Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 101, June/July 1991
The Soviet people are confronting an unprecedented economic and political crisis. In the first quarter of 1991 production dropped by 6-10 per cent and the budget deficit stood at 31.1bn roubles – larger than the 26.7bn planned for the whole year! In April, massive workers’ strikes, demanding improved conditions and the resignation of President Gorbachev, warned that the working class will not passively shoulder the burden of this crisis. Meanwhile national republics are striving for ‘independence’ amidst a resurgence of bloody national clashes and fierce political battles between Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the ‘conservatives’. EDDIE ABRAHAMS analyses the crisis.
The social, economic and political conditions of the overwhelming majority of Soviet people are deteriorating sharply. In the process, and with the aid of the state apparatus, a tiny minority of intellectuals, party, state and economic functionaries are organising to defend and enlarge their existing privileges by establishing themselves as a new capitalist ruling class.
Despite its size and the fear it inspires among reactionaries, the working class is not an independent and determining factor in the drama. Those who are, are fundamentally anti-working class and divided into three main trends: the ‘radicals’ temporarily grouped around Yeltsin, the so-called ‘conservatives’ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the forces supporting Gorbachev.
Perestroika and glasnost were launched by Gorbachev in 1985 as a response to the social and economic crisis facing the Soviet Union. Restructuring and democracy were to revive a stagnant economy and society. However, in the absence of an independent working class political force, bourgeois counter-revolution has seized the initiative.
Perestroika
Perestroika has set the foundations for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR with all the main trends supporting the transition to a market economy. They differ only on the speed, fearing that too rapid a pace will result in uncontrollable working class upheavals.
On 2 April, in the latest manifestation of perestroika, food prices went up by an average of 60%. One litre of milk rose from 36 to 50 kopeks, A kilo of beef climbed from 2 to 7 roubles. A 20 kopek loaf now costs 60 kopeks. Overnight, Soviet working class living standards dropped. This was the first step in a wider ‘anti-crisis’ programme designed to ensure a gradual transition to a market economy.
Prime Minister Pavlov predicted that even on this plan the Soviet people should prepare for 18 million unemployed and a 20% drop in production. The more radical ‘Shatalin’ programme would have entailed 30 million unemployed and a 30% drop in production. It was rejected last year for fear of the working class response.
Nevertheless the accumulated legal and economic measures of perestroika have already set the basis for the development of a new privileged class. Over the past four years, the number of people with an income greater than 250 roubles a month has grown fourfold. 3.1 million people in co-operatives and private business – 2.3% of the work-force – earn 500 roubles a month, while 500,000 earn 3,000 roubles a month. The average wage remains at 240 roubles a month. 71 million people, a quarter of the Soviet population, earn less than 100 roubles a month and two million are already unemployed.
A new bourgeoisie is emerging amidst the most blatant corruption and robbery. A Soviet social scientist, Leonid Razikhovskii, argues that the economy is today dominated by a ‘lumpen-bourgeois ethic’ and that it is: ‘a unique, historically unprecedented monster – a completely mafia-ized economy’.
An alliance of corrupt party officials, factory managers and racketeers in the co-operative and growing private sector are ruthlessly plundering the state, illicitly transferring vast resources and funds to the private sector and the black market. Thus while state shops run desperately short, the black market has everything – but at a price beyond the reach of workers.
A Lithuanian govermnent minister stated that:
‘… co-operatives and joint enterprises are often oriented not towards the production of consumer goods but towards their redistribution: from the state into their own pockets. If we are to call things by their real names it is speculation on a very large scale.’
Glasnost
Glasnost has benefited the same class which is prospering with perestroika – the so-called ‘radicals’. They are the privileged intelligentsia – professionals and intellectuals – the ‘co-operators’ and new entrepreneurs, concentrated in Moscow, Leningrad and the large cities. Glasnost has enabled them to dominate much of the Soviet media, cultural and public political life. Under the pretext of openness and democratic renewal it has allowed them to politically organise and extend their influence.
