“Color revolutions” and the reconstruction of the post-Soviet space

Introduction

§ 1. The concept of “color revolution”

§ 2. Causes of “color revolutions”

§ 3. The main prerequisites for “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet space and in the countries of the former socialist bloc

§ 4. Main events and characters

§ 5. Consequences of “color revolutions”

§ 6. “Color gaps”

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

Over the past 10 years, a whole wave of “color revolutions” has swept through the countries of the former USSR and the Soviet bloc. Some countries were able to resist these “waves”; others were less fortunate.

How do these revolutions still arise? Who inspires, prepares, and finances them?

It is these questions, and more, that will be answered in this work. To find answers to the questions asked, you first need to understand what a “color revolution” is, what causes it to arise, and, of course, how to prevent it. Of course, the main reasons for revolutions lie in the state itself where it occurs. This means that there are some problems in the country, and the best prevention of revolutions is to make thoughtful and informed decisions on governing the state. But this may not be enough. As you know, it is impossible to please everyone.

Another way to prevent “color revolutions”, which will be revealed in this work, is direct counteraction to opposition street demonstrations.

Relevance. The topic of “color revolutions” is more relevant today than ever. There are three main reasons for this.

The first reason is historical. The revolutions in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan are accomplished historical facts that had a significant impact on the countries where these revolutions took place. And if so, then these events need to be studied, analyzed and appropriate conclusions drawn. For some, so that something like this would never happen again, for others, on the contrary, to hone their skills in carrying out bloodless coups. In our country, such revolutions simply need to be studied. Russia is returning to the world stage as a strong and prosperous power, whose opinion can no longer be ignored, as it was in the 90s of the 20th century. Today we are taking more and more confident steps in foreign policy, which means we could also adopt such a technology as the “color revolution”. Perhaps this sounds like an echo of Russia’s imperial ambitions, but I would like to note one important point - Russia has always been and will remain a country that firmly defends its national interests in a variety of ways. There is nothing wrong with this, since we cannot leave the world stage. Russia is a country with rich natural resources that most countries in the world do not have. And no one will allow us to develop quietly and peacefully and engage in purely internal politics, as was the case, for example, with Sweden. Swedish historian Peter Englund said: “One of the roads that led to today’s wealth and prosperity in Sweden originated near Poltava.” However, it is necessary to understand that Sweden entered the path of prosperity after losing 2/3 of its territory (the Baltic states, Norway, Finland, etc.). It is possible that if, under certain conditions, all the lands beyond the Urals and the Caucasus are torn away from Russia, we may also be allowed to quietly and peacefully engage in purely internal politics. Only in Russia itself such a scenario for the development of events cannot satisfy anyone.

The second reason is political science. According to the President of the Historical Perspective Foundation, Doctor of Historical Sciences N.A. Narochnitskaya, “the almost totalitarian dictatorship in Europe of libertarian ideals and the declaration of conservative and Christian judgments about morality as “not politically correct”, humanitarian interventions during the transition to the 21st century, the encouragement of a whole series of color revolutions, which all over the world twenty years ago would have been called coups d'etat, the interference of foreign participants in the country's constitutional processes - all this indicates a deep crisis in the very concept of democracy, the obvious collapse of its classical interpretations. Moreover, the fact that “color revolutions” became possible indicates the ineffectiveness of the institution of elections as one of the main procedures of democracy. Provided that a separate group of people with almost unlimited financial resources has become capable of protesting the official election results on the streets of cities, gathering several thousand people (with a total population of the country of tens of millions), elections as an expression of the will of the people lose all meaning.

The third reason is psychological. “Color revolutions” showed how easily the media can manipulate people. Conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized public opinion and the habits of the masses - becomes at this stage of history the most effective way to achieve its goals. Through the media, it is possible to convey to the population the information that will be beneficial to the customer. And if in Western countries (in the USA primarily) a similar method of manipulation has been developed over the past 50-60 years, then for the countries of the post-Soviet space and the former socialist camp this method is relatively new, and if so, it is also more effective. An excellent example of this is the information war that unfolded during the armed conflict in South Ossetia in August 2008, when Western media during the first days of the conflict accused Russia of aggression. This led to condemnation of Russia by Western public opinion.

Item. The main subject of the study is “color revolutions”: preparation, technology, organization, consequences.

Goals. The main goal of the project is to show what “color revolutions” are, what danger they pose and how to prevent them.

Study methods. The main method of study is a comparative analysis between the events in 1991, which led to the collapse of the USSR and, according to the chief researcher of the RAS analytical center S.G. Kara-Murza, “were a well-thought-out crime that threw Russia into the deepest and most protracted crisis known in the history of modern times”, and the events in the first half of the 2000s in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, which went down in history as “color revolutions”.

§ 1. The concept of "color revolution"

Before making an assessment and conducting a detailed analysis on a given topic, you first need to have an understanding of the concept of “color revolution”.

If we delve deeper into the terminology, the concept of revolution comes from the late Latin word revolutio (turn, overturn, transformation, conversion) - a radical, radical, deep qualitative change in society or knowledge, associated with an open break with the previous state. The term “color revolution” appeared only in the early 2000s. It should not be confused with the “velvet revolution”. The Velvet Revolution, in a narrower concept, refers to the process of bloodless dismantling of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in November-December 1989. However, in a broader concept, “velvet revolutions” include all events in the countries of Eastern Europe and Mongolia, during which Soviet-type political regimes were eliminated in 1989-1991.

Today, “color revolutions” are a series of mass street riots and public protests, supported by foreign non-governmental organizations, usually resulting in a change of political regime without military participation if the revolution achieves its goal. There is also a change in the ruling elites.

There is currently no consensus on exactly what event can be considered a “color revolution.” For example, the “Bulldozer Revolution” in Yugoslavia, the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan are officially considered color revolutions. A number of researchers go further and trace the concept of a color revolution to the Portuguese “Carnation Revolution,” when on April 25, 1974, a bloodless left-wing coup took place in Lisbon, Portugal, which changed the regime from a fascist dictatorship to a liberal democratic system. However, the last example cannot be attributed to the “color revolutions”, since the main organizers of the Portuguese coup were the military, while the main actors“color revolutions” are civilians and, first of all, active opposition youth. For the same reason, the coup in Iran on August 19, 1953, when Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown as a result of actions sanctioned by the United States, cannot be considered a “color revolution.” Although it was the coup in Iran in 1953 that can be called a prototype of future “color revolutions.”

2000 - “Bulldozer revolution” in Yugoslavia.

2003 - “Rose Revolution” in Georgia.

2004 - “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine.

2005 - “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan.

2006 - Attempt at the “Cornflower Revolution” in Belarus.

2008 - Attempt at a “color revolution” in Armenia.

2009 - Attempt at a “color revolution” in Moldova.

Where did the concept of “color revolution” come from and when did it originate?

Theoretically, the roots of this phenomenon can be sought in the “Monroe Doctrine” (named after the American President James Monroe, 1758 - 1831), according to which, in July 1823, the United States proclaimed its right to establish regimes loyal to Washington “south of the Rio Grande”, those. in Central and South America, and in the messianic model of the world order, born on its basis, called “Pax Americana” (Latin: American world) - a world built on the American model. In his doctrine, Monroe declared: "...as to the Governments of countries which have declared and maintained their independence, and those whose independence, after careful examination and upon the principles of justice, we have recognized, we cannot contemplate any intervention by a European power for the purpose of oppressing those countries or the establishment of any control over them otherwise than as an unfriendly act towards the United States."

However, a more structured concept of a “color revolution” was formed relatively recently. One of the fundamental works on “color revolutions” was the book by American political science professor Gene Sharp “From Dictatorship to Democracy. Conceptual Foundations of Liberation", which was published in 1993. Sharp views the fight against non-Western-oriented states as a fight against dictatorship. His book talks in detail about how to carry out a revolution using the simplest methods. It became a true bible for the activities of young revolutionaries. Opposition movements in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and many other countries sought practical inspiration in it. This book is of interest as a classic guide to action, detailing the tactics and strategy of activities within totalitarian and authoritarian states. Let me clarify – totalitarian from the point of view of the so-called. developed Western democracies. What force can the opposition mobilize so that it is sufficient to destroy the anti-democratic regime, its military and police system? A common feature of these examples of the destruction or weakening of dictatorships is the decisive mass application of political disobedience on the part of the population and its institutions. The dictatorial regime has characteristic features, which make him very sensitive to skillfully applied political disobedience.

US President George Bush, during whose administration almost all the “color revolutions” occurred, never denied his patronage of the “new democracies” in the world. As an example, we can cite the following incident, which took place in February 2005.

On February 24, 2005, a summit meeting between Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush took place in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia—the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since the Orange Revolution had already occurred in Ukraine. It was officially assumed that this meeting would usher in a period of reconciliation between Moscow and Washington. However, on the eve of negotiations between the leaders of Russia and the United States, the American delegation is holding a closed meeting. Political advisers, businessmen, lobbyists, and Bush allies are invited to attend. In addition to those mentioned above, the meeting is attended by leaders of colorful revolutions. Among others, Ivan Murovic is the leader of the Serbian student movement Otpor, which made Vojislav Kostunica the new president of Yugoslavia. Gigo Bokeria is the leader of the Georgian student opposition movement “Kmara” (literally – “Enough”), which brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power. Vladislav Kaskiv is the leader of the Ukrainian “orange” social movement “It’s Time,” which installed Viktor Yushchenko in the leadership of the country. George Bush personally invited them to meet and talk with them face to face.

The next day, in his speech, George Bush focused on the young revolutionaries who occupied the seats for especially important guests. George W. Bush said: “We salute a group of outstanding young men and women from Eastern Europe. We salute you and thank you for your courage and your sacrifice. The revolutions that began 15 years ago have now reached Georgia and Ukraine. Of course, the call of freedom captures the mind and soul of everyone and someday the day will come when freedom will come to every country and every nation. We are awakening." This is a clear call for revolution, made an hour before Vladimir Putin is due to arrive. This has brought a chill to the upcoming summit, which could have been a reconciliation meeting.

§ 2. Causes of “color revolutions”

Over the past five years, there has been a trend towards decreasing democratization and freedom in the world. According to Freedom House (or FH, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington that produces an annual international survey of political rights and civil liberties), the number of countries in the world listed as "free" has decreased significantly over the past five years. Freedom House divides countries into three categories: completely free, partially free and not free. There are two criteria by which they classify a particular country into a certain category:

Political rights, the opportunity to freely participate in the selection of leaders and in the formation of important decisions for society;

Civil liberties (freedom to develop opinions, institutions and personal autonomy from the state, in practice meaning independent media and strong protection of minority rights).

Each of these dimensions is rated on a scale from 1 (maximum) to 7 (minimum).

And if in 2004 89 states were recognized as completely free countries, 54 as partially free, and 49 as not free, then already in 2008 the number of completely free countries decreased to 72, partially free increased to 59, and not free increased to 64 countries. However, this organization cannot be considered at all a serious source of indicators of “free” and “not free” countries. As is known, its budget is 80% financed by the US government, and its ranks include former American officials (for example, American ideologist, former assistant to the US President for National Security Zbigniew Brzezinski, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld). For these reasons, the organization is often accused of lobbying the interests of the White House, interfering in the internal affairs of other states, and publishing politically biased reports. And moreover, in January 2005, President of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akaev directly stated in Moscow that his country was preparing a “Tulip Revolution” and the main channel for receiving funds for it was Freedom House.

According to the director of the Institute of CIS Countries, K.F. Zatulin, “color revolutions” are caused by several main reasons.

The first reason is the deep crisis of the newly independent states in which these revolutions took place. Deep internal political and economic crisis.

The second reason is the undivided desire of the world superpower and other forces interested in division and influence to advance their interests.

The third reason is the crisis of our own methodology and the methodology of Russian foreign policy.

The fourth reason is problems in the economic sphere. The main problems lie in the economic sphere: the poverty of large masses of the population, as well as the absence of a middle class, which is a guarantor of stability, leads to destabilization in the country. An efficient economy is the key to solving most complex problems.

According to researchers, of course, no United States, China, or Russia together could shake up the situation, even if they really wanted it in these states, if there were no internal reasons. And all these years the government itself has been collecting “brushwood for the fires of the opposition.” In Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan (in Yugoslavia the situation was somewhat different), power was at the helm for a long time. Askar Akaev was in power even before Kyrgyzstan was granted independence. Eduard Shevardnadze returned to Georgia in 1992, Leonid Kuchma served two terms as president - the maximum number of times according to the Ukrainian constitution. Naturally, over such a long period, not only successes, but also problems in the life of any state accumulate and not only the number of supporters, but also opponents grows.

The main problem in many countries is that the government does not cooperate with the opposition, but ignores and sometimes suppresses it. The threat of revolution in the state is like a disease in a person, the “symptoms” of which indicate that something is wrong with the body. If you do not pay attention to these “symptoms” and harshly suppress them, then the country’s leadership will not heal the body, but will only drive the disease into the depths, where it will progress and develop. And one day she will still get out, but it will be much more difficult to stop her.

However, “color revolutions” can be carried out not only due to the fact that there are problems in the state where they are taking place (this goes without saying, since there is no country that does not have internal and external problems), but also due to that someone needed them. And not only to those who conducted them, but also to those who organized them. As a rule, such “organizers” are located far from squares, streets and striking people - but at the same time, they provide all kinds of assistance, both political and financial, to all revolutionary-minded organizations. Some countries have taken on obligations to build a world order according to their own understanding. History teaches us that anyone who takes responsibility for redividing the world ultimately pays a very high price.

Countries that spread ideas about freedom (in their understanding) are also not altruists. They pursue certain goals. According to Gene Sharp, director of the Albert Einstein Institute, there are several issues associated with foreign interference in the internal affairs of a country:

Foreign states often tolerate or even directly assist dictatorships in order to further their own economic or political interests.

Foreign states may also betray the people of a country where a “color revolution” is being prepared and fail to keep their obligations to help them in order to achieve another goal.

Some foreign countries will take action against a dictatorship simply to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.

Foreign states can only actively intervene for positive purposes if and when an internal resistance movement has already begun to undermine the dictatorship, drawing international attention to the brutal nature of the regime.

§ 3. The main prerequisites for color revolutions in the post-Soviet space and in the countries of the former socialist bloc

As you know, any effect is generated by a cause. And the “color coups” were no exception. Revolutions became possible after certain conditions were created. Such conditions help to raise the people against their own government and, with the help of manipulation through the media, deliberately instill in the revolutionary-minded masses one simple truth - there may not be another moment.

