SOVIET MODEL OF TOTALITARIAN MODERNIZATION

Abstract

Social transformations of the end of XXth century, political collapse of the soviet state, turning of the country into a raw materials-producing appendage of the industrially developed countries have become a basis for Russians' nostalgia for the «totalitarian» USSR. The success of «totalitarian» reforms of the 1930-s ensured not only high rates of industrial production growth but also a redistribution system within which financial, labour and other resources, necessary for the development of military industry, actually were taken away from the society. There is a paradox that the totalitarian model of state development, historically embodied by Peter's and Stalin's reforms, aiming military strengthening of the country, in a short period of time later provoked a shortage of elementary political and economical freedoms that became the reason for of the collapse of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, being in the zenith of their military power.