Propaganda aspects of cultural liberalization in the conflict between the Western and Communist systems

Koshmarov Mikhail ORCID: 0000-0001-6166-5186 PhD in Technical Science Director for the Development of Innovative Technologies, Russian Social Business Promotion Centre 101000, Russia, Moscow, Luchnikov, 2 mk69@ya.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The global conflict between the Western Liberal world and the Eastern Communist world, more often called the Cold War, began almost immediately after the end of World War II and ended in 1989 with the self-liquidation of the Eastern Bloc. The conflict was ideological and was conducted mainly with propaganda tools. This article will analyze the technologies of using cultural phenomena and scientific reports in order to promote the ideology of globalism; the processes of cultural liberalization of post-war Western society and the consequences of such liberalization. It will be shown that Western society and Western culture underwent tectonic changes during this period. This transformation of Western culture was so radical that, firstly, despite the Iron Curtain, it launched the processes of ideological diffusion with the countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR. Secondly, the revolutionary post-war changes in Western countries led to the neoliberal economic revolution that began in the 1980s. Cultural liberalization refers to rapid, almost in one generation, changes in the system of values, beliefs, patterns of social behavior, legal and economic norms and practices. The neoliberal economic revolution is understood in this article as the liberalization of the Keynesian post-war economic system, the deregulation of the banking system, the transfer of control in the early 1980s to a team of politicians and economists guided by the doctrines of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, financialization ^[1]. It should be noted that the reports of the Club of Rome also agree in their assessments of economic neoliberalism as an obviously harmful phenomenon for humanity ^[2] and the research of Academician Glazyev^[3].  

This research is relevant today for the reason that despite the failure of deregulation and financialization policies, which became apparent during the global financial crisis or GFC 2008, the beneficiaries and successors of this neoliberal global revolution have now taken command positions in politics and economics. Moreover, they are trying to scale these economic theories and practices to the entire planet, intending to create something resembling a planetary corporation. The neoliberalism of the Chicago Friedman School of Economics, which prescribes maximum privatization and rejection of the social functions of the state, including education, health care, the penitentiary system and maximum deregulation of the financial sector and free trade – this is the economic component of globalism. Friedman called himself a liberal, his followers in the United States call themselves neoclassics, or neoconservatives.

This article will explore the genesis of this cultural transformation, its ideological and economic components, and its determinism with the economic neoliberal revolution. Some aspects of the penetration of this system of worldviews into the countries of the Eastern Bloc, which caused transformations of society, which are quite suitable for the thesis of the Club of Rome, will be considered separately and in more detail –The first global revolution. The report of the same name by the Club of Rome in 1991 will be analyzed. ^[4]  

The principles and mechanisms of information wars that are being waged against Russia today ^[5] were not created from scratch after V.V. Putin's Munich speech. The structure of this information conflict, the scientific school, the metaphysics of H. Mackinder's doctrine and, more importantly, the geopolitical goals of the partition of Russia ^[6] have remained the same since the Cold War. Therefore, the study of the genesis of the transformation of Western society, from the WASP community to liberal globalism, the diffusion of these transformations to the countries of the Eastern Bloc, and the propaganda tools of the parallel ideological war between the West and the East are especially relevant today. The term propaganda in this article is used in the classical sense, consonant with the works of E. Bernays, G. Lasswell, W. Lippman, J. M. Keynes and the Herman-Chomsky theory of propaganda ^[7].

 The Cultural Revolution in the post-war society of the USA

By the early 1980s, the WASP values of the core of the British Commonwealth, or as they often say, the Five sisters, but especially in the USA and in the UK, were revolutionarily transformed. Many things that were considered impossible before the war, in the second half of the forties began to gradually seep into the agenda, in the fifties they began to be discussed, in the sixties they were introduced, by the early eighties they became a new social norm.  

The most radical changes occurred in the conservative WASP community in the United States: since the early 1960s, restrictive quotas on national grounds for admission to universities were lifted at universities, including the very conservative league of universities for elites, which of course was due to the horrors of Nazism. Quotas for the admission of women to universities have also been lifted. (Access to education has also been greatly simplified in the UK). A side effect of these innovations has been a gradual change in the perception of mixed marriages in the snobbish WASP community. Marriages with non-WASPS have ceased to be a shocking challenge to society. This transformation on college campuses and in the minds of the elites has created the prerequisites for the next wave of revolutionary changes.

In the second half of the 1960s, three revolutions began almost simultaneously in the USA and in the UK, which significantly changed the culture of Western countries and the basic values of society. The musical rock revolution, the psychedelic revolution and the sexual revolution. All these revolutionary changes in the lifestyle of the generation of the 1960s and 70s went on in parallel, fueling each other, and in the late 1970s. even the meme hendiatrix sex drugs rock-n-roll appeared. 

Also in the 1960s, the emancipation of the black population of America began: in 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed abolishing segregation. The peak of this revolution was the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.

It is also worth noting another revolution of the late 1960s, which led to the disavowal of medical diagnoses for certain perversions and further the process of repealing laws formulated differently in different states, which the US Supreme Court summarized as: "commonly called sodomy laws." [Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)]

There was also an event here that the mainstream later made historic.  In 1969, an incident completely unthinkable at that time happened in New York: mass disobedience of the police, the so-called Stonewall riots (1969) and although no one died, the anniversary of this riot is now celebrated with "pride parades" throughout the West. In 1973-74, by several stages of voting, accompanied by scandals and incidents, the American Psychological Association (APA) removed this diagnosis from the register of mental diseases; WHO repeated this in 1990; The decision of the US Supreme Court abolishing criminal prosecution under "sodomy laws" in all states was adopted in 2003. [Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)]

 The revolutions described above have created a huge number of consequences in all areas of Western society, and have begun to radically change the value foundations of this society. Today, many things that were completely unthinkable in the 1960s are the norm, such as legal same-sex marriage. But the changes are not over and today there are also shocking practices in society. For example, the practice of prescribing puberty blockers for sex reassignment to children under 12 years old, which has been officially used in the UK in private clinics with public money for the last 10 years. This is a direct consequence of the liberalization of Western culture and worldview. The details of this practice caused a scandal, court cases and discussion in the media after the publication of the 500-page evidentiary investigation of Hannah Barnes in 2023. "Time to think: The Inside Story of the collapse of the Tavistock Gender Service for Children" ^[8] The scandal was caused not by the practice of prescribing infertility drugs followed by sex reassignment surgery, but by prescribing these drugs to children after several interviews. More than a thousand children went through the program and even the mainstream had to react: The Times published more than a dozen articles about this investigation.

