Whenever and wherever the imperialist bourgeoisie gets into a profound economic and political crisis, it inevitably seeks in the most desperate ways to divert its crisis into anti-working class channels.
Understanding this should be ABC for class-conscious workers, in particular for Marxists who have studied the historical evolution of the capitalist class.
The present crisis raging throughout the U.S. is slowly but surely taking on a worldwide character and will become more onerous with each passing day. No amount of gimmicks by the Bush administration and their hordes of economic and political advisers will arrest it.
At the present time, the U.S. ruling class is most anxious, above everything else, to utilize the crisis in the USSR to cover up its own, most formidable and insuperable problems.
This should not prevent us from making an independent class analysis of the crisis in the USSR. Failure to do so would be playing into the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
There can be no denying the magnitude of the crisis in the USSR. The collapse of the workers' movement there, the continuing breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the banning of the Communist Party, and the virtual disintegration of the party apparatus are the result of an adventurous attempt to restore capitalism.
It began with what appeared to be an effort to revolutionize the scientific, technical and industrial apparatus of the USSR, which was a welcome forward step.
However, the Gorbachev administration soon revealed what was really in store. To what extent it was premeditated or planned is not clear, but eventually it could be seen that perestroika entailed a fundamental change of social relations, indeed, of property relations. Nevertheless, it took the world communist movement by surprise, even after the imperialist bourgeoisie had unloosed a flood of favorable publicity, bordering on the most nauseating flattery, about Gorbachev and his numerous meetings with the imperialist leaders.
The present crisis in the USSR is the result of six years of maneuvering to overturn the socialized economic system and bring about a so-called free capitalist market, with all that entails.
In order to take a world view of the situation of the working class, the oppressed and the socialist movement, it is indispensable to analyze the crisis in the USSR in the light of the general crisis of capitalism. Furthermore, no analysis can leave out the unending attempts of imperialism to subvert the first successful proletarian revolution in world history by blockade, military pressure and political isolation over a period of more than 70 years.
The present world crisis has a twofold character. While the crisis in the USSR cannot be separated from the world capitalist crisis, neither can the developing world economic and political crisis be divorced from developments in the USSR, Eastern Europe and the countries resisting imperialism like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and, closer to home, Cuba.
It is best to begin an analysis of the twofold character of the world crisis by examining how the imperialist bourgeoisie presents the very latest developments in the USSR.
In bold headlines, the New York Times of Dec. 9 reports on its front page, "Declaring Death Of Soviet Union, Russia And Two Republics Form New Commonwealth." The secondary head says: "Take Over A-Arms." And then: "Newborn Bureaucracy Inheriting Functions Of Old Authority." Virtually every word is slanted in an attempt to direct the reader into anti- socialist and pro-imperialist conceptions.
It is true, of course, that Russia, the Ukraine and Byelorussia on Dec. 8 formed a so-called commonwealth of independent states. But left out is what a working class paper would have emphasized first and foremost: this commonwealth is a racist alliance by the three Slavic republics directed against the southern republics. Moreover, inside these three republics there are considerable non-Slavic national minorities. The national minorities, most of them historically Moslem, were brutally oppressed by Great Russian chauvinism during the czarist empire.
This move is an attempt to recreate the old czarist, autocratic yoke on the ruins of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is led by the notorious counterrevolutionary, Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Republic, and includes the renegade CP leadership in the Ukraine. Also joining in is the leadership of Byelorussia, whether willingly or not we cannot say at this time.
Such a lengthy article as the one in the Times should have made clear at the very beginning that even the biggest of the southern republics, Kazakhstan, was excluded from attending the secret meeting which cooked up this scheme. Now that the deal is done, however, all the republics are invited to rubber-stamp this racist alliance, to in effect subordinate themselves to the domination of Great Russian chauvinism (with the Ukraine as a junior partner).
Even more indicative of the racist character of this so- called commonwealth is that the Armenian bourgeois leaders have aligned themselves with it, for no other reason than that they are raising the banner of Christianity in opposition to the other southern states, which are mostly Moslem.
