The Collapse of the Soviet Union Was a Mistake

Rocky, Ivan Drago, and the virtue of rivalry

James Doone examines the USA–USSR rivalry, civilizational vigor, and the rise of new global counterweights against liberal decay.

“The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

— Putin, Ruler of Russia

Firstly, a foreword to say that I, the writer, am not a communist nor do I want to see communism rise once more like a Norse horde coming over the crest of the hill seeking fresh silver by plundering the monastery at Lindisfarne. Economically, I desire to see restored the medieval guilds (this is for another article) and economic autarky and protectionism as well as dirigisme. Even though I am a Celt, and culturally am an Anglo, I feel in my bones, not in my mind, a nostalgia for the Soviet Union, for her art, aesthetics, propaganda, posters, flags, symbols. It feels like something interesting was lost—a grand metanarrative perhaps, maybe the dogmatic and ideological nature of Bolshevik states appeals to my sense of order and classification, a very Faustian trait (as can be seen in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea which talks ad infinitum about taxonomy), as can be seen in the fact that European man loves to classify things (see Linneas). We children of the post-modern age are rudderless and without wind in ideological sails.

The USSR was a brutal police state and, most importantly, why I oppose it is that it was an anti-Christian state that killed clerics and destroyed churches, wedded to state atheism as per the teachings of Marx and Engels, the two prophets of communism. Make no mistake, Marxism and its spawn are religious systems; Marx is a Moses figure standing on the mountains of Germany holding The Communist Manifesto on stone tablets with Engels being Aaron and holding up his staff to lead the proletariat through the Red Sea bearing the Red Banner. Lenin comes onto the scene as a pope, for the head of the CCCP was a papal figure interpreting the texts of Marx as if they were holy scripture. Now Lenin’s corpse lies in state as if he were an incorrupt saint, awaiting the flocking pilgrims.

Under the Bolsheviks, who overthrew the God-ordained Tsar Nicholas II, churches were destroyed, monasteries burned, monks and nuns shot, hanged and butchered, and Bibles burned. The red wave was a daemonic attack by the dark, ruinous powers of the forces of chaos. For this reason, I despise communism. Any who says the tsars are not ordained by God… ANATHEMA. But civilisations are like the human body (references to Spengler never end). If the body does not train and lift weights and develop musculature, then the body will atrophy and become weak and thin. So too are civilisations and the weight that a civilisation needs to lift is competition between empires. One can see this perfectly between the twin powers of the United States and the Soviet Union. When there were two, the two powers raced in everything: technology, science, munitions, weapons, medicine, even film and media to try and increase the power, soft and hard, of their respective bloc to win the ultimate prize of world domination, status and prestige. The ruling classes of both powers had one, and only one aim. . . making their nation and people as strong as possible, and instituting policies that achieved this.

And yet now in 2025, 30 years after the dissolution of the USSR, America, which now has no enemy to fight, no opponent in the game of chess, is rotting, for it has not lifted any weights in 35 years. It went from a proud, muscular GI Joe to a pink-haired harpy getting offended at reality in such a short space of time, for it has no one to test its mettle against, though American mettle is now paper. America in the 1960s was ruled by a class of educated, serious men. Now it is ruled by a gaggle of incompetent apparatchiks and party stooges, happily playing the fiddle while Rome burns—a man like Biden is only one step away from Nero. America is falling apart at the seams, which is not surprising as it too, like the old CCCP, is a revolutionary state wedded to an ideology at odds with reality (both liberalism and communism share this trait) and like the CCCP, America will collapse for it cannot sustain its fiction, but at least the USSR was based mainly on the ancient peoples of the Rus, whereas America, who is an American now?

Reagan in 1983 called the Soviet Union the evil empire. He was right, but the tables have turned. In 2025, Russia is now a bastion of Orthodoxy, tradition, Russia-first policies, ethno-nationalism, compared with the liberal, atheistic, anti-Christian, DEI, woke America. It is now the US that is the evil empire and Russia is the last place on earth where Christian and Faustian man can find refuge from the horde of the woke Leviathan (Hungary also is a sanctuary). What is a boxer without an opponent to fight? Unemployed and stagnating.

QUO VADIS, FAUSTIAN MAN? Do not go west, nay, instead go east, to the land of the two eagles and the onion domes of the Orthodox churches, to the lands of the Slavs, where boyars sit in their stone halls hewn from rock and the Cossacks roam the steppe under their hetman, for the Rus, and for the tsar, as Tsar Nicholas I declared: Orthodoxy, Monarchy, Nationalism. This should be the only ideology of every state in the world. The Soviet Union had a zampolit (political officer) in every sector; now the USA has a DEIpolit—not to uphold the Marxist dogma, instead to uphold the liberal one. The New Left is not socialist, it is liberal.

Gorbachev foolishly went on holiday before signing the new document, Новый союзный договор (New Union Treaty), which stated that the Soviet Union would transform into a new Union of Sovereign States and this plan was due to be signed on August 20^th, 1991, but was foiled by a hardliner coup a day before. If only this treaty had come into force, it would have meant that the current post-Soviet states would still be united in a union (but without communism) with RUSSIA. However, some states wanted full independence, such as Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. This would have meant there would have been a strong politico-economic block remaining to retain rivalry with the American imperium, but alas the winds of history had another idea. This plan was foiled and the USSR was abolished and states went their own way into petty nationalist struggles and strife, and today wars break out (Georgia, Armenia vs Azerbaijan etc.), which is a travesty.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel, for America is like carrion waiting to be devoured by the swarming buzzards as it has been run into the ground due to idiot leaders and a nonsense ideology of equality. First the USSR and now soon the USA. With the decline of America, Europe again may be free from the American yoke. Though the rise of the BRICS+ pact means that economically, America now has competition from the non-aligned nations, or more accurately the anti-American bloc of nations (who can blame them after America’s actions?).

The Soviet Union, without communism, should have survived for practical, useful reasons to counter the weight of Washington. The 1960s were a time of great civilisational energy, a time of optimism, a time of futurism and the dawn of the space and atomic ages. There was a feeling of muscular power in the fibres of the Soviet and American biceps. A man, like a nation, works better when he has a training partner. What made Apollo Creed train hard and Rocky train so hard? Competition, desire to win and overcome, the masculine drive. Who can forget the training montage of Rocky training in the wilderness of Soviet Russia in the 80s and Ivan Drago training in a top Muscovite gym with scientists in lab coats and he in a white leotard with a hammer and sickle in red on the gym kit. Ivan had tech and science, and Rocky chopped wood and carried logs through thick layers of snow in the winds of Siberia. Rocky won. Sean Connery is the only actor who can play a Soviet submarine captain, a Spanish conquistador, and an Irish cop, all with a thick Scottish accent and yet it works, because he is Sean Connery. If you haven’t, watch Red October. The only hope now for the oppressed peoples of the world, including Europe, is BRICS+ and the East Axis. China with Russia and Iran and other nations, in a union of economy, will free the cosmos from the looming shadow of Trump Tower.

There used to be the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. There used to be Soviet troops in the GDR. And we must honestly admit that they were occupation troops, which remained in Germany after World War Two under the guise of Allied troops. Now these occupation troops are gone, the Soviet Union has collapsed, and the Warsaw Pact is no more. There is no Soviet threat, but NATO and U.S. troops are still in Europe. What for?

— Putin

Addendum

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