Returning to the topic of studying the propaganda aspects of the conflict between the communist and Western systems, it is necessary to note the most important political consequence of the above-described revolutions. The new youth culture has become a very effective advertisement for the "free world", as the West called itself until 1989, a bright cover for a young, actively developing self-awareness. Rock music and related paraphernalia were promoted as symbols of some kind of abstract youth protest, the "wind of change", freedom from dogmas and conventions, and a progressive spirit. The words free, liberty, freedom, revolution were often used in lyrics and in the names of songs, music albums, and music festivals.

At the same time, the new youth culture interpreted "freedom" in its own way - as free love, a return to primitive promiscuity in the terminology of the anthropologist's research  Louis Morgan 1877. "Ancient society, or the study of the lines of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilization."^[9]

In the America of the sixties, a new unique format of mass art appeared – stadium concerts.  More precisely, we should talk about the revival of the format, since the prototypes of modern stadiums are ancient amphitheaters, and mass concerts are a kind of hybrid of ancient Greek mysteries and Roman Ludi.

These stadium spectacles were preceded by festivals in nature, far from populated areas. The most famous of these festivals, the 500 thousandth Woodstock in 1969, to which a huge number of articles, films, literary texts and scientific research are devoted, the anniversaries of this festival were widely celebrated. There is a meme of the Woodstock generation in Western discourse. Thus, Woodstock is a cultural, one might say, archetypal phenomenon of its time, an eidos and a symbol of rock and roll culture, sexual and psychedelic revolutions. The issue of a postage stamp, for the anniversary of this festival, was honored with an article in Forbes magazine: "The stamp release ceremony on the first day took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the Play It Loud exhibition is currently taking place, showcasing vintage instruments of famous artists of the rock and roll era." [Chii D. Woodstock Festival's 50th Anniversary gets the Postage Stamp Treatment // Forbes.com 08.08.2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidchiu/2019/08/08/woodstock-festivals-50th-anniversary-gets-the-postage-stamp-treatment/?sh=40f744dc574e (accessed 12/15/2023]     

Photos of Woodstock participants, especially dancing half-naked young women associated with Eugene Delacroix's painting "Freedom leading the People" (it is often called "freedom on the barricades"), also became a meme. Looking at photos or videos of these dancing participants and participants of the festival, it is quite obvious that they are in a trance, their facial expressions and body language reflect a state of euphoria, "signs of drug intoxication", in legal terminology. The Woodstock Festival became the extreme of the psychedelic revolution, when several hundred thousand young people were simultaneously in an altered state of consciousness under the influence of psychoactive drugs that alter cognitive abilities and perception. At that time, these substances were a pharmaceutical novelty in the research and active testing stage, including by US intelligence agencies, according to a report by the special committee of the US Senate on the study of government activities in relation to intelligence activities, which is in the public domain.  ^{[10, pp. 389, 392]}.

The trafficking of these substances was not actually controlled at that time, and an organized anti-drug state campaign was launched by President Nixon in 1969, almost immediately after Woodstock. The "war on drugs" meme came into circulation after Nixon's "Public Enemy number One" speech. 17.07.1971. ^[11]

Such music festivals in nature with rhythmic melodic music, trance-inducing substances and promiscuity were actually practices of paganism and shamanism. Later, such festivals in a more civilized stadium version began to be used as a propaganda tool for commercial or political purposes.  For example, the broadcast of a rock concert at London's Wembley Stadium in 1988 in support of South African anti-apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela was watched by more than half a billion people.

 But even at Woodstock, this potential of political shamanism was tested by rock icon Jimi Hendrix, who played the US national anthem on an electric guitar, which became a musical phenomenon of his time. Today, the Burning Man psychedelic festival is held annually in the Nevada desert, which is attended by the heads of Big Tech, eg. M. Zuckerberg and I. Musk, politicians, celebrities of show business. [Holtermann C. What Is Burning Man, and Why Have Paris Hilton and Elon Musk Shown Up? // New York times. 03.09.23 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/03/style/what-is-burning-man.html?searchResultPosition=5 (accessed 12/15/1969.) 

The effect of simple catchy melodies and texts was repeatedly enhanced and scaled up with the development of mass production of personal sound reproducing devices – compact receivers, turntables, tape recorders; and also from numerous small-circulation "guerrilla" printed publications and popular glossy rock magazines, e.g. Rolling Stone, founded by Jan Wenner in 1967.

A good final illustration of this subsection will be a quote from Brzezinski's 1972 book about the beginning of a new era of technotronics: "For good or bad, the rest of the world will find out what awaits it by watching what is happening in the United States: whether it's scientific discoveries in space and medicine or a dental electric toothbrush in the bathroom; pop art or LSD; air conditioning or environmental pollution; aging problems or juvenile delinquency. The confirmation of this thesis is more vague in fashion, music, social norms and values, but even there the term "Americanization" obviously implies a specific source. Similarly, international students returning from American universities have caused an organizational and intellectual revolution in the academic life of their countries. Changes in the academic life of Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and more recently France, and to an even greater extent in less developed countries, can be attributed to the influence of American educational institutions." [12, p.31]

In Western countries, rock culture has significantly pushed the boundaries of social norms, and the three parallel revolutions mentioned above have reprogrammed most of the youth. The Woodstock generation are people with a new value system.