USSR

As noted above, the events of the late 80s and early 90s that took place in a number of countries in Eastern Europe and Asia cannot be called color revolutions. To define these events there is another concept - the “velvet revolution”, i.e. revolutions strictly aimed at dismantling socialist regimes. However, “color revolutions” are a direct continuation of the “velvet revolutions”. This means that the latter also require careful analysis and analysis.

The Velvet Revolution, as we know, led to the collapse of the USSR, which “was the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. For the Russian people, it became a real drama. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.”

Currently, there is no single point of view among historians on what was the main cause of the “Velvet Revolution” in the USSR and, as its consequence, the collapse of the country. Also, they are still arguing and will continue to argue about whether it was possible to prevent the process of collapse of the USSR. One of the prominent researchers of the collapse of the USSR and the chief state archivist of Russia R.G. Pihoya. boils down the main reasons to the following:

Centrifugal nationalist tendencies inherent in every multinational country and manifested in the form of interethnic contradictions, clashes (Karabakh conflict, “Osh massacre”, etc.) and the desire of individual peoples to independently develop their culture and economy;

The dominance of one ideology, a ban on communication with foreign countries, censorship, lack of free discussion of alternatives (especially important for the intelligentsia);

Growing dissatisfaction of the population due to shortages of food and the most necessary goods (refrigerators, televisions, toilet paper, etc.), ridiculous prohibitions and restrictions (on the size of a garden plot, etc.), a constant lag in living standards from developed Western countries;

Constant shortage of consumer goods, growing technical lag in all areas of the manufacturing industry;

Crisis of confidence in the economic system: in the 1960s-1970s. The main way to combat the inevitable shortage of consumer goods in a planned economy was to rely on mass production, simplicity and cheapness of materials; most enterprises worked in three shifts, producing similar products from low-quality materials. The quantitative plan was the only way to evaluate the efficiency of enterprises, quality control was minimized. The result of this was a sharp decline in the quality of consumer goods produced in the USSR, as a result, already in the early 1980s. the term “Soviet” in relation to goods was synonymous with the term “low quality”. The crisis of confidence in the quality of goods became a crisis of confidence in the entire economic system as a whole;

A number of man-made disasters (plane crashes, the Chernobyl accident, the wreck of the Admiral Nakhimov steamship, gas explosions, etc.) and the concealment of information about them;

Unsuccessful attempts to reform the Soviet system, which led to stagnation and then the collapse of the economy, which led to the collapse of the political system (economic reform of 1965);

The decline in world oil prices, which shook the economy of the USSR;

Monocentrism of decision-making (only in Moscow), which led to inefficiency and loss of time;

Defeat in the arms race, victory of “Reaganomics” in this race;

The Afghan War, the Cold War, incessant financial assistance to the countries of the socialist camp, and the development of the military-industrial complex to the detriment of other areas of the economy ruined the budget.

All this together could not but have a disastrous effect on the country. From the listed reasons it is clear that it was already very difficult to influence the situation in the 90s, because the main problems that caused the crisis were laid down years, and sometimes decades before the events of 1991.

The main reasons for the revolutions in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan are noticeably different from the reasons that led to the events in the USSR in 1991, and are noticeably different from each other, but they all gave rise to one consequence - a coup d'etat.

Yugoslavia

The main prerequisite for the coup in Yugoslavia was the ongoing civil war, which included a series of ethnic conflicts between Serbs on the one hand and Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians on the other, as well as conflicts between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia, caused by religious and ethnic contradictions. The Yugoslav War was the bloodiest in Europe since World War II.

In general, the Yugoslav War is divided into three periods:

Conflicts during the collapse of the SFRY:

1) Ten-day war in Slovenia (1991);

2) Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995);

3) Bosnian War (1992-1995).

Conflicts in Albanian areas:

1) Kosovo War (1996-1999);

2) Conflict in the Presevo Valley (2000-2001);

3) Conflict in Macedonia (2001).

NATO military actions:

1) Operation Deliberate Force (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995);

2) NATO war against Yugoslavia (1999).

Georgia.

A radically different situation developed in Georgia, which, compared to Yugoslavia, had a relatively stable internal situation. The main and most common reason for the transition to the active stage of the color scenario was dissatisfaction with the governance of the country by Eduard Shevardnadze, who assumed the presidency after Georgia gained independence. The indignation of the population was caused by accumulated claims against the government related to the difficult economic situation in the country and corruption among civil servants. The situation was complicated by the desire of ethnic minorities for independence or annexation to the Russian Federation, expressed in the de facto independent existence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Negative emotions in society were also caused by Shevardnadze’s refusal to attempt to forcefully resolve the conflicts in Abkhazia and Ossetia, combined with unsuccessful attempts to resolve the issue peacefully.

Ukraine.

The preconditions for the coup in Ukraine developed in a surprising way. The main thing that triggered the campaign of protests, rallies, pickets, strikes and other acts of civil disobedience was mass distrust in the official election results. The impetus for the protests was the announcement by opposition leaders of the fact of election fraud.

Objectively, the Ukrainian precondition for revolution is one of the most far-fetched. About 800 trained specialists were able to change the fate of a country of 46 million people through clear manipulations with the help of the media and well-thought-out action plans. Strictly speaking, all this could be observed in every country where the “color script” was worked out, but in Ukraine the skill of its implementation reached its apogee.

The country was divided into two main opposing political camps. The first is a significant part of the inhabitants of western Ukraine, who formed the main basis for the revolutionary masses. This group supported the Western vector of the country’s development and sincerely believes that Russia will hinder the prosperity of Ukraine.

The second camp is the bulk of the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-speaking Ukrainians live. They advocate close cooperation and friendship with Russia.

The confrontation between the two political camps was the main culmination of the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine.

Kyrgyzstan.

The last, fourth situation, against the background of which a revolutionary fire could ignite, which brought a lot of troubles and, as we will see, in the future, human casualties was in Kyrgyzstan. In February - March 2005, the next parliamentary elections were held there. The results of these elections, predictably, were recognized as dishonest by pro-Western “democratic” public organizations, including the above-mentioned Freedom House organization. This, instigated by the same NGOs, led to popular discontent and a sharp escalation of the situation.

The following factors are believed to have contributed to the power crisis in Kyrgyzstan:

Difficult economic situation of the population;

Contradictions between the more prosperous (by Kyrgyz standards) north and the poor south, aggravated by the dominance of “northerners” in government and administration;

Corruption, nepotism and clannishness are deeply rooted in the country.

Weakness of the central government and law enforcement agencies, lack of effective system governance of the country, loss of a sense of reality (Askar Akaev, whose regime, according to observers, was the most democratic among all the post-Soviet states of Central Asia, was unable to show toughness in suppressing the first shoots of the rebellion and chose to give up power).

It is clear how strikingly different the basic preconditions for coups d'etat are. However, if in the case of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, these were mainly internal destabilizing factors, then in the case of the USSR and Yugoslavia, foreign policy pressure from Western countries was added to this. The latter played no less a role than the first, and perhaps even greater, because both in the case of the USSR and in the case of Yugoslavia, at the time of the revolution the replacing ruling elite actually no longer had any external allies. While Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan before the “color coups” could have considered Russia as such an external ally.

§4. Main events and characters

All revolutions, especially “colored” ones, have the same structure. Conventionally, this is a pyramid divided into three tiers. On the upper tier are high-ranking patrons of the revolutionaries. Individuals, sometimes a group of people, who train, guide, finance and create optimal information support throughout the world. Such patrons are very influential, but never act directly, preferring intermediaries. This allows you to maintain a decent appearance in the eyes of the world community.

On the middle tier are the direct organizers of the coups. As a rule, this is a group of young people with a completely pro-Western orientation. This group is divided, in turn, into two categories. The first category is specialists in the field of PR technologies, professional psychologists, journalists, etc. They help organize the necessary background so that the people have a negative vision of the official government. This helps in the long term to overthrow this very power, provided that no one stands up to defend it. Most of these specialists and professionals are citizens of foreign countries who have no special relationship with the countries where they are organizing a coup. The second category is the so-called “showcase”. Young politicians who are leaders of the revolution, well recognized by the common population. As a rule, it is this group of people, with the successful implementation of the “color scenario”, that becomes the new ruling elite of the country. Some of these leaders, such as Mikheil Saakashvili, were educated in the United States. Therefore, it is not difficult to guess whose interests he will primarily defend in his country.

Well, the lower tier is ordinary people who create massive protests in the streets and squares. Sometimes they do this for their own ideological reasons, but more often than not, they are ready to stand for hours and days in the cold for money, and for very big money.

Having passed the stage of searching for reasons, the active stage of the “color project” begins.

USSR.

Since 1985, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee M. S. Gorbachev and his supporters began the policy of Perestroika, the political activity of the people increased sharply, and mass movements and organizations were formed, including radical and nationalist ones. Attempts to reform the Soviet system led to a deepening crisis in the country. In the political arena, this crisis was expressed as a confrontation between USSR President Gorbachev and RSFSR President Yeltsin. Yeltsin actively promoted the slogan of the need for the sovereignty of the RSFSR.

The collapse of the USSR took place against the backdrop of a general economic, foreign policy and demographic crisis. In 1989, the start of economic crisis in the USSR (economic growth gives way to decline).

In the period 1989-1991. the main problem of the Soviet economy reaches its maximum - chronic commodity shortages; Almost all basic goods, except bread, disappear from free sale. Rationed supplies in the form of coupons are being introduced throughout the country.

Since 1991, a demographic crisis (an excess of mortality over the birth rate) has been recorded for the first time.

Refusal to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries entails the massive collapse of pro-Soviet communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989.

On February 7, 1990, the CPSU Central Committee announced the weakening of the monopoly on power, and within a few weeks the first competitive elections were held. Liberals and nationalists won many seats in the parliaments of the union republics.

During 1990-1991 the so-called “Parade of sovereignties”, during which all the union republics (the RSFSR was one of the first) and many of the autonomous republics adopted Declarations of Sovereignty, in which they challenged the priority of all-union laws over republican ones. They also took actions to control local economies, including refusals to pay taxes to the union and federal Russian budgets. These conflicts cut off many economic ties, which further worsened the economic situation in the USSR.

On June 12, 1990, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR. The Declaration approved the priority of the Constitution and Laws of the RSFSR over the legislative acts of the USSR.

In March 1991, a referendum was held in which the overwhelming majority of the population in each of the republics voted in favor of preserving the USSR.

Based on the concept of the referendum, it was planned to conclude a new union on August 20, 1991 - the Union of Sovereign States (USS) as a soft federation.

At this time, a number of state and party figures, having united in the State Emergency Committee (State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR) under the slogans of preserving the unity of the country and to restore strict party-state control over all spheres of life, made an unsuccessful attempt at a coup d'etat, which went down in history as "August putsch"

In December 1991, the heads of the three republics, the founders of the USSR - Belarus, Russia and Ukraine gathered in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (the village of Viskuli, Belarus). On December 8, 1991, they stated that the USSR was ceasing to exist and signed the Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth Independent States(CIS).

On December 26, the session of the upper house of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, from which at that time only representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were not recalled, adopted a declaration on the termination of the existence of the USSR.

The “Velvet Revolution” in the USSR led not only to the collapse of a single multinational power, but also to the collapse of an entire bloc of socialist states. The country's territory decreased to the borders of the 17th century. The army was split, as were the Baltic and Black Sea fleets.

Yugoslavia.

In Yugoslavia, protests began immediately after the early presidential elections held on September 24, 2000. The Election Commission announced that no candidate had received the minimum number of votes and a second round had to be held. According to the leaders of the opposition bloc “Democratic Opposition”, its candidate Vojislav Kostunica received more than half of the votes. Kostunica also announced numerous violations committed during the voting. At the same time, in Montenegro the turnout for voting was minimal, and in Kosovo no elections were held at all.

Protests began across the country, organized by the opposition movement “Otpor” (the leader of the movement is Ivan Murovich). By October 5, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Belgrade. Security forces used special equipment and then service weapons against rally participants. As a result of clashes between security forces and demonstrators, the latter took possession of the Yugoslav Parliament building and then stormed the Belgrade television center. It was during the last episode that Ljubisav Djokic distinguished himself by ramming a bulldozer he owned into the fence of the television center complex, which is why the revolution received the name “Bulldozer”. Fire was opened on him with live ammunition. The commanders of the army and police units stationed in the capital entered into negotiations with opposition leaders and reached an agreement with them on the security forces observing neutrality in exchange for the absence of hostile actions on the part of demonstrators opposed to Milosevic.

Initially, the electoral commission, under the influence of Milosevic, insisted on holding a second round of elections, claiming that Kostunica received only 48.96% of the votes in the first round. However, after the revolution, the Federal Constitutional Court decided to amend the election protocol and, thus, Kostunica, with 50.2% of the votes, became president. Slobodan Milosevic resigned on the morning of October 6, 2000.

The coup in Yugoslavia became the prologue to a whole series of similar revolutions. The scenario was worked out clearly and without any special problems or opposition from the official authorities. This indicates that the country's official leadership was not prepared for such a development of events. As subsequent events in the world showed, not everyone learned lessons from the Yugoslav events.

Georgia.

As in Yugoslavia, in Georgia the political and socio-economic crisis reached its peak on the eve of the presidential elections on November 2, 2003. The political blocs of Shevardnadze “For New Georgia” and Abashidze’s “Union for the Democratic Renewal of Georgia” were opposed by the “United People’s Movement” of Mikheil Saakashvili and “Burjanadze’s Democrats” ", headed by former speakers of the Georgian parliament Nino Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania, who died on February 8, 2005 under strange circumstances. Also worth special mention is the already mentioned student opposition movement “Kmara”, and its leader, Guigo Bokeria.

Parliamentary elections in Georgia were held on November 2, 2003 and, according to official data, ended in victory for Shevardnadze and his allies, but the announced results were not recognized by international observers and opponents of Shevardnadze. Mikheil Saakashvili defiantly declared his victory based on opinion polls, a claim supported by the International Community of Free Elections, a local monitoring group. Based on the data presented, Saakashvili put forward a demand for new elections and called on Georgian citizens to take to the streets and support him.

By mid-November, mass demonstrations began in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, which subsequently affected other cities and towns in the country. Crowds of people from the Kmara youth organization chanted their slogans; many public organizations, for example, the Georgian Institute of Freedoms, also showed enviable activity in noisy protests.

