In 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) crumbled, as individual republics voted to secede from the Union. An astonished world watched as the superpower disintegrated into chaos. The government that had industrialized a backward nation in less than half a century, acquired nuclear capabilities, and launched Sputnik- the first orbiting of an artificial satellite, fell almost overnight. From the ashes of the Soviet Union arose several independent republics and a Russian Federation spinning out of control as it sought to deal with rapid increases in unemployment, corruption, and ethnic tensions.
Spanning eleven time zones, the Soviet Union was a giant, both literally in terms of geography and figuratively in terms of power and influence. Over one third of the world’s population lived in states where the communist party was in power and socialist economic conditions prevailed. All of these states, without exception, had at one time been aided by the Soviet Union in their quest to build socialism. The Soviet Union had held the imperialist maneuvers of the United States in check for the better part of the 20th century, assisted numerous anti-colonial and liberation movements, and offered a source of inspiration to socialist revolutionaries the world over.
What went wrong. How did this moral giant of a state fall so hard and so fast? And what were the effects of the Soviet Union’s disintegration on the revolutionary liberation movements, the working class in the advanced capitalist states, and the remaining socialist states?
The construction of socialism does not occur in a vacuum. The historical conditions of the people building socialism, their level of education and culture, and the effect of the imperialist forces’ opposition are real challenges that the people must overcome to successfully construct a new order founded on people’s democracy and socialism. However, when revolutionaries seek to analyze the events leading to the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union, it is important to avoid pinning all of the problems on conditions outside of the revolutionary movement’s control.
Equally important is how the revolution reacted to these external conditions. What errors were committed and how could they have been rectified and avoided in the future? It is important to concentrate on the revisionist leadership of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev. They are the main culprits of the Soviet Union’s demise. It is equally important to evaluate the mistakes of true Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries. Therefore, an honest critique must be offered of Stalin and his leadership in the Soviet Union. To dodge an honest critique would undermine the purpose of an anti-revisionist evaluation and instead protect the cherished myths about socialism’s “founding fathers“.
When the Bolsheviks came to power in the October (November on the new calendar) Revolution of 1917, they inherited a country stunted by centuries of tsarist autocracy. The Russia of 1917 was a backward country reeling from poverty, illiteracy, and the devastation of World War I. At the time of the Bolshevik revolution, the laboring masses were clamoring for “land, bread, and peace”. This was the raw material with which the people, guided by the Communist Party, would eventually forge a new socialist superpower.
As difficult as it was, the masses of workers and peasants rose to the occasion and overcame the historical obstacles that threatened their revolution. Under the leadership of Lenin, and then Stalin, the Soviet Union was formed as a revolutionary state and the construction of socialism was by most measures a success. The future seemed bright for most citizens of the Soviet Union, as socialism promised them an increased standard of living and a life free from the exploitation and anarchy of the capitalist market. In fact, the working people of the world were optimistic about their future as the Soviet Union increasingly became a symbol of liberation and a source of support for the international worker’s movement.
When the German armies invaded in World War II the landscape and context of socialist revolution was forever changed. The sole revolutionary government in the world would have to face the invading armies of what had been to that point an unstoppable war machine. As Hitler’s forces moved further into the Soviet Union they leveled cities, killed civilians, and destroyed fertile crop land along their way. It was not until the Germans reached the city of Stalingrad, a city whose people proved as solid as the metal they were named after, that the tide turned. In a battle that eventually left the city in shambles, the Soviet forces turned back the Nazi invaders. The Soviet Union’s victory over fascism was an important victory for them and the world.
However, this victory came at a great cost to the Soviet Union. The devastation of World War II set back some of the accomplishments of socialist construction and posed new problems for the revolutionary movement in other countries, whose forces had been drained in the ideological and physical struggle against fascism. Out of the 50 million who died in World War II, the Soviet Union sacrificed over 26 million of those lives. Over 9 million soldiers and 18 million civilians were left dead. Another 18 million were wounded. Among these were the country’s youth and some of the brightest and most dedicated communists. Reconstruction of the Soviet Union, as well as the new people’s republics of eastern Europe, would have to occur without them. This peculiar situation made the multifarious task before them all the more difficult.