The Economic Neoliberal Revolution

The rejection of new values by older generations was offset by the propaganda of scientific and technological progress and an unprecedented rise in consumption, explained to the public by the advantages of the capitalist system of the free (later Western) world. It should be noted that capitalism in the 1950s and 1970s in the United States and in Western countries was a system largely controlled by the state, and the possibilities of speculation for financial organizations were prohibitively regulated. The salary ratio of the highest and lowest employee in government and commercial organizations did not exceed the ratio of 1:10. This time in Western scientific discourse is called by sociologists and economists the glorious thirtieth anniversary. In many ways, this concession to the masses was made to demonstrate the superiority of the capitalist system; after 1989, most of the social privileges of the lower strata of society were gradually changed for the worse, everywhere except in some countries of continental Europe. (And Japan, whose economy has never been a market economy in the Western sense). The Gig economy or the economy of part–time employment, introduced by the neoliberals, is actually the privatization of the labor market – a new "improved" market of "net labor", "cleared" of social benefits.

Some ideological aspects preceding economic transformations should be noted.  The appearance of an Act of Congress dated June 14, 1954, which expanded the text of the oath and added the words "one nation under God" and a new religious motto printed on every U.S. banknote since 1957: In God We Trust, "In God we trust." This official U.S. motto was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1956.  

  So, on the one hand, there was a reformatting of the consciousness of young people, a rewriting of moral norms and foundations traditional for the Anglo-Saxon community, on the other, a new sound was given to the Protestant understanding of material success as a sign of being chosen by God. And this new sound was immediately visualized by Hollywood, where a bag or suitcase with bundles of dollars increasingly became the axis of the plot, the main meaning. The final shots also became a stamp, where the hero who received this dollar prize found himself in paradise, on a tropical beach – a successful move from the point of view of PR – at the same time the product placement of the travel business and the ideological programming of the masses.

 The deification of dollar bills fit perfectly into the new ideology of consumption. For Fukuyama in 1989, consumption was precisely an ideology or even a kind of quasi–religious practice that unites society. However, consumption in 1989 was already such a practice, public consciousness was significantly transformed as a result of the use of advertising technologies. What S. Huntington noted with irony in 1996:  "The argument being put forward that the worldwide spread of pop culture and consumer goods embodies the triumph of Western civilization is a vulgarization of Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is Magna Carta, not Magna MacDonald's. [...] And what, in fact, does the fact that its inhabitants identify their civilization with carbonated drinks, worn trousers and fatty foods tell the world about the West." ^{[13, pp.77-78]}.

As a result of this excessive, demonstrative consumption, which also became increasingly over-credited, the critical properties of public consciousness were significantly reduced and the population accepted mainstream narratives, if not as truth, then as a given, a fait accompli that does not pose an obvious danger to the future. This made it possible to begin the neoliberal economic transformations of the 1980s.

Exploring cultural and economic liberalization in the United States, it is impossible not to mention the Report of the trilateral commission "Crisis of Democracy" in 1975, or rather its middle part concerning the United States, written by Huntington. The report analyzes in detail the figures of public opinion polls, statistics on elections in the United States, the weakening of the authority of the government in general and the institution of the presidency in particular in the period (1962-1975).

Huntington at the beginning of the report calls this time a democratic surge, and after stating the facts, in the final chapters uses the word distemper. "The spirit of protest, the spirit of equality, the desire to expose and correct injustice reigned everywhere in the country." ^{[14, p.60]}The reasons for this are indicated in the report: post-war demographic bulge, access to education, overcrowding of colleges, the strengthening of media power and the emergence of numerous opposition media working as "anti-patriotic agencies".

Separately, the increased role of TV is analyzed, which surpassed the institute of the presidency in terms of influence according to the survey figures: "The most noticeable new source of national power in 1970, compared with 1950, were national media - national television networks, national news magazines and major newspapers with nationwide coverage, such as the Washington Post and New YorkThe York Times" [...] "The press, indeed, played a leading role in achieving what no single institution, group, or combination of institutions and groups had previously been able to achieve in American history: the removal from office of a president elected by a popular majority. No future president can or will want to forget this fact." ^{[14, pp.98-100]} 

Also, Huntington, analyzing public opinion polls, points to ideological tectonic shifts in the minds of young people: "[...] disrespect for power on the part of young people was part of broader changes in their views and values regarding sexual morality, religion as a source of moral guidance, as well as traditional patriotism and adherence to the principle of "right or wrong, this is my country." ^{[14, p.109]}, traditional for the Anglo-Saxons for centuries.

In conclusion, Huntington concludes about the possible suicide of democracy and suggests a solution.  Democracy in America has become too much, it will survive only if it is balanced.  ^{[14, p.115]}One more conclusion can also be drawn from Huntington's analysis, implied but not voiced: the United States, as a world empire, needs a different political and economic system. 

At the end of the report, after reviews of the situation in the USA, Europe and Japan, the following considerations are given. The economic success of a "highly industrial society" and affordable education have changed the values of society to "post-bourgeois" ones, but a consensus has formed without a goal. The following problems arose: delegitimization of power, and the dysfunction of democracy. Democracy is a hostage to social "giveaways"; "inflation is an economic disease of democracies." ^{[14, p.164]} Education brings many problems to the political system and requires correction. Public confidence in the government will decrease in the future. The US political system faces the task of "redefining its functions" and "restoring prestige."

