Yeltsin's poll victory a step to dictatorship

Socialist Outlook no. 41, 1 May 1993 · printed under the name Paul Clarke

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

BORIS YELTSIN'S victory in the Russian referendum is a major step in the direction of dictatorial rule. It is also likely to translate into further blows against the living standards of the Russian masses.

The conflict between Yeltsin and the Congress of People's Deputies has been above all over economic reform. Yeltsin's plans to speed up market reform involve cutting state credit to industry, and allowing enterprises to become bankrupt. If these plans go through, millions of Russian workers will be sacked.

Industrial chiefs

Opposition to Yeltsin's plans in the Congress has come from groups strongly linked to industrial managers; the section of the old bureaucracy dependent on the management of big industry and the thousands of large-scale factories which still dominate the Russian economy.

Yeltsin's line has been that economic chaos has been caused by the slow progress of economic reform. But in reality the chaos has been produced by the disruption of the old planning system.

This has been compounded by deliberate economic sabotage by the West. Up to $24 billion in aid to Russia has been designated by the IMF, World Bank and Western governments – but only $1 billion delivered.

Break-up

The rest depends on 'the speed of economic reform' – ie marketisation and breaking up the big industrial complexes.

Add to this is the maintenance of the cold-war COCOM trade restrictions, which blocks thousands of Russian goods being imported into the West, and the export of high tech goods to Russia.

Further privatisation and marketisation will change the situation in Russia from chaos to social catastrophe. If the big enterprises are allowed to become bankrupt it will result in mass unemployment, and the eventual reduction of Russia to third world levels of subsistence.

That kind of social catastrophe will need the heavy hand of authoritarian government to implement it; and that is the road which Yeltsin is going down.