Key dates:

2) November 23 – Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov convinced Shevardnadze to leave Georgia to avoid bloodshed. The Supreme Court annulled the election results. New elections are scheduled for January 4, 2004, they were won by the leader of the revolution, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Opposition protests reached their peak on November 22, the first day of the new Georgian parliament, whose legitimacy has been questioned. On the same day, oppositionists led by Saakashvili, holding roses in their hands (hence the name of the revolution), seized the parliament building, interrupted Shevardnadze, who was giving a speech, and forced him to leave the hall, accompanied by bodyguards. The president then declared a state of emergency in the country and called for help from troops and police in the area of ​​his residence in Tbilisi. However, even elite police units refused to support him. On the evening of November 23, St. George's Day in Georgia, Shevardnadze met with opposition leaders Saakashvili and Zhvania to discuss the situation at a meeting hosted by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. After the meeting, Shevardnadze announced his resignation. This caused real euphoria on the streets of Tbilisi. More than 100,000 protesters celebrated the victory with fireworks and rock concerts.

Nino Burjanadze, speaker of the Georgian parliament, became acting. president until a new round of re-voting was held. Meanwhile, the country's Supreme Court annulled the results of the presidential election. On January 4, 2004, new presidential elections were held in Georgia, which were won by Saakashvili, who took the oath of office as President on January 25 of the same year. On March 28, 2004, new parliamentary elections were held, in which the New Democrats, supported by Saakashvili, won.

The Georgian coup as a whole repeated the Yugoslav scenario. The organizers, who had already gained experience, were able to organize and bring their protege to power in a fairly short time. Russia was concerned about these events - an American protectorate appeared on its southern borders.

Ukraine.

Events in Ukraine developed according to a completely different scenario. The beginning of the “Orange Revolution” is considered to be a protest organized and carried out by supporters of Viktor Yushchenko (the main opposition candidate in the presidential elections in November-December 2004) and the “It’s Time” movement under the leadership of its leader, Vladislav Kaskiv, after the announcement by the Central Election Commission (CEC) ) preliminary results, according to which Viktor Yushchenko’s rival from power, Viktor Yanukovych, won. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Ukraine found violations in the voting procedure and counting of votes, overturned the Central Election Commission's decision on the election results and ordered it to hold a second round of voting again. The protesters managed to force the Ukrainian authorities to wait for the decision of the Supreme Court and, on its basis, hold another round of voting in the presidential election. As a result of the re-voting, Viktor Yushchenko won.

The main base of the united opposition was the western and central regions of Ukraine, while V.F. Yanukovych was supported mainly by the eastern and southern regions of the country. Public opinion in Western countries was on the side of the Ukrainian opposition. A number of statesmen in European countries acted as mediators between the opposing forces from others similar to her in their duration and intensity. In addition, the warring parties accused each other of a variety of crimes and fraud. For example, supporters of Ukrainian presidential candidate V. A. Yushchenko said that on September 9 he was poisoned with an unknown poison. External signs of poisoning were quite characteristic of dioxin intoxication. Subsequently, Viktor Yushchenko's face was quite distorted by the irreversible processes that occur in such cases.

On November 23, rallies began in the cities of Western and Central Ukraine, in Kyiv and a number of other cities and regional centers in support of the opposition candidate. The main arena of popular discontent was the Kiev Independence Square (Ukrainian Independence Square), where, according to various estimates, according to the Russian version, from 100 to 200 thousand people gathered for a peaceful demonstration, and up to 500 thousand according to the European version, from all over the country. Rallies and pickets also took place in front of the buildings of the Presidential Administration, the Verkhovna Rada - the Ukrainian parliament, government, etc. The distinctive sign of the demonstrators was orange - the color of Yushchenko's election campaign, hence the name of the revolution. Yanukovych supporters used white and blue colors. City authorities in Kyiv, Lviv and several other cities refused to recognize the legitimacy of the official results. At a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, Yushchenko defiantly pronounced the text of the oath of the President of Ukraine from the podium, despite the fact that he had not yet been officially elected.

Yushchenko entered into negotiations with incumbent President Leonid Kuchma, wanting to peacefully achieve recognition of his victory, but the negotiations were interrupted on November 24, since Yushchenko’s position did not provide for a result of the negotiations other than declaring him president. After the announcement of the final results, which recognized Yanukovych as the winner, Yushchenko spoke to his supporters in Kyiv, calling on them to start an “Orange Revolution” and, through strikes, paralyze the government and force the authorities not to recognize the rigged election results.

The actions and decisions of the Central Election Commission were unlawful and contradicted a number of articles of the laws of Ukraine “On the Central Election Commission” and “On the Election of the President of Ukraine”;

As a result, the demands of M. D. Katerynchuk (Yushchenko’s confidant in the presidential elections of Ukraine) were partially satisfied - the actions of the Central Election Commission were declared unlawful, its decisions on the election results and the publication of the election results were cancelled. The Chamber of Civil Affairs ordered the Central Electoral Commission to again hold a second round of voting within the period established by the law “On the Election of the President of Ukraine”, counting from December 5, 2004. Following this decision, the Verkhovna Rada changed the composition of the Central Election Commission and adopted amendments to the law on presidential elections in order to block the main channels of election fraud. The adoption of these amendments was the result of a compromise between the government and the opposition. In the package with them, a constitutional reform was approved, limiting the power of the President of Ukraine and transferring part of his powers to the cabinet of ministers and parliament.

During the re-voting held on December 26, 2004, Viktor Yushchenko won. An attempt by Viktor Yanukovych’s supporters to protest the results of the repeated second round of elections did not bring results, and even before the end of the trial, Viktor Yushchenko was officially recognized as the President of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian scenario was not as smooth as in Yugoslavia and Georgia. The coup organizers stumbled for the first time. However, they still managed, not without difficulty, to bring the matter to an end. For Russia, the “Orange Revolution” carried a double danger: the rupture of a single cultural and civilizational space - the new Ukrainian leadership deliberately headed for the West; and the emergence of a serious geopolitical threat - the southern flank of the country was captured by pro-Western regimes.

In Russia, analysts, having studied the scenarios of “color revolutions” after the Ukrainian events, came to the conclusion that a necessary element in the technology of coups is the creation of network youth movements, “infected with the idea of ​​revolution and a change of power.” Until then, the importance of young people in election campaigns in general and voting in particular was underestimated. It was considered a politically passive group of the population. Meanwhile, in all three coups, youth political organizations (in Yugoslavia - “Otpor”, in Georgia - “Kmara!”, in Ukraine - “It’s Time”) played a crucial role. Firstly, all mass actions involving the population were carried out with the help of young people, mostly students. Secondly, youth organizations brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets who were capable of resisting the security forces. Thirdly, it was the mass participation of young people that created an aura of “genuine revolutionism” around the events that took place and made it possible to present the movement as a national cause. Taking all this into account, Moscow began to act in two directions. The first is internal: taking control of all organizations that may be involved in possible future riots on the streets of large cities when trying to implement “color scenarios” in Russia; in addition, a course was taken to create a pro-government youth organization “Nashi”, whose main purpose was to become the main strike force to counter possible coups.

Kyrgyzstan.

After a relatively short time, revolutionary fervor spread to Asia. The events in Kyrgyzstan were somewhat different from other “color scenarios”. There was no central opposition youth movement, and events were more spontaneous than a pre-planned revolution.

On March 24, 2005, President of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akaev, having failed to stop attempts to usurp power, was overthrown and soon left the country with his entire family, receiving temporary asylum in Russia. Since the events took place in the spring, during the flowering of tulips, the revolution, in continuation of the Georgian trend, received the designation “Tulip”. As a result of the coup, power passed into the hands of a heterogeneous opposition, which itself was stunned by what had happened. Immediately after this, internal disagreements and conflicts began among the victors. After some time, Askar Akaev, as a result of negotiations with representatives of the opposition, signed a statement about his resignation from the presidential post. As a result of early elections, one of the leaders of the opposition, Kurmanbek Bakiev, was elected president. This, however, did not lead to the normalization of life in the country, and among opposition figures (primarily Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Felix Kulov) the struggle for power continued, or rather for leadership in tandem, in which Bakiyev successfully won.

The country's new leadership has not become an obedient instrument in the hands of the White House. Moreover, President Bakiyev managed to weaken and split the pro-American group of Kyrgyz politicians (Kulov, Otunbaeva, etc.) and at the same time strengthen cooperation with Russia. An example of this is the increase in the period of use of the air base at Kant, which is located 20 km east of Bishkek, in 2009 for Russian air force units within the framework of the Collective Rapid Deployment Force of the Collective Security Treaty Organization for 49 years, with a possible extension for another 25 years old. With all this, located 23 km northwest of Bishkek, the Manas air base, which until June 2009 was used by the US Air Force as a military air base, will be repurposed as a transit center at Manas International Airport from June 22, 2009, which significantly narrows the scope of use of the air base for the US Air Force.

In addition, the effectiveness of the participation of the Kyrgyz Republic in the CIS structures and regional organizations - SCO, CSTO, EurAsEC - has increased.

color revolution socialist bloc

§ 5. Consequences of “color revolutions”

Before his execution, Georges-Jacques Danton, a famous figure in the French Revolution, said: “The revolution devours its children.” The same can be attributed to the consequences that took place after the “color scenarios”.

USSR.

The events of 1991 in the USSR differ from the events that took place in the early 2000s in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, if only in that there were human casualties during the 1991 coup. During the coup itself, three deaths were officially recorded. After the putsch, a number of high-ranking USSR leaders committed suicide. It is the absence of deaths that is the main difference between a “bloodless”, “soft”, “color revolution”. Also, the “color revolution” does not lead to deep social, political and constitutional changes. As a rule, during “color coups” there is only a change in the ruling elite, as well as a redirection of guidelines in foreign policy. The events of 1991 led to a radical breakdown in the way of life of entire peoples, absolutely at all levels. The country has completely changed its vector of development: social, economic, political. On the territory of the former USSR, interethnic conflicts flared up in many places, some of which escalated into full-scale wars. The period of such wars can well be called the second Civil War, since de jure the country no longer existed, but de facto the USSR still continued to exist throughout the first half of the 90s of the 20th century. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia was on the verge of a similar fate, when a number of federal subjects declared their own sovereignty. However, the second “parade of sovereignties” was prevented; otherwise, Russia as a country might not exist today.

Yugoslavia.

In December 2000, parliamentary elections were held in Yugoslavia, in which the democratic coalition won, which collapsed two years after these events. On April 1, 2001, Slobodan Milosevic was arrested at his own residence on charges of abuse of power and corruption, and on June 28, at the initiative of Zoran Djindjic (mayor of Belgrade, Prime Minister of Serbia in 2001-2003), he was transferred to the Hague Tribunal. His trial was never completed, as Milosevic died in prison on March 11, 2006.

The completed revolution accelerated the already rapidly occurring process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia into independent states. Three years after the coup, Yugoslavia became the confederate State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. Three years later, on June 3, 2006, Yugoslavia finally ceased to exist with the withdrawal of Montenegro from the union.

The revolution in Yugoslavia, and its subsequent collapse, have more in common with the “velvet revolution” in the USSR than with the “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The last three countries did not undergo profound political and social changes after the revolutions, while the USSR and Yugoslavia ceased to exist after the revolutions. This allows us to conclude that a “velvet revolution” did take place in Yugoslavia. Thus, the list of countries that experienced a “color revolution” was reduced to three countries: Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Georgia.

After the coup, the new Georgian president took a strong anti-Russian position on major key issues. For example, the demand of the Georgian leadership to withdraw Russian bases from Georgian territory (the 12th military base in Batumi and the 62nd military base in Akhalkalaki) - according to the Istanbul Agreements of 1999, was one of the most acute problems in Russian-Georgian relations.

An agreement on the procedure for the withdrawal of Russian military bases was signed in mid-2005. On May 3, 2006, the withdrawal of equipment from the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki began. The complete withdrawal of Russian troops and weapons was completed in November 2007.

A further deterioration in relations with Russia, as well as the desire of the Georgian side to forcibly resolve conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, led to an armed clash between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. As a result of the conflict, Abkhazia and South Ossetia were recognized as independent states by Russia (August 26, 2008) and a number of other countries. And on September 2, 2008, the Georgian Foreign Ministry handed a note to the Russian envoy in Tbilisi, Andrei Smaga, notifying him of the official severance of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Ukraine.

A more contradictory picture emerged in Ukraine. Having assumed the presidency, Yushchenko, and with him the foreign policy of Ukraine, like Georgia’s, took on an anti-Russian character. An attempt was made to revive GUAM (a regional organization created in October 1997 by the republics of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova), and the Commonwealth of Democratic Choice was created. Both organizations are in one way or another anti-Russian in nature. In addition, Ukraine has taken a general course towards rapprochement with the United States and European integration.

But at the same time, passions in the political life of Ukraine itself did not subside. The first government after the Orange Revolution, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, lasted from February to September 2005, and was dismissed because its composition was extremely heterogeneous, since Viktor Yushchenko tried to satisfy the claims to power of all his main supporters, representing different political groups. As a result, conflicts within the government and between various branches of government began almost from the very first day.

After Tymoshenko, the cabinet of ministers was headed by Yuri Yekhanurov. However, the political struggle, which did not subside even for a day, forced Yekhanurov on August 4, 2006 to cede his prime minister's post to Viktor Yanukovych.

At this moment, the famous gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine took place in 2005-2006, caused by the intention of the Russian concern Gazprom to bring gas export prices for post-Soviet states into full compliance with the price level on the European gas market.

At the beginning of 2006, a political crisis occurred that resulted in a conflict between the executive branch (President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov and the Cabinet of Ministers), on the one hand, and the legislative branch (the majority of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada) of Ukraine, on the other hand.

On March 26, 2006, the next elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine took place. However, the new parliament was unable to solve old problems. As a result of the elections, five parties with completely opposite views overcame the 4% barrier. This led to the fact that the Rada was unable to form a viable government coalition for a long time. And again a new political crisis occurred in April-August 2006.

In August 2006, representatives of the “anti-crisis” coalition formed the government of Viktor Yanukovych. However, the growing confrontation between Yanukovych and Yushchenko leads to a new protracted political crisis in 2007. As a way out of it, an agreement was concluded between the warring parties to hold early parliamentary elections on September 30, 2007. As a result of the elections, on December 18, 2007, it was again possible to form a more or less capable “orange” government headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, which worked until the resignation of President Yushchenko in 2010.