And at the very end of the book, after all the conclusions of the researchers' report, there is a document "Appendix 1. Discussion of the report at the Kyoto plenary meeting on 05/31/75." ^{[14, pp.173-187]}Structurally, these are 7 small subsections of the conclusions of the Trilateral Commission after the discussion of the report. Here are the main theses that are interesting from the point of view of the research conducted in this article: "The Imperial Presidency goes down in history, and there is no need to return it. [...] If Congress can effectively exercise this power, there may be good reasons to restrict the president." [...]"If the "post—industrial world" is a world in which knowledge reigns, political parties should increasingly devote themselves to supplying this commodity, as in poor times they took care of jobs and social protection." [...]"Today, higher education is the most important value-creating system in society. The fact that this either does not work well or contradicts the goals of society should cause serious concern." ^{[14, pp. 176, 178,185, resp.]}

In 1975, the Trilateral Commission was the most authoritative platform for globalist intellectuals, representatives of the "Davos culture", as Huntington would later call them. As follows from the above report, the use of non—independent presidents is how globalists saw the solution to the political and economic crisis, and in many ways it stemmed from the problems associated with the presidency of De Gaulle (and indirectly Kennedy). Moreover, taking into account the plans for liberalization, deregulation, and financialization, it was necessary to eliminate all the risks of this long-term program. Non-systemic independent national presidents were seen as risks to further liberalization and globalization. The next generation of Anglo-Saxon political leaders fully met this global economic super-task. In the 1980s, R. Reagan, M. Thatcher, B. Mulroney, B. Hawke began to implement these plans. The only serious problem that has arisen on the path of globalization over all these years has been D. Trump, who, on the third day of his presidency, tore up the CCI treaty, which had been preparing for many years, on the air. [Tharoor I. Trump kills TPP, giving China its first big win. // Washington Post. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/24/trump-kills - tpp-giving-china-its-first-big-win/ (accessed: 12/15/2023)]

The situational context of the discussion of the report "Crisis of Democracy" in May 1975 in Kyoto should also be taken into account.  In January 1976. The Interim Committee of the IMF Board of Governors has drawn up on paper a change in the Bretton Woods monetary system ^[15], which has not actually worked since 1971.  after the Nixon Shock or Nixon Shock. Since that moment, the world has been operating a currency system for the first time that is not tied to the gold standard or  Jamaica Accords.  In parallel with the process of changing the international monetary system, in 1973, the testing of the neoliberal economic doctrine of shock therapy of the Chicago School in Chile began, under the leadership of Pinochet and the supervision of Friedman. Also, the background of all these events was the energy crisis of 1973, a serious shock to the Western economy. 

The Chicago School of Economics is a neoclassical school of economic principles developed and popularized by a group of faculty at the University of Chicago, led by Milton Friedman and George Stigler. In the 80s, these practices were implemented in the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Australia.  Since the 1980s in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and since the 1990s throughout the world, capitalism has been financial, speculative, and not commodity-production capitalism of the times of Marx-Engels and Lenin-Trotsky.

 This was precisely the financial revolution that began in the late 1970s as a softening, deregulation and gradually led to the breakdown of the system - the abolition of the division between commercial and investment banks in the United States in 1999. These barriers were established to protect the financial system from speculative bubbles in 1933 by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration (Banking Act of 1933), after the Wall Street crash of 1929, which occurred as a result of unprecedented financial speculation. Such speculative schemes immediately revived and led to the GFC-2008: the value of debt derivatives, called financial assets, by 2008 amounted to 160 trillion dollars: three and a half times more than the value of global GDP; "financialized capitalism has reached the limits of its own logic."^[16]

The reason for the unprecedented scale of the GFC-2008 is the guarantees of maximum reliability of these derivatives by the three main rating agencies Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch, they are also called the Big Three, which were de facto perceived by the public as guarantees of the state, according to the results of an investigation by the Senate commission.^[17] After years of investigations and litigation, the agencies agreed to a no-fault settlement and paid a total of several billion fines, i.e. less than 1% of the damage caused as a result of their activities.  Trump's nuclear electorate are households that have fallen victim to this guaranteed investment pyramid scheme made possible by banking liberalization.

The ideology of neoliberalism

The self-removal of the Soviet bloc in 1989 was sold to the public as the result of an exceptionally successful neoliberal policy.  This "victory" was engraved in granite by the meme the end of the story by the title of the already mentioned Fukuyama article. The evolution of ideology was recognized by the neoliberals as complete.  It is necessary to dwell in more detail on this work on the ideology of consumption. The juxtaposition of Marx and Weber is absolutely true in Fukuyama, in the sense that Marx considers religion to be a superstructure over an economic basis, and Weber denies this, using the example of the difference in the understanding of happiness by Catholics and Protestants: "The choice in favor of leisure, not income, in favor of the militarized lifestyle of a Spartan hoplite, and not the prosperous life of an Athenian merchant..." ^[18]

And then the mode of production turns into a superstructure, and the basis is ideology, which means that first of all it is necessary to take into account not GDP, but "religion, culture and moral values underlying any society."

 Examining Marx's theses, one should take into account the fact that the life of the Marx family was complicated by political and legal turbulence. Both Marx's father and mother were the children of rabbis, and these were very prominent rabbinic dynasties. After Trier became Prussian in 1815, the Napoleonic emancipation laws were repealed and non-Christians were removed from all public offices, and in 1816 the practice of law was classified as a public office. The Marxists had to choose – either to be baptized, or to renounce all official position and activity. Marx's father, at one time, took advantage of the window of opportunity in the "Napoleonic European Union" and became a lawyer, so the Marxes made the difficult decision to change the faith of their ancestors. Heinrich Marx was baptized in 1817, Karl and his brothers and sisters were baptized in 1824 in the Lutheran Church. He was 6 years old at the time of his baptism. Henrietta, Karl's mother, was baptized even later, in 1825, due to family pressure. ^{[19, p.57]}

Together with Hannah Arendt, we can go even further and assert, taking into account all Marx's works, that the theory of the basis-superstructure and the primacy of the material, is a reflection of his passionate desire to destroy an unfair world to the ground and is intended to convince his new adherents to separate themselves from God, "free themselves" from family, nation, state, believe in "the paradise of communism." The image of the biblical prophet chosen by Marx is also quite correlated with his teachings, based more on pathos than on logos: child labor, the blood of children, suffering children, etc. are mentioned more than a hundred times in the first volume of Capital.

