[Militant International Review, No. 45, New Year 1991, p. 42-49]
The Soviet Union is being torn apart by contradictory processes of revolution and counter-revolution, argues Elizabeth Clarke.
Workers‘ patience with the deprivations of the mismanaged planned economy have been exhausted
The Soviet Union is being torn apart by contradictory processes of revolution and counter-revolution. The ruling bureaucracy has been shaken by a profound revolt from below. The patience of the workers with the deprivations of the mismanaged planned economy has been exhausted. The advantages of planning have been buried under a mountain of bureaucratic waste and corruption. Workers hate the bureaucrats, the ‚mafia‘, for their arbitrary power and privileges. Last year’s miners‘ strike was a magnificent expression of the workers‘ desire to throw the bureaucrats off their backs.
While workers know what they are against, however, they are not clear on what they want. In the absence of an alternative based on genuine Marxism, there are powerful illusions in the ability of the market, or capitalist methods, to provide a way ouf of the morass. The economies of the advanced capitalist countries, still able to draw on the accumulated wealth of the post-war upswing, present a picture of stability and prosperity. At the same time, the totalitarian state of the bureaucracy and the legacy of Stalinism have discredited the ideas of Socialism, Marxism, planning, and the real achievements of the October revolution. Many workers believe, therefore, that market methods will give them more control over the economy. Many of the bureaucrats, for their part, believe that capitalism now offers them better incomes and privileges than the disintegrating planned economy.
Faced with a movement of revolt from below, Gorbachev attempted, when he first took over the leadership, to reform the bureaucratic apparatus, leaning on various newly created representative bodies to overcome the entrenched resistance of hard-line Stalinists who still dominate key sections of the state apparatus. His measures, however, failed to halt the decline and disintegration of the economy.. Early in 1990. Gorbachev himself appeared to go further: while still paying lip-service to ‚Socialist planning‘, he embraced the idea of ‚radical‘ economic reforms based on the introduction of the market. The levers of central control became increasingly ineffective, but were not replaced by any viable mechanism. Shortages have got worse, regional dislocation is more acute. For most workers the ‚market‘ actually means the black market, with higher prices for food and essential goods. The break down of the system of state administration combined with a mushrooming black economy has resulted in an acute economic crisis, especially with food distribution.
In his ’state of the union‘ message at the supreme soviet in mid-November, Gorbachev was forced to admit that things were going from bad to worse. Apparently without direction, lacking any new policy initiatives, Gorbachev came under fire from all sides. Ominously, he was warned by Colonel Victor Alksnis, leader of the hard-line Soyuz group, that he had thirty days (before the next meeting of the Congress of People’s Deputies) to bring the crisis under control. Alksnis warned that „a genuine civil war is going on in the country“, though in „a cold form”, and called for strong Presidential rule to bring „nationalist forces“ under control.
As if in reply, Gorbachev returned to the soviet with extraordinary measures to concentrate supreme power into his own hands. The previous government bodies were pushed aside in favour of a new Council of Security, dominated by the KGB, the army, and the police. Later, Gorbachev appointed General Gromov, formerly Soviet commander in Afghanistan, as deputy minister of the interior, and an increase in the defence budget was announced. Gorbachev has not yet revealed his latest thinking on the economy, but it is likely that this shift towards the bureaucratic apparatus will go together with an attempt to reassert more central control over the economy.
While taking steps to rebuild his bridges with key sections of the bureaucracy, however, Gorbachev is also attempting to lean more directly on the workers. At the beginning of December, a presidential decree was issued establishing ‚workers‘ committees‘ to supervise the distribution of food and other essential goods. They will be able to inspect factories, shops and transport, and have powers, ‚in consultation with the authorities‘, to sack or prosecute anyone guilty of profiteering or embezzlement. What form these committees will take in practice remains to be seen.
Evidently, Gorbachev hopes to reinforce the authority of a section of the bureaucracy with workers‘ organisation which reflect the anger of workers at the new NEP-men who exploit the market as an opportunity for profiteering. But clearly, such committees, if they take on any flesh, are a double-edged weapon. If they prove to be genuine workers‘ committees, involving rank-and-file shop-floor workers, they will not only hit at corrupt officials and black-marketeers but will inevitably begin to question and challenge the organised nepotism and corruption of the bureaucrats themselves.
