The sudden resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on Dec. 20 constitutes a heavy blow to world imperialism's hopes for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. It also demonstrates the complete bankruptcy of the Gorbachev grouping's experiments. These include introducing free (capitalist) marketing, decentralizing socialist industry and shifting the national income toward the upper crust of Soviet society as against the mass of workers and peasants.
Gorbachev's bourgeois reforms have widened and deepened class differentiation in the USSR. This was not very clear in the early stages of Gorbachev's experimentation when it was thought that modernizing industry and increasing national income for all was the fundamental objective of his policies.
However, sabotage of the achievements of socialist construction by the new bourgeois strata has made it clear to an ever-wider section of the Soviet people that socialist construction is not the basis for the chaos in the country. Rather, the effort to foist capitalist enterprise on Soviet society is the culprit.
The resignation also demonstrated in a most striking way that the progressive forces in the country have at last taken the offensive and scored a limited, tentative victory. Of course, it is confined thus far to the parliamentary arena. But under the given conditions it reflects growing awareness of all sectors of society that the Gorbachev reforms have led to an abyss.
Shevardnadze's departure as foreign minister should first of all be understood in light of the international situation, most particularly with regard to the U.S. and the growing danger of a U.S. military attack on Iraq.
The imperialists themselves must have known that something was afoot. It is impossible that they could not have known that the Gorbachev program was facing an acute crisis. Warnings of this have been communicated to the summits of the U.S. ruling class all along. But the bourgeois press continued to sing hosannas to the wonders of capitalist enterprise in the USSR.
Then all of a sudden the ruling class seemed to have grasped the full destructive impact of the capitalist reforms on the USSR. It must have become clear to them that swift emergency measures were necessary to shore up the Gorbachev governing group and reinforce the tottering capitalist reforms.
Thus just a week before Shevardnadze's resignation, the Bush administration — with military-like swiftness entirely uncharacteristic of its usual slow pace with regard to financial and economic measures — suddenly made an announcement. Washington said on Dec. 12 that it was not only lifting the U.S. trade ban against the USSR but also rushing the USSR's application for membership in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
On the same day it was announced (New York Times, Dec. 13) that simultaneous with the offer to grant loans, donations of food were to be made to the USSR — not only from the U.S., but also Britain, Germany, Japan, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Australia.
Why the sudden rush? Is the food crisis so serious in the USSR? Or is it an artificial crisis created by bourgeois speculation and sabotage of the food industry? The truth is there's been a bumper crop this year in the USSR.
The growing realization in the imperialist camp is that Gorbachev's entire program of capitalist reforms has reached a crisis point. His entire capitalist restructuring program is on the verge of collapse. The five-year tenure of the Gorbachev grouping was becoming steadily discredited, having brought nothing but misery, destitution and chaos to the mass of the people.
Much more important, the reforms were leading toward a polarization of Soviet society into two hostile class camps. The camp of the new bourgeoisie, aided and abetted if not instigated and directed by the imperialist monopolies, stands against the camp of the working class, the peasants and the progressive intelligentsia.
The bourgeois press is desperately trying to convey the impression that the polarization and fragmentation in the USSR rotates around the so-called independence movement in the republics, where so much bloodshed has already been caused. But these struggles are the effect of the viciously divisive economic reforms. These reforms are the principal cause of the struggles of the various nationalities. This cannot be emphasized enough since the capitalist press deliberately wants to present the issue as simply one between the national government and the nationalities, leaving out altogether the underlying cause of the conflict, which began with the economic restructuring.
Confusing cause with effect here distorts the political situation in the USSR beyond recognition. If the progressive opposition to the Gorbachev regime is to rally the mass of the workers and peasants against the Gorbachev regime, it must first and foremost present a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the fratricidal struggle among the nationalities and by the nationalities against the center.
The political crisis resulting from the resignation posed the most acute problem for the Gorbachev governing group. It must either move further back toward capitalist chaos, or respond to the growing ferment among the workers and peasants in their opposition to the bourgeois reforms.
It should be noted that the hurry-up emergency package of food aid, consumer products and some high technology was offered by the imperialists against the background of two reports. One came from the U.S. government and the other from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Both reports, which were in preparation for months, advised against precisely such aid, loans or grants until further progress had been made in the implementation of the capitalist reforms. These reports demonstrate how far removed these savants of bourgeois economics are from the realities of the situation in making the kind of prescription that could set off a revolutionary explosion.
In the meantime, the political crisis was maturing in the most sensitive and most urgent area of Soviet foreign relations, in the military field.
The Gorbachev grouping had gone to utterly shameless lengths in allying itself with the imperialist powers against Iraq, an oppressed country. One would think it had gone the ultimate in discrediting itself in the world anti-imperialist struggle — indeed having renounced it — and let it go at that.
But Shevardnadze and presumably Gorbachev himself went a step further and acceded to the demands of the Pentagon for more. The Pentagon insisted not only upon the USSR going along with the first 10 UN Security Council resolutions. The White House actually forced the USSR to co-sponsor the last resolution, which the U.S. had foisted upon the UN Security Council, unequivocally authorizing the use of force by Jan. 15 if Iraq does not capitulate to the imperialist demands.
In going to such lengths, Shevardnadze, and of course Gorbachev too, could not but raise the specter of a military coup. In light of the Soviet military's reluctance to approve any such military collaboration in an attack against a friendly oppressed country as Washington and the Pentagon demanded, the possibility of a coup did arise.