It should also be noted that Mill's economic man, stemming from Smith's teachings, is a man formatted by the Church from childhood, a bearer of highly moral principles, at least the economists of the 18th and 19th centuries saw it that way. Marx, whose economic apparatus (like Mill's) is primarily the economic school of Smith and Riccardo, perfectly understood this important ideological aspect while working on his unfinished Capital, which was not accepted as a serious economic work by either Rosa Luxemburg ^{[20, p. 101]} or J. M. Keynes. ^{[21, p.916.]}

Let's go back to Fukuyama's article, "The End of History?" made by neoliberals/globalists their motto in the 1990s. After comparing Marx and Weber, the following conclusion is drawn: "Why did the socialist countries begin to move away from centralized planning [communist principles] only in the 1980s? The answer should be sought in the minds of the elite and its leaders, who decided to make a choice in favor of "Protestant" well-being and risk and abandon "Catholic" poverty and a safe existence." ^[18]

And then Fukuyama comes to an almost Leninist conclusion: A universal state = liberal democracy + a video recorder. Literally: "it is possible to simplify the content of a universal homogeneous state as a liberal democracy in the political sphere, combined with free access to video recorders and stereo systems in the economic sphere."^[18] In 1989, the possession of such devices confirmed the status of a "decent" person, like a white linen shirt in the time of Adam Smith.^{[22, p.803]}   It should be noted that Fukuyama's formula of globalism resembles Lenin's thesis "Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country." ^{[23, p.30]}

Further, Fukuyama strengthens his thought – and already speaks about "the universal culture of consumption – this is both a symbol and the foundation of the universal state." ^[18]   According to the author, it was not so much the ideology of consumption that won, but in many ways the curiosity of such consumption, including intangible ones – films, music, books, sports, travel. Having had enough, Russian society rejected many things. An example of this is the abandoned baseball stadium on the territory of Moscow State University for more than 10 years.

Mechanisms of self-destruction of the Eastern Bloc

The United States, represented by President R. Reagan, a former Hollywood supporting actor, was proposed in 1987. The "new Marshal's plan" for the USSR, a peace treaty on disarmament without loss of face, sovereignty and territories in exchange for investment and technology, modeled on the economic reforms in China from 1978 to 1984. and even a little more: the United States offered the USSR a strategic partnership [in world governance]. Reagan's speech in Berlin, "Tear down this Wall" on June 12, 1987, was diametrically opposed to the speech of 1984, famous for the meme "the evil Empire". It was a truce proposal, not an ultimatum. At that time, China began to actively integrate into the global economy, and in April 1980 joined the Navy and the World Bank. In the autumn of 1980, the Chinese government invited M. Friedman to teach the theory of the free market to civil servants and economists. ^{[24, pp. 520-522.]}

For communication with Russia, the West chose the thesis "global partnership" – global partnership, for China "constructive engagement" – constructive engagement. Both of them can be interpreted as broadly as each participant is "glad to be deceived."

After such a "business" proposal, the Soviet elites were conditionally divided into two parts in a ratio of approximately 1 to 4 (although the proportions can be argued).  A small, practical part saw a chance to monetize their power, while the majority, yielding to the persuasions of a minority and believing in the possibility of honesty of the deal proposed by the West, showed criminal inaction. From that moment on, the first, small part of the elites became compradors, "played" for the United States and imperceptibly aggravated the economic problems of the USSR in order to bring the collapse of the economic system and economic shock closer. (And thus make privatization the only possible way out, in the absence of promised Western loans). It would not be correct to categorically state that there was direct economic sabotage, but anyone who lived in the USSR at that time will testify that there were definitely interruptions in the supply of food to large cities and looked exactly like systemic ones. (An analogy with the supply of bread in Paris in 1789 suggests itself) Such interruptions are seen as a consequence of the imperceptible reconfiguration of the existing system by Comprador managers: the appointment of people with limited ability and incompetent to key positions, using the advice of their deputies, inaction and/or alcoholism of these appointees, and as a result – embezzlement and negligence at descending levels. The power hierarchy weakened, subordinates increasingly ignored, criticized, and even violated direct orders from the leadership. This should also include the multiple growth of the black market, where these same compradore managers could earn big money through cooperatives of affiliated intermediaries, while spreading "insider information" and blaming the backwardness of the economic system, which they themselves corrupted. The problems they created were both a "300% profit" and an argument for the need for reforms and a tool for creating discontent among the masses.

As a result, the naive part of the elites were deceived in their hopes, the new Marshall plan turned out to be a bluff, Gorbachev was shamefully denied the promised investments at the G7 summit in London, in June 1991 [Martynov O. USSR and G7: instead of the Marshall plan, six Major points.–Kommersant Power magazine 07/22/1991. URL: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/204 (accessed 12/15/2023).]

The practical part of the Soviet elites thus became the beneficiaries of economic liberalization, deregulation and later privatization. The result of these liberal reforms was the impoverishment and half-starvation of the vast majority of the Russian population and the war in Chechnya. Such a regressive vector had a strategic goal: to unleash a civil war in Russia "all with all" in order to implement the next phase of disintegration. As an example of plans for disintegration, one can cite theses from the main book by Z. Brzezinski, published in 1997: "Russia, organized on the principle of a free confederation, which would include the European part of Russia, the Siberian Republic and the Far Eastern Republic, it would be easier to develop closer economic ties with Europe, with the new states of Central Asia and with The East, which would thereby accelerate the development of Russia itself." ^{[6, p. 239]}

Shock without therapy, economic torture – Naomi Klein describes the 1990s in the USSR in such terms in her book The Doctrine of Shock.^[25]

The example of Boris Yeltsin and his "drunken showings" at Johns Hopkins University in September 1989 is a good illustration of how the country was governed and what preferences future "strategic partners" showed. [Yeltsin B. speech at Johns Hopkins University, September 12, 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ6Q3xwvp_w (accessed 12/15/2023).]

