This document is written as a contribution to pre-conference discussion in preparation for the Workers World Party Conference on June 1.
May 14 — It should now be clear as daylight that the secret meeting on April 23 between the Gorbachev (bourgeois centrist) grouping and the Yeltsin (bourgeois restorationist) grouping in the USSR constitutes the formation of a virtual coalition. It is fraught with the greatest possible dangers for the socialist foundations of the USSR.
Indeed, it could well decide the destiny of the USSR. As each day goes by, the restorationists become bolder while the centrists are in steady and continuous retreat. The danger of a bourgeois restorationist cold takeover, with Yeltsin at the head, becomes a distinct possibility.
Every day brings more grist to the mill of the counter-revolutionaries. President Mikhail Gorbachev has just humiliated himself by requesting another $1.5 billion in credits from the U.S. government to relieve the acute food crisis in the USSR — which was brought on by his own bourgeois reforms.
Gorbachev, in an interview with Rupert Murdoch, the reactionary multi-billionaire owner of many publications, pleaded with the U.S. government to disregard the extreme right-wingers in its fold who oppose all measures to ameliorate the chaotic conditions in the USSR. Excerpts from the interview appeared in the May 12 Sunday Times of London.
"We are on the verge of chaos," he told Murdoch, forgetting that this is music to the ears of the imperialist bourgeoisie. And why is this happening? His answer is enormously illuminating. "Because we are abandoning the command economy."
This admission says it all! Gorbachev has been insisting for years that the "command economy," that is, centralized planning, was responsible for the deteriorating economic situation. But now, for the very first time, he has let the cat out of the bag. It is actually the abandonment of planning that has brought things to the point of utter chaos!
Gorbachev told Murdoch in detail about the difficulties of trying to transform a socialist system into a capitalist one. At the same time, however, he refused to categorically state that he is for privatization of all the means of production. Still the centrist, he clings to his formula of transforming the USSR into a market economy while presumably maintaining some state ownership.
Relief is what he needs at the present moment, in the form of grain and food products, and this is precisely what the White House and the Congress are holding back on.
Extending a billion-and-a-half dollars of credit to a country which only a few years ago was the most credit-worthy in the world seems to be a huge problem for the White House hard liners and the most reactionary elements in the Congress. But the billion and a half is really a piddling sum considering the magnitude of the Soviet Union's natural resources, especially when one remembers that it is the world's largest producer of gold.
The U.S. administration is holding back on the money and instead is sending a team of "experts" to assess the situation — i.e., to determine how best to wreck the socialist forms of distribution in agriculture and food production in favor of market forms. Only then, if at all, will they agree to the loan.
It should be added that extremely bad weather has deepened the food and agricultural problem. Heavy rains last fall in the Ukraine devastated the 1990 harvest. The fields were so muddy that farmers were unable to harvest enough seeds for spring planting or prepare plots for sowing. Desperate farmers in the Tula region, 100 miles south of Moscow, gathered potatoes for seed by hand but still were forced to import 1,000 tons of seed potatoes from the Netherlands and 7,000 tons from Germany. (U.S. News and World Report, May 13, 1991.)
The bad weather may be a mitigating circumstance that explains more fully the nature of the current shortages, but it is the political crisis that is of the greatest importance.
What has brought on this virtual coalition between the Yeltsin and Gorbachev groupings? Why was it necessary? We discussed in the last issue how this coalition was arrived at in dead secret, in gross violation of both the so-called spirit and letter of glasnost. Indeed, it was done completely behind the backs of the people, without consultation, without admitting the press, radio or television.
Yet no one in the bourgeois world seems to regard the meeting as anything but a great achievement for them. Doesn't this make absolutely clear what they mean by democracy? They mean bourgeois democracy, democracy that serves the ends of the bourgeoisie.
If this secret meeting had achieved something for socialism, for the strengthening of the socialist aspects of the Soviet regime, they would have regarded it as a crime against democracy. As it is, the opposite is true.
But let's first of all address the question of its legality. On March 25, the people of the USSR had voted on a referendum to sustain the union treaty governing all the republics of the USSR. It was overwhelmingly approved by a huge majority.