The ongoing confrontation between Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, and Yanukovych leads to another political crisis in 2008.

At the turn of 2008-2009, there is a new gas crisis with Russia, in fact, a repetition of a similar crisis of 2005-2006.

And finally, the political crisis and struggle ends only on February 7, 2010, when the second round of the presidential elections in Ukraine takes place, where Viktor Yanukovych wins. And on March 11, 2010, instead of the resigned Tymoshenko government, the Cabinet of Ministers of Mykola Azarov was formed.

Today, after five years of incessant disputes, confrontations and clashes, a bloodless Ukraine stands on the threshold of a new time, which, however, promises stability, order, and most importantly, the revival of friendly relations with Russia. An example of the latter is that one of the first interstate agreements of Yanukovych dated April 21, 2010, was Ukraine’s agreement in principle to extend the lease period for Russia of the largest naval base on the Black Sea in Sevastopol for 25 years (until 2042) with the possibility its extension for another five years. While Yushchenko, as president, claimed that the lease agreement for the naval base would expire in 2017 and would not be renewed.

Ukraine is a clear example of what a “color revolution” can lead to in a state with a wide variety of political trends and parties. During this time I grew up external debt Ukraine, the country actually stopped developing for five whole years, which is a very long time in the modern world. By the way, in Russia, such a choice is even richer and it is unknown how confrontations in Russia, similar to those that took place in Ukraine in 2004-2010, would have ended.

Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan is the first country where the president installed by Western forces did not blindly carry out all orders from abroad. After the coup, there was relative stability in the republic for several years, but everything changed in April 2010, when another revolution occurred in the wake of anti-government protests that swept throughout Kyrgyzstan.

On March 17, 2010, a kurultai (congress) of the opposition was held in Bishkek, the leader of which was Social Democrat Roza Otunbaeva.

The unrest began in Talas on April 6, when the opposition seized the regional administration building after a rally. In response to the forceful methods of law enforcement agencies, the protesters used primitive means in the form of sticks and stones. Attempts by the special forces to regain control of the situation were unsuccessful. Protesters also tried to seize the building of the regional police department.

On April 7, unrest swept Naryn and Bishkek, and in the capital the opposition managed to seize the television center and go on air. President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed a decree introducing a state of emergency in the country and introducing a curfew in Bishkek.

On the morning of the same day, a crowd of thousands of opposition supporters stormed the parliament building and tried to seize the Government House, but encountered resistance from the police and National Guard troops. One of the oppositionists tried to ram the gate in a seized car.

Several armed people appeared in the crowd around the Government House building. Snipers who were on the roofs of administrative buildings, including the roof of the White House (Government House), opened targeted fire on the armed rebels. Opposition leaders announced shooting at unarmed people. An angry crowd began an assault.

The head of the State Security Service of Kyrgyzstan, the brother of the country's president, Zhanybek Bakiev, admitted that he gave the order to open fire to kill, but only on armed people. “I gave the command (to open fire) on the armored personnel carrier that was shooting. I do not hide this, but I gave the command to shoot at those who have weapons. I radioed that if anyone runs with a weapon, then open fire on them to kill. Because they also conducted targeted fire,” Bakiyev said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

The parliament building was destroyed and the building of the Prosecutor General's Office was set on fire. The crowd seized the television center building. The planned program program was changed and a “live broadcast” began with the participation of employees of non-governmental organizations and human rights activists. Then the former chairman of parliament Omurbek Tekebaev said on air that “power has completely passed into the hands of the people.”

After these events, the government of Kyrgyzstan resigned. President Bakiyev fled from Bishkek to Osh. The opposition formed a temporary “government of people's trust” (for a period of six months to organize democratic elections), headed by former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva.

On the evening of April 7, 2010, Otunbaeva announced that power in Kyrgyzstan had completely transferred to the opposition.

On the night of April 8, a wave of looting swept through the capital. But by the morning of April 9, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kyrgyzstan, police units, together with people's squads, managed to completely clear the country's capital, Bishkek, of looters. Passenger bus service was relaunched in the city. April 9 and 10 were declared days of mourning in the republic for the victims.

On April 15, Kurmanbek Bakiyev left Kyrgyzstan. And already on April 16, he signed a letter of resignation from the presidency. On April 20, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that Bakiyev was in Minsk.

As a result of the April 2010 clashes between the opposition and law enforcement agencies, 84 people were killed and more than 1,500 were injured. Human sacrifices, namely their absence, are main feature"bloodless" and color revolution. However, in this case, there is no need to talk about this. There was a coup, a bloody one. It is already clear that the revolution was basically spontaneous in nature, and there can be no talk of any planning. These riots and casualties are, again, a direct consequence of the “Tulip Revolution” of 2005.

The main reasons for the new coup in Kyrgyzstan are considered to be:

The incompleteness of the "Tulip Revolution";

Falling standard of living (lumpenization) of the broad masses of the population, in particular rising prices for light and heat;

Unlike Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine, where the main customer of the “color revolutions” was, of course, the United States, in Kyrgyzstan, according to the Russian writer and publicist N.V. Starikov, the situation is somewhat different. While the 2005 coup can still be attributed to the activities of Washington, the same cannot be said about the 2010 coup. For the main players in the region: the United States and Russia, the revolution came as a surprise. Which allows us to make the assumption that Moscow and Washington were not involved in what happened.

There are two more countries that have the necessary resources for a coup - China and Iran. Kirghiz are Muslims. However, judging by the development of events and the lack of tilt towards Islamic slogans, Iran was not involved here. There is only one option left: before us is a “test of the pen” of China. Kyrgyzstan has large deposits of coal, antimony, mercury, uranium, zinc, tin, tungsten, lead, rare earth metals, wollastonite, and nepheline syenites. There are also hydrocarbons in Kyrgyzstan. China needs it all. The following fact also aroused interest. The leaders of the revolution have already communicated with Russian Prime Minister Putin, but they have not spoken with US President Obama.

If this is so, then China gives the fruits of victory to the Russian Federation according to the principle: political influence for you, contracts for minerals for us.

§ 6. “Color gaps”

An attempt at the “Cornflower Revolution” in Belarus.

After a whole series of successful peaceful changes in the ruling elites in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, it was assumed that similar events could happen to the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. The new coup was previously dubbed the “Cornflower Revolution” (presumably on the same principle as the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan). It was expected that the most suitable occasion for this would be the 2006 presidential elections.

According to the results of the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Belarus, the elections ended with the victory of Lukashenko, after which the opposition (the youth movements “Zubr” and “Young Front”, as well as the coalition of Democratic Forces) led by one of the losing candidates, Alexander Milinkevich, organized mass protests. A few days later, a tent city consisting of nineteen tents was organized on Oktyabrskaya Square. The number of people taking part in the protest grew during the first three days of the protests, and after Alyaksandr Milinkevich’s call to disperse, it gradually decreased. On average, several thousand people were near the campground in the evening, and about three hundred were there at night, during the day and in the morning. On the night of March 24, the tent city was liquidated by the police, its participants were detained and arrested for various periods of administrative arrest.

The failure of the “Cornflower Revolution” is explained by poor organization in the opposition camp. According to state media estimates, the majority of Belarusians have repeatedly expressed support for A.G.’s course during the elections. Lukashenko.

In August 2008, I had the opportunity to visit Minsk. After talking with city residents, it became clear how simply and, most importantly, bloodlessly, any provocations on the part of the protesters were prevented. Since the tent city was set up on Oktyabrskaya Square, toilets were removed from the square itself and from all adjacent streets by the authorities. And the protesters were forced to retreat to the alleys adjacent to the square, where riot police were already waiting for them. And since it is an administrative offense to relieve oneself outside of specialized places in the central part of the city, the protesters were quite lawfully detained.

An attempt at a “color revolution” in Armenia.

Mass protests began in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, after the next presidential elections on February 19, 2008, as a result of which Robert Kocharyan won. According to the protesters, the elections themselves were held with violations. The rallies were organized by supporters of presidential candidate and first President of the Republic of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan. During the riots, 9 demonstrators were killed, one police representative (as a result of a grenade exploding in his hands) and about 300 were injured of varying degrees of severity.

The protests began on February 20 and continued for 10 days in Yerevan on Theater Square, involving tens of thousands of demonstrators throughout the day, with dozens of tents erected that same day to allow demonstrators to remain there overnight. Despite calls from the government to stop the demonstrations, protests continued until March 1. On the morning of March 1, police dispersed several thousand people with batons and electric shocks.

At noon on March 1, a crowd held a rally outside the French embassy. Law enforcement forces were forced out of the area by 4 pm as they could no longer cope with the growing number of demonstrators. Activists overturned trolleybuses and buses to install barriers. Several cars were burned, including police cars. In the evening, clashes broke out between police and demonstrators who barricaded themselves in Myasnikyan Square. At approximately 10 p.m., President Robert Kocharyan, with the approval of the Armenian parliament, declared a 20-day state of emergency prohibiting demonstrations. Kocharyan argued his decision by saying that some of the demonstrators looted nearby shops on Mashtots Avenue, set fire to several police cars and buses, and also seriously injured police officers.

The state of emergency came into force, at approximately 1 am on March 2, Levon Ter-Petrosyan was forced to call on the protesters near the French Embassy to go home, thereby putting an end to the protests.

An attempt at a “color revolution” in Moldova.

The reason for the unrest was the announcement of the preliminary results of the April 2009 parliamentary elections, in which the Communist Party of Moldova won with 49.96% of the votes. It was followed by the Liberal Party - 12.79% of the vote, the Liberal Democratic Party - 12.26% and the Our Moldova Alliance - 9.81%. In this regard, on April 6, about two thousand people gathered in the center of Chisinau for a peaceful rally under the slogans “Down with the communists!”, “Better to be dead than a communist!”, “Freedom!”, “Change is us!” Traffic was blocked along the main street.

On April 7, riots began in the city. Protesters seized the parliament building in the center of Chisinau. Unknown persons hoisted the flag of Romania over the entrance, and the flag of the European Union on the spire above the building. Opposition leaders condemned such actions and called it a provocation. The first floor of the building was set on fire. At the same time, opposition leaders said they had lost control of the situation. Meanwhile, the police took no action.

In Chisinau it was disabled mobile communications and information sites are blocked. Mobile communications were soon restored. Information has also appeared that the Moldovan authorities and the demonstrators have come to general agreements and will soon begin a recount of votes. However, this information was soon refuted by the Central Election Commission, and one of the opposition leaders, the mayor of Chisinau, Dorin Chirtoaca (Liberal Party), said that he demanded repeat parliamentary elections, and not a recount of votes. That same evening, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin addressed the people with a televised address, in which he accused opposition leaders of attempting a coup.

In the evening, demonstrators still controlled the square next to the parliament. Fires were lit inside and outside the Parliament building, furniture was removed, safes were opened, and documents were burned or scattered. That same evening, a fire started in the building, but it was soon put out, after which the rally participants began to disperse, leaving several hundred people.

In Moldova, new early parliamentary elections were scheduled for July 2009 - as a result of which the Communist Party lost its majority in parliament and went into opposition, and a new government was formed.

However, it is worth noting that the events in Belarus, Armenia, and Moldova cannot be fully considered attempts at “color coups.” The differences are that there were no protests that took place over several weeks, and there were no youth organizations. There was also no negative assessment of the elections by Western observers. The difference between situations like “color failures” and “color revolutions” is also that opposition leaders do not control groups of young people, and the protests are mostly spontaneous.

Conclusion

The analysis indicates that the “color revolutions” that swept through the countries of the post-Soviet space, although temporarily, still built a ring of unfriendly states around Russia. And the fact that this happened suggests that Russia at the moment is the main target for diverse forces in the world.

In addition, the parallel drawn between the events that occurred in the USSR in the early 90s and the events in the post-Soviet space and in the countries of the former socialist bloc in the early 2000s shows how similar these events are, but at the same time they have fundamental differences.

The first and main difference is that during “color revolutions,” unlike “velvet” revolutions, there are no human casualties. The second difference is that “color scenarios” do not carry deep political, social and economic transformations in the state where they occur. The third is that the main protagonists during the “color revolutions” were opposition youth. While during the “velvet revolutions” the revolutionary masses are made up of people of various social and age categories.

The common features between the events of 1991 and the events in the first half of the 2000s include the technology of influencing the masses through the media. It was the media that disseminated the main revolutionary ideas, conveying a picture of a "dark present" and painting a picture of a "bright future" if the people rose up against their government.

In addition, based on the analysis, we can conclude that “color revolutions” occurred only in three countries: Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. In Yugoslavia, it was not a “color revolution”, but a “velvet” one, since the country, some time after the coup, experienced a profound political and social change that ended in the final collapse of the country. Exactly the same situation could be observed fifteen years ago, when the USSR collapsed after the “Velvet Revolution.”

The “color revolution” in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 led to the sad events of 2010, when dozens of civilians died. The country was on the brink of civil war. This once again emphasizes the danger that “soft” and “bloodless coups” pose.

The “soft scenario” of a coup has already been tested once over Russia. This cannot be allowed to happen a second time.

Russia is the only country that borders all the world power centers: NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), EU (European Union) and EAR (East Asia Region). Today, when information moves between continents in seconds, finance in minutes, goods in weeks and months, the space of Eurasia is designed to connect the West, East and South through the “north bridge”. And today the interests of the east, south and west converge here – in Russia. It is safe to say that whoever controls the “northern bridge” in the future will receive enormous dividends and have enormous weight in the world.

Many countries are currently in a state of rapid economic, political and social change. At the beginning of the 21st century, the world is changing rapidly. Russia's participation becomes more noticeable from year to year.

It is Russia, along with Brazil, India and China, that is called the possible leader of tomorrow. Analysts say that in 10 years the world will change again and the influence of these countries in the global economy and politics will increase sharply. On the world political arena there are no friends, no enemies - there are only national interests and a fight for resources. Here competition strictly divides into strong and weak, rich and poor.

Today, it may be too early to talk about the end of the era of “color revolutions.” However, there is no need to talk about a repeat attempt at the “velvet” or “color revolution” in Russia. As you know, you can’t step into the same river twice. But this does not mean that there is no longer a threat. As was shown above, using the example of other countries, it is enough to make a few rash decisions and actions, and the government will once and for all lose trust in itself from the people. This can lead to dire consequences.