For Yeltsin's ultra-democratic escapades, the USSR administrative code had an exact wording: "Appearing in public places drunk, insulting human dignity and public morality." The 60-year-old head for whom such appearances are periodic is, of course, seriously ill, and his legal capacity is conditional.  Illegitimate methods of destroying the principles of the parliamentary republic in October 1993 and the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in December 1993, which establishes the priority of international law over Russian law, without actually discussing it, have not received a legal assessment.

The 1996 elections became a classic of political technologies – the rating of the victorious Yeltsin at the beginning of the campaign was about 5%.  In 1997, the "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between the Russian Federation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization" was signed. This document on partnership and cooperation in paragraph 4 contained the following construction: "NATO member States confirm that they have no intentions, plans or reasons for deploying nuclear weapons on the territory of new members and do not need to change any aspect of the construction of NATO nuclear forces or NATO nuclear policy, nor do they foresee the need to do so in the future." [The Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between the Russian Federation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. https://www.nato.int/cps/ru/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm (accessed 12/15/2023)]

Report of the Club of Rome The First Global Revolution

Analyzing the events preceding the self-removal of the USSR and exploring the question of why the Soviet elites accepted Reagan's proposal, it will be useful to study the report of the Club of Rome "The First Global Revolution" in 1991. For the first time in 25 years, the report was created inside the club without involving external customers, under the personal authorship of the founder of the organization, Alexander King (together with co–author Bertrand Schneider.)   The report was published in English in early 1991 and was immediately translated into Russian.

In a 2-page introductory speech "To the readers", academician D.M. Gvishiani said that in Moscow back in 1977 "a meeting of members of the Club of Rome with representatives of Soviet scientific circles was held to discuss the report "Humanity at a Crossroads"; in 1980, the report "Revision of the World Order" was published and in July 1989, the Association for the Promotion of the Club of Rome was established. ^{[4, p.8]}

Thus, the preparatory work on the creation of a network of scientists sympathetic to globalism and the introduction of "universal values" into circulation was done ahead of time. The report itself is imbued with universal pathos, concern for a common home – Land, environmental issues and problems of overpopulation and consumption.

It is important to note that stylistically it is written as simplistically as possible. There are few scientific terms in the text, but there are many verses, either as epigraphs or inside chapters or at the end of chapters. At the very beginning of the book, but after all the introductory words, there is a quatrain by Omar Khayyam, popular in the late USSR, at the very end of the text, but before all the additions-notes – the Vedic prayer "Peace peace peace". 3000 years BC ^{[4, pp.15 and 301]}

The text also contains poems by an English poet of the 17th century; quotations from the Koran; a statement by an Indian philosopher of the 9th century;  Vedic hymn to the Earth, 3000 BC; poetic couplet by Thomas Eliot; poetry of the Aztecs. ^{[4, 63,167, 176, 202, 274, 294, accordingly]}

Regarding the quotations, it should be noted that on page 298 there is a hybrid of two maxims of the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, No. 30 and No. 81; as a result of such an arbitrary crossing, a 10-line statement with a completely new meaning appeared. ^{[4, p. 298]}

The right words are not elegant.

Beautiful words are not trustworthy.

Kind is not eloquent.

An eloquent person cannot be kind.

The good one wins and that's all.

He wins and is not proud.

He wins and does not triumph.

He wins and does not exalt himself.

He wins and cannot avoid it.

He wins and does not rape.

(The original in Russian is available in the Russian State Library. The source code in English can be downloaded on the Internet.) It should be noted that there is a double distortion (or adaptation to the Soviet reader or reader) – the Russian translation of the English version of this compilation from Maxim Lao Tzu creates a new meaning.

True words are not pleasant

Pleasant words are not true

A good man is not a speechifier

 A speechifier is not a good man

Thus a good man is content with being resolved without resorting to force

May he be resolved without pride

May he be resolved without exaggeration

May he be resolved without ostentation

May he be resolved out of necessity ^{[26, c.241]}

         Also in the middle of the report there are lines designated in the Russian translation as "the ancient Colombian doctrine". This is an instruction to a woman: "Listen, look, understand why we exist on Earth. Don't be lazy, don't wander around uselessly, don't feel empty curiosity. How should you live? What should you do in the near future? They say it is very difficult to live on a Land where there is a fierce struggle, my little lady, my little bird, my darling." ^{[3, p. 268]}

Chapter 4 ends with arguments on several pages about the need to empower women. "First, society must listen and trust women. In today's rational world, dominated by men, ignoring women's intuition, the versatility of their nature and natural common sense often leads to serious losses." ^{[4, p.147]}

In addition to reflections on the need for global governance, the text contains many variations of the new terminology: the global harmonization process, global problems and global vision, global tasks and global cooperation, global challenges and global solutions, global community and global government, global dangers and global prospects, global thinking and global society. At the end of the chapter on governance, it is pointed out the need to involve political advisers in the management, whose work is both great art and science, as well as politically independent scientists. ^{[4, p.263]}

The final tenth chapter of the main text contains the following advice: "The elite easily comes to terms with circumstances, despite the appearance of opposition. The majority of the population does not get involved in discussions, being only the object of manipulation. The gap between the level of consciousness of the elite and the rest of society is huge." ^{[4, p. 301]}

It is reasonable to assume that these poetic inclusions and repetitive globalist neuro-linguistic mantras, as well as the above ideological, political and feminist messages were aimed at a certain audience, namely the wives of Soviet leaders, including Raisa Gorbachev and Naina Yeltsin.