It has to be remembered that the Bush administration and the Pentagon had insolently gone over the heads of the Soviet government in inviting the Soviet chief of staff, Gen. Mikhail A. Moiseyev, to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Colin Powell, for the purpose of coordinating military strategy. The U.S. went over the heads of the Soviet government because Gorbachev had shown ambivalence on this question, although had repeatedly said he was in favor of negotiation rather than the use of force before the Helsinki summit meeting.
Thus the attempt to reach out to the military over Gorbachev's head. As is well known, it boomeranged. The Soviet chief of staff, in a news conference along with General Powell, definitively ruled out Soviet military collaboration in an attack. That should have ended the matter.
But Shevardnadze's and Gorbachev's willingness to co-sponsor the shameless UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force was a challenge to the Soviet military and to the Soviet government as a whole, one of the most provocative conceivable.
Instead of backing down, however, the Soviet military deputies opened an attack against Shevardnadze. While not enough details have come out, it suffices to say from what has been in print in the foreign press that it was of such dimensions as to set Shevardnadze back on his heels.
The attack was led by the Soyuz caucus, particularly Col. Nikolai S. Petrushenko and Col. Viktor I. Alksnis. But it is not just the two young colonels. It is a substantial section of the progressive military who took up the challenge and forced Shevardnadze's resignation.
As Shevardnadze himself said, their attack was "the last straw" causing him to resign.
The intervention of the Soviet military in foreign policy is a symptom of a broader, indeed more acute, political crisis. The crisis stems from the complete bankruptcy of the Gorbachev capitalist restructuring of the USSR.
Even the bourgeois-minded economists of the USSR and some of the more extreme right-wing bourgeois deputies found themselves in an impossible situation when their own plans proved unworkable. Now some are retreating in utter confusion.
What does all this show? It shows that despite the ravages of dismantling, vandalizing and sabotaging, the socialized economic foundation of the USSR still stands. The formidable complex of progressive social, economic and political institutions of the USSR — all based on the collectivized ownership of the means of production by the state — still stands. It is a virtually impregnable fortress that cannot be overcome by the marauding bourgeois pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist reforms without resort to civil war.
The effort of the "innovative, imaginative experiments" of the bourgeois intelligentsia to usher in a new capitalist era in the USSR has come up against a stone wall. The efforts of the new bourgeoisie — their economists, lawyers, technocrats and academicians — have failed. They have not brought to life the tantalizing prospects of capitalist prosperity based upon a free market, dismantling central socialist planning and decentralizing socialist industry.
This failure is especially significant in light of the growing capitalist crisis in the U.S., including the S&L scandals and the endangered condition of the biggest U.S. banks, including Citicorp, Chase Manhattan and Manufacturers Hanover Trust — which the Soviet press and electronic media are forced to report.
The attempt to foist a capitalist restructuring plan on the Soviet economy is not unlike putting a saddle on a cow. It's a mismatch. It doesn't work.
Capitalism cannot be introduced solely by decree, intrigue and conspiracy between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the governing group in the USSR. It took five long years for an authoritative representative of the Gorbachev administration to say all of the above in so many words. But Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, chairperson of the internal security forces, said all this on Dec. 21. And the fact that he is newly appointed by Gorbachev himself gives force and effect to what has been said here above.
"There are attempts from abroad to exert overt and covert pressure on the Soviet Union. ... All these efforts often screen a desire to strengthen not so much us, but their own position in our country," Kryuchkov said (New York Times, Dec. 23).
The bourgeois press, in their report on Kryuchkov's speech, took particular delight in repeating over and over that it was after all the head of the "sinister KGB" saying all this. And he is reported to have backed down considerably on Dec. 25 under pressure from Gorbachev, who appointed him to the post. But that does not change one iota the character of the struggle between the bourgeois reformists and the more progressive elements in the Congress of Deputies who are fighting against them. At bottom, it is a reflection, although in a distorted form, of the struggle between the proletariat and its allies, and the new bourgeoisie.
Kryuchkov was not the only one saying this. There was a whole string of progressive deputies who took the podium at the Congress of People's Deputies who in one form or another said the same. What gives Kryuchkov's speech particular force and effect is that it is the first time a high official of the Gorbachev administration is saying it. And what he is saying is in direct opposition to what Gorbachev has been saying all along.
It is not so much that Gorbachev is moving to the left as that the forces of resistance to the bourgeois reforms have grown sufficiently strong to challenge him. Gorbachev's consent to validate workers' control over the food and consumer goods industry is recognition of the growing resistance to the capitalist reforms.
There is now a political situation in which Gorbachev promotes one line — the line of conciliation with capitalist restructuring. The line of resistance is enunciated by Colonels Petrushenko and Alksnis and the many thousands of lower level grassroots officials who are lending voice to mass dissatisfaction of the millions. This situation cannot long continue.
The Shevardnadze resignation is one episode in a protracted, irreconcilable struggle between the bourgeoisie on one side and the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry and progressive intelligentsia on the other. On a sociological plane it is a struggle between two diametrically opposed social systems — capitalism and socialism. Such a struggle cannot continue for any length of time without a definitive resolution.
The most hopeful sign in the USSR is that the progressive opposition has finally taken the offensive against the Gorbachev administration and forced Shevardnadze's resignation. This demonstrates the inherent vitality of the Soviet working class and the renewed prospects of a victory of the socialist forces against the capitalist marauders.
Last updated: 19 February 2018