Stalin’s leadership was instrumental in the initial construction of socialism, the defeat of fascism in World War II, and the reconstruction of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the war. He proved both his revolutionary dedication and his grasp of Marxism-Leninism in the obstacles over which he led the people to victory. An accurate account of history will reflect his grasp of theory in the construction of socialism and his strength in defeating fascism. While Stalin’s record as a whole was one of accomplishment and his motivation unquestionably honorable, errors were made under his leadership. Errors which would later be distorted and then used as a weapon to defeat the revolutionary gains that had been made.
The remnants of the old capitalist regime are present to varying degrees during the epoch of socialism. The suppression of such elements is a necessary part of the people’s revolution for democracy and socialism. There is no question that Stalin dealt a series of heavy blows to those who sought to hold on to the outdated forms of production for private profit. The construction of socialism would have been impossible without a strong campaign against the reactionary elements. However, the historical record also reflects that Stalin’s struggle on this point was erratic. There was a certain necessity to modify the degree of struggle in accordance to the conditions the revolution faced. However, the party under Stalin’s guidance sometimes hastily reversed course from extreme methods of cooptation to coercion.
For example the decision to eliminate inheritance taxes in 1942 was a tactical error. As Engels explains in The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State, inheritable wealth is a fundamental method for the ruling classes to protect and pass on their privileges. The absence of restrictions on inheritance, combined with the low level of taxation on the income of top managers and executives in the Soviet Union, provided a fertile breeding ground for the development of new class antagonisms that Brezhnev would later exploit to his advantage.
At other times Stalin sought to relentlessly suppress those bourgeois elements that still existed in the dark recesses of Soviet society. While this policy is sound in its objective, errors were often made in how it was administered. At times when it was difficult to identify exactly who was the enemy and who conspired against the new socialist constitution, the party leadership seemed to adopt a policy of “better-safe-than-sorry”. This meant that a number of good communists who had participated in no such reactionary schemes were violated and removed from the party, exiled, or sent for rehabilitation. As Mao pointed out in his evaluation of Stalin, Stalin’s record is overwhelmingly correct and beneficial to the cause of revolutionary socialism, but the errors that he made must be recognized as such in order that they will not be repeated.
Upon Stalin’s death, the revolutionary movement had experienced important victories internationally. Socialism was secure inside the Soviet Union. Worker’s governments had adopted the socialist system throughout most of eastern Europe. The Chinese and Korean communists had consolidated the revolution in their countries. An aura of cooperation and optimism was evident in the interaction between the socialist states. In 1956 an unexpected event would shake up the solidarity of the socialist bloc and pose a new menace to the future of socialism. At the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev laid the foundation of modern revisionism and steered the Soviet Union away from a course of revolutionary socialism toward a reintroduction of capitalistic practices.
Khrushchev engaged in both the theoretical revisionism of the basic tenants of scientific socialism as well as the historical revisionism of socialism’s accomplishments in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev aimed his denunciations first at the memory of Stalin. In the single greatest blow to an accurate account of socialism‘s history, Khrushchev invented the myth of Stalinism, effectively giving the imperialist camp a great lie with which to bludgeon the cause of revolutionary socialism around the world. Stalin’s errors were exaggerated and his image was transformed from that of a good but fallible leader to a madman and a tyrant. At the 20th party congress Khrushchev denounced Stalin as having engaged in the perversion of party principles and democracy and of revolutionary illegality. In this way Khrushchev was able to insulate himself from political attack by claiming that his revisionism was actually a return to the principles of Leninism.
In fact, Khrushchev revised two fundamental theses of Marxism-Leninism. Khrushchev rejected the class character of the revolutionary party and state. In speech after speech Khrushchev alluded to the all-people’s state and the all-people’s party. The term all-people stands opposed to the idea of a worker’s state and a worker’s party. All-people necessarily includes those who are capitalists, landlords, or tsarist sympathizers. There is no place in the revolutionary state or the worker’s revolutionary party for those elements that would seek to reverse course and re-enslave the working masses to the dictates of production for profit. The revolutionary state and party are instruments of the working class and their allies in the peasantry and intelligentsia. To call for an all-people’s states is to rebuke the Marxist concept of class struggle and to obfuscate the contradictions between various social strata that still existed in the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev also violated dialectical materialism as a method of analysis. According to Khrushchev, internal contradictions no longer existed in the socialist epoch. Apparently, all remnants of the old society and class antagonism simply did not exist in Khrushchev’s analysis of the Soviet Union. His failure to acknowledge these internal contradictions within Soviet society allowed for the breeding of a new privileged strata of party bureaucrats and reactionary intellectuals. Their influence would exert itself openly under Brezhnev and Gorbachev.