Which fully correlates with Fukuyama's article: "The real question for the future is to what extent the Soviet elites have internalized the consciousness of the world state." (Original: "the consciousness of the universal homogeneous state") ^[18]

            It should be noted separately, one of the main theses of the founder of the Club of Rome Aurelio Peccei.  The founder and first President of the club, A. Peccei, an Italian anti-fascist and co-head of the FIAT concern, in his 1969 book. The "cliff ahead" proved that only the partnership of the "Atlantic Community" and the USSR can solve the global problems facing humanity. This thought runs through the whole book. ^{[27, p. 33, 184, 191, 239, 269]} At that time, a Fiat factory appeared in Tolyatti and Signor Peccei in his book "lobbied" his concern (etc. industrial giants). However, the main idea of the partnership was deeper – the involvement of the USSR in global trade: oil and gas in exchange for Western goods in those industries where an obvious advantage was achieved. The use of such Western goods will create conditions for the "rewiring" of Soviet society by the cult of consumption, which, it should be noted, was partially successful by 1989.

Memorandum of the Council on Psychological Strategy

Working with the elites is an instruction directly from the memorandum of the PSB D—33 Psychological Strategy Council dated 06/29/1953., which is declassified and is freely available for download on the CIA website cia.gov .  Here are some key quotes from the Memorandum:

"The doctrinal program (in general, and not just the Doctrinal Program of the United States): a planned and systematic attack on a hostile doctrinal system, conducted simultaneously with the positive propaganda of the basic philosophy of one's own system. Basically, the Doctrinal Program is aimed at a specific group, not at the mass. [...]

U.S. Doctrinal Program Task Force: The composition of the task force will vary from country to country and from region to region. In general, the U.S. doctrinal program will aim to effectively reach those individuals who would be interested in doctrinal issues and who will actively participate in and influence political and intellectual, including scientific, activities in their respective countries and regions. […]

Educated people are usually intellectually curious. They want to know more if they can have available materials whose objective value they respect. The U.S. doctrinal program should develop such materials and, through improved dissemination methods, ensure that the target audience learns that this material is easily and economically available."^[28]

The technique of "working with certain groups, not with the masses" turned out to be very effective: the "intellectually curious" elites of the USSR believed the promises of the "free world", adopted the Western paradigm and thereby self-colonized.

Chronology and some details of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc

By 1991, Gorbachev had already given a lot and received nothing in return for the country. Here is the chronology of the main stages of descent:

February 14, 1984 The visit of M. Thatcher to Moscow, to the funeral of V. Andropov.

December 15, 1984  The visit of Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife to London after the hospitalization of K. Chernenko.

November 19-20, 1985  The Gorbachev-Reagan Geneva Summit.

June 12, 1987 Reagan's keynote speech in Berlin, "Tear down this wall."

On April 14, 1988, an agreement was signed in Geneva to resolve the situation in the Republic of Afghanistan and the immediate (May 15) withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

November 9, 1988 Dismantling of the symbol of the Cold War – the Berlin Wall.

On September 12, 1990, the Treaty on the Final Settlement in relation to Germany (on the unification of Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet troops).

October 15, 1990 Nobel Peace Prize to Gorbachev.

November 19, 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty).

June 12, 1991 Election of the President of the Russian Republic within the USSR Boris Yeltsin.

July 15, 1991 The G7 meeting in London in the presence of the Gorbachevs.

July 30, 1991 The signing of the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) in Moscow.

On August 19-21, 1991, the coup of the GKChP and the transition of actual management to Yeltsin's team.

December 8, 21, 1991  The Belovezhskaya Agreement, the Alma-Ata Declaration.

December 26, 1991 Declaration of the Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR No. 142-N: "The USSR as a state and a subject of international law ceases to exist."

The following comment should be made on the position of the USSR in this "peace process", from the point of view of historical precedents and the understanding of international relations by Europeans. For a European politician, a peace treaty is a business contract, not a philosophical treatise. A common European practice, documented in detail at least since the time of the Peace of Westphalia, were indemnities for payments for the dissolution of armies and garrisons in conquered territories. Germany was ready to officially pay for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Simply put, it was necessary to discuss an agreement where financial tranches and technologies would be linked not in debt, but in payment for the withdrawal of troops. Gorbachev, on the other hand, made a "regal gesture", obviously losing from a political point of view, counting on a mirror manifestation of goodwill by new partners without any document. For the sake of future generations, it would be fair to investigate such actions in detail by an official commission, taking into account the scale of the damage inflicted on the people.

On the platform of the journal of the Smithsonian Research Institute in Washington, there is an interesting article for this study, which contains a fragment of a 2009 interview between Mikhail Gorbachev and Bloomberg TV producer Ch. Rose and Reagan's Secretary of State D. Schultz.^[27] There is also a video of this interview on YouTube: [March 26, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arsb-DUcRt0&list=PLY15F12IzJZ_ouvlRD7RI9mHJ0QxGZsWF&index=2 date of application: 12/15/2023.]

In this video, Gorbachev, Schultz and Rose are sitting on the studio stage, talking about the details of the events of the 1980s. There are several dozen spectators in the studio hall, including G. Kissinger. About half an hour after the interview began, Gorbachev suddenly remembered and told an interesting detail of a one-on-one meeting with Reagan (only with translators)  on Lake Geneva in 1985.

 "Reagan directly asked if they could forget about their differences in case aliens invaded the world.: 

"Would you help us?"

I said, "There's no doubt about it."

 He said, "So are we."^[29]

After this recollection of Gorbachev, 67-year-old Rose began to laugh like a child, recalling the meme photo of Clinton laughing at Yeltsin at a 1995 press conference. [Press Conference. New York. October 23, 1995. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWbaUtVrhgA&t=95s date of application: 12/15/2023.]

By August 1991. Gorbachev completely surrendered the geopolitical chess game and depended on the decisions of the new "strategic partners". In this situation, the transfer of power during the "three days of constitutional vacuum" created by the GKChP on August 19-21 was an acceptable way out for all key players, as Alexander Prokhanov rightly noted.

