What caused the collapse of the Soviet Union?

[Sam Lord]

This question has come up in a number of threads and I thought it might be useful to start a specific thread to discuss it.

Trotskyites assert that it was doomed from the start because it is impossible to "build socialism in one country" whereas the traditional Marxist-Leninist view is that a clique of revisionists around Khruschev simply came to power after the death of Stalin and set about restoring capitalism.

What made me return to this question is that by chance I came across an interesting article by someone called Ted Talbot who does not support either position and has an alternate view.

Talbot points out that changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not brought about by economic collapse or by popular revolution from below. The changes were in fact instigated by the elite running these countries.

In this regard he quotes from an article by Kotz and Weir:

Conventional wisdom tells us that the remarkable demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 was propelled by the collapse of its socialist economy, leading the citizenry to peacefully sweep aside the nation's Communist leadership and their misbegotten socialist system. Yet, if one inquires into the whereabouts of the allegedly deposed Communist leaders, one finds most of them not languishing in exile, but still in high-level positions in the 15 new nations that emerged from the USSR.

Furthermore, most of them are a great deal richer than than they were before the Soviet Union's demise. Two years after this odd revolution, 11 of these 15 new nations were headed by former top Communists.

In contrast to the conventional wisdom, the Soviet revolution of 1991 was made, not against the small elite that ran the Soviet Union, but rather by that elite. And it was not a collapse of the USSR's planned economy that drove this process, because no such collapse took place. While the Soviet planned economy encountered serious problems after the mid-1970s, it was far from collapsing at the end of the 1980s. Rather, the Soviet elite dismantled their own system in pursuit of personal enrichment.

So this poses the question .. how was it that 60 years after the revoultion you ended up with a ruling elite running the show who had more affinity with capitalism than with socialism never mind communism ... and who saw the introduction of a straightforward market economy as the best way to enrich themsleves.

It is this question that Talbot attempts to answer.

http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htm

[Apjp]

This question has come up in a number of threads and I thought it might be useful to start a specific thread to discuss it.

Trotskyites assert that it was doomed from the start because it is impossible to "build socialism in one country" whereas the traditional Marxist-Leninist view is that a clique of revisionists around Khruschev simply came to power after the death of Stalin and set about restoring capitalism.

What made me return to this question is that by chance I came across an interesting article by someone called Ted Talbot who does not support either position and has an alternate view.

Talbot points out that changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not brought about by economic collapse or by popular revolution from below. The changes were in fact instigated by the elite running these countries.

In this regard he quotes from an article by Kotz and Weir:



So this poses the question .. how was it that 60 years after the revoultion you ended up with a ruling elite running the show who had more affinity with capitalism than with socialism never mind communism ... and who saw the introduction of a straightforward market economy as the best way to enrich themsleves.

It is this question that Talbot attempts to answer.

http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htm

You always confuse opinion with fact. Trotsky was the original marxistleninist

Sent from my GT-I5500 using Tapatalk

[Sam Lord]

Trotsky was the original marxistleninist

[TotalMayhem]

What caused the collapse of the Soviet Union?

[Sam Lord]

I doubt it. He couldn't even add to three.

[C. Flower]

This question has come up in a number of threads and I thought it might be useful to start a specific thread to discuss it.

Trotskyites assert that it was doomed from the start because it is impossible to "build socialism in one country" whereas the traditional Marxist-Leninist view is that a clique of revisionists around Khruschev simply came to power after the death of Stalin and set about restoring capitalism.

What made me return to this question is that by chance I came across an interesting article by someone called Ted Talbot who does not support either position and has an alternate view.

Talbot points out that changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not brought about by economic collapse or by popular revolution from below. The changes were in fact instigated by the elite running these countries.

In this regard he quotes from an article by Kotz and Weir:

So this poses the question .. how was it that 60 years after the revoultion you ended up with a ruling elite running the show who had more affinity with capitalism than with socialism never mind communism ... and who saw the introduction of a straightforward market economy as the best way to enrich themsleves.

It is this question that Talbot attempts to answer.

http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htm

I'm glad you asked this question. Everyone has an opinion on it, and it's perhaps the single most important political question there is, imo. The fall of the USSR and the conversion from a mainly nationalised economies to mainly privatised economy dealt a serious blow both in immediate terms and to the morale of socialists, communists and workers throughout the world. The loss of the USSR as a counterweight to the US resulted in a period of US world dominance militarily, with no effective veto.

The answers to the question are likely to be different depending on the how the person answering viewed the USSR and on whether they analyse the question using Marxist methodology, that looks at the economic base, and the totality of class relations, and historic conditions, rather than looking at the personalities of rulers, as was the case in traditional bourgeois history.

Trotskyists have a problem in answering this question, as the USSR lasted so long, and Stalinists have a problem in that it eventually collapsed.

I recently read an article that suggested that a decline in Russian oil led to the collapse. (edit - I was less than persuaded by this, but think that a serious study should be made of all the factors).