What we see here is a virtual endorsement of the proposal put forth by the notorious czarist counterrevolutionary, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who offered a very similar solution in a letter to the Politburo during the Brezhnev period. He has long stood for going back to a Christian Russia dominated by the Slavs at the expense of the southern and Asian oppressed peoples.
The dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the setting up of this new so-called commonwealth is explained in the bourgeois media as a manifestation of self-determination. This is the type of self-determination that the Southern slavocracy in the U.S. invoked to break up the Union and perpetuate slavery. It was all done in the name of states' rights and self-determination.
Rather than admit that the bourgeois economic reforms have pitted the different nationalities against each other, the new ruling group claim that severe national antagonisms "naturally" existed and have only come to the surface now because previously the various republics were afraid to rebel.
Beginning with the 1903 conference of the Russian Social Democratic Party, the right of self-determination up to and including secession was a cardinal aim of the Bolsheviks. It was assiduously and energetically promoted by Lenin and was incorporated into the Constitution of the USSR in 1922. Each succeeding constitution after that, up to and including the one promulgated by Gorbachev and his colleagues, included this right.
The right of secession of any state was never denied. It might be true that some wanted to break away but were fearful that exercising this right could lead to the type of repression which prevailed under the Stalin regime. Nevertheless, history shows that had there been a strong and formidable desire for independence, it could not have been long suppressed by fear or intimidation. We have seen so many national insurrections for independence throughout the world that continue to fight on despite oppression. For example, one of the oldest continues to rage in Ireland, no matter how severe the repression.
The centrifugal forces now tearing the USSR apart were set in motion by none other than Gorbachev himself. They burst on the scene in December 1986 with a rebellion in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. Gorbachev had tried to drown out opposition to his economic reforms by replacing the Kazakh leader of the party in that republic, Dinmukhamed Kunayev, with a Russian, Gennadi Kolbin. There followed demonstrations and street battles eventually involving an estimated 200,000 people.
In the "Communist Manifesto," Marx and Engels described how the bourgeoisie can set in motion forces that it then cannot control, "like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." This is what has happened to Gorbachev. With his bourgeois reforms, he set in motion centrifugal forces which are now consuming him.
What a terrible retreat from the internationalist positions of Leninism!
The Soviet press is now openly speculating on Gorbachev's resignation. It is interesting to note that he has denounced this so-called commonwealth as illegal, pointing out that the Congress of People's Deputies would have to approve it. But who destroyed the effectiveness of the Congress of People's Deputies?
It was Gorbachev who pushed through in a way reminiscent of bourgeois dictators a resolution that deprived this same Congress of its real power. He in fact dissolved it and handed it over to the republics. They in turn are squabbling among themselves while the ground underneath all of them is trembling.
The economic pact among the three leaders, arrived at in secret, gives their scheme away. The very first sentence after the preamble states, "The parties have agreed to the following: To carry out coordinated radical economic reforms aimed at creating feasible market mechanisms, transformation of property and ensuring the freedom of entrepreneurship." What more need be said?
"Radical economic reforms" is a phrase used over and over again by the Yeltsin-type counterrevolutionaries to mean deep-going, pro-capitalist reforms to restore capitalism. "Feasible market mechanisms" means to abolish price controls on every-day commodities and consumer goods of every type, including bread.
The "transformation of property" means the abolition of socialized property and its replacement by individual ownership. This is well understood to mean the privatization of state-owned enterprises. "Ensuring the freedom of entrepreneurship" means to abolish the restrictions on the activities of a considerable petty bourgeoisie.
The latter have become so vociferous since the failure of the August coup that they have actually been attacking the Yeltsin government for not moving fast enough to give them the full freedom which this trio of renegades is now promising.