A complex puzzle of compradors and idealists was completed in the same year. On December 8, 1991, official representatives of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed the "Agreement on the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States", better known as the "Belovezhskaya Agreement", which legally consolidated the Bolshevik division of the Russian state, politically dividing the titular nation and thereby creating a prerequisite for the civil war that began in 2014.

Conclusion.

Using the full range of information influence, the West eventually outplayed the communist bloc. But it should be noted that it was the communist system that was dismantled, the pseudo-religious order, established initially on the denial of God, the fatherland, common sense and cemented by the terror of Trotsky–Lenin internationalists, who destroyed, first of all, the former elites – secular, spiritual and military - carriers of culture, historical knowledge and traditions of the Russian state. The people of Russia did not accept communism, but submitted to the dictatorship on pain of death. 

No matter how the subsequent rulers tried to transform this communist pseudo-religion, the manifesto written by 30-year-old Marx and 28-year-old Engels remained at the core - a document controversial from a scientific point of view, more like a political technology brochure.

This ideological phantom, as the philosopher Ivan Ilyin predicted, by the third generation had become a set of meaningless rituals that the "priests" themselves did not believe in. And in this regard, liberalism turned out to be a more solid pseudo-religion than communism. But in 1989, it was no longer liberalism at the peak of J. M. Keynes' career, but a significantly different new version – globalism.  It is quite possible to say that globalism eventually defeated both communism and traditional WASP liberalism.

The struggle against communism and the unprecedented growth of consumption distracted Western society from the events taking place within this society itself, and by the time the end of the history of this struggle, Western society and its institutions were significantly reformatted ideologically, politically and economically. The cultural liberalization of the 1960s and 70s had revolutionary consequences.  Power passed to a group of politicians, military men, and economists with a supranational vision of the future – to the globalists, who immediately converted this power into the economic practices listed above in the article.  

The following data should also be taken into account. S. Huntington in 1995. comparing the number of people identifying themselves with the "Davos culture" and the audience, CNN indicates that in both cases it is about 1% of the world's population. ^{[13, p.79]}  These data correlate well with the 1998 World Bank Inequality Report ^[30] by Tom Piketty. Having conducted a more accurate study in 2011, he noted: "Since the 1970s, the share of the top thousandth (0.1% of the richest) in national income has increased significantly in all Anglo-Saxon countries," [unlike continental Europe and Japan]. ^{[31, pp.318-319]}.  Thus, globalization, before the beginning of regionalization in 2015, was in the interests of a narrow group of the elites of the Anglo-Saxon countries; as well as large owners, politicians, managers, intelligence officers and scientists located in the gravity zone of this group; (this is also the corresponding group in the EU countries). This structuring is confirmed by numerous conflicts between globalists and traditionalist patriots, during the presidency of Trump, who called his opponents the Deep state– today this expression has become common, used including in Western discourse, sometimes in different meanings.

A more important consequence of the rise to power of the neoliberals/globalists is the unprecedented concentration of power that occurred gradually, law by law. Extraterritorial laws of the United States (acts on combating drugs, terrorism, corruption, tax crimes); the institution of international economic sanctions or other pressure, arbitrarily imposed personally, against countries or, as in the case of the Serbs, against certain nations; legalized kidnapping and holding them without trial for years, legalized torture (Memorandum on Torture 2002.); carte blanche to the special services for total electronic surveillance of any officials or ordinary citizens (Snowden's 2011 revelations).   

The manipulation of the UN Security Council for the invasion of Iraq is the peak of such a concentration of political power of the globalists, after which the pendulum of public opinion went down. Edward Snowden presented irrefutable evidence of the danger to society of this collusion of politicians, corporations and intelligence agencies. Trump's victory in 2016 and the storming of the Capitol in 2021 are another extreme of the pendulum.

It is important to note that cultural liberalization continues today.  There is a further transformation of principles and values, but already in new political conditions – financially, informationally and in some countries politically close to dictatorship.  For the future privatization of the planet, a new ideology of globalism is being created, it is also sometimes called universalism, implying the universal (global) unification of everything and everything, the destruction of any identities. New theories are immediately tested by numerous new practices. All aspects of human life are undergoing changes to a greater or lesser extent, including fundamental concepts and identities: the state, religion, nation, family, personality. First of all, these changes are taking place in Western countries and their economic satellites, but also in countries less dependent on the West through the networks of numerous NGOs. The purposeful large-scale promotion of the ideology of globalism is visualized through films, pop culture, advertising, pseudoscientific video blogs, video games, etc., penetrating into all spheres of culture and thus creating presets for any type of discourse. And thus, gradually, but accelerating more and more, there is a change in social norms and practices, an expansion of the discursive window, in the coordinate system of Joseph Overton, a cultural paradigm shift.

The practices of the new ideology are so radical that by default they put people brought up in such a globalist agenda in a radical contraposition to all bearers of traditional values of humanity, for example, the aforementioned practice of using puberty blockers. The ideological goals of globalism are to educate the "Gretta Thunberg generation" by 2050, people of a new "supranational mindset" who believe that all the resources of the planet, like the air, belong to humanity, and not to individual countries. The term ecocide has already been introduced into the discourse, meaning crimes against the environment, which in the near future may well mean the possibility of discussing the invasion of UN coalition forces, as once in Iraq, to combat chemical weapons, intelligence about which was falsified by the US intelligence community. 

Today, there is an antithesis to globalism and its plan to build a global pyramidal panopticon: a multipolar world, a new world economic structure promoted by Russia, China (and South Asia), and India ^[32]. And this conflict is not only civilizational. Globalists today oppose the vast majority of the planet Earth (including a significant part of the population of Western countries). This majority puts forward, in contrast to the non-transparent plans of the globalists, their own, scientifically based and, more importantly, completely public theories: the Indian vision of One Earth, One Family, One Future, the Chinese concept of a Community of a single destiny of mankind, the Russian Just multipolarity. @

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