Gorbachev’s ‚presidential coup‘ and the sharpened economic crisis cannot but raise a question mark over the compromise economic plan – the ninth in two years – presented by Gorbachev to the Supreme Soviet in October. At that time, Gorbachev was still trying to appease both the old guard – especially the military-industrial complex behind the prime minister Ryzhkov – and the openly pro-capitalist wing represented by the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin. Belligerently pursuing his campaign for the ‚500 days‘ programme for transition to the market, drawn up by Stanislav Shatalin, Yeltsin decried the compromise as an attempt to mate a „hedgehog with a snake“ and to „preserve the administrative bureaucratic system.“
The programme categorically declared the superiority of the free market over central planning. But the Shatalin Group’s proposals for 70% privatisation in 18 months were watered down and the abolition of subsidies to loss-making concerns will be delayed. Retail prices will be gradually ‚liberalised‘ apart from those of basic foodstuffs and consumer goods. Wholesale prices will be raised by central decree. The aim to slash the budget deficit to 5bn (£5bn) roubles by mid-January has been amended to a target of between 25 and 30bn roubles. No firm figures were given on further cuts in the military or KGB budget (and it was subsequently announced that military spending would increase by 26bn roubles).
Much of the pace and extent of changes was left to the republics in a recognition of what is already happening. Estonia began to implement the ‚500 day‘ programme at about the same time as it was sent for revision by central government. Azerbaijan’s leader says 30 years is more realistic. With each republic moving at a different pace, with privatisation of industry and land going ahead piecemeal, the linksbetween the republics and the central economy are bound to come under enormous strain, with even greater conflicts in the future. Republics are making up their own rules as they go along. Thirteen out of the 15 say their laws supersede those of the centre. The ability of the government or even the president to either plan the transition to the market or to exert control over the republics is extremely circumscribed.
The process of disintegration and break-up already presaged in the MIR is proceeding at break-neck speed. The continued rule of the bureaucracy and the collapse of the centrally planned economy have driven protectionist, nationalist and separatist tendencies to an extreme. In the Russian Federation there are now no fewer than 16 self-proclaimed autonomous republics, five autonomous regions and 10 autonomous areas. Five republics have already refused to sign the new Union Treaty which makes big concessions to the ’sovereign‘ republics.
The logic of these developments is that the centre would be left with only residual powers over foreign policy and defence. Four republics are already demanding the right to form their own armies. In Armenia, 70 unofficial armed groups exist. And part of the agreement which ended the Ukrainian students‘ hunger strike was that no Ukrainians would serve outside the republic and that 25% of officers above the rank of lieutenant in the Soviet army come from that republic.
These developments alone give grounds for a revolt on the part of the military tops. Colonel Alksnis’s warning to Gorbachev reflected the impatience of the military. The president’s appointment of General Gromov, increased powers for the army, and the presence of Marshal Yazov in the Security Council are a measure of Gorbachev’s need to reassure the military. „I am against any splintering of the state, redrawing of territory, or the destruction of centuries-old links between the peoples,“ Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet in November. But the powerful centrifugal forces already set in motion pose formidable problems for the central bureaucracy. There will be severe limits to all-Union economic planning if if comes to depend on military coercion.
Gorbachev has issued a decree that all goods should still be supplied according to the usual contracts. Normally most republics ‚trade‘ about half of their products with the rest of the Soviet Union but in the present situation of breakdown in agriculture and industry, a number of republics have virtually banned ‚exports‘. The Ukraine, which would usually supply one quarter of the Union’s food, has set up road blocks and has decided to pay 70% of its wages in ration coupons! Pro-market Estonia has doubled prices and set up border posts. No electric railway wagons have been distributed from the USSR’s only producer in Riga for seven months. Other industrial areas have threatened to refuse to send their products to market unless food and consumer products are guaranteed. Actual barter of trainloads of goods takes place between workplaces!
