaders who signed the verdict on the Union still do not regret what they did. The first President of Ukraine, Kravchuk, noted in an interview with Interfax that at that time "the USSR had exhausted itself as such and began to fall apart without Kravchuk, without Yeltsin and without Shushkevich." The first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, also confirmed to Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the collapse of the Soviet empire "is a historically inevitable process that was predetermined for the USSR." However, the peoples of the former USSR had a completely different opinion on this matter.

Fifteen years later, most residents of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine bitterly regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, a survey by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) showed. The nostalgia for former power is especially strong in Russia (68 percent), somewhat weaker in Ukraine (59 percent) and Belarus (52 percent).

Similar results were presented by other sociological centers in Russia. According to the Yuri Levada Analytical Center, 61% of respondents regret the collapse of the former USSR. The majority of Russians now, like two years ago, are confident that the collapse of the Soviet Union could have been avoided - 59% and 65%, respectively, while those who say otherwise are much fewer (27% and 24%).

The fact that the majority of Russians regret the collapse of the USSR is also confirmed by the results of studies by sociologists from the Bashkirova and Partners company - 56%. According to their data, almost the same number (53%) of survey participants believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union could have been prevented. Only 37% believe that what happened was inevitable.

According to the sixth wave of regular international surveys of the population within the framework of the Eurasian Monitor program, 52% of the polled residents of Belarus, 68% of Russia and 59% of Ukraine regret the collapse of the Soviet Union. Do not regret, respectively, 36%, 24% and 30% of respondents. 12%, 8% and 11% found it difficult to answer this question. This was announced at the press conference yesterday by the head of the ZIRCON research group Igor Zadorin.

At the same time, the majority of respondents are aware that it is now impossible to recreate the USSR on the previous foundations. In Russia, 68 percent of respondents think so, in Ukraine - 71 percent, in Belarus - 76 percent of respondents.

If a referendum on the unification of the former Soviet republics into a new union were held today, then what chances would the new renewed Union have? According to sociologists, the participants in this hypothetical referendum in Russia and Ukraine would have voted "rather for unification" / in Russia 51 percent in favor, 22 percent against; in Ukraine, 45 and 25 percent, respectively. The opinions of the inhabitants of Belarus are ambiguous - 36% are in favor and 32% are against. Between 11 and 16 percent of those polled in these countries would not vote.

"The former format of the USSR has lost its relevance. Citizens generally believe that if they unite, then not with everyone," said Valery Fedorov, head of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center. According to him, 45% of respondents were in favor of unification with Belarus, and 39% - with Ukraine. At the same time, Kazakhstan was in third place in terms of popularity - it has the sympathy of 29% of the respondents.

State Duma Vice Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has a reputation as the "mouthpiece of the Kremlin", also believes that the answer to the 15-year-old Belovezhskaya Accords that destroyed the Soviet Union could be the reunification of the four republics on the basis of new agreements. "If a single economic space is actually formed, in the future, even if in a truncated form, a union state can be restored on the basis of four republics - Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan," the LDPR leader told Interfax. Zhirinovsky is sure that with such a configuration, the new union state could be strong, have a large territory, a significant population, and have powerful natural resources.
This "voice of the people" and "voice from above" clearly indicate the direction of a new integration within the framework of an already dying one. CIS. The future belongs to the Customs Union of three Eurasian countries - Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

For all economically more or less developed countries, the global crisis has become an exam in the "Hamburg account". The credit ratings of even the “old” EU states are collapsing, but the recession hit the former Soviet republics with particular force, none of which managed to create a competitive economy. If the crisis threatens the Irish or Greeks with “merely” exclusion from the eurozone, then the refusal of international financial institutions in credit tranches to Ukraine itself can lead to a social explosion with the ensuing change in foreign policy orientation.

Political scientist Alexander Chernitsky talks about the new geopolitical situation with Yevgeny Fedorov, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship.

Let's not hide the fact that Mr. Fedorov's position can be called both overly optimistic and, shall we say, debatable. Nevertheless, in the opinion of KM.RU, it is of undoubted interest, which is why our portal introduces our readers to it.

- Evgeny Alekseevich, in February 2009, we met in one of the television studios, where we discussed the future of the CIS in the context of the crisis. Then, to my question about the prospects for the reunification of Russia with its scattered national outskirts, you answered that it would happen amazingly quickly - within a few years. Moreover, you stressed that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will most likely be drawn into a single state after the CIS countries. And this despite the fact that they are part of the European Union! How has the past ten months affected your point of view - has it been shaken?

My position has remained the same, and therefore strengthened, since time works for it. This year, a European state was created, which in essence actually means the beginning of the formation of the second pole of the world in the face of the EU.

- Obviously, you are referring to the election in November of the first "President" of the EU (Permanent President of the European Council), the "Minister of Foreign Affairs" of the EU (High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) and the entry into force of the first "constitution" of the EU in December ( Lisbon Treaty)?