Based upon his revisionism of scientific socialism Khrushchev would promote two erroneous theories regarding socialist economy and the development of communism. First Khrushchev replaced the principle of using the political economy to strengthen the economic base of socialism with the goal of surpassing the United States in consumer options for Soviet citizens. This policy was wrong in two aspects. First of all, unless the economic base of socialism is strengthened, stagnation and recession will rear their ugly heads making the production of consumer goods all the more difficult. Second, while the Soviet people could have used more consumer items of better quality, there was no reason to set the western level of consumption as the standard. Certainly, it was better for the culture, health, and revolutionary consciousness of the Soviet people not to adopt western attitudes about consumption.
Khrushchev also embarked upon a policy of adventurism and utopian pronouncements. He made unscientific claims that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States’ standard of living by 1980 and that within the 20th century the Soviet Union would reach the final stage of communism. Both of these assertions were unfounded and unattainable, ultimately leading to an erosion of trust in the Soviet Communist Party. The assumption is that Khrushchev anticipated a withering of the Soviet state and Communist Party and that the people would somehow not be threatened by the imperialist and capitalist forces of the United States and Britain.
If Khrushchev laid the foundation of modern revisionism, Brezhnev strengthened its place in the party and state. Whereas Khrushchev refused to recognize the internal contradictions of Soviet society, Brezhnev brazenly invented the idea of a uniform Soviet people without class or nationality. Brezhnev oversaw the entrenchment of a new bureaucratic elite, or privilegentsia. As the privilegentsia increased its stranglehold on the party, corruption spread quickly and internal contradictions were further antagonized. The party found itself further removed from the masses and the use of compulsion became more and more necessary at home and abroad.
Further deviating from Leninist norms, Brezhnev shifted from a revolutionary reliance upon the masses for defense of the Soviet Union, to the development of a traditional military. Prior to Brezhnev’s efforts to militarize Soviet society, the Soviet Union had been protected mainly through the mobilization and popular support of the masses. Brezhnev decided to engage United State’s imperialism on the traditional military front as well. Military spending ballooned to 15% of the Soviet Gross National Product under Khrushchev and Brezhnev maintained and increased this level of spending. This is the same time period that the United States was dedicating 7% of its GNP to defense.
Brezhnev conferred upon the Soviet Union a distinct advantage in military capacity over the United States. The Soviets, by 1983, had 989 submarine-launched ballistic missiles compared to 584 for the United States, an advantage of 860 to 108 in theater nuclear force missiles and 880 to 218 in theater nuclear force bombers. This advantage however came at a great price. Greatly contributing to the economic instability and bankrupting of the Soviet Union, it also wrested the task of revolutionary defense from the masses and handed it over to a professional military. Brezhnev’s military arrogance as well as his excommunication of China and Albania from the family of communist parties strained relations among the socialist bloc and broke down their solidarity.
By the time Gorbachev came to power, all the hard work had been done for him. The history of socialism had been revised so that revolutionary democracy was considered tyranny and bureaucratic elitism was praised as democracy. The theory of scientific socialism had been revised so that it was no longer important to evaluate in a dialectically materialist manner or to recognize the class character of a socialist party and state. The privilegentsia had become entrenched and their allies among the intelligentsia had been raised to positions of prominence. All that remained for Gorbachev to do was nail the lid on the coffin of socialist relations and reintroduce capitalist practices openly. Of course, in that great tradition of Orwellian doublespeak, he would do so in the name of socialism.
Gorbachev is known for two primary “reforms” of the Soviet system: perestroika and glasnost. Glasnost was suppose to be a new program of transparency in social and political life. In effect, it was the resurrection of capitalists and bourgeois intellectuals who sought to destroy socialism and the U.S.S.R. Articles from the rightist line inside the intelligentsia flourished without scientific evaluation, criticism, or political struggle against their message. The political mobilization of the reactionary forces was allowed to continue in the open as they organized to squeeze the last bit of power from the hands of the working masses.