Also, we should not forget that with the advent of the new administration in Washington, the tone of the conversation with Moscow has changed. The new US president is openly looking for new ways of cooperation and perhaps even friendship with Russia. Overseas they finally realized that it is much more profitable to be friends with us than to compete with us. Perhaps today we will no longer be able to compete with the United States on equal terms, as the USSR was able to do in its time, but times are changing. And today the rules of the game in the world are no longer the same as they were 60-70 years ago. Today, economics determines everything. And the one who has it developed better and more reliably is stronger.

But if the United States of America does decide to continue its “conquest of the East” (as journalists called a series of color coups in the post-Soviet space) and, moreover, risks re-implementing a new Russian revolution, many assume that it will have only one color: red . The color of the inevitable clash between two powers, which will slowly but surely move towards confrontation with each other in an extremely dangerous battle.

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PLAN-OUTLINE
conducting a group lesson on public and state training with officers of the military unit 3474.
TOPIC: “Color revolutions are a threat to international security. History and mechanisms of occurrence."
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Bring to the attention of military personnel the threat to international security.
2. Study the history and mechanisms of color revolutions.
3. To instill in military personnel love for their people, the Motherland, respect for its traditions, heroic past, and multinational culture.
STUDY QUESTIONS:
Color revolutions are a threat to international security.
History and mechanisms of color revolutions.
TIME: 100 minutes.
PLACE: methodological class.
METHOD: oral presentation of educational material, discussion of the material being studied.
MATERIAL SUPPORT: political map of the world, pointer.
LITERATURE:
Gapich A, Lushnikov D. Technologies of color revolutions. M., Rior, 2010.
Grant Arakelyan. Color revolutions in the context of history and the mirror modern politics// Academy of Trinitarianism”, M., 01/02/2014.
Annual message of the President of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly, dated December 4, 2014
Kara-Murza S.G. Revolutions for export. M.: Algorithm, Eksmo, 2006.
Kuzmin V. The role of the United States in the implementation of “color revolutions” in foreign countries // Foreign Military Review. 2008. No. 6. P. 8-16.
National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020.
Progress of the lesson:
Study questions, time (min) Contents of the study question and
actions of the leader Actions of the trainees
I Introductory part
5 minutes - I accept the report of the assistant leader of the UCP group;
-I give the floor to an informant about events in the world and abroad;
-I announce the topic, purpose, educational questions
classes and the procedure for practicing them;
-I’m starting to work on the first training question. The personnel are in the methodological classroom, the assistant leader of the UCP group reports on readiness for the lesson.
II Main part
1. Color revolutions are a threat to international security.