Virulently anti-socialist and anti-Marxist, they worship everything capitalist and imperialist. They regard egalitarianism as a ‘perversity* and enthusiastically support calls for the rapid introduction of a market economy. They have a virulent hatred for the working class which they fear could bar their sejfish ambition. A ‘radical’ newspaper recently wrote:
‘Market reforms begin to be threatened not so much by the machinations of the nomenklatura as by the workers’ movement which is gaining momentum spontaneously, and by the radicalisation of the population’s sentiments due to price hikes.’
On the margins of this ‘radical’ camp, glasnost has spawned and given ‘freedom’ to even more pernicious forces of anti-semitic, proto-fascist Russian chauvinists, monarchists and religious fundamentalists.
Glasnost and the republics
In many national republics the ‘radicals’ and sections of the party apparatus have coalesced into reactionary pro-capitalist blocs. Eager to integrate into the world capitalist market they are engaged in a struggle for ‘independence’ from the USSR.
This is leading to a tragic division and weakening of the working class and the suppression of national democratic rights. The Georgian government which calls for ‘independence’ from the Soviet Union, is violently crushing the long established Ossetian autonomous region and the democratic demands of the Mskhetian Turks. In Azerbaijan, the minority Armenian community is subject to bloody pogroms orchestrated by Azerbaijani ‘democratic forces’, whilst Armenian ‘democratic forces’ do the same to the Azeri minority in Armenia.
In the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, bourgeois nationalist governments have succeeded in whipping up national hostility against the substantial Russian working class, while in massive Russia, Yeltsin, who spouts democratic slogans in his fight against Gorbachev, is himself striving to stifle the democratic rights and aspirations of Russia’s own 16 autonomous republics, five autonomous regions and 10 national districts.
Foreign policy
The Soviet leadership’s foreign policy of accommodating imperialism has revealed the extent to which it has moved into the camp of counter-revolution. Its full support for the imperialist destruction of Iraq was but the latest and clearest example.
Since the end of the War the Soviet Foreign Minister visited Israel to prepare for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. But meetings with the PLO were indefinitely postponed. In the clash between North Korea and the US who are seeking to close down Soviet-built nuclear reactors, the Soviet Union is siding with the US. Examples can be multiplied.
The opposition
The main organised political opposition to the Soviet Government and the ‘radicals’ comes from the ‘conservatives’. They vocally demand the retention of a united Soviet state and frequently speak out against ‘concessions to imperialism’. They do not however constitute a working class opposition. They want to retain the Union only because their own power and privilege rests on the gigantic Union-wide economic and military institutions. Whilst willing to see the introduction of the market, they do not, unlike the ‘radicals’, want Russia to be subordinated to US or European capital. The conservatives have in any event proved themselves too weak, sociably isolated and spineless to decisively influence the direction of events.
The Soviet working class
The imperialists can now rest at ease. The Soviet Union has ceased to represent a threat. Nevertheless they continue to deny credit, financial and technological aid. International capital will comply only when it is sure that private property has been re-established on an unchallenged basis, only when it is confident that its investments will not be endangered by the threat of political and social upheaval and instability.
The corrupt and bureaucratic methods of the CPSU have driven millions of workers to oppose socialism. The working class has been divided, weakened and tainted with nationalism and chauvinism. It nevertheless remains a potential power capable of disrupting the plans of imperialism and its allies in the USSR. Within the CPSU and outside it, in the factories and mines, there are significant if small groupings of socialists and communists who are working hard to politically organise the working class against the tide of reaction. They confront huge problems of ideological confusion, demoralisation and disillusionment, but they nevertheless have fertile ground on which to work.
The overwhelming majority of workers oppose the restoration of capitalism. Hatred for private business and co-operatives is widespread. Working class protests demand: ‘No to free growth of prices! ‘No to the speculators who rob the working people!’ ‘Shut down all those who gouge the people and steal bread from their mouths!’
A workers’ leader summed up working class sentiment:
‘The programmes of transition to the market that have been adopted contain within them the danger of violation of the workers’ interests. Exploiting the confusion, the administrative-command apparatus is attempting not only to hold onto the reigns of management, but to become in fact the owners of the means of production, creating concerns, associations and joint stock companies. As for us, we are left the role of hired labour, the draught force of the economy. We cannot and simply do not have the right to allow that.’
If organised socialists succeed in giving political expression to these sentiments and can combine them with an anti-imperialist and internationalist outlook, counter-revolution will not have everything its own way. ■