To get the full measure of where things are at, we refer the reader to an article that appeared Oct. 9 in Izvestia, and is translated and excerpted in the Current Digest of the Soviet Press (Vol. XLIII, No. 41). Written by Prof. V. Danilenko, it is deeply critical of the "democrats" like Yeltsin who came out on top in what the author refers to as "the August revolution." His criticism is that these politicians are not acting sufficiently in the interests of the entrepreneurs who helped them get in power.
"We very much need a Russian Reagan," writes Danilenko. "A person who is capable of putting the main emphasis on the interest of private entrepreneurs.... And the government itself should be organized on market principles, providing broad legal opportunities for business to influence the processes of decision-making. ..."
"A very distinct sphere of activity — political business — has existed in the West for a long time," explains Danilenko. "... Thanks to it, effective interaction between business and the authorities is ensured, and the actions of power structures are geared toward the requirements of entrepreneurs."
He concludes that "Ties between business and political parties are necessary. ... Appropriate legal regulation of election campaigns that would officially allow business to exert an influence on voting results is necessary. ... Finally, detailed legal regulation of lobbying activity is necessary. This is the most effective instrument linking business to the power structures. We used to actively criticize this institution. Today we should admit that in any civilized country, lawmaking work is simply inconceivable without it."
What a blunt exposition of the workings of capitalist democracy! Danilenko hasn't learned the art of deceiving the masses of the people that is practiced so professionally by Reagan and the others in the West he admires so.
The bourgeois professor is speaking for the restless entrepreneurs, who he says provided "material assistance" to Yeltsin during the August days, if they weren't actually at the "White House" in Moscow directing opposition to the attempted coup. And now they're protesting that the Yeltsenites are not doing enough for them.
Are the new entrepreneurs a full-fledged bourgeoisie? They are certainly very formidable and were made doubly arrogant by the failure of the coup and the resulting sharp turn toward counterrevolution. But is this bourgeoisie the new ruling class?
No. It is a nascent bourgeois stratum. This is a commercial bourgeoisie of big merchants, petty traders, thieves, small commercial bankers and small proprietors. They hide behind various organizational structures that call themselves collectives but in reality are dens of thieves appropriating the products of the labor of the workers.
However, they still lack the fundamental attribute of a ruling class: they do not own the basic means of production.
Their struggle with the counterrevolutionary political leadership rotates around the mechanisms by which the basic means of production will become privatized. But this privatization has not yet taken place on a scale sufficient to satisfy either the imperialist bankers abroad or the nascent bourgeoisie at home.
Even Yeltsin, when he went to Germany recently to assure the imperialist bankers, said that only a third of the basic means of production will be privatized over the next three years. That's a pretty long time, especially coming from this vociferous accelerator of radical reform.
However, let us not underestimate the formidable character of the bourgeois elements. They are strong. They control many key political positions. Besides Yeltsin and others on a republic level, Gavriil Popov and Anatoli Sobchak, the mayors of Moscow and Leningrad, respectively, are in their camp.
Furthermore, they are being boosted and trained by the imperialists, whose intervention must never be forgotten even for a moment. When Defense Minister General Dmitri Yazov, a member of the State Committee for the State of Emergency that organized the attempted coup, was interrogated a few days later, he is reported to have told the investigator:
"We all agreed that in recent years Gorbachev had been traveling abroad frequently, and we often had no idea what important matters he was discussing over there. For example, what kind of report did Gorbachev deliver at the meeting of the Group of Seven in London? We didn't know very much about what he said there. Before this, at least we had always discussed everything in the Politburo or in the Presidential Council. Or in the Security Council. ...
"We, of course, were unwilling to become even more dependent on the U.S. — politically, economically, and militarily."
(As though to confirm what Yazov was saying about the influence of the imperialists in the USSR, this was published in Izvestia on Oct. 10 as a reprint from material that first appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel on Oct. 7. Izvestia complained that it had to retranslate the material back into Russian because it didn't have access to the transcripts obtained by the German paper!)
Yazov's testimony throws a powerful searchlight on the real causes of the coup — fear of becoming an appendage to U.S. imperialism. Unfortunately, this group was unable to take the masses into their confidence, call on them to carry out an open struggle against capitalist restoration and resign their posts if necessary to facilitate such a course.