In modern conditions, the construction and service and combat activities of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia are carried out in difficult conditions. The development of troops is significantly influenced by a number of factors, the main ones of which are considered to be foreign policy, as well as socio-political and socio-economic conditions, trends in the changing nature of wars and armed conflicts, and, of course, the results and experience of the “color revolutions” of recent decades.
On November 20, 2014, at a meeting of the Security Council, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin called for taking into account the lessons of “color revolutions” in other countries. He stated: “In the modern world, extremism is used as a tool of geopolitics and the redistribution of spheres of influence; We see what tragic consequences the wave of so-called “color revolutions” led to, what shocks the people of countries that went through irresponsible experiments... external interference in their lives experienced and are experiencing... We are obliged to do everything necessary to ensure that this never happens in Russia.” (end of quote).
It is impossible to determine long-term and even short-term plans for the construction of troops without taking into account the conditions under which the tasks assigned to the internal troops will have to be solved.
Currently, the military-political situation in the world is developing under the influence of the increasingly complex process of globalization of international political and economic relations and is characterized by high dynamism, increased instability, growing tension in a number of regions, aggravation of existing and the emergence of new crisis situations.
It is obvious that at present the main goal of the United States is to form a unipolar model of the world order with a rigid hierarchy of its main participants. The Russian Federation is increasingly playing an important role in countering the unprecedented US pressure on other states.
The bitterness with which Western countries, taking advantage of the Ukrainian crisis they themselves unleashed, opened a wave of anti-Russian sanctions and escalated the situation around Russia, indicates that they have set a course for direct confrontation, the purpose of which is to provoke a deterioration in the socio-economic situation of the Russian Federation and, at a minimum, its subordination to Western dictatorship, and, at most, the collapse of the state.
This is directly pointed out by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, noting that Western politicians openly say that the purpose of economic sanctions is to create problems specifically in the socio-economic sphere, due to which it is planned to provoke discontent and protests, the ultimate goal of which is is a change of the President and Government of the Russian Federation.
At the same time, Western states, having provoked the Ukrainian crisis, are planning both the final separation of Ukraine from Russia and the implementation of the tasks of a deep reformatting of the entire system of international relations. The main goal of these actions is to prevent the restoration of Russia as an independent center of power with global influence.
The active involvement of the West in the political reorganization of the states of the post-Soviet space and the ways in which this is being accomplished indicates that the threat of the Russian Federation being gradually drawn into border armed conflicts and provoking internal armed conflicts in individual regions of the country cannot be ruled out.
That is why issues of military security of the state are currently becoming increasingly important.
Possible threats to Russia's military security are divided into several groups.
Global dangers and threats will be associated with the United States and its allies both in the west and in the east of the country. Their source should be considered the desire of Russia’s geopolitical rivals:
achieve unconditional dominance and elimination of the Russian Federation as a center of power possessing nuclear weapons;
turn Russia into a country incapable of influencing the development of international relations in the world and its regions.
Military threats of a regional and local scale will form along the perimeter of Russia’s borders due to the persistence of old or the emergence of new contradictions with neighboring or other states in the regions of our country’s national interests. The aggravation of these contradictions could lead to the outbreak of local or regional wars and armed conflicts.
In the future, cross-border dangers and threats to military security will be difficult to separate from internal threats that are associated with attempts to violently overthrow legally elected authorities and a change in the constitutional system of Russia as a result of the preparation and implementation of projects like “Bolotnaya-2”, the “Ukrainian” scenario for the development of the internal political situation , as well as with the desire to secede part of the country’s territory to form the so-called pro-Islamic state “Islamic Caliphate”. Not so long ago, the idea of ​​​​creating a state “Great Turan”, uniting Turkic-speaking peoples, was relevant.
Analysis of extremist manifestations in Russia in 2013–2014. indicates the development of a number of very dangerous trends.
We are talking, first of all, about expanding the range of organizations and groups that are trying to use the ideology of extremism to achieve their goals. If in previous years it was adopted by certain marginal groups such as skinheads and neo-Nazis, today xenophobic calls are increasingly heard from the leaders of organizations of the so-called “patriotic”, pseudo-liberal persuasion, including some parliamentary parties.
A particular danger for the future of the country is that ideologists and leaders of organizations from the entire spectrum of destructive forces have placed their main bet on young people, since they are mobile, but often easily suggestible, and do not have clear moral and ideological guidelines.
It is at the hands of young people that the most dangerous violent crimes are committed, including murders motivated by xenophobia and terrorist acts. Thus, the suicide bombers who carried out explosions in Volgograd on December 29 and 30, 2013, were 23 and 29 years old, and the suicide bomber who committed a terrorist attack on October 5, 2014 in Grozny was 19 years old.
A special role in the spread of destructive ideology in recent years The Internet began to play a role, which serves as a tool for the leaders of radical structures to recruit new members, a means of communication and organization of extremist and terrorist actions. The phenomenon of “self-recruitment” is often observed, when the ideological views of users of the global network are sharply radicalized under the influence of disseminated propaganda, which as a result brings them into the ranks of extremist and terrorist structures.
The level of socio-economic activity of the country's population continues to remain high. Currently, there is an increasingly steady tendency towards the unification of various destructive forces that had never acted together before and had different ideological platforms (anarchists, nationalists and non-systemic opposition). Geographically, protest activity of the population is shifting from the center to the east of the country. Having failed in the capital region, the leaders of the protest movement decided to change their tactics, moving their activity to the regions and are actively trying to participate in election campaigns at various levels in order to gain a foothold in government bodies.
To discredit the current government, the leaders of radical structures use any excuse to destabilize the situation and provoke the population to mass street actions. For these purposes, biased Russian and foreign media and the Internet are actively involved.
Another threat-forming factor is the activities of various non-governmental organizations and foundations that aim to undermine existing social relations. Their destructive impact is aimed mainly at financial support for the so-called “promising carriers of protest potential” (social and civil activists, public and human rights organizations, etc.).
The factor of poorly controlled labor migration continues to largely determine the growth of extremist manifestations in Russian society. Currently, in all subjects of the Russian Federation where migration flows are directed, there is an increase in interethnic tension and, to one degree or another, there is a threat of an increase in extremist manifestations. The reason for this in a number of cases is attempts by representatives of ethnic diasporas to introduce their national mentality into the existing socio-economic life in cities with a traditionally Russian population.
The most difficult situation in the migration sphere is developing in the Southern and North Caucasus federal districts, which, on the one hand, is due to its proximity to the demographically rapidly growing republics of the North Caucasus, and on the other, to the economic attractiveness of these regions for migrants from the countries of Transcaucasia and Central Asia.
Currently, there is a focus of a number of national communities on lobbying the interests of a number of foreign states (for example, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran). At the same time, the religious factor is actively used, which plays a unifying role among labor migrants, primarily those who profess Islam. There is a tendency to involve representatives of nationalities that traditionally do not profess it into Islam.
Islamists are actively lobbying for the construction of an unjustified number of religious buildings in the regions of the Russian Federation. However, the main emphasis in the implementation of measures aimed at the Islamization of the population is again placed on young people, socially vulnerable, marginalized groups and the female audience.
It should be noted that the process of Islamization of the Russian Federation can lead, on the one hand, to a significant increase in Russia’s influence in the Muslim world, and on the other, to the intensification of the activities of emissaries of radical Islamic movements to incite aggressive nationalism and separatist sentiments among the Muslim population, which can lead to serious interethnic conflicts.
At the same time, the process of large-scale expansion of radical Islam into almost all regions of the Russian Federation is of concern. In a number of Russian regions, emissaries of organizations pursuing the goal of reviving the Islamic way of life and spreading Islam throughout the world are active, including through armed struggle - “jihad” and the creation of a “caliphate” - an Islamic state based on Sharia law.
A threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation is represented by the activities of foreign intelligence services and organizations aimed at inspiring separatist sentiments in a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation and turning them into an instrument of pressure on government bodies, as well as the formation of an anti-Russian and anti-Russian social stratum ready to defend the idea of ​​state independence of ethnic groups by any means, including those used within the framework of “color revolution” scenarios, discrediting and complicating the implementation of large infrastructure projects in regions of the Russian Federation rich in raw materials.
Based on the above-mentioned external and internal threats, four main scenarios for the development of the situation in the world in the long term can be identified.
The first scenario (“Hard globalization”) is one of the most negative for Russia, since it assumes the unconditional consolidation of the dominant position of the West in the world economy. The consequences of its implementation could be a Western monopoly on the development of high-tech industries, while the countries of the rest of the world will be assigned the role of auxiliary elements.
Based on this, Russia’s functions in the economic field will most likely be reduced to meeting the raw material needs of developed Western countries and the United States, with a further decrease in its competitiveness in the field of high technology. In the military field, Russia will be forced to reduce its nuclear missile potential, fixing its defense capability at a level that mainly ensures the maintenance of internal political stability. The future of the country will be determined by the degree of integration into the Western community, but since the prospects for full integration are insignificant, one of the options will be a further technological lag behind Western countries, as well as possible territorial losses.
It is with this option that an armed confrontation with the West cannot be ruled out in the long term. Taking this into account, the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, which are entrusted with participation in carrying out territorial defense tasks, as well as possible involvement in combat operations on the front line, as was the case more than once during the Great Patriotic War, must be prepared for new phenomena in armed struggle in the 21st century.
Assessing the nature of the armed struggle, one should expect that on the side of the potential enemy there will be superiority in the quantity and quality of weapons and military equipment, dominance in the information sphere, in space, in the air and at sea.
At the same time, powerful modern means of armed struggle are becoming a “double-edged sword.” On the one hand, they make it possible to achieve the most decisive strategic goals in a relatively short time, on the other hand, the destructive consequences of the use of these weapons (even without the use of nuclear weapons) can negate the results of their use, since significant financial and material investments will be required in the restoration of infrastructure, if this will be possible at all.
All this encourages Western states to reconsider their positions in the use of military force and change the methods of conducting armed struggle and war in general. The purpose of their actions is to force the enemy to accept the conditions imposed on him. That is why recently there has been a growing desire to introduce exclusively beneficial restrictions on the use of military force according to the following main indicators:
limiting the theater of military operations in space to the borders of the state that is the victim of aggression and unconditionally preventing the retaliatory use of military force on its territory (all military conflicts involving the United States and NATO);
limitation of armed confrontation in the spheres of armed struggle - combat in the air and in space, in the information sphere and avoidance of open armed struggle by groups of ground forces (war in Yugoslavia 1999);
restriction of armed struggle by the methods of its conduct - challenging opponents to open armed struggle in areas with guaranteed success of the United States and its allies and imposing on public opinion ideas about the inadmissibility of guerrilla, sabotage and other asymmetric methods of warfare, calling it terrorism (the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) ;
limitation of armed struggle by means of its conduct - prevention of the use of nuclear and so-called weapons of the poor - chemical, biological and other relatively cheap types of weapons of mass destruction, the desire to remove anti-personnel mines from armed struggle, as well as simple and effective mine-explosive weapons (for example, from All chemical weapons have been removed and destroyed from Syria.
Other characteristic features of armed struggle that have been identified based on the study of armed conflicts and wars that have already occurred include:
tightening the nature of local conflicts, the goal of which may be the complete destruction of the enemy’s state system;
blurring of the lines between the state of war and peace, as a result of which armed struggle is most often carried out without states openly declaring a state of war;
the course of the armed struggle will proceed according to scenarios and rules dictated by the side most prepared to put into practice the most advanced achievements in the military and technological fields. At the same time, the armed struggle will increasingly acquire a coalition character on the part of the aggressor;
early creation of strike groups to carry out pre-emptive strikes with decisive goals and, accordingly, minimizing the duration of the threatened period;
shifting the emphasis of armed struggle to aerospace and others.
New approaches to the conduct of armed struggle presuppose the formation of new military concepts. A significant danger for the Russian Federation is posed by the concept of “preventive deterrence” adopted by the military-political leadership of the United States, which determines the ability to deliver a “quick global strike” as the main requirement for the future appearance of the armed forces.
The concept of “prompt global strike” refers to the ability of the US military to carry out operations at unprecedented speed, and we are talking not so much about the speed of deciding to go to war, but about the speed of action within the framework of waging this war.
It should be especially emphasized that this ability must be implemented in the face of a powerful integrated enemy air defense system, which makes it possible to determine with sufficient certainty the countries that are potential targets of such a strike (primarily Russia).
The requirements for “speed” and “decisiveness” in the actions of the armed forces, characteristic of delivering a “global strike,” also formed the basis of the concept of “quick decisive operations,” which in recent years has taken one of the main places among the developed concepts of combined combat operations.
The second scenario (“Moderate globalization”) of the development of the situation in the world reflects possible direction transition from a predominantly unipolar system of international relations to a multipolar world, which should provide greater freedom of choice in the economic and political development of individual countries and regional associations.
If this scenario is implemented, Russia has a chance to consolidate its position as a world military-economic leader, but only if it is able to play the role of a consolidating center for the integration processes of the Eurasian Economic Community, which could unite a number of states not only in the post-Soviet, but also in the regional space.
The third scenario (“Increasing role of regions”) implies dominance economic systems regional scale without clearly defined world centers, which, in principle, contradicts the main trends in the development of the modern world economy, namely its centralism and interdependence.
If this scenario is realized, Russia will be forced to either form its own zone of economic influence in the post-Soviet space or, if it is unable to consolidate to solve these problems, it may become an arena of open expansion on the part of regional groupings, or will join one of them.
The fourth scenario (“Slide into Chaos”) combines several scenarios for the catastrophic development of the military-political situation, leading to uncontrollable (uncontrollable) processes, a change (overthrow) of legitimate power. This scenario can be triggered by various factors, such as:
intensification of terrorist activity to a scale at which the economies of the largest centers of the modern world may collapse;
various kinds of natural anomalies and a number of others.
The development of this scenario implies complete unpredictability of the situation. At the same time, the possibility of provoking this scenario by certain forces cannot be ruled out, as evidenced by the large-scale development of the “theory of controlled chaos” in Western countries.
But with any of the above options, primarily with the first (hard globalization) and fourth (sliding into chaos), conditions may arise under which certain forces may try to provoke a “color revolution” in one form or another in the Russian Federation.
It should be noted that the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs are carrying out work to study armed conflicts and “color revolutions” of recent decades, which are the main destabilizing factor in the socio-political and socio-economic situation in various countries of the world. Students listen carefully, ask questions if necessary, and answer when questions are addressed to them.
2. History and mechanisms of the emergence of color revolutions.
45 minutes I present this educational question using the method of oral presentation of educational material, followed by discussion of the material being studied.
“Color revolutions” are a declared non-violent, bloodless (or with a minimum number of casualties) coup d’etat, controlled from the outside using special international political technologies. These technologies were developed by the United States and its allies and are aimed at destabilizing and changing power in a variety of countries without direct violence or with minimal use of it.
“Color revolutions” became widespread in the late 1980s. in Eastern Europe and led to a sharp decrease in the influence of the Soviet Union in this region. A little later, under the influence of the ongoing coups in the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, the USSR itself collapsed. The next target after the Soviet Union was Yugoslavia, which, in the process of a “bulldozer” revolution and armed conflict, was split into many small states, none of which today has serious influence in the Balkans.
A few years later, “color revolutions” began to occur in the Commonwealth of Independent States (“orange” in Ukraine, “tulip revolution” in Kyrgyzstan, “rose revolution” in Georgia).
In 2010–2011 “color revolutions” turned into armed conflicts in a number of Arab countries. As a result of the Arab Spring, the legitimate government led by Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in Libya, and Syria plunged into chaos and full-scale civil war.
Unsuccessful attempts (or failures) of “color revolutions” include the actions of the opposition in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Armenia and Moldova.
But the most striking attempt to organize “color revolutions” was the Euromaidan in Ukraine.
“Color revolutions” are more political than social. The pretext for them is usually the disagreement of the opposition leadership with the results of parliamentary or presidential elections, as well as any, even insignificant, action of the authorities aimed at maintaining public order and perceived by the opposition as illegal and exceeding the necessary framework for ensuring law and order and public safety in their understanding. If successful, “color revolutions” usually lead to a change in the country’s leadership, but not in the social system. An exception can be considered the socio-political transformations in a number of countries of the socialist camp of Eastern Europe at the end of the twentieth century.
Among the reasons, and to a greater extent, the reasons why revolutionary movements could unfold in countries that had embarked on the path of democratic development back in the early 1990s, supporters of these processes attributed the fact that in their states the population is not free, there is no freedom of speech, is happening social development, the standard of living does not rise. Such a complex of reasons may well serve as the basis for social indignation of any form. However, in most cases, the lives of people in states that experienced a “color revolution” have not changed for the better; the path of a new social, economic and political development was not found, to say the least - the states turned out to be collapsed, and society - split. Therefore, they should be considered solely as a manifestation of network technologies in modern information and geopolitical confrontation.
The experience of the “color revolutions” that took place in the first decade of the 21st century shows that the process of their preparation in different countries and the algorithm for their implementation, although they have common features, can differ significantly.
The first scenario assumes an unexpected coup being prepared by the ruling elite, timed to coincide with the elections and the subsequent organized crisis of legitimate power (representatives of the same elite are opponents in the elections). It is typical for Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
The second scenario is a conspiracy by part of the ruling elite against its formal leader and/or another part of the ruling elite (clan, etc.). It was tested in Ukraine and Georgia.
The third scenario involves a kind of export of revolution from the periphery to the capital, organized by the joint efforts of the capital and regional elites. This scenario is especially typical for Ukraine, where the Kiev Euromaidan for three months was fueled by radical units from Western Ukraine, whose training was sponsored by the intelligence services of Western countries.
The fourth scenario is “revolution in pursuit”. Representatives of part of the elite in this scenario take advantage of the results of the unrest that has engulfed the country, related directly or indirectly to the activities of the head of state and government or to some other factors. They lead the revolution, putting forward, together with the rebels, demands for “democratization” and a change in the political regime, transferring the conflict to the necessary political plane.
An important aspect of “color revolutions” is the emphasis on “nonviolent action.” All of them are committed with an ostentatious declared minimum level of violence. They constantly talk about the need not to succumb to provocations and not to show aggression. Although, in essence, the “color revolution” is typical violence, where instead of firearms a crowd is used - a mass of unarmed people, which in itself has great penetrating and destructive power. Elite groups and oligarchs seeking political power and legalization of their fortunes tend to support a new revolution.
In the course of actions, the opposition creates strike groups of extremists in advance. The militants have a clear structured organization, know their leaders, exchange experiences, and when there is a change of power, they take part in active actions. These organizations, divided into combat groups, are the beginnings of the future “guard” - a structure that provides security for demonstrations and headquarters, the ability to physically confront security forces, and organize transport, communications, and supplies. At the same time, the arsenal of weapons of combat groups can be very diverse - from metal rods and baseball bats to firearms. These forces are well funded, and they are the ones designed to organize and conduct mass protest events. A striking example of such an organization is the Right Sector in Ukraine.
Of no less importance are all kinds of underground and legal “circles” to overthrow the government, which are not armed with bats and Molotov cocktails, but act differently. They are strong precisely in organizing protests, through the use, among other things, of Internet resources and SMS messages. Suffice it to recall that in December 2011 – February 2012 in Moscow on Bolotnaya Square and Academician Sakharov Avenue, it was social networks that made it possible to quite effectively organize and gather at a certain time in a designated place “dissenters.” The key to success or, conversely, failure of the “color revolution” largely depends on who controls and how it uses information technology. At the same time, the outcome of the political struggle in the field of information technology is determined not so much by the quantitative ratio of the volume of broadcasting, but by the quality of broadcasting, the ability to capture and convince the audience.
"Color revolutions" showed how easily the media can manipulate people. Conscious and cunning manipulation of organized public opinion and the habits of the masses becomes at this stage of history the most effective way to achieve one's goals.
An excellent example of this is the information war against the legitimate President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Moreover, from the very first days of Euromaidan, it was Russia that the United States and the European Union accused of destabilizing the situation in the country, and subsequently of aggression against Ukraine. The crash of the Malaysian Boeing, the investigation into the causes of which has been pointedly delayed and for which the perpetrators have still not been found, became the reason for another tightening of both political and economic sanctions against Russia.
To exert psychological pressure on law enforcement officers, riot organizers often use citizens as human shields. The crowd, consisting of women, children, students and other peaceful “freedom fighters,” demoralizes the security forces. In fact, this is a method from the arsenal of terrorists. Only here, instead of the classic hostage-taking, we are talking about the voluntary and purposeful self-capture of the crowd into a hostage situation. The life and health of these people become a lever of influence of opposition forces on the state leadership.
The most important factor in the victory of “color revolutions” is financing from interested foreign individuals and organizations, as well as part of the local business elite. For example, the US administration openly admitted that the United States invested more than $5 billion in the events in Ukraine that led to the unconstitutional coup in February 2014, not counting financial assistance from American public organizations.
It should be noted that “color revolutions” in the CIS countries were successful if their leaders were high-ranking officials who left the executive branch no earlier than one election cycle ago. Thus, the leaders of the 2004 “orange” revolution in Ukraine were former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and former Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. The leaders of the revolution in Kyrgyzstan are former Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev and former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbaeva. The leaders of the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia were former Minister of Justice Mikheil Saakashvili, as well as Zurab Zhvania, who served as head of parliament, who was considered shortly before as a possible successor to President Eduard Shevardnadze. We must not forget that the current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in 2009–2010. served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of Viktor Yanukovych.
An important factor in the victory of the “color revolutions” was the presence of serious support among the opposition in one of the regions of the country. For the “orange” revolution and Euromaidan in Ukraine, such a region was the west of the country, and for the “tulip” revolution in Kyrgyzstan - the south. Often the search for regional support for opposition actions was facilitated by the cultural and historical differences between regions. At the same time, nationalists sometimes became the core activists for street actions, and in the leadership of the opposition, the tone, as a rule, was set by liberal politicians who were not alien to nationalist ideas.
Usually “color revolutions” are associated with the activities of foreign non-governmental organizations. Their influence on the development of events in the post-Soviet space cannot be denied, since it was from there that the financing of all “color revolutions” came and continues to come.
Currently, there are various assumptions by political and public figures about what needs to be done to prevent “color revolutions.” What were the main mistakes of the leaders of the states that were victims of these events?
Thus, in the foreign policy sphere, more targeted work should have been carried out with the political elites of the post-Soviet space and the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and a rethinking of the role and significance of friends and allies in modern conditions. For example, the position of some of them in the context of the Ukrainian crisis and pressure from the United States, NATO and the EU turned out to be treacherous towards Russia.
Lessons should be learned from the analysis of the events in Kyiv in terms of external interference in the confrontation between the authorities and the opposition. Viktor Yanukovych’s mistake can be considered that he did not promptly suspend the activities of various types of non-governmental organizations, did not prohibit foreign officials from taking part in any anti-government actions, which should have been considered as interference in internal affairs and a violation of state sovereignty.
In matters of the socio-economic sphere, special attention should be paid to the material well-being of the population and the fulfillment of all socio-economic obligations undertaken by the government. An analysis of the “color revolutions” shows that their initiation and implementation were successful in states experiencing economic and social difficulties. The population's dissatisfaction with government agencies and political leaders who do not fulfill their election obligations becomes the impetus for the emergence of mass events, which can subsequently be used by the ideologists of “color revolutions” to their advantage. Although this is not always the basis for motivating a coup - an example would be the social welfare of Libya before 2010.
In the information sphere, the government had no chance of success if it did not promptly introduce strict control over the media and Internet sites that promote the ideas of separatism, extremism, terrorism, as well as actions aimed at overthrowing the existing government system. As practice shows, it is through them that the recruitment of persons who in the future may become the driving force of the “color revolution” occurs. Particular attention should have been paid to social networks, with the help of which, within a few hours, a small group of protesters can turn into a crowd demanding the overthrow of the state system. Information warfare must be active in nature, protecting the interests of the state.
In the military sphere, it is proposed to pay special attention to the legislative justification of the actions of security forces, which during the “color revolutions” represent the main force opposing the unrest. In each of the “color revolutions” there came a moment when no negotiations or non-military measures could resolve the situation and only the use of military force within the framework of the law remained the last option to stop terrorists and extremists. Students listen carefully, ask questions if necessary, and answer when questions are addressed to them.
III Final part
5 minutes -Reminding the topic, goals, educational questions;
-I answer questions that arise during the lesson;
- I celebrate the best;
-I give tasks for independent preparation;
-I'm finishing the lesson. When students have questions, they ask them.