Of course. As we all know, after the Soviet Union the world was unipolar, but now it is beginning to take shape as a bipolar one. This, by the way, is the result of the economic crisis.

- The crisis has sharply weakened the United States, and China, with all its successes and with all its potential, is still not powerful enough at all, so Europe has managed to “put its foot in the door”?

Well, yes, the logic is close enough. So, the creation of a bipolar world in terms of its geopolitical consequences will be comparable at least with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This means that the world has now entered a paradigm in which Russia has a completely different role and place than during the past eighteen years. It is no coincidence that the Europeans once allowed the South Stream, and then suddenly once again allowed the Nord Stream. These are the consequences of the creation of the European Union.

- More precisely, these are the consequences of the consolidation of the European Union in 2009, after all, the Maastricht Treaty formally paved the way to the current EU...

So, the ideology of a bipolar world has been launched, in which Russia is not just one of the small states that can be reckoned with or not. Now Russia is already a kind of significant counterbalance or, if you like, a makeweight in the system of coordinates of the two poles, America and Europe. The European pole has not yet taken shape, but it is already clear that it will take shape, there is no turning back. And for America, this is a clear signal.

- What is the signal about? Should Washington realize that if Europe needs a strong Russia, then the United States needs an equally strong Russia?

In the course of the global crisis, prerequisites have been created for the strengthening of Russia, which, in its “strong” quality, is needed both by America and Europe. And this removes barriers to the restoration of a single national space of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. A situation is emerging in which everyone needs Russia, and it is necessary to negotiate with it, and negotiate with a strong Russian state.

- And it will probably be difficult for him to gain proper power without returning to his original historical limits. After all, we are talking about a classic land power, whose influence is the function of its territory. However, what about the ambitions of the republican "bosses" who do not want to obey Moscow? Throughout the post-Soviet period, they served as virtually the only obstacle to reintegration. And to this day they tightly hold on to their "square" powers of deputies, prime ministers, presidents and businessmen-monopolists affiliated with them. Maybe now the national elites will collapse into the arms of the "big brother" due to insurmountable economic difficulties?

Yes, that's not the point. The space has changed. The republics did not want "back to Moscow" because the global geopolitical structure encouraged the fragmentation and departure from Russia of its national republics. Moreover, such a construction acted not only in relation to Russia: the emergence of many small, formally independent states was welcomed all over the planet.

- Perhaps it is appropriate to recall Yugoslavia, and Kosovo, and even East Timor...

But now the former Soviet republics have nowhere to go but to negotiate with the Russian elites on a single state space. And first of all it concerns Ukraine. That is, the whole situation is changing. Since Ukraine did not have time to get into the EU, it means that it has no other choice but to negotiate with Moscow. Another thing is that this should not be the accession of Ukraine to Russia, in other words, the absorption of Ukraine by Russia. I do not think so. Although this is already a completely different level of the issue, I believe that, most likely, we will move according to the “Kievan Rus” scenario, that is, the capital of the united country may well be located in Ukraine.

- “The people of Kievan Rus created the Muscovite state,” Solzhenitsyn involuntarily comes to mind. True, the headquarters of the CIS from the very beginning was located not in Moscow, but in Minsk, but no integration results were achieved within the framework of the Commonwealth, something amorphous turned out - “swan, cancer and pike”. Even the Union State, with its objectively significant achievements (take, for example, the equal rights of Russians and Belarusians to freedom of movement, choice of place of stay and residence), has led to little in the matter of real reunification.

And it couldn't! Until very recently, there were simply no conditions for the formation of a single state by Russia and Belarus.

- That is, you think that the reintegration has now been given a boost by the creation of Europe as a single state?

Yes. Yes! Just to clarify: it did not give impetus, it created the preconditions for a push. The push itself will happen within about five, six, seven years. That is, we can already talk about the restoration of the unity of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and maybe Georgia, and some other republics somewhere by 2020.

- Can the recent creation of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus be seen as one of the early steps in this direction?

Exactly.

- The other day, Kazimira Prunskienė, the first Prime Minister of independent Lithuania, headed the pro-Russian, as the media immediately dubbed her, the People's Party of Lithuania. Is this a signal of the nostalgia of the local society for the Soviet country, or is it purely internal political games within the borders of the former Lithuanian SSR?

Of course, this is a signal. There will be more and more such events. A gradual reversal of geopolitical trends is beginning in the former USSR, and in general throughout the world. Centrifugal tendencies are replaced by centripetal ones, and this cyclicity is well worked out in history. And here, in the CIS space, these centripetal tendencies are tied to Russia. They will be more severe in Ukraine and Belarus, less severe - in the Baltic States. Nevertheless, I do not rule out that the same tendencies will bring the Baltic states into a single state with Russia, just as they brought it to us more than once in the past. You see, these are historical roads, they are perfectly rolled: forward - backward, forward - backward. But to the right - to the left? There is no such.