The coup was carried out not in the spirit of Leninist strategy and tactics but of crude Blanquism, at best. It was devoid of an ounce of Leninist teaching and experience on the three great Russian revolutions, beginning in 1905.
It must be said in praise of Blanqui that he was a meticulous organizer. He demonstrated skill and ability in preparing the most minute details of conspiratorial work. Here, on the contrary, it is painfully obvious there was a lack of preparation.
How much stronger the opposition to capitalist restructuring would have been had they begun the struggle much earlier, before Gorbachev and those to the right of him had the chance to pack the party leadership with bourgeois reformers. One milestone in the offensive of the neobourgeoisie was the 19th Party Conference of June-July 1988, which was hailed in the West and given enormous media attention.
The conference, under the slogans of democratization and a struggle against bureaucratic command structures, was a fraud. It is so easy to see that now. It was not really intended to democratize the organs of socialist administration but to break them up and construct a bureaucratic administrative command structure suitable for capitalist restoration. This is precisely what Yeltsin is now doing.
Yeltsin now has a parliament that is merely an instrument for him and his co-conspirators to issue one illegal decree after another, break up socialist organizations, and even ban the Communist Party — a neofascist act. Yet with all this, the bourgeoisie whom he represents are not satisfied. But when are the bourgeoisie ever satisfied with their servants?
The 19th Party Conference, while spouting democratic phrases, in reality was an attempt to undermine the socialized economy and destroy the party apparatus. (We have never been uncritical defenders of the political apparatus of the CPSU and its positions. But to hail its destruction in the interests of pro-capitalist restoration is another matter.)
We should remember that Yeltsin as late as 1988 was an alternate on the Politburo and first secretary of the Moscow committee, where he cultivated a bourgeois grouping around him. As Gorbachev finally explained rather apologetically to the conference in his summary speech (July 1, 1988), Yeltsin had changed the personnel of the Moscow party leadership "two or three times" before "this began to worry us." He changed the personnel of the party two or three times and only then did they begin to worry! This is utterly incredible.
"I reproved Comrade Yeltsin at a meeting of the Politburo. I told Boris Nikolayevitch in a comradely way that he should draw a conclusion for himself and take this into consideration in his work. In other words, this was assistance to him and nothing more than that."
Earlier in his speech, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of resorting to "a peremptory tone and command methods. This was followed by endless change of personnel."
The political differences, instead of being brought out openly and clearly, were masked by organizational maneuvers. While these were of course understood by the higher echelons of the party leadership, the political issues were not brought out so the masses could understand what was going on.
It's not unusual for political struggles to be masked by organizational maneuvers in order to conceal class and group interests. But this party conference took the cake. The mask was glasnost, "democracy," which in practice meant democracy for the bourgeois elements to the exclusion of progressive and revolutionary criticism.
Speaking in terms of universal modes of production, such as slavery, feudalism and capitalism, the economic structure always determines the political structure. But it is also true that once a nascent ruling class seizes the political structure at an opportune moment, it will ultimately turn the economic situation around to bring it into line with the political leadership. This can take decades or, as the struggle between feudalism and capitalism showed, even centuries.
At the present time, the bourgeoisie in the USSR is formidable and has through its agents seized the political superstructure, particularly in the great centers like Moscow and Leningrad. However, its specific weight in the class structure of the USSR is still inadequate to constitute itself as a full-fledged ruling class. Furthermore, its so-called democratic representatives are in an extremely unstable position and may fall at any time, either as the result of a fascist coup, toward which some of the so-called democratic forces are already leaning, or because of a general upsurge by the Soviet working class, which is inherently the most formidable and numerous class, especially if we count the rural proletariat and the workers engaged in the agricultural collectives.
This is precisely what the imperialist bourgeoisie is frightened about, and it is this perspective that revolutionary workers throughout the world should bear foremost in their minds.
Last updated: 19 February 2018