Russia has already set up trading agreements with four republics and the Ukraine has exchanged envoys with a foreign state – Poland. The Leningrad city soviet has had to go to Germany to buy food for its citizens. This itself was necessitated by the impossibility of getting supplies from either the Ukraine or from other parts of Russia. The central government has already announced the withdrawal of subsidies on meat and milk products for Leningrad on January 1 so the Lensoviet aims to sell-off some municipal property to keep down the cost of food. This of course begs the question of whose property it is. But if the government is trying to get the city representatives to take responsibility for price rises, it can expect some retaliation.
A dispute with the Kremlin earlier in the year over the ‚ownership‘ of Russia’s diamonds was just a foretaste of what is to come. The Russian Federation, encompassing one half of the country’s population, has 90% of the USSR’s oil and gas within its ‚borders‘ and 35% of coal. Its parliament has not only declared its intention to implement the Shatalin plan but also to claim all the resources of the republic as its own. This is a recipe for a clash with the centre as the new plan expressly aims to retain central control over the sale of hard-currency earning products like oil, gas. gold and diamonds.
How will the central bureaucracy enforce its decrees?
How will the centre enforce its laws and decrees? It has already employed force in a number of republics and bloody clashes have ensued. Fifty five servicemen have died in Armenia in the last three months. Big armed clashes are brewing in Moldavia where the Russian inhabitants of the industrial East bank of the Dniester have actually appealed to Gorbachev to protect them from the nationalists at republican level. Workers detachments can be ready for action within half an hour. In neighbouring Gagauzia, All-Union troops stand between armed road-blocks and thousands of Moldavian ‚volunteers‘. Since Gorbachev came to power 1,000 people have been killed, 8,500 injured and 700,000 people made refugees in national conflicts which the bureaucracy is incapable of resolving.
To ensure the continuation of production and distribution force would have to be used, not just against road blocks or against workers taking things into their own hands but against elected local parliaments. When the Baltic states began to defy the centre, generals spoke of the need for the army to step in as the only force capable of maintaining unity. If Gorbachev would not give the orders they would be given for him. He has the powers as Commander in Chief of the army but he will hesitate a thousand times before them.
In spite of his bold talk, Gorbachev has been terrified of taking decisive action on this or any other issue, but has followed a zig-zag course under the pressure of events. Leon Trotsky, speaking of the dithering of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet in the middle of 1917, asked ironically „to drag things out, to gain time for your own vacillations – is that not the most ingenious of all political policies?“ But such a policy does not, especially in a crisis situation, afford protection indefinitely. Having appeared, eventually, to have made his decision to take the road of capitalist restoration, albeit camouflaged with sugary phrases about ’strengthening socialism‘, Gorbachev has once again pulled back, apparently more sharply than ever.
Gorbachev was pushed towards reform, after 1985, by the stagnation of the economy and the growing discontent of the workers. Now he is being pushed back towards bureaucratic methods by fear of mass revolt against the dire hardships that even its advocates say are inherent in the transition to the market. Gorbachev is justifiably afraid of taking the brunt of the already accumulated wrath of the masses at the conditions in which they are being forced to exist today. Hence his repeated attempts to shift the blame in all directions, calling at the deputies, rounding in turn on his own prime minister, and then on Yeltsin. Public scrapping over the economic plans is just one aspect of the deep divisions that have opened up at the top in response to the failure of the system and the mighty pressure building up from below. Each layer of the bureaucracy lacks confidence even in its own proposals. Architects of the ‚500 day‘ programme now admit it would not work, Yeltsin, still the figure in whom many ordinary people invest their last hopes, years from defiance of the centre to proposals for coalition and strong presidential rule.
Many of yesterday’s ‚democrats‘, like Sobchak and Popov, the mayors of Leningrad and Moscow, express exasperation not only at the continued power of the Communist Party in the administration, in the army and in the KGB but also at ‚too much democracy‘! They echo Gorbachev in seeking more ‚executive‘ power for themselves. At the head of the two largest soviets in the country they decry the slogan of ‚all power to the soviets‘, even though these parliamentary-type bodies. with very limited control over the executive arms of the government, are far removed from the organs of workers‘ democracy established in 1917! Calling for a ’separation of powers‘ they wish to ape the worst features of capitalist ‚democracy‘, where all the real decisions are taken anywhere but in the popularly elected parliaments. They want cabinet or even presidential government including emergency dictatorial powers.
