The Disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

​Introduction
The rivalry between different nations for control over the resources and economies of different countries across the world has been a well-known feature of world history for over centuries.

After the Second World War in the 1940s, the Soviet Union emerged as a strong contender to the United States for control over the world's economies. The so-called Eastern Block of Nations and Western counterpart were divided by what was famously known as the "Iron Curtain". The fight for supremacy resulted in what is generally called "The Cold War".

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or the Soviet Union, as it was popularly known was dissolved in 1991 following the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Earlier all the Republics, including Russia, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, 11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR left the United States as the world's only superpower.

Several of the former Soviet republics have retained close links with the Russian Federation and formed multilateral organizations such as the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eurasian Economic Community, the Union State, the Eurasian Customs Union, and the Eurasian Economic Union to enhance economic and security cooperation. On the other hand, only the Baltic States have joined NATO and the European Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11, 1985, after Konstantin Chernenko's death. He was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, and he realized that doing so would require reforming underlying political and social structures.

The reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23, 1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the "power" ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov as a Politburo candidate.

This liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. It also led indirectly to the revolutions of 1989, in which Soviet-imposed communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were peacefully toppled (Romania excepted), which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics.

Under Gorbachev's leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies (although the ban on other political parties was not lifted until 1990).

In May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, and the introduction of rationing.

Unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachev's plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, and to censor drinking scenes from old movies.

Some noted this mirrored Tsar Nicholas II's program during World War I, as that was also intended to eradicate drunkenness in order to bolster the war effort, although that was also intended to redirect grain usage for only the most essential purposes, which did not appear to be a goal in Gorbachev's program.

However, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a serious blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev, who noted annual collections of alcohol taxes decreased by 100 billion rubles.

Alcohol production migrated to the black market, or through moonshining as some made "bathtub vodka" with homegrown potatoes. Poorer, less educated Russians resorted to drinking unhealthy substitutes such as nail-polish remover, rubbing alcohol or men's cologne, which only served to be an additional burden on Russia's healthcare sector due to the subsequent poisoning cases. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the existing centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms, which tended toward market socialism.

This situation continued until the early 1990s when Michael Gorbachev the then Prime Minister of the USSR introduced two concepts, namely, "perestroika" and "glasnost", meaning restructuring and transparency.

He persisted in these somewhat ill- advised concepts until, finally, they resulted in the total collapse of the Federation of Soviet countries.

Finally Gorbachev declared his office extinct and handed over the powers to the Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the revolutionary symbol, the Russian flag.

The Cultural Revolution Begins
In the 1960s, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong came to feel that the current party leadership in China, as in the Soviet Union, was moving too far in a revisionist direction, with an emphasis on expertise rather than on ideological purity.

Mao’s own position in government had weakened after the failure of his “Great Leap Forward” (1958-60) and the economic crisis that followed. Mao gathered a group of radicals, including his wife Jiang Qing and defense minister Lin Biao, to help him attack current party leadership and reassert his authority.

Did You Know?
To encourage the personality cult that sprang up around Mao Zedong during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, Defense Minister Lin Biao saw that the now-famous "Little Red Book" of Mao's quotations was printed and distributed by the millions throughout China.

Mao launched the so-called Cultural Revolution (known in full as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) in August 1966, at a meeting of the Plenum of the Central Committee. He shut down the nation’s schools, calling for a massive youth mobilization to take current party leaders to task for their embrace of bourgeois values and lack of revolutionary spirit.

In the months that followed, the movement escalated quickly as the students formed paramilitary groups called the Red Guards and attacked and harassed members of China’s elderly and intellectual population. A personality cult quickly sprang up around Mao, similar to that which existed for Josef Stalin, with different factions of the movement claiming the true interpretation of Maoist thought.

Lin Biao’s Role in the Cultural Revolution
During this early phase of the Cultural Revolution (1966-68), President Liu Shaoqi and other Communist leaders were removed from power. (Beaten and imprisoned, Liu died in prison in 1969). With different factions of the Red Guard movement battling for dominance, many Chinese cities reached the brink of anarchy by September 1967, when Mao had Lin send army troops in to restore order.

The army soon forced many urban members of the Red Guards into rural areas, where the movement declined. Amid the chaos, the Chinese economy plummeted, with industrial production for 1968 dropping 12 percent below that of 1966.

In 1969, Lin was officially designated Mao’s successor. He soon used the excuse of border clashes with Soviet troops to institute martial law. Disturbed by Lin’s premature power grab, Mao began to maneuver against him with the help of Zhou Enlai, China’s premier, splitting the ranks of power atop the Chinese government.

In September 1971, Lin died in an airplane crash in Mongolia, apparently while attempting to escape to the Soviet Union. Members of his high military command were subsequently purged, and Zhou took over greater control of the government. Lin’s brutal end led many Chinese citizens to feel disillusioned over the course of Mao’s high-minded “revolution,” which seemed to have dissolved in favor of ordinary power struggles.