I'm surprised that you don't mention the drain on the USSR by the military pressure and arms build up under Reagan, which went to the point in the early 1980s when there was an imminent possibility of a first strike against the USSR and which drained Russian economic resources into massive defensive arms expenditure. The Afghanistan war, stoked by the US deliberately to undermine the USSR, was also a factor.

Ultimately, it's surely obvious that an isolated socialist state in a world dominated by a capitalist imperialist power and dominated economically by capitalism, would come under tremendous pressure and be unsustainable ?

[antiestablishmentarian]

An interesting article. I think it indirectly validated a few of Trotsky's points about the effects of isolation and Russia's backwardness on the revolution. There's also an interesting comparison to be made with the writings of Gramsci, who criticised Taylorist and Fordist methods of production, which were adopted by the bureaucracy during the Four year plans and as the article pointed out remained at the root of the economy for the duration of the Soviet Union's existence.

[Sam Lord]

Ultimately, it's surely obvious that an isolated socialist state in a world dominated by a capitalist imperialist power and dominated economically by capitalism, would come under tremendous pressure and be unsustainable ?

I'm not sure why it is obvious that it would be unsustainable other than it fits into some peoples ideological perspective. By the end of the second world war the Soviet Union was far from isolated. In fact socialism seemed to cover half the planet.

[TotalMayhem]

I doubt it. He couldn't even add to three.

Maybe, and yet he was pushing their defense spending beyond the breaking point.

[Holly]

Basically one word: Communism.
The human spirit yearns for freedom but in police states such as the Soviet Union, the people are beaten-down. Fed on a diet of state-run media and indoctrinated in state schools and then to be spied-on by the NKVD, the downtrodden working class had little hope until the whole rotten system imploded from its own manifest failure to to deal with its contradictions.
Since a few in the politburo controlled the lives of so many millions through a system of communist repression, it took only a few well-placed individuals to bring the whole charade tumbling down. Once Gorbachev admitted the need for perestroika and glasnost, the game was up.
Communism is the opiate of the undergraduate/pseudo-intellectual class of work-shy wasters which has never worked in practice and never will because, under its auspices, the most power-hungry, ambitious, and ruthless blackguards float to the top like scum, void of conscience and humanity.

[C. Flower]

I'm not sure why it is obvious that it would be unsustainable other than it fits into some peoples ideological perspective. By the end of the second world war the Soviet Union was far from isolated. In fact socialism seemed to cover half the planet.

I've read a good bit about Reagan's era and I agree with TotalM on this to quite an extent, that military pressure on the USSR from the US, which was the dominant economy and military power globally. Why would it be in any way surprising that this power would be immensely hostile to the USSR and do everything within its power to destroy it ?

I would like to know a lot more about exactly what was going on internally in the Soviet Union. I've just bought two books (thanks Oxfam) on the USSR's economy and would like recommendations on more.

Which half of the planet was, and is no longer, socialist?

[TotalMayhem]

Of course Reagan wasn't the sole factor, but he, or rather the politics he stood for (the brainchild of such notable monsters as Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski) certainly did play a role in the demise of the U.S.S.R.

[antiestablishmentarian]

[quote=Holly;159365]

Basically one word: Communism.
The human spirit yearns for freedom but in police states such as the Soviet Union, the people are beaten-down. Fed on a diet of state-run media and indoctrinated in state schools and then to be spied-on by the NKVD, the downtrodden working class had little hope until the whole rotten system imploded from its own manifest failure to to deal with its contradictions.
Since a few in the politburo controlled the lives of so many millions through a system of communist repression, it took only a few well-placed individuals to bring the whole charade tumbling down. Once Gorbachev admitted the need for perestroika and glasnost, the game was up.

Funnily enough, if you substituted 'Special Branch' for NKVD, that would be an accurate enough description of Irish political life. We even have our own kangaroo 'Special Criminal' Courts and things like 'contempt of court', which are used by the state against political activists like the Rossport 5, BallyBrack 3 and BinTax 2.

Communism is the opiate of the undergraduate/pseudo-intellectual class of work-shy wasters which has never worked in practice and never will because, under its auspices, the most power-hungry, ambitious, and ruthless blackguards float to the top like scum, void of conscience and humanity.

And that sounds to me like a textbook analysis of the economy and state under capitalism. Perhaps you should read another thread that was posted here this morning about how politicians bleed the system dry for expenses, and you need only search this sites archives for myriad threads on the rotten state of institutions and the economy.

[C. Flower]

I'm not sure why it is obvious that it would be unsustainable other than it fits into some peoples ideological perspective. By the end of the second world war the Soviet Union was far from isolated. In fact socialism seemed to cover half the planet.

There were no major industrial powers that moved to socialism, unless you count war-wrecked east Germany. The capitalist west was able to propogandise a Hollywood world in which everyone had a house, a big car and a swimming pool in the back yard, and show pictures of GUM, in Moscow, with an oversupply of left boots (yes, possibly a myth, but not without some foundation).