The popularly elected Russian parliament has called for a ‚government of public confidence‘ that can maintain law and order. With such a government, Gavriil Popov explains, „we’ll get the urgently needed billions of dollars because the West realises it can safely rescue us.“ ‚Democratic‘ academicians peddle ideas about ownership of property giving people a sense of responsibility instead of going onto the streets in protests etc. Popov actually argues for any „mechanism that would be especially strict during this period of radical change“. The role of these so-called leaders is becoming clear. They will act as brakes and fire-hoses in an attempt to hold back the masses and make the Soviet Union safe for capitalism.
But the masses may not extend their magnanimity to these ‚democrats‘ much longer. They will demand a fight for programmes that will fill the shelves again. The democrats of Russia. at a recent conference, gave Yeltsin a blank cheque to implement whatever he sees fit. But in the big movements that will undoubtedly unfold this winter, his policies will be found to hold no comfort for the mass of workers. They will find him recommending moderation in the face of the worst crisis many of them will have faced in their lives.
Out of 1,000 basic goods that should be on sale now only four are regularly available in the shops. The majority of retailing is done through irregular channels. Hungry people pass by co-operators displaying rotten fruit and fish at 26 roubles a kilo. Hatred of speculators grows in tandem with hatred of anyone who gets more than a fair share. Moscow police are supposed to have clamped down on a whole number of black market rings. 185,000 racketeers have been held in the last eight months but the enormous gap between state prices and what, in the context of dire shortage, can be charged on the streets or in the markets. means that even those involved in the official distribution network hold their own supplies back until they are assured of something over the official price.
Estimates put the black market as high as half the Gross Domestic Product. There are 150,000 rouble millionaires already. They drive about with body-guards in cars that cost 250,000 roubles and eat meals costing more than many workers earn in a month. The rabidly pro-capitalist paper, Moscow News, sighs: „Alas, general prosperity always begins with this tasteless and obnoxious luxury for the few against the background of poverty and even destitution for the many.“ Unfortunately, the introduction of capitalist relations, far from bringing about prosperity for all, will simply legalise speculation and profit.
It is beginning to become clearer to many workers in the Soviet Union just who is likely to benefit from this much-vaunted market. If shares are to be sold, it will be those who have already made money who will be able to buy up property. Sixty per cent of savings are in just five million accounts and the average savings held by the 80 million households with deposits is 4,300 roubles. The minimum share on the new commodities market in Moscow is 100,000 roubles.
Workers have seen their own managers trying to set themselves up as capitalists. They have seen profit-taking within their own workplaces and there is evidence of local ‚Communist‘ Parties being given a share of central funds to establish commercial banks. In Leningrad, in spite of the fact that 80% of industry there is under the control of the military industrial complex, the bosses of the biggest 26 ‚enterprises‘ in that city have formed an association to prepare the necessary infrastructure to enable capitalism to flourish.
Nevertheless, even workers who have seen the swindles carried out by so-called cooperators, feel they could do things better if they owned their own workplaces. State ownership has become indelibly associated with bureaucratic management.
In the light of a continued boom in the West and a crisis in their own economies they have been attracted by the apparent widespread prosperity of the capitalist countries. They have not reckoned on what would happen under a market system to jobs and services that did not make money. In Czechoslovakia tensions have developed between miners in profitable and unprofitable pits. They are in favour of immediate privatisation provided workers in pits that have to close are re-employed. Yet for subsidies to be provided, and to pay for essential services, taxes would have to be paid which would eat into profits. Workers would get involved in the risky business of trying to run individual enterprises profitably. To compete for markets and get capital for investment, they would find themselves forced to lower wages and cut corners with regard to safety and conditions.