On December 8, 1991, the Belovezhskaya agreement was signed on the creation of the CIS. The USSR ceased to exist. Pravda.Ru wondered if the reunification of the republics was possible and did people have a desire to live in the new Union?

Gorbachev predicts the creation of the USSR 2.0

Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia (1991-1993), People's Deputy of the RSFSR (1990-1991) Andrey Dunaev regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union, but believes that it is "unrealistic to restore it, since "princesses and bais have already appeared in all the republics."

"Reunification is even undesirable," the former people's deputy told Pravda.Ru. In his opinion, "we fed the backward republics of Central Asia and tried to bring them up to the average union level."

They also helped Eastern Europe. “I remember well how after the Victory we ate nothing but quinoa for several years, sometimes there was bread. And now documents have been published that at that time we handed over thousands of tons of grain to Poland. And what gratitude do we have from the Poles now?” Andrey Dunaev noted.

The ex-minister believes that the fate of the Russian state does not depend on the addition of territories, but on how well the people will live, how well science, technology, education, and medicine will be organized.

What would the USSR be like now if it had been preserved, no one knows, Pravda.Ru said editor-in-chief of the "Literaturnaya gazeta"Leonid Polyakov.

If a large country were preserved, it would be better than what we have now, he believes, calling the collapse of historical Russia (that is, the USSR) a tragedy.

“I would like to preserve that country. And most of the peoples who inhabited it would like to, with the exception of some republics. And I would like to live there. direction, it would be very decent to live in this country," the expert notes.

“We should have followed the path of China, and not the path of “political chatter,” Leonid Polyakov is sure. At the same time, according to him, one can imagine how high the Soviet Union could rise with its potential: scientific, technical, with a population of over 300 million people.

“When our liberals talk about the Soviet Union, they only remember the empty shelves of 1989-1990. But it was actually a country that lost control due to the Gorbachev line,” Polyakov stated.

Historian Andrei Fursov"Pravda.Ru" that the Soviet Union cannot be restored, just as it is impossible to restore the social system that was in Soviet times: it was broken in order "to turn a relatively large group of people into owners."

If we talk about the new conditions for reunification, then, according to the expert, "you can't swallow what you can't digest."

- I'm not sure that we need republics, for example, Central and Central Asia. These are completely different cultural zones. After all, you can unite only with those who correspond in culture, in ethnic composition. Otherwise, nothing good will come of it, ”Fursov summed up.

The neutrality of the Soviet Union in the outbreak of the World War made it possible for the Soviet people to continue peaceful construction.

However, the military threat was removed only temporarily. The tense international situation, fraught with surprises, demanded from the Soviet government the utmost strengthening of the country's defense capability, a sharp rise in industry and agriculture, the strengthening of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, and the rallying of the entire people. These were the most important tasks then facing the Soviet state.

In connection with the attack of fascist Germany on Poland and the rapid advance of the Nazi troops to the east, the Soviet government, as a precaution, held in the first days of September 1939 a large training gathering of replacements in six military districts. In the Kiev and Belorussian special military districts, the troops were put on alert, and for the convenience of commanding them, the Ukrainian and Belorussian fronts were created.

The territory of Poland could become a springboard for an attack on the USSR. The non-aggression pact concluded with Germany in August 1939 was by no means a reliable guarantee against aggression.

An alarming situation also developed for the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus: having fallen under the yoke of Polish capitalists and landlords in 1920, during the period of weakness of Soviet Russia, they could now find themselves under the yoke of German fascists.

Less than two weeks after the German attack on Poland, the Polish government left the country to its fate. The Polish state actually ceased to exist.

The Soviet Union took under its protection the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. On September 17, 1939, the Red Army crossed the Soviet-Polish border.

The working masses of Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia everywhere created peasant committees, volost and district self-governments. The liberation campaign of the Red Army was completed by the end of September.

12 million people, including more than 9 million Ukrainians and Belarusians, were rescued from the lord's captivity and saved from the enslavement of fascism.

On September 28, an agreement was concluded between the governments of the USSR and Germany, which determined the Soviet-German demarcation line, which ran along the rivers Pisse, Nareva, Western Bug and San.

In October 1939, in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage, people's assemblies were elected by secret ballot.

Expressing the will of the vast majority of the population, they proclaimed Soviet power on the liberated land and turned to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to reunite Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian SSR and Western Belarus with the Byelorussian SSR.

In early November, the fifth session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a resolution on the admission of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to the Soviet Union and their reunification with the Ukrainian and Belarusian republics.

With the establishment of Soviet power, the peoples of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were able to begin socialist transformations.

In the very first days, large industrial enterprises, banks, transport were nationalized there, private ownership of land was liquidated, and unemployment was put an end to in a short time.

The implementation of these measures was fraught with considerable difficulties and took place in the conditions of an intensified class struggle.

The reunification of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Western Belarus with the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was of great importance.

The historical task of uniting the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples in united national states has been accomplished.