Department of Ideological Work of the GUKVV
Ideological preparation
Subject:
"Color" revolutions as a factor
destabilization of states and the threat
international security".
Study questions:
1. “Colored” revolutions – the theory of “controlled”
chaos" in action.
2. Geopolitical goals of “color” revolutions and their
consequences.
1

Characteristics
modern world are:
intensifying struggle for possession of energy sources, including in the Middle and
Middle East, Caspian Sea basin, Central Asia and the Arctic;
instability of relations between the leading world powers, a series of wars and
military conflicts, real threats of new wars;
exacerbation of contradictions between civilizations, primarily in religious and
spiritual spheres;
negative consequences of the global financial and economic crisis, terrorism,
extremism, conflicts on national and ethnic grounds;
the preservation of previous centers of instability in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian zone
Gulf, several countries in South Asia and Africa;
the real possibility of new hotbeds of tension emerging in the North
Africa, Central Asia and other regions;
gradual transformation of the world from unipolar to multipolar, strengthening
the influence of new centers of power - Russia, China, India;
expansion of NATO's composition and area of ​​operations, attempts to give the bloc global
functions that run counter to the norms of international law;
equipping the armed forces of the world's leading countries with high-tech equipment
armed struggle.
2

As noted in the Concept of National
security of the Republic of Belarus, approved
By Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus dated 9
November 2010 No. 575, “ongoing
transition from unipolar to multipolar
world order, active formation and
the formation of new centers of power is exacerbated
rivalry of states and competition of models
future development.
The desire of a number of countries to use force
methods, pressure, economic and resource
benefits for promoting your interests,
double standards in the interpretation of democratic
norms and principles remains the source
tension."
3

"Color revolutions" of the 21st century
Georgia
2003
Ukraine
2004, 2016
Moldova
2009
Tunisia
2010
Uzbekistan
2005
Syria
since 2011
Lebanon
2005, 2011
Morocco
2010
Armenia
2008
Kuwait
2011
Jordan
2010
Iraq
2011
Kyrgyzstan
2005
Bahrain
2011
Algeria
2010
Mauritania
2011
Libya
2011
Oman
2011
Egypt
2011
Saudi Arabia
2011
Sudan
2011
Djibouti
2011
Somalia
2011
Yemen
2011, 2015
G.
Legend
Countries where
during
"colored
revolutions"
happened
change
state power
Countries where
during
"color revolutions" change
state
authorities
Not
happened
41

Recommendations of the Chinese commander and
philosopher Sun Tzu on decomposition
opposing side
(2nd century BC)
* Destroy everything good that is in your enemy's country;
* Involve prominent representatives of your enemy in criminal activities
enterprises. Undermine their prestige and expose them to
public disgrace;
* Incite quarrels and clashes among citizens of the enemy side;
* Incite the youth against the old;
* Interfere by all means with the activities of the government;
* Be generous with offers and gifts for purchasing information and
accomplices.
5

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
One of the developers of the general strategy
overthrow the government and establish democracy in
in modern conditions is a senior scientific
Fellow at the Albert Einstein Institute in Boston
(USA) Gene Sharp
His books have been published:
"The Politics of Nonviolent Action" (1973)
“Social power and political freedom” (1979)
“Defense based on civic engagement” (1990)
“From dictatorship to democracy. Conceptual Framework
liberation" (1993),
which became a guide to action to destabilize
situation, the organization of political disobedience in
a number of states, including the republics of the former USSR,
as well as in the post-Soviet space.
6

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
7

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Algorithm of “velvet” revolutions,
proposed by S. Huntington in the book
"The third wave. Democratization at the end of the 20th century":
"Lessons for those who strive for democracy,
are:
* mobilize broad nonviolent opposition to the regime,
* seek support from the center and, if necessary, from the right
conservatives
* restrain the left and do not let them take the lead in
movement,
* win over some of the military to your side,
*
achieve sympathetic coverage in Western media
mass media and US support."
Practice and preach nonviolence. Besides
everything else, then it will be easier for you to tighten
security forces on their side: the soldiers are somehow not inclined to sympathize with people who
they throw bottles of Molotov cocktails at them.
8

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Advice for democratizers
regarding limiting the power of the military:
*
Courte the generals. Ultimately, whether the regime falls or not will depend on
whether they will support him, join you in opposition, or remain on the sidelines. Support
the military may be useful during a crisis, but essentially all you need from them is
What is really necessary is that they do not want to defend the regime.
* Quickly identify or dismiss all potentially disloyal officers,
including both leading supporters of the authoritarian regime and military reformers who
may have helped you establish a democratic regime. The latter are more likely to lose their taste for
democracy than the desire to interfere in politics.
* Ruthlessly punish the leaders of coup attempts against your government.
* Clearly define and strengthen the chain of command.
* Refocus your military on military missions. You can have it all
reasons to want to resolve conflicts with other countries.
9

10.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
10

11.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Under "color" revolutions, as a rule,
is understood as “the process of changing ruling regimes under
pressure from mass street protests and
support
funded
because of
milestone
non-governmental organizations."
There are also more “strict” definitions of “colored”
revolutions":
"state
coup,
carried out with predominant use
methods of nonviolent political struggle,
by the forces of the protest movement, usually in
interests and with direct dominant
participation in planning, organization and financing
with
sides
foreign
states,
groups
foreign
states,
public
or
commercial organizations."
11

12.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Formula for democracy “American style”:
- there is no democracy other than democracy
USA;
- priority of national interests in any
the country, besides America, has the antipode of democracy;
- US national interests are identical
values ​​of the “civilized democratic world”, and
opposition to them is a sign of authoritarianism,
despotism and totalitarianism;
- there is no other image worthy of a person
life than the one that is implanted by Western,
pro-American media and non-governmental
organizations.
12

13.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Stages of the “velvet revolutions”
First (preliminary) stage:
Goals: creating internal opposition, uniting people
around opposition movements to the regime, creating a backbone
future political parties and assault troops
revolution.
Second stage:
Goals: legalization of the opposition; joining forces and creating
single Center; developing common visions for the future
countries; developing methods of work for the opposition; conquest
support from leading social groups; bribery of management
majority of national media to organize the campaign
harsh criticism of the regime.
Third stage (active phase of the coup):
Goals: creating chaos, destabilizing the situation in the country,
disorientation of the country's top leadership, demoralization
national security forces; sabotage everyone
government measures aimed at overcoming the crisis;
organizing a change of government through democratic elections
or the "velvet" revolution.
13

14.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
The basis of the “color revolutions” is
so-called "Indirect Action Strategy"
The essence of the strategy
Organizing protests
Spheres
impact
Organization of strikes,
blocking military facilities
Main goal
Rendering
comprehensive
influence on the “undesirable”
state
V
interests
destabilization
sociopolitical and economic
situation, the formation of "forces
resistance"
political
economic
informational
ideological
military
Overthrow
legal
government of the country and
casting
To
authorities
loyal forces
Transfer of members of radical extremist groups
groups, accusing authorities of using force
against civilians
14

15.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
SHOCKING FORCE OF “COLOR REVOLUTIONS”
Particular attention is paid to student organizations - as the main
the backbone of future combat troops of the “velvet” revolution.
15

16.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
"Rose Revolution" in Georgia
16

17.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
"Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan
17

18.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
18

19.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
After the Vilnius Eastern Partnership summit (November 28-29, 2013), the dispersal of the opposition tent city,
acceptance
January 16, 2014 by the Verkhovna Rada
Ukraine laws that provided for tougher sanctions for
participation in mass riots, protest action took
strongly anti-presidential and anti-government in nature.
19

20.

Driving forces of Euromaidan in Ukraine
The main extremist groups in Ukraine (the so-called “Right Sector”):
"Ukrainian National Assembly - Ukrainian People's Self-Defense"
(UNA-UNSO)
All-Ukrainian Association "Trident" named after S. Bandera
"White Hammer"
Public organization "Patriots of Ukraine"
"Social-National Assembly"
Political parties that were part of the “united opposition”:
“All-Ukrainian Association “Fatherland” (leader A. Yatsenyuk)
UDAR Party (leader V. Klitschko)
Party "All-Ukrainian Union "Freedom" (leader O. Tyagnibok)
Others participating in the protests include:
Democratic Alliance (leader V. Gatsko)
“Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko” (leader O. Lyashko)
Civil movement "Vidsich" (without a clear leader)
The largest Ukrainian oligarchs who sponsored Euromaidan:
I. Kolomoisky
P. Poroshenko
D.Firtash
V. Pinchuk
I.Zisels
V. Rabinovich
20

21.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
21

22.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
As a result of the violent confrontation in the center of Kyiv, the seizures began
administrative buildings and authorities in the capital and regional centers,
creation of parallel authorities, organization of informal security forces
structures, Ukraine was on the verge of introducing a state of emergency, losing
territorial integrity and economic collapse.
22

23.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
23

24.

Consequences of hostilities in Donbass
Humanitarian catastrophe in Donbass
According to the UN, the number of refugees has exceeded 1 million people.
The population remaining in the ATO zone faced
with an acute shortage of water, food, items
essentials.
Starobelsky
district
KrasnoLimansky
district
Slavic
district
Kremensky
district
Happiness
Slavyanoserbsk
Lugansk
Artemovsky
district
Krasnodon
Konstantinovsky
district
Lutugino
Debaltsevo
Gorlovka
Izvarino
Anthracite
Red
Partisan
Sverdlovsk
Dolzhansky
Donetsk
Shakhtersk
Amvrosievka
Ilovaisk
Elenovka
Trudovskoe
Mariupol
Dyakovo
Uspenka
For
period
armed
conflict loss from both
parties
made up
more
3,5
thousand people
killed
5.5 thousand – wounded. Died
over
3,6
thousand
peaceful
citizens, more than 9 thousand injured
24

25.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Coordination
financing
"second
Orange Revolution" in Ukraine carried out
US State Department, and the funding itself went
through numerous foundations: National
fund
support
democracy",
"Center
international private entrepreneurship",
"American
center
international
trade union
solidarity",
Agency
International Development (IDA); state
US Institute of Peace, George Private Foundations
Soros and Pierre Omidyar and others.
“...it is quite obvious that all this
planned so that Ukraine in the future
joined the EU and NATO. Because the main one
the US goal is to place its own
military bases on its territory, next to
Russian border..."
25

26.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Each “color” revolution has its own
signs that indicate technology, hand
main
organizers,
customers
coup d'etat:
-
the special foreign policy style of Western countries and
USA, their distinctive way of working;
-
strict compliance of the action plan with the basic template
(or scenario) - they develop according to a similar scenario,
which indicates the use of one template scheme;
-
organization and use of youth protest
movements - them
lead with technology
reflexive management (which in many ways are
American invention);
-
certain repeating features are ok
selection and promotion of the so-called revolutionary leaders;
- lack of revolutionary ideology, which allows
recognize them as fakes, etc.
26

27.

Main armed conflicts and hotspots
tensions in the world
Northern Ireland
DPRK
Ukraine
Transnistria
Nagorno-Karabakh
Kosovo
Syria
Israel
Iraq
Mali
Nepal Myanmar
Libya
Pakistan
Senegal
Afghanistan
Egypt
India Thailand
Chad
Nigeria
Sudan
Yemen
CAR
Democratic
Republic of the Congo
armed conflicts
Somalia
hotbeds of tension
27

28.

Consequences of the "color" revolutions,
their development into civil wars and conflicts
Yugoslavia
(1991 - 2001)
Libya
(2011)
Syria
(since 2011)
Ukraine
(since 2014)
28

29.

Arab revolutions 2011/2013
Targeted military and information
Western campaign to transform Syria
NATO troops
Anti-Syrian forces
USA and bloc countries
NATO (Euro-Seven);
Israel, UAE, Qatar,
Türkiye, Tunisia
Syrian
opposition +
6000 mercenaries
Pro-Syrian forces
Iran;
Nationalist and
religious
factions
28

30.

Speech by the President
Republic of Belarus
A.G. Lukashenko
in the general discussion of the 70th session
UN General Assembly
September 28, 2015
“...The entire system of international security is experiencing
serious crisis. Loss of mutual trust between global
players, lack of willingness to compromise, return to
elements of bloc confrontation, in fact, put the world on hold
the brink of a new war.
Attempts to impose a certain model continue
development to other states. What does this lead to?
As a result of external interference, the export of "colored"
revolutions and artificial regime changes, stable first of all
countries plunged into chaos and anarchy. It's all covered up
democracy."
30

31.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Positions of the Presidents of Russia and the United States on Syria
(from speeches at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly
in September 2015)
President
Russia
V.V. Putin
“Bashar al-Assad is a legitimate president.
The UN must support him to bring
order in the country. Moreover, no one except
Assad and the Kurds, does not fight against Islamic State
states." Under the auspices of the UN it is necessary
create an international coalition to fight
with IS and other terrorists. Any
actions bypassing the UN are illegal. Help
Basara Assad is associated with growing
Russia's ambitions - as if those who
accuses, there are no ambitions.”
US President
Barack Obama
“Bashar al-Assad is a tyrant who destroys
own people, so he cannot continue
stay in power. It must be admitted that after
there cannot be such serious bloodshed and
speeches about returning to the pre-war status quo.
The situation in Syria is not internal
problem,
This
problem
total
world
communities. The US is ready to cooperate with others
countries, including Russia and Iran, so that
achieve
transfers
authorities
transitional
government. Military force for settlement
the situation in Syria is not enough.”
31

32.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Message from the President of the Republic of Belarus
A.G. Lukashenko to the Belarusian people and the National
meeting of the Republic of Belarus of April 24, 2018
about the situation in Syria
"Stabilize
situation
V
this
exhausted
In the country's seven-year conflict, the Syrian authorities simply cannot
give. All possible means are used: starting from
support for the armed opposition, hysteria in the media and
ending with direct rocket attacks.”
And this is instead of giving the Syrian people the right
determine your own destiny at the table
negotiations Whatever they do, especially these
permanent members of the UN Security Council."
“Everyone leave Syria and give the Syrian an opportunity
people to determine their lives and destiny. What are you like roosters?
walk around this territory in front of each other, show
your power and strength, training an army or something else. And to us
they tell you how poor Syria is and how you like it there
help. Yes, the Syrian people will cope there without all of us.
Give them this opportunity.
32

33.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
33

34.

The results of the political crisis in the countries of North Africa and
Middle East:
Libya
the economy is destroyed;
the death toll is in the tens of thousands;
on
territories
countries
continue
armed
conflicts.
Syria
a severe blow was dealt to the tourism industry, which provided
8 billion dollars annually to the country, which attracted
foreign currency and amounted to 12% of GDP;
hyperinflation of the Syrian pound;
The outflow of population from the country continues.
Egypt and Tunisia
touched only the top
changes
echelon of power
elites;
The power structure in these countries is currently not
has undergone major changes, just as it did not happen
significant reform of the socio-economic
spheres;
economic growth rates fell from 7-8% to less than 1%,
The country's foreign exchange reserves decreased by 40%, the level
crime in the country increased by 200%.
34

35.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
Resolution of the Ukrainian conflict Head of State
called a key security issue in Europe.
“Without its settlement, there will be peace on the continent
remain under threat," he said, speaking at
Minsk on October 31, 2018 at the opening of the meeting
Core Group of the Munich Conference on
security.
“We must under no circumstances have this conflict
leave it to our children. But this question can be left to the children to find the culprits. They then
They'll figure it out if they want to figure it out. Today
we must look for those who are not guilty. Today we need to decide
problem. Otherwise, any talk about
our pan-European home, in which there should be
peace and order are, to say the least, not fair.”
“To put these proposals into practice,
they need to be discussed at the negotiating table with the participation
all parties involved. And let's be honest:
if we fail to bring to this table
United States of America, we are unlikely to reach
goals".
35

36.