The problems cannot be solved in one workplace or even one city. Workers would no more control industry and run society through ‚private ownership‘ in the Soviet Union than they do in Britain, France, or the USA. The only way is through the removal of all layers of the bureaucracy – re-taking control through elected workers‘ representatives prepared to work without privileges and go to the end. Such a struggle would be far more fruitful for workers than any attempt to try and be ‚good capitalists‘.
Although the methods of privatisation under the new plans are not spelled out, the bulk of the means of production will not be given to the workers through shares or any other means. Enterprises have had the right to issue shares to their workers since 1988, but the central government, like the city soviets, aim to sell assets to make their books balance.
Leningrad is offering ships from the merchant fleet and Moscow is trying to sell shops. Popov wonders why there are no takers for the empty shops. Managers are declining the offer of buying out their shops ‚because it would involve constant strain caused by responsibility‘ and because of ‚worries about the future‘.
Vladimir Sokolov also puts his finger on why another source of investment capital is so hard to come by … that of the foreign investor. „He will not come to us with his technology until his investments are 100% protected against any revolutionary expropriation“. All kinds of ‚incentives‘ are on offer to capitalists in the Free Economic Zones and elsewhere. Firms are being invited to come in and take out as much profit as they want (roughly along the lines of what they were doing before 1917!) Gorbachev’s recent visit to France and Spain was primarily designed to ’sell‘ the Soviet Union – to get big credit deals signed and look for investment capital.
Arguments over the plans have centred not so much on whether to ‚free‘ prices and sell off state assets as to how to do it and how fast. Putting up prices first, as Ryzhkov attempted to do earlier in the year, not only sparks off waves of protest, it means that those with money will be able to buy the goods and the rest will have to wait for hand-outs. It could result simply, as in Poland, with more goods in the shops but no money in peoples pockets. Shatalin and Co argued that the rest of Ryzhkov’s proposals – putting up wages to compensate for prices rises – would have taken the budget deficit to 340bn roubles (from the currently expected 90bn).
Leonid Abalkin countered that the Shatalin plan would have created inflation of 200% and closed 25% of the country’s collective farms through bankruptcy by the end of the year. Ryzhkov, representing the bureaucratic and technical elite that would be threatened most by the dismantling of the planned economy, predicted the disintegration of the country and a drop of at least 30% in living standards. Others predicted anything between 20 and 50 million unemployed.
Supporters of the ‚500 day‘ plan themselves admit that huge shocks and privations would be in store, but Shatalin tells the Financial Times: „The Polish therapy in our country is absolutely impossible. It would not simply leave the patient sick. It wouldn’t leave any of those who implemented it alive”. Insisting he is still a socialist, he says that „for the economy to get moving at all, a revolution in the sphere of property must be made.“ But, he points out, „we are still as terrified of it (private property) as the devil is of incense.“ He rests his case on the belief that „the situation couldn’t get worse“.
All those debating the ‚transition to the market‘ believe that the giant state monopolies must be broken up with a ‚Monopolies Commission‘ established to ensure no ‚unfair‘ competition. But where would the money come from for the enormous investment needed to start up new foundries or chemical plants? Massive investment is needed now simply to cut out the horrific practices in Soviet industry that endanger the lives and health of so many millions. Yet there would be no need to break up the state monopolies if they were under the control and management of workers in a workers‘ state. A division of labour and specialisation has been one of the assets of the vast state-owned economy of the USSR which, in spite of monstrous deformations, strode forward for decades at a greater pace than the capitalist world. Out of the 180 machine-building factories in the USSR, 160 are actual monopolies. All tram rails are made in one town – Kuznetsk – and all sewing machines in another – Podolsk. One chemical plant outside Yerevan is the sole producer of a number of key drugs. Its closure due to ethnic struggles in Armenia led to 750 other factories being closed down.
This situation brings home the catastrophe inherent in the separation of the republics from the central economy. Each would attempt to be self-sufficient but would lack the resources to start from scratch. The break-up of the Soviet Union even in this respect alone would be a backward and not a progressive step. Marxists support the right of the republics to self-determination, including the right to secede, if there is overwhelming mass support for such a step. We would not advocate separation, however. The way forward is through the democratisation of the USSR, to return to the idea of a genuine socialist federation based on the fraternal association of nationalities and democratic planning based on workers‘ control and management.