Gorbachev described perestroika as his policy of economic renewal and restructuring. On this point he did not lie. The socialist system was restructured according to the imperialist demands of Reagan and Thatcher, and old capitalist economic practices were renewed. A 1987 law was passed allowing for and protecting the ownership of private productive property. Social planning of the economy was abolished, the system of delivery and distribution of economic goods and services was dismantled, and the means of production was gradually transferred to private ownership starting with agriculture. Factories were encouraged to base decisions on market factors such as profit rather than social factors such as working conditions, employment, and increased productivity.
The reintroduction of capitalism, under the program of perestroika, lead to a long period of economic decline. The years 1990 and 1991 saw a combined 19 percent contraction in the economy. There was a sharp increase in consumer prices as workers were laid off in large numbers. Shortages of basic goods, such as laundry detergent, became commonplace. Poverty and unemployment were evident for the first time since socialism had been constructed in the 1920s. To add insult to injury, a looming budget deficit threatened to bankrupt the country.
Despite the overwhelming hardship facing the Soviet people, the communist party won the 1989 competitive elections, capturing 87% of the vote. However, in 1991 Yeltsin performed a coup of sorts, while Gorbachev was on vacation in the Crimea. Yeltsin stood on top of a Soviet tank in front of the Russian parliament and incited the crowd to turn against vice-President Yanaev who was in charge while Gorbachev was recovering from an illness. Yeltsin then stormed into parliament and orders the Communist Party expelled from parliament, despite their winning of 87% of the seats. Gorbachev resigned shortly afterward and Yeltsin proceeded to ban the Communist Party and confiscate its property. In 1991, a referendum was held in each republic on the future of the Soviet Union. By a 75% margin the republics voted to renew their federation and preserve the Union. In a political maneuver Yeltsin refused to renew the federation without Ukraine, which voted for independence. In a matter of months the Union had dissolved into the chaos and poverty that still plagues them today. These events signaled the culmination of the counter-revolution that was birthed in the revisionism of the 20th Party Congress.
Gorbachev oversaw the reintroduction of capitalism in the Soviet Union, and Yeltsin was responsible for the decline of the Communist Party’s political power and the disintegration of the Union. The effects upon the average person in the former Soviet Union has been tremendous. There have been rapid increases in crime, unemployment, and suicide. Poverty is rampant throughout town and country alike, and millions are without healthcare. Due to these conditions the average worker now has a life expectancy of 10 years less than what she had under the Soviet system.
The impact was also difficult for working people in the advanced capitalist states and the liberation movements around the world. Western governments no longer saw a need to maintain the welfare states that had guaranteed the working class a basic standard of living. Without the threat of Soviet power and revolutionary socialism, the capitalists in those countries were free to exploit the working masses and extract as much surplus-value from their labor as they saw fit. George Bush proclaimed that a “New World Order” now existed. This new order disregards the rights of workers and exploits the oppressed within countries and across borders without restriction. Without the Soviet Union’s check on imperialist power, the popular revolutions in Colombia, the Philippines, and Nepal will have to face western opposition alone. The remaining socialist states of China, Vietnam, DPRK (north Korea), and Cuba would all face different crises. The Chinese reactionaries began to formally dismantle the socialist system. The process that began with the death of Chairman Mao escalated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China voted in 2002 to allow capitalists and landowners into the party. Whether workers can regain control of their party and state peacefully remains to be seen.
Both Cuba and DPRK face great economic difficulty as they lost their major trading partner and Soviet subsidies for their industries. Vietnam adopted milder reforms based on the Chinese model, and they stumbled from one corruption crisis to the next as capitalistic elements sought, with some success, to gain a foothold in the party and state.
The revolutionary movement of the 21st century will have to struggle without the aid of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union still stands as a historical source of instruction and example for revolutionaries to learn from. Unless these lessons are taken to heart, the revolutionary movement risk further losses in the battle against capitalism’s war, poverty, and racism.
Beevor, Antony, Stalingrad: Penguin- New York, NY. 1999
Ebenstein, W. & Fogelman, E., Today's Isms: Prentice Hall- Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1985
Martens, Ludo (editor), The Collapse of the Soviet Union: Causes and Lessons: EPO- Antwerp, Belgium. 1998
White, Stephen, Communism and its Collapse: Routledge- New York, NY. 2001