The referendum widened the economic authority of the republics, strengthening centrifugal forces whose objective is to wreck centralized planning. At the same time, however, it retained the Soviet Union as a unitary state, as a union of all the republics on a federated basis. That should have settled the matter, at least for the time being, of the relationship between the centrifugal forces of nationality vs. the crying need for economic coordination and socialist planning. For only through a correct balance between the two, arrived at by compromises here and there over a period of time, can socialist construction proceed on the basis of public ownership of the means of production and socialist planning.
But then, on April 23, came the meeting of this coalition that enlarged the power and particularly the economic independence of the republics. The secret meeting was held between Gorbachev and the leaders of nine of the republics — the Russian federated republic (headed by Boris Yeltsin), Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenia, the Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
It was a triumph for the pro-restorationist forces headed by Yeltsin, who has now suddenly found in Gorbachev an "ally" with a human face. (New York Times, May 12.)
Six other republics — the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia and Moldavia — were either not invited to this meeting or declined to go. It's not clear which. It is wrong, however, to regard them as being outside the jurisdiction of the USSR or to assume that they've already gone on the road to secession.
It is, of course, the right of each individual republic to secede. This is guaranteed by the succeeding constitutions of the USSR and buttressed by the writings of Lenin over a period of years. However, self-determination has to be considered in the light of the concrete circumstances of each historical period. Self-determination cannot be routinely applied as an abstract universal formula.
For instance, Lenin many times referred to the question of the separation of Norway from Sweden as having aided the class solidarity of the workers, because it broke down the animosity between the Swedish and Norwegian workers and laid the basis for collaboration between them.
But what about the secession of the Baltic states in the context of the contemporary world struggle? It is being instigated by imperialist militarism, which seeks to use every possible inch of territory on the globe to feed its insatiable appetite for aggression and superprofits. How could that kind of secession aid the class solidarity of the workers? In fact, it could do great harm to the cause of socialism in general and become a dagger pointed at the heart of the USSR.
How fraudulent that Yeltsin, with his usual double-talk, has become the spokesperson for Baltic "independence"! The Russian republic which he heads is the main generator of national animosities, with its legacy of Great Russian chauvinism.
Let us examine the propriety of this meeting from the point of view of jurisdiction — whether a meeting by the heads of the nine republics is the proper forum for the task described in their accord as "resolving the inter-ethnic strife." This was a meeting of heads of states. The Ukraine, Kazakhstan or the Russian Federation, for example, are states within the framework of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Inter-ethnic conflicts are nationality conflicts, conflicts between nations, nationalities or ethnic groupings. These groupings are not necessarily identical with the states which supposedly represent them.
There's a fundamental difference between a particular nationality or ethnic grouping and the state or republic structure which politically represents it. The state may not altogether represent the nationality. A state like the Russian Federation has quite a number of nationalities and ethnic groups. There are scores of nationalities, or ethnic groupings if you will, in the Soviet Union. But there are only 15 republics.
For years during the Lenin period the party worked to bring to the fore a new form of government for the workers' state, a bicameral instead of unicameral constitutional structure.
USSR: 60 Years of the Revolution, 1922-1982 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982) describes the state structure as follows:
The 1924 Constitution of the USSR established that the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, which was the supreme body of the union between the USSR Congresses of Soviets, should consist of two chambers — the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities.
The Soviet of the Union was elected by the Congress of Soviets of the USSR from representatives of the union republics in proportion to their population. The Soviet of Nationalities was formed of representatives of the union and autonomous republics and autonomous regions on the basis of five representatives from each union republic, five representatives from each autonomous republic, and one representative from each autonomous region. The composition of the Soviet of Nationalities as a whole was approved by the Congress of Soviets.
The establishment of the Soviet of Nationalities was an important guarantee for ensuring the interests of the union and autonomous republics, and subsequently autonomous areas. ...
The whole purpose of this was to see that national and ethnic representation was carried out to its fullest extent. The attention paid by the USSR to the nationalities is indicated by the fact that in 1982 "books and booklets are published in 89 indigenous languages of the USSR."