Pro-marketeers also argue that making the rouble convertible is an essential prerequisite of ‚free market‘ relations on a world scale. Foreign Capitalists will only invest in the Soviet Union on a big scale if they can withdraw their profits in a currency which has a definite value in terms of US dollars, German marks, etc. On the basis of either bureaucratic planning or the restoration of capitalism, or even a transitional hybrid between the two, convertibility of the rouble will mean nothing more than devaluation and even further hardship for the mass of the population. Again, those with money would survive. Those on low wages and tiny pensions would go under. The only means of avoiding such a catastrophe would be to dramatically increase productivity.
This will be achieved only through planned investment in new technology on a scale that Western capitalism is incapable of providing. It could now only be achieved through reorganisation carried out with the fullest participation of workers and experts. This in itself is only possible through the political revolution – the throwing off of the bureaucracy.
Without workers taking things into their own hands, prospects are grim
In the present circumstances, without workers taking things into their own hands, the prospects are grim indeed. A rapid transition to the market or a long drawn out affair, even an abandonment of such plans, will see a further deterioration. An intervention by the army and an attempt to impose central directives might temporarily restore some of the previous production and distribution levels but at enormous human cost. Such a Stalinist counter-revolution would be an enormous set-back for the working class of the Soviet Union.
Gosplan experts now warn of famine and mass epidemics as well as a slump in production of anything from 30-70% because of the collapse of the central planning and supply system. The ministries are still supposed to be running 80% of companies and order firms to deliver 90% of their products to the state, In an open letter to Sovietskaya Rossiya – paper of the Russian ‚Communist‘ Party – these ‚planners‘ say that in the entire engineering industry only between 5% and 8% of contracts with suppliers had been concluded a month before the deadline. In the first half of next year many plants will come to a standstill and go bankrupt. Workers will not get their wages and entire work forces will be made redundant. Without emergency measures „the economic crisis will become irreversible“.
Little wonder that five million people are reported to be waiting to emigrate. Already 100,000 Soviet Germans have left with an estimated loss to the economy of 4bn roubles. But the majority of the 290 million population have to brave the prospect of worse dislocation. Privatisation will threaten so many aspects of life that workers take for granted even today – warm houses, hot water and light, cheap transport. Even before new measures take effect, crises are developing in every sphere.
The crisis in agriculture has gone from chronic to acute. For every one rouble of produce, five roubles 29 kopeks has to be put in. On land that could, with modern methods, produce 40-50 tons per hectare, an average of only 13 tons is being reached. With the introduction of ‚cost-accounting‘, individual state farms cannot afford modern harvesting equipment or labour. Cost-accounting in factories means managers have been unwilling to let their labour force go to the country as in the past. The ‚Communist Party no longer has authority amongst the youth who used to be included in obligatory Komsomol teams of land-workers. The KGB and the army were mobilised (as well as the Peoples‘ Deputies for one day!) yet still the greater part of the bumper grain harvest and the potatoes stayed in the fields. Combine harvesters and tractors stand idle for lack of spare parts. Storage facilities are also substandard, meaning the ‚loss‘ last year of between 30 and 35 million tons.
And the solution of the ‚Democrats‘? „Nine million efficient farms can save Russia from total ruin and feed the country,“ says the agricultural scientist and people’s deputy, Tikhanov. All you need is land-owning peasants, ready to run risks, not looking for hand-outs and „capable of working 14 hours a day during the farming season“! „All unused land should be… awarded to the most successful bidders.“ But in spite of laws permitting the ownership and inheritance of land being passed, 98% of all land is still in the hands of the collective and state farms.
„Peasants aren’t taking the land!“ cries Abalkin. But the majority of those working on the land are now agricultural workers, not peasants, Who believes, moreover, that a hard-pressed central government, trying not to tax the fledging capitalist enterprises for fear they will flee the nest, will provide cheap credit for equipment or fertilizer over a long period? Only state ownership and democratically-run planning involving all producers could assure such provision for small concerns. It would also, however, breathe new life into the state farms and collectives.