Model of policy change
by force in Ukraine
Actions of the USA and the West
Preparatory
stage
Creation
conditions for
destabilization
situation
Political
Economic
Ideological
Military
Active phase
"color revolution")
(scripts
Destabilization
domestic political
situation
Creation
superiority
in ratio
"destructive
forces - Ministry of Internal Affairs"
Capture
administrations
in Kyiv and
regional
centers
Change
political
course
Victims among
"peaceful
population"
Individual events
service and combat activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs
"Maidan"
Introduction
in the EU and NATO
36

37.

“Color” revolutions are a threat to international security
During the open dialogue of the President of the Republic of Belarus A.G.
Lukashenko with representatives of Belarusian and foreign funds
mass media on January 29, 2015 noted:
“If someone has such a crazy thought in their head that
Belarus is possible or there will be a “Maidan”, the sooner you come from
throw your heads away, the better it will be. Never in Belarus "Maidan"
it won't."
A.G. Lukashenko noted that in his position as President
enough powers and strength to prevent fratricidal
carnage. “No one - not you, not me, not those sitting here, not those who
listens, “Maidan” is not needed. There are some scumbags. But on
this is the power to neutralize them and prevent
shooting at each other. No one will fight inside Belarus
allowed."
37

38.

Questions for conversation:
1.Name the characteristic features of the modern world.
2. Give examples of how the world has recently become increasingly
unstable.
3. Why is the United States most interested in the so-called. "color" revolutions?
4. What does the American ideologist S. Huntington “advise” regarding destabilization?
the situation in the countries that are the next targets of the “color” revolution?
5. Define the concept of “color revolution”.
6. What are the main stages of the “color” revolution according to the American
sample.
7. How the technology of “color” revolutions was used in the events of 2013-2014
gg. in Ukraine?
8. Tell us about the stages (sequence) of implementing “colored”
revolutions using Western technologies.
9. What were the consequences of a series of “color” revolutions in the North?
Africa and the Middle East?
10. Why the unresolved crisis in Ukraine is dangerous for everything
European region?
11. What threats and challenges does the Ukrainian crisis pose for the national
security of our state?
12. What measures does Belarus propose to resolve the crisis in Ukraine?

Unlike a hybrid war, the main and only goal of a color revolution is to organize a coup d'etat with the subsequent transfer of the country under external control.

Color revolutions- these are technologies of coups d'etat in conditions of artificially created instability, in which pressure on the authorities is carried out in the form of political blackmail, and the tool of blackmail is a protest movement (usually a youth movement) used to destroy the government.

At the same time, the country's economy, financial system and its armed forces suffer minimally during the manipulated street rebellion and the seizure and crushing of government bodies.

Crush Strategy in a color revolution, it is a method of action that is based on non-force technologies of organizing coups d'etat by provoking acts of mass civil disobedience with the aim of overthrowing the government and transferring the country under external control.

The peculiarities of the stages of implementation of this strategy and its relatively compressed time frame make it possible to classify it as a strategy of destruction, which is implemented in a relatively short time in the course of several successive steps.

The color revolution strategy includes several main stages:

• - formation of an organized protest movement;
• - creating an incident - an event that can cause a powerful public outcry and bring people onto the street;
• - implementation of conflict mobilization;
• - formation of a political crowd;
• - putting forward ultimatum demands to the authorities.

Thus, the color revolution strategy is based on the relatively high dynamics of the actions of the aggressor country and includes several stages.

At the first - preparatory - stage of the color revolution, painstaking work is carried out to collect information and prepare actions of mass disobedience, search for sources of financing, formulate slogans, establish control over the media, train militant leaders, select objects for possible capture, organize a warning system for collecting protesters and etc.

At all stages, an important place is given to public diplomacy as part of the “soft power” of the aggressor state, whose operations are aimed at undermining the cultural and ideological sphere of the victim country, instilling false values ​​in the ruling elites and the population, and demonizing individual political leaders.

The subsequent stages of the strategy are implemented over a relatively short period of time (several weeks) and involve delivering a powerful ramming attack on the government with the aim of overthrowing it and transferring the country under external control. Such color revolution strategies have shown their effectiveness when used against relatively underdeveloped countries with an unstable system of government, socio-economic, ethnic, and religious contradictions. An important role in the preparation of mass protests by the population belongs to foreign funds operating on the territory of the state, pseudo-religious organizations manipulated by the media. The diplomatic departments and intelligence agencies of the aggressor country are actively working to crush the ruling regime. At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, more than 30 color revolutions took place, including in Ukraine, Georgia, Libya, Kyrgyzstan and a number of other states. They did not bring anything good to the peoples of those countries that were subjected to monstrous experiments by overseas strategists.

Overall a combination of traditional and hybrid species of modern conflicts is already a determinant, a determining factor for all armed conflicts. If the use of hybrid methods in new types of conflicts makes it possible to achieve the goal without open military intervention (for example, in the color revolution), then traditional conflicts necessarily include hybrid technologies.

Hybrid threats. Modern conflicts are associated with a new type of threat - hybrid threats, which are a multi-level and dynamic combination of conventional and irregular forces, terrorist and criminal elements, nationalist and pseudo-religious organizations, which are used in concert to achieve subversive goals. An important source of hybrid threats are governmental and non-governmental organizations that carry out subversive actions in the administrative-political, financial-economic and cultural-ideological spheres, in cyberspace and in outer space.

The documents of international security organizations and the national security strategies of individual states must imperatively include issues of countering hybrid threats as catalysts for conflicts of varying intensity and scale, up to global ones.

The hybrid threat complex has the following characteristics:

• - sources of threats - states, international terrorism, nationalist and pseudo-religious organizations, structures of transnational organized crime, oligarchic clans. It is characteristic that the United States and NATO demonstrate a subjective propaganda approach to the concepts of “hybrid war” and “hybrid threats”, call Russia the author of these concepts and try to hold it responsible for their practical application. At the same time, Washington does not want to consider its own “hybrid” methods of struggle, widely used in conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and today designed to cause damage to Russia, China, Iran and many other states, as such;
• - by origin, the sources of threats to the state - the targets of hybrid aggression (coalition of states) can be both internal and external.

Insider threats are generated by the inability of the state to effectively solve pressing issues and problems of society, to ensure security, as well as the material and spiritual development of each citizen.

In many states in modern conditions, this type of threat is given threatening relevance by corruption, the underdeveloped system of checks and balances between the three branches of government, which should ensure the protection of the interests of the state and its citizens, the imperfection and injustice of socio-economic relations, the presence of acute contradictions on a national and religious basis with the inability and unwillingness of the authorities to resolve them, the absence of a unifying national-state idea, the weakness of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies, insufficient control over borders, neglect of environmental issues, health care, education and science.

An important internal factor contributing to the vulnerability of the state is the underdevelopment of the potential of soft power, which determines the attractiveness of the state for its own population and the peoples of other states. The country's weak attractiveness turns it into an object of cultural and ideological expansion of hostile forces.

External sources of hybrid threats State and non-state structures of the aggressor country serve, using their capabilities to undermine the economy of the target country, exert military pressure, and conduct subversive information and psychological operations.

Important characteristics of hybrid threats are:

• - high degree of selectivity and acute focus of threats against vulnerable areas of the target;
• - the mixed nature of hybrid threats, which gives them a unique ability not only to serve as a catalyst for a hybrid war, but also in some cases to be used to initiate a color revolution, the conditions for which “ripen” on the soil prepared by a hybrid war. Along with this, it should be noted that in general, the color revolution is a separate phenomenon that develops on the basis of its own conditions.

The complex nature of hybrid threats makes it difficult to uncover their source, which is usually anonymous. The uncertainty this creates can significantly slow down a targeted response by the country under attack or the international community.

To summarize the above, it should be noted that hybrid threats are a sign of an immediate danger of causing damage to a state or a coalition of states. At the same time, forecasting threats does not allow us to accurately determine their content or the severity of the damage caused. Accordingly, for international organizations and individual states, planning actions and the necessary resources to counter hybrid threats is associated with a number of uncertainties.

The creation of such uncertainties is an important feature of hybrid threats, which rely on the ability of state and non-state adversaries to use a combination of different strategies, technologies and capabilities to achieve asymmetric advantages.

The list of hybrid threats to international security includes several groups of threats, the successful countering of which requires systematic work on strategic forecasting of the development of the situation and proactive planning. Today we should highlight a number of trends in the development of the international and domestic situation that contribute to the emergence of new threats or increase the degree of danger of existing threats. These include:

• - the negative impact on the stability and predictability of the international situation of relapses of unilateral forceful approaches in international relations. The trend is strengthened by the decline in the authority and real capabilities of international organizations to influence the development of the situation in the world;
• - exacerbation of contradictions between the United States and other important participants in world politics, including between the United States, Russia and China, the United States and Iran, as well as Russia and NATO. The destabilizing influence on international security of conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, in the Near and Middle East, in a number of countries in South Asia and Africa, and on the Korean Peninsula remains;
• - the use of US and EU economic sanctions against Russia, Iran and some other states, provoking financial and economic crises, which in terms of total damage is comparable to the large-scale use of military force;
• - the growing threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their falling into the hands of terrorists. The difficulty of developing an international consensus on the fight against terrorism;
• - strengthening global information warfare, improving forms of illegal activity in the cyber field and the field of high technology;
• - the use of strategies aimed at supporting the development of nationalist sentiments, xenophobia, separatism and violent extremism, including under the slogans of religious radicalism;
• - threats associated with uncontrolled and illegal migration, drug trafficking and human trafficking;
• - intensification of the struggle for resources, including in the Middle East, on the Barents Sea shelf and in other areas of the Arctic, in the Caspian Sea basin and in Central Asia.

A powerful catalyst for instability and uncertainty in the sphere of international security are the actions of the United States and NATO to deploy elements of a global missile defense system in Europe and the build-up of the alliance’s military activity near Russian borders.

A brief and far from complete list of hybrid threats to international security and Russia’s national security makes it possible to put hybrid war and color revolution among the most pressing threats to international stability, a powerful tool for undermining trust between states. Hybrid war and color revolution are forming a new type of interstate confrontation.

Moreover, the use of a complex of hybrid threats as an instrument of external pressure in order to create instability within a target state or coalition of states ceases to be only an internal threat and poses a great danger to the entire global security system.

For Russia, the need for long-term military and political planning in the field of ensuring international and national security has become urgent due to the deterioration of relations with the West. Activities for planning the most important spheres of state life should be based not only on a strategic forecast of the development of a particular scenario of the international situation, but also on a forecast of the means of violence being developed and produced - armed and unarmed.

And the Independent Expert and Analytical Center "Epoch" in their reports revealed the principles of using the technologies of color revolutions or the “cloud enemy” (the term was proposed by the leading expert of the CVPI MGIMO Khamzatov M. M.)

As the director of the IMI MGIMO Alexander Arsenievich Orlov noted in his report “The Role of International Universal Organizations in Ensuring Global Security”, in the process of forming a new world order associated with conflicts, significant instability, the fundamental principles of international relations are ignored, arbitrary interpretation of the provisions of the charter of the UN and other organizations is allowed . According to Orlov, today Russia alone remains the only guarantor of compliance with international law.

Unlike NATO countries, which over the past two decades have repeatedly committed gross violations of international law and acted in violation of the provisions of the UN Charter, it is Russia that, in its peacekeeping practice, complies with the norms of international law and the fundamental principles of international relations. Moreover, as Igor Mikhailovich Popov, head of the independent expert and analytical center “EPOCHA,” noted in his report “War is Peace: Non-Military Aspects of Ensuring State Security,” the North Atlantic Alliance already today considers Russia as a partner “in quotes.” In one of his latest statements, the NATO Secretary General identified Russia as one of the threats to the modern world order.

According to Popov, geopolitical confrontation has not been canceled in the modern world, and for Western civilization Russia will always remain a geopolitical rival. According to the expert, it is necessary to clearly see the prospects for relations with the West, which even today is hatching plans to continue what was started during the collapse of the Soviet Union. And our “partners” also have scenarios for similar destructive effects. First of all, according to Popov, no one canceled the option of a military invasion. Secondly, the scenario according to which the Soviet Union was destroyed remains effective. And finally, the most likely option is the use of the same technologies that were used during the initiation of the color revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and today. This option, according to Igor Mikhailovich, is the most promising for the West, since in the modern world there are practically no other effective options left.

Today, when the nature of war is changing dramatically, the war is moving from the format of armed resistance alone to the format of increasing information pressure and non-contact combat. The understanding of war, according to Popov, has changed and today social technologies, being the basis of color revolutions, seem to be the most effective means of harsh influence in world politics.

Leading expert at the Center for Military-Political Studies at MGIMO (U) of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Musa Magomedovich Khamzatov, defines the main technology used during color revolutions against the traditional Armed Forces with the term “cloud enemy.” In his report “Cloud Adversary”: a new threat to international security,” the expert names the main reason for the emergence of such technologies as the emergence of nuclear weapons, which led to a crisis in the art of war and in the principles of conducting armed counteraction in the global space.

The emergence of cloud adversary technology and color revolutions has allowed our Western “partners” to go beyond the limitations imposed by the principle of nuclear deterrence.

As part of the organization of color revolutions, according to Khamzatov, the presence of such a cloud enemy directed against the Armed Forces of the target is a fundamental technology. This enemy is inert, he does not have a clearly defined number, composition, and there is no clearly defined rear. For the “cloud adversary”, all this is not manifested explicitly. Even the role of foreign minister of such an enemy can be played by any minister of a neighboring state. According to Khamzatov, this is exactly what we observed in Ukraine, when European politicians at the rank of ministers worked directly with Maidan activists. Based on this, the financing of the cloud enemy within the framework of the use of color revolution technologies is also difficult to define, unsystematic, without a specific center, but at the same time more than effective. As a result, according to Khamzatov, we see the result in the form of significant damage to the political, economic and social components of the state, and the enemy with whom, logically, the Armed Forces should fight, is essentially absent.

The main element of the cloud enemy technology is destructive influence through social technologies, which allows creating the necessary conditions for the introduction of other elements: armed groups, radical groups, detachments of foreign mercenaries.

This technology, the technology of the cloud enemy within the framework of the organization of color revolutions, according to Khamzatov, makes it possible to exclude the Armed Forces, the army of the target, directly destroying the political, social and economic foundation of society. And then everything turns out to be simple - the state, engulfed in chaos, is declared by the international community as a failed state, and its political elites are declared guilty of the socio-economic crisis and the loss of the ability to control the development of the situation.

The purpose of using the technologies of color revolutions is to take the country into economic slavery, to subjugate the political elites and the political system of the state, avoiding serious financial costs and open armed opposition.