The Dissolution of the USSR was "engineered"?

[stud40111]

I read the following quote in another thread on this forum:

"...the Soviet Union didn't "fall" or "collapse" in any particularly valid sense of those words; its dissolution was engineered by political officials acting against a popular desire for its preservation"

That was not the first time that I heard a statement to that effect.

Now my question, which is directed to those who share a similar sentiment, is in what particular ways does it appear that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was "engineered"? In what ways does it appear to have been deliberately done?

I am not interested so much (right now) in what may have motivated individuals to dissolve the USSR, but in what ways they went about doing this, if, indeed, its dissolution can be considered to have been the product of deliberate efforts in that direction.

Anyone with insights and answers, please share them.

Thanks in advance.

[stud40111]

Nobody cares to take a stab at this one?

[Kléber]

It was completely engineered, Gorbachev had been making slight moves toward it for a few years before it happened. Privatization was carried out by Party bureaucrats. The bureaucrats had all the money (because, since the times of Lenin, they had been making at least 10 times as much money as workers), and they were the ones conducting the privatization process since they ran the government and anybody who criticized them had been shot since the times of Stalin so.. surprise surprise, the old Party bureaucrats bought everything that was privatized, and they became the new capitalist class. Look at who the capitalist oligarch barons in Russia used to be, before 1991, they were practically all high-level Party officials. The USSR was destroyed by its own ruling elite. Stalinists thought this would never be possible because socialism could supposedly be built in the USSR as long as the CPSU stayed in charge and it was safe from imperialist attack. However, the restoration of capitalism had been predicted by Leon Trotsky long ago in The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm); he said it was inevitable that either the workers would rise up against the bureaucracy and establish socialism, or the bureaucracy would triumph over the workers and restore capitalism.

[Comrade_Stalin]

The answer to this question will change based, on who you ask. The Trotskyist will tell you that it was Stalin and his bureaucrats, which “engineered” the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Stalinists will tell you that it was the revisionist that “engineered” the collapse. I can see more proof in the Stalinists point of view as countries that still follow Stalin’s economic model are still standing.

[Kléber]

I can see more proof in the Stalinists point of view as countries that still follow Stalin’s economic model are still standing.http://www.hjo3.net/orly/gal2/orly_luigi.jpg

[Kayser_Soso]

It was completely engineered, Gorbachev had been making slight moves toward it for a few years before it happened. Privatization was carried out by Party bureaucrats. The bureaucrats had all the money (because, since the times of Lenin, they had been making at least 10 times as much money as workers), and they were the ones conducting the privatization process since they ran the government and anybody who criticized them had been shot since the times of Stalin so.. surprise surprise, the old Party bureaucrats bought everything that was privatized, and they became the new capitalist class. Look at who the capitalist oligarch barons in Russia used to be, before 1991, they were practically all high-level Party officials. The USSR was destroyed by its own ruling elite. Stalinists thought this would never be possible because socialism could supposedly be built in the USSR as long as the CPSU stayed in charge and it was safe from imperialist attack. However, the restoration of capitalism had been predicted by Leon Trotsky long ago in The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm); he said it was inevitable that either the workers would rise up against the bureaucracy and establish socialism, or the bureaucracy would triumph over the workers and restore capitalism.

Trotsky also "predicted" that socialism was so entrenched in the USSR that it any attempt to overthrow it would be extremely bloody, possibly resulting in civil war.

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

From my point of view, we do have to understand some of the motives to understand the methods. Too many people simply say Gorbachev led a great conspiracy to undermine the regime. I disagree. Whatever he says about this now, the dissolution of the USSR was by no means consciously his will, but one of a variety of possible results of his policies as their consequences so happened to play out.