(Today, according to Gorbachev himself, there are 100 published languages and 120 different peoples.)
The Soviet Union may have more nationalities within its geographical confines than any other state, with the possible exception of India. One of the characteristic features of the USSR, which has always puzzled the imperialist scholars of the Soviet Union, is how in the world the Soviet regime, beginning with Lenin and up to the Gorbachev era, was able to maintain a relatively peaceful relationship among the nationalities.
To be sure, there was repression during the Stalin era, but no one in the imperialist press was able to uncover the kind of large-scale strife which is now reaching the point where, as this coalition says, it is "tearing society asunder."
But it's not just "society" in general that is being torn apart. It's the social system in the USSR, the workers' state. And it's not because of the inter-ethnic strife. It is the stimulus of bourgeois property which has divided the whole country and has revived ancient antagonisms. The inter-ethnic strife is the effect, not the cause, of the growing dismemberment of the USSR. The fundamental cause of the struggle is the growth of the bourgeoisie and its attempt to win domination over the workers and peasants.
The first rebellion over national oppression, it should be recalled, came back in December 1986 when fighting broke out in Alma-Ata, in Kazakhstan, after the removal of the First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party, Dinmukhamed A. Kunayev, and his replacement by an ethnic Russian. He was the first of many party leaders and government officials in the southern republics said to be removed for corruption, but whose replacement by Gorbachev perestroika promoters inflamed the local population.
The bicameral legislature in the USSR, comprising the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities, differs from the bicameral form prevalent in the bourgeois states. Britain has its House of Lords and House of Commons. In the United States, there's the House of Representatives and the Senate. This is not the time to critically review these forms of bourgeois state. Suffice it to say that the Soviet Union, while it achieved a bicameral form of government where the widest possible latitude was given to universal suffrage, at the same time gave clear and unambiguous recognition to the existence of various nationalities and also to the oppression they have faced for centuries. The Soviet of Nationalities was their forum to not only express and discuss problems and solutions but also to have legislative power along with the Soviet of the Union.
Clearly, when a problem arises that has to do with the nationalities or with inter-ethnic strife, the place for it to be raised and resolved is in the Soviet of Nationalities. But here, in this secret meeting, the two groupings together with the nine republics not only took it upon themselves to raise the question of inter-ethnic relations but put the blame for the strife on the nationalities.
In other words, these republics, which have many nationalities in them, put the blame on the nationalities rather than on the republics themselves. They made the republics synonymous with the nationalities. But the Russian Republic, for instance, is a federation of nationalities. Which among them authorized Yeltsin to speak and legislate for them? Can the other heads of the republics speak for all their nationalities?
The meeting of these republics meant to convey the political notion that the representatives of the particular republics are identical with representation for the nationalities in their republics. That's a false position, especially in a country with so many nationalities.
It's like saying that the governors of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana or New York have identical interests to the nationalities — Black, Latino, Asian — in those states. That's a very tall assumption. In the USSR, the Soviet of Nationalities was formed precisely because it was improper to leave the solution of this question to the republics alone. It could only be done in collaboration with the other chamber, the Soviet of Nationalities. The 15 republics alone could not adequately deal with it. The head of a republic in Georgia might be a Georgian but not necessarily an Ossetian or some other nationality residing in Georgia.
The Soviet of Nationalities was one of the truly great achievements of the Soviet Union. It was made possible by the revolution and it took years of hard work to develop it amidst a growing political differentiation in the Soviet Communist Party into right, left and center groupings. Nevertheless, the party was in unanimous agreement on the bicameral form of the Soviet state and approved in particular the Soviet of Nationalities.
The big problem that faces both the Gorbachev grouping and the outright restorationists if they are to realize their schemes of a restructured society is how to find an easy transition. As Gorbachev tells it to Murdoch, he wants a "mixed economy with elements of small ownership and trade." He will allow some private ownership of the means of production, but only on a small scale.