You surely don't put the whole global experience of neo-liberalism reaction, that brought down the USSR and pushed back reformist gains of Social Democracy, down to the personality of Khruschev ? Capitalism didn't have an option about regaining the lost ground - it was do or die. Declining rates of profit forced it to try to grab back these territories and to intensify exploitation of populations in the capitalist countries - as well as continuing with neo colonial wars and repressions.

If political blame needs to be aportioned, for the loss of the USSR and for the failure to stop the neoliberal project in its tracks and reverse it, it surely needs to be spread across the left worldwide, and not just the CPs ?

[Edo]

This question has come up in a number of threads and I thought it might be useful to start a specific thread to discuss it.

Trotskyites assert that it was doomed from the start because it is impossible to "build socialism in one country" whereas the traditional Marxist-Leninist view is that a clique of revisionists around Khruschev simply came to power after the death of Stalin and set about restoring capitalism.

What made me return to this question is that by chance I came across an interesting article by someone called Ted Talbot who does not support either position and has an alternate view.

Talbot points out that changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not brought about by economic collapse or by popular revolution from below. The changes were in fact instigated by the elite running these countries.

In this regard he quotes from an article by Kotz and Weir:



So this poses the question .. how was it that 60 years after the revoultion you ended up with a ruling elite running the show who had more affinity with capitalism than with socialism never mind communism ... and who saw the introduction of a straightforward market economy as the best way to enrich themsleves.

It is this question that Talbot attempts to answer.

http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htm

Interesting link Sam - I haven't read anything like that since I was a member of the communist party in college over 20 years ago! - and like then - I found myself giving up the will to live half way thru it - you really have to be a "believer" for it to work for you - kinda like US style "born again" christianity in a way - if you have the "faith" the path is clear - tho to the rest of us it with a sceptic side in our brains - it sounds like total tosh

That aside..........to the your poser - why did the communist hierarchy dismantle the USSR?

I think it was that the USSR simply lost the will to exist as the USSR - they simply lost the faith.....and when you are trying to build a vaguely defined utopia.....faith to push on regardless is sometimes all you have...........the leadership couldn't see a way to move from the socialist dictatorship phase to..............??????? - if you are going to make a long hard journey - its useful to know what the end destination is............they either lost sight of the final destination, or lost faith in their ability to be able to get to the final destination ,or simply questioned the existence of the final destination in the first place............Communist Utopia, like an Aurthurian Camelot, just disappeared into the mist and legend - only visible now to a few true believers.

how long such"heretical" thoughts had been going on, or had been vogue inside the Politiburo, the Communist party leadership and the intelligentsia of the USSR prior to Gorbachevs elevation is a interesting question and would be great Masters of PHD thesis for any political or history student.

Once the private questioning of the validity of the Soviet Experiment became public post 1985 with Gorbachevs Glasnost and Perestroika - well that was the end - when the pope starts to doubt the existence of God - well the game is up

What happened after this to the USSR reminds me of the last week of a company in the US that I worked for when I was on a J1 summer stay there- once the rumours of the firms impending demise became known outside the boardroom - and after the MD addressed us all that the cash to pay the salaries would run out in a week and then the company would go into liquidation........the result was total anarchy.........nobody worked for the company at all - anything this was questioned "What are you going to do? Fire me?" - no phone calls were answered - a couple of us loyal eejits in Logistics made sure that the last orders were packed up and left the building and made sure nothing was taken out of the warehouses - other than than everybody looked after themselves - whatever you could could carry buddy - everything that wasn't nailed down was taken - everything that could be nailed down was sold off to the highest bidder in a firesale - I bought my work PC and desk for $50 and everybody did vaguely the same - lots of capital equipment and lab equipment was sold off at knockdown prices to outsiders and those in the company who could raise the cash to buy the stuff - normally the directors - by the end of the week - the only thing left to the liquidator was the 4 walls of the company buildings and other junk that nobody wanted............

thats exactly what happened the USSR in 1991 - once the ship was going down - wells its every man and woman for himself - not surprising the old elite transformed itself into the new elite - happens all the time - they were the ones in a position to exploit the wreckage- had the political and social skills to manipulate the situation and best exploit it for their own benefit and self preservation - thats why they had climbed the ladder to the top of the old elite in the first place.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE AN ELITE - no matter what society you created

If we had a revolution in the morning - I can guarantee you that within 10 years - a lot of the current elite would be back in positions of power all over the place - they know to survive - even if they were nearly all murdered - like the bolsheviks did in the USSR in the 20's - the "Elite" gene just regenerates and a new one will start acting like the old one very very soon - power and the retention of power has always been the same since the beginning of time - there is no such thing as equality of ability.

If you want an example of an elite - you could do worse than look at that wonderful character Victor Komarovsky (played brilliantly by the late great Rod Stieger) in Dr Zhivago - in the beginning of the the story he moves effortlessly in Tzarist Moscow high society - he is high up in the legal professions,multi-lingual well educated, cosmopolitan,well connected and makes it his business to be well connected. and most importantly is a keen observer of the ebbs and flows of political tides........by the end of the book he has wormed his way into influence and power in the communist party and the embryonic new elite taking shape in the USSR - people and families like that always survive.