The bureaucracy staggers like a wounded beast from one blunder into another. Without the intervention of the masses, things can only go from bad to worse. The leaders discuss their ‚powers‘ when, by their own admission, they have none. In March and April 1917 Kerensky remarked that the government „did not work but merely discussed its condition“. So who will act?
Sobchak and Popov, who are openly pro-market, in the face of their city budgets being halved, should not be talking of increasing transport prices five-fold and possibly resigning. Retreating will not preserve their credibility, as they believe, but will have the opposite effect. A fight like that of Liverpool city council in 1983-85 would mobilise the movement to challenge the rule of the central bureaucracy. But these people represent merely a ‚radical‘ (i.e. pro-capitalist) wing of the bureaucracy and hide behind scare stories of unrest and violence. Nothing must disturb the peaceful transition to a glorious market economy! Unfortunately for them, if they don’t act, other forces will. The military is seething with discontent. The tops are waiting for the right time to move. The ranks and the population are enraged by reports that 30,000 young men have died in the last few years through brutal treatment in the armed forces. Recruitment of youth into purely local armies will be a double-edged sword for the newly emerging nationalist governments of the republics. If they try to use troops against strikers who are from their own territory, how reliable will they be?
Delays and empty talk at the top are enervating the working class of the Soviet Union. Again, as Trotsky put it in relation to 1917, „the standard of living continually sank … the mood in the workers‘ districts was becoming more and more nervous and tense. What depressed them most of all was the absence of prospects. The masses are capable of enduring the heaviest deprivations when they understand what for.“ But at present, as Quentin Peel of the Financial Times indicates, „the expectations of the Soviet people are low. That goes hand in hand with their lack of confidence in any government. But it does mean that prolonged depression may not necessarily produce bloody revolution.“ They have rejected the old system but are unsure of what can be substituted for. it.
There is a veritable war being waged against the October revolution. Much publicity is being given to documents which ‚prove‘ that Lenin not only shot strikers but also labelled as prostitutes women who appealed to soldiers for food for their children and ordered their execution. Many workers still revere him and reactionaries in Leningrad who want the town to be called Saint Petersburg cannot muster the necessary two-thirds support. Elsewhere his statutes are under attack by the new pro-bourgeois regimes in some of the wealthier republics. Descendants of White Guard landowners and Nazi collaborators are rearing their heads in the still uncertain workers‘ movement. A number of organisations, including some independent trade unions, called people to a demonstration on the anniversary of the October revolution with a leaflet headed ‚Day of National Tragedy‘ with a black border. These elements are more convinced about going back to the market (with social guarantees) than the mass of the population.
The confidence of the ‚Communist‘ Party – the party of the still-ruling bureaucracy – is suffering big blows. Now it has to accept defeat in elections in Georgia (where no fewer than 150 parties have sprung up). It is losing members – 400,000 in the first nine months of 1990. The ‚Popular Fronts‘ of Leningrad and Moscow have virtually disintegrated but new parties have not yet consolidated. They meet, discuss programmes and constitutions and agree to meet again!
The ‚democrats‘ in control of the soviets this year, who walked on air in the protest demonstration last year in Palace Square, are cautioning people to stay at home and ‚prepare for winter‘! What does this mean except that these people are bankrupt and will not survive the hurricane of events in the next months and years. A full tilt rush to the market will hit the reefs of mass resistance. The experience of Poland is salutary where the workers‘ hero Wałęsa now wants to be a Piłsudski-style dictator. Hungarians have begun to move against the catastrophic decline of their living standards.
The experience of Romania’s attempts to go headlong towards capitalism, bringing workers back onto the streets in protest, will also not go unnoticed in the Soviet Union. Nor will the recession developing in the capitalist countries. But above all it will be their own experience that draws the mighty proletariat of that country inexorably towards revolutionary and Marxist ideas. In the struggle they will rediscover the great traditions of their class and its revolutionary leaders. They will link their struggle to that of the workers in the capitalist countries, not for the re-establishment of capitalism but for a sweeping away of bosses and bureaucrats alike and the establishment of worldwide socialism.
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