Cultural Revolution Comes to an End
Zhou acted to stabilize China by reviving educational system and restoring numerous former officials to power. In 1972, however, Mao suffered a stroke; in the same year, Zhou learned he had cancer. The two leaders threw their support to Deng Xiaoping (who had been purged during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution), a development opposed by the more radical Jiang and her allies, who became known as the Gang of Four.

In the next several years, Chinese politics teetered between the two sides. The radicals finally convinced Mao to purge Deng in April 1976, a few months after Zhou’s death, but after Mao died that September, a civil, police and military coalition pushed the Gang of Four out. Deng regained power in 1977, and would maintain control over Chinese government for the next 20 years.

Some 1.5 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution, and millions of others suffered imprisonment, seizure of property, torture or general humiliation. The Cultural Revolution’s short-term effects may have been felt mainly in China’s cities, but its long-term effects would impact the entire country for decades to come. Mao’s large-scale attack on the party and system he had created would eventually produce a result opposite to what he intended, leading many Chinese to lose faith in their government altogether.

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A Brief look at the arrangements for the dispensation of Justice by Courts in India

Among the other major upheavals that have taken place within countries and federations of countries, the notable ones are the red revolution in China and the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc. We shall look at some of the highlights of these in the next few weeks.

In the meanwhile, this week, I propose to introduce the reader to some of the important features of the functioning of the Judiciary in India.

We have seen, in earlier pieces carried in this column, that the State in India is a creature of the Constitution the farsighted members of the Constitution Assembly (which was tasked with the responsibility of scripting the document), has scoured around the world and decided to borrow from notably the United States, Britain, France and Russia many countries. The doctrine of separation of powers was, in particular, modelled on the system prevalent in the United States.

The Head of the State at the national level is the President of India and the Prime Minister is the Head Executive, the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha and the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Heads of the two Houses respectively and the Chief Justice of India Heads the Judiciary.

At the State-level the Governor is the Head of the State, the Chief Minister that of the government, and the Chairman of the Legislative Council (where such a House exists) and the Speaker of the Assembly and the Heads, respectively, of the Houses of Legislature.

Even before the provisions of the Constitution of India came into force on 26 January 1950, the four pillars of the Indian legal-system namely the CRPC, CPC, IPC and the Indian Evidence Act were already in place.

Wrong doings of a civil nature are usually called “torts,” while those of a criminal type are called “offences.”

When a crime is committed the sequence of events that follows comprises - a case first being registered with the police on the complaint of an individual or on account of their taking cognizance of it on their own, the registering of the First Information Report (FIR), the filing of a charge - sheet thereafter, offer the completion of investigation (also called “discovery’ in American parlance), which shows, prima facie, that a crime been committed, then the conduct of the trial, the announcement of the verdict and then the passing of a sentence together with the quantum of punishment as decided upon by the Court.

My father, who had retired as a Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, used to say that it is common for appeals in civil matters to be allowed (he was talking about appeals in the Supreme Court) would Judgments of the High Courts.

He added, however, that as criminal cases usually deal with facts and not then interpretation of the nuances of the Law, there should normally be no scope for the Supreme Court with the findings of the High Courts. Against that background, he said that he found it strange that in one particular case the Supreme Court should have observed that one decision of the High Court was "mischievous".

There is always present a group of twelve persons called the Jury to assist the Court in determining the guilt of the defendant.

Those undergoing imprisonment following a sentence are I sometimes allowed to go out of jail for a short period, known as a furlough, in response to requests for their presence on important occasions. Often, on the basis of good conduct during the imprisonment, they are also granted what is known as a remission of the sentence.

Sometimes wholesale release of prisoners is also ordered by government is known as a pardon.
The other phenomenon associated with the conduct of trials and hearings by Courts of Law is the commission of contempt of Court by a person, which is usually the consequence of showing wanton disrespect to the bench.

A common misunderstanding which most people entertain is to confuse a stay order with that of a suspension. The former merely continues the ‘status quo’, while the latter what is the ‘status quo ante’ to be restored.

An important aspect of the evolution of the judicial system in India has been the growth of what is known as "Judicial Activism".

As has been observed by this columnist in earlier articles, Courts in India have, over time, not merely interpreted the Law or the provisions of the Constitution - but have, on occasion, made observations and passed rulings that have had the effect of legislation or on one well known occasion, amendment to the Constitution itself.

A well-known example is the Golaknath case (in which, for the first time in India’s history, the Supreme Court used the principal of what is called “prospective overruling”) placing the chapter on fundamental rights of the candidates beyond the pale of the powers of Parliament.

There have also, in recent times, been many rulings by Supreme Court in India which have had the effect of filing in vacuums, and showing the manner in which Society needs to keep pace with contemporary issues which were not originally anticipated when certain Laws were enacted.

An interesting observation that I will always been fond of quoting in the context of discussing the Law is that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".