"People do not want to work in a factory," Gorbachev protests, "whose owner has accumulated money in some unknown [also translated as dubious] way. Privatization should give people a share, a lease maybe, membership of a cooperative in their factories. Small private properties might be allowed in trade." In short, it is the good old middle way.
How can there be an easy transition? Maybe if the giant multinational corporations were lining up, desperately seeking to purchase or to immediately invest huge sums of money into the Soviet economy. But this is not happening. With all the privatization that is going on, with all the damage that has been done to the collective farm system, the basic social and economic infrastructure established over a 70-year period is still there, although in damaged form.
The ideal situation for the centrists and even more for the restorationists would be if there were enough domestic buyers from the new bourgeoisie to purchase the means of production. If legislation could be passed that clearly allowed the state to sell its properties outright and let individuals sell, resell and pass the property on to their heirs, that would considerably ease the process of transforming the socialized economy into a ruthless, exploitive capitalist system.
But those who may have the cash for the purchase of huge mines, mills, factories — the entire productive apparatus of the USSR including the huge military-industrial complex — are loathe to disclose it. Fear of the workers restrains their eagerness to obtain the fruits of privatization.
So they have all hit upon the idea that the Soviet state should make loans available to prospective purchasers for the purpose of privatization. In other words, they want the workers' state to subsidize the bourgeoisie. That certainly would be an easy transition, could it be accomplished.
The restorationists are stymied by the fact that not only the workers but the peasants and the public in general are opposed to such an idea. Besides, to whom will the money be loaned? And how can the Soviet state extend such huge loans at a time when it faces a huge deficit that is daily being increased, precisely because of the type of chaos that the Gorbachev regime has inflicted upon the people?
The loans would have to be extraordinarily huge to facilitate the sale of the basic means of production, and would quickly create an unparalleled wave of hyperinflation of the type that prevailed in the years before the Soviet government established a planned economy and stabilized the currency.
Inflation would devalue the ruble and curtail such foreign trade as is now possible.
Blaming everything on the "command economy," Gorbachev leaves himself blameless. At the same time, he gives a plug for the capitalist economy. The broad public in the Soviet Union is now told that capitalism is not a command economy. But what kind of economy is practiced by, for instance, General Motors? Who decides how many cars should be built, of what style, and where markets should be sought? Is it the workers? Is it the foremen and -women at the factory? Is it the hundreds and hundreds of middle managers? Is it even the so-called broad sector of stock holders, numbering perhaps in the hundreds of thousands? But their votes are controlled by a handful of financial institutions and banks as well as a few people on the board of directors. These in turn generally hand over the basic authority to the CEO and chairman of the board, whose close association with the banks is what usually explains their rise to authority.
Is General Electric or any other big capitalist corporation run any differently than General Motors?
Why put over such a big fraud about the "command economy" and contrast it to the "democracy" of big capital, which is in reality a plutocracy of bankers and industrialists where command is the key word?
The arbitrary system of planning in the Soviet Union needed only to be democratized, made less rigid, with greater participation and more freedom from political control, but within the same socialist system.
The free market isn't free under today's capitalism. Take milk, one of the most basic necessities. New York State regulates the production of milk in order to keep the price high on the "free" market. Farmers all over the U.S. just two years ago were ordered to kill vast heards of cows so the price of milk would be kept high on the "free" market. It is only the private ownership of the means of production which is unlimited. Three or four dozen families control the bulk of the economic arteries of the U.S.
The gap between rich and poor in the U.S. grows ever wider because of the enormous concentration of power in ever fewer hands. The income of the top 1% of the population now exceeds that of the bottom 40%. To maintain this, a strong capitalist state is necessary. But our "communist" president in the USSR tells the publishing lord, Rupert Murdoch, "Maybe the U.S. feels it does not need a strong Soviet Union. But we feel we need a strong United States. It is the guiding axis of international relations. We see attempts in America to destroy it, but we must not allow it to happen."
However one may attempt to analyze the internal developments in the USSR, it is impossible to get a comprehensive view of them except in the context of the present world situation. It is this aspect we intend to address next week.
Last updated: 19 February 2018