Abstract: The subject of the presented work is the assessment of the US national intelligence regarding the events in the period after the August 1991 crisis in the USSR and the prospects for its development within the framework of the model of the new Union Treaty against the background of centrifugal trends. The key theses included in the approved version of the report of the US intelligence community are characterized as the object of the work. The main attention is paid to the issue of inter-republican relations inside and outside the USSR during the search for consensus when concluding a confederate treaty. The methodology of the work consists of the basic principles of scientific cognition (historicism and objectivity) and special historical research methods: descriptive, comparative, historical-systemic, statistical and problem-chronological. The novelty of the research is determined by the approach in which the causal links between the analytical efforts of the CIA and their true goals are searched, as well as historical sources, many of which are involved in scientific circulation for the first time. The article emphasizes that, according to the CIA's erroneous assessment, the scenario of "confederation" as a result of the collapse of the USSR was less likely due to the unwillingness of many ex-Soviet republics to cede part of their political sovereignty and power to the government of the confederation. It turns out that, according to American analysts, Ukraine was a key player in the domestic political arena outside the RSFSR, which had a huge nuclear potential on its territory. This, in turn, predetermined the fate of this country for decades to come and laid the foundation for the emergence of interstate contradictions with Russia. It is noted that the intelligence community of the United States proposed, in cooperation with other Western countries, to influence the development of events in the territory of the former USSR either according to the scenario of "confederation" or according to the scenario of "free association" with the transfer of issues on defense and arms control to the Russian government.

Abstract: The object of this research is the processes that took place in the COMECON member-states due instability of the financial sector. The subject of this research is the impact of the economic factor upon the evolution of bipolar system of international relations and sociopolitical sustainability of the Soviet Union during the 1979 – 1983. The article provides a scientific assessment of extent of awareness of the US intelligence on the financial solvency of the COMECON member-states, their ability to meet repayment schedules for both interest and debts, and the consequences of possible default of any of the countries during the financial crisis. The authors set the task to analyze the target points of foreign analytics regarding the “dependency” of Western European enterprises on their Eastern business partners, as well as clarify the extent to which a significant decline in trade between the East and the West affected the Soviet and Western European economy. The use of unpublished foreign and domestic archival documents, as well as foreign periodicals define the novelty of this research. This article is first to disclose the information on how the United States turned the severe financial problems of Eastern European countries for the purpose of political pressure on such issues as Afghanistan, crisis in Poland, and construction of the Soviet gas pipeline. Leaning on the introduced into the scientific discourse CIA documents, assessment is given to the effectiveness of trade and economic policy of the United States and its Western European allies in relation to Eastern Europe. The article also analyses the support of centrifugal tendencies in the economy of the Eastern European countries of the Soviet bloc.

Abstract: The research subject of this study is the reciprocal influence of the problems of food supply and the social stability of the Soviet state with an analysis aiming to establish the relationship between the onset of the provision crisis and the massive politicization of economic processes in the USSR on the part of society during the examined period.The article is directed at studying the degree of impact the unfulfilled consumer expectations had on the social perception of power by the population of the Soviet Union during the agrarian crisis of the early 1970s.Particular attention is paid to the interaction between the government and society on questions of food supply, as well as the alleviation of the provision crisis through imports.The methodological basis of this work is founded on the basic principles of scientific knowledge - objectivity and historicism, which allowed the authors to study the evolution of the population's mass consciousness in a dialectical relationship with the era's phenomena. Upon implementing the above-mentioned principles, a number of both general scientific and specific historical research methods were applied (historical-situational, historical-comparative, historical-systemic, and statistical methods). The scientific novelty of this work is its attempt to reflect on the course of the socio-political development of the USSR under the influence of changing internal and external factors caused by the consumer crisis.The authors note that under difficult conditions, the authorities of the USSR and the CPSU Central Committee were forced to meet the social needs of the population in order to maintain a certain level of food provisions, as well as to support welfare. Evidence supports that increased social payments and higher wages in the early 1970s temporarily reduced the population's discontent with the Soviet political regime. The authors conclude that the concentration of the population’s attention on the low level of meeting their urgent needs was the basis of social inversion and the revision of the Soviet government approval index.