Gorby: the sorcerer's apprentice?
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
FOR MANY on the left the 'Gorbymania' of three or four years ago has been transformed into utter disillusion. Gorbachev seems like the person who brought the Soviet Union down.
Edward Pearce, the Guardian's perverse wet Tory columnist, heaped scorn on Gorbachev for surrendering everything to the Americans internationally and giving too much democracy away at home. But many well to Pearce's left share the same theme: Gorbachev was a disaster.
Obviously Gorbachev's perestroika totally failed. To see why it is necessary to look beyond the twistings and turnings of particular Gorbachev policies over the last couple of years: failure was built into the whole project right from the start.
Radical
Perestroika, a radical renewal and restructuring, was intended at the beginning, to revive the old bureaucratic-command system, not kill it off. It did not start out as a plan to bring capitalism to the Soviet Union.
Perestroika was aimed at a partial democratisation of the system within the framework of the political monopoly of the Communist Party (CPSU); and at a marketisation of the economy within the framework of continued national planning.
Nearly seven years later it is difficult to remember these first objectives of perestroika. Why was failure written into the whole plan?
The democratic opening provided by the first initial glasnost measures brought the de facto recognition of the legality of parties other than the CPSU, and a tremendous release of nationalist sentiment in the republics.
Millions of people who had never been able to speak out freely grabbed glasnost with both hands. Once that had happened an irreversible momentum towards elections with alternative parties and platforms developed.
But the ability of the CPSU to put the brake on the democratisation movement was constrained by the visible failure of its economic policy.
Attempts at marketisation of the command economy produced an unworkable hybrid. Most industries remained nationalised, but central planning began to break down as local factory managers, and bosses in the republics, used the greater freedom to try to bolster their own position.
More economic freedom with a command economy means greater freedom for hoarders, speculators and the black market. The whole economy was 'mafia-ised'. No alternative democratic national planning was proposed; the result was growing chaos.
At first the bureaucracy at regional and local level attempted to obstruct perestroika which they often saw as a threat to their positions; but when it was rammed through they sought the profitable openings that their control of goods and a growing black market gave them.
These factors combined to drastically increase the weight of pro-capitalist, pro-market liberal forces inside the bureaucracy and the CPSU. The trajectory of Yeltsin is eloquent here.
Reputation
Yeltsin, former CPSU boss in Moscow, made his reputation as a champion of anti-bureaucratic demands – against corruption and privilege.
But by the time he became de facto leader of the Inter-Regional Group in the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet he was in effect the leader of the right.
Gorbachev had no answer to the national question. He oscillated between repression of national movements and concessions. But the possibility of any kind of future federation on a non-capitalist basis was undermined by his refusal to concede the basic national right of self-determination from the very beginning.
By 1990 the pro-capitalist consensus inside the bureaucracy and the Communist Party was overwhelming.
The splits inside the bureaucracy revealed at the time of the August 1991 coup were essentially over the preservation of the union, reflecting the interests of sections of the bureaucracy like the armed forces' leaders dependent on the all-union state apparatus. But neither the coup plotters nor those who rallied round them were opposed to the restoration of capitalism.
But of course the coup tremendously speeded up the whole pro-capitalist process which was in train anyway. It gave the opportunity for the most vigorously pro-market 'liberal' wing of the bureaucracy, led by Yeltsin, to come to power and push through their wilder economic plans.
But they are faced with huge restraints. They cannot rapidly marketise an economy which is still 98 per cent in public hands; that will take many years and billions of dollars, if it is ever accomplished at all.
What can be done is to viciously attack the social gains of the working class as a 'preparation' for marketisation. This is exactly what is happening now. The cheap rents, fuel, food, transport and other necessities, historic gains for the Soviet workers, are being swept away.
Phenomenon
The Gorbachev phenomenon occurred because a section of the political leadership of the bureaucracy looked the reality of the Soviet Union in the face; and they saw that a general, systemic stagnation had overtaken the rapid economic gains of the post-war period.
The need for an overhaul of the system was first recognised by Gorbachev's former patron, Andropov. Andropov, former head of the KGB, knew better than anyone else the real details of the Soviet Union's stagnation and decline.
What some of Gorbachev's 'campist' critics don't see is that the Soviet Union was on the road to disaster and collapse anyway. If Gorbachev and the perestroika process had not intervened, then economic collapse and mass protest movements like Poland's Solidarnosc would have emerged.
Dilemmas
Perestroika just precipitated a world-historic crisis which was waiting to happen. Whatever the way in which the crisis emerged, the same basic dilemmas would have been there.
Gorbachev's fate just highlights the fact that the bureaucratic command system is one which cannot be reformed. It can only be overthrown and replaced. The question is – by what?
And here we come back to the crux of the matter. Anyone who thinks that without Gorbachev and perestroika we would be coasting along with some new form of Brezhnevism is day dreaming.
For a transformation of the Soviet Union towards democratic socialism, the only way to avoid the horrible historical price which will be paid for capitalist restoration, is for a mass labour and socialist movement to emerge and take power. It is a huge task which is just beginning.