Understanding the Gorbachev period requires that we understand the context in which he rose to power. Contrary to Trotskyite logic, when Gorbachev came to ascendancy, the Soviet Union was on no level a progressive country. During the 1950s, but particularly as concentrated in the rise of Khrushchev and his group to power, decisive shifts took place in the way the USSR was administered and how it participated in the world. We see these particularly in the liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the "all-people's state" and "all-people's party", the shift in relations with other aligned countries (namely the shift to a policy of other countries simply producing commodities for Soviet consumption rather than being meaningfully assisted in their own development, thereby assuring their perpetual dependence on the USSR), the introduction of the whole concept that the revolution doesn't continue under socialism, but rather that socialist progress occurs simply through peaceful competition with the imperialist world, etc. These alterations were fundamental, rapidly transforming the Soviet Union from a nominally socialist country into a social-imperialist nation. (One that, in other words, was socialist in name, but imperialist in reality.) Khrushchev's line represented the interests of a rising class of capitalists seen in what the West knows as the "black market", i.e. an underground capitalist economy that had developed as a result of many of the old relations (namely production relations) remaining untransformed and which had gained ideological muscle by way of the substantial disconnect established between the party and the people during the 1930s (the latter 1930s in particular). This class of capitalists now in effect took over the administration of the society.

Subsequently, Soviet policies generally mirrored the Keynesian-esque logic that prevailed in other imperialist countries at that time. A substantial welfare state was maintained for some time in order to buy off the domestic working population and paid for through the exploitation of people across the globe through empire-building that was rationalized as "internationalism". The Soviet economy precisely from the time of Khrushchev then naturally began to fray and weaken as it became progressively more parasitic. Anti-social behavior made a major comeback. By the mid-1960s, the imposition of outright militarism had become necessary to sustain all this; a shift concentrated in the rise of Brezhnev to power. The crushing of emerging civil protests, including ones demanding the restoration of the proletarian dictatorship, now took place in keeping with that. Likewise, suddenly god-breathing now came back into fashion and official acceptability, viewed as providing a "healthier", non-political outlet for broad discontent.

By the early 1980s, the Soviet economy had become completely stagnant, debt had run up to vast amounts, and life expectancy in the USSR was actually falling. It was in this context that Gorbachev came to ascendancy. His rise to power concentrated a shift away from Keynesian-like policies to new "get cheap" policies vaguely mirroring the same principle shift that was already underway in the imperialist world more broadly (the shift to neoliberal economics). Indeed the country got cheaper in many ways. Part of this involved the brilliant economics of perestroika, which privatized and sold off to foreigners large chunks of the Soviet economy, thereby creating a new, competing class of capitalists whose interests were hostile to those of the ruling bourgeoisie. The new "get cheap" shift also affected other policy areas, including military and spying expenditure. Indeed, the core reason Gorbachev had been selected to administer the country was because he opposed continuing the occupation of Afghanistan, viewing that proxy war between the Soviet Union on the one hand and the United States on the other as too expensive to sustain. (The Soviet Union's Afghanistan War thus functioned in much the same way for it as the Vietnam War did for America; serving as the final impetus for a major policy shift from "buy-off-the-people" to "get cheap".) But these "get cheap" policies led forward by Gorbachev had unintended effects...

In addition to, as previously stated, creating a new, competing class of capitalists whose interests were hostile to those of the ruling bourgeoisie, the way in which these hostilities got sharpened up politically often revolved around the role of the military-spying apparatus in society and globally. Brezhnev had made this apparatus central to his policies. The Gorbachev policies, by contrast, substantially decreased the power and the influence of that apparatus both domestically and globally. As a result, the military-spying apparatus came into increasingly overt and sharp conflict with the new perestroika and glasnost reforms. One could easily see this in the Soviet-aligned parties around the world, for example. The CP-USA, which the KGB boasted of having "total control" over (literally administering it through a secret wing therein), denounced perestroika as "revisionism" for instance. Gorbachev's policies, it should be added, corresponded to a general realignment with the United States, marking a shift from Soviet assertion in the world to a protracted process of capitulation. By 1990, as Soviet client states were being overthrown across Eastern Europe, Gorbachev made a declaration that the USA and the USSR were "no longer adversaries". The subsequent year, the Soviet Union participated in the original Gulf War led forward by the United States and canceled the Warsaw Pact. It was the latter move in particular that sparked a rebellion led by the military-spying apparatus and representing the class interests of the entrenched "black market" capitalists for the abandonment of the Gorbachev reform policies. They were defeated by the political and military forces of the new, rising class of capitalists led famously by Yeltsin, who apparently made the most nearly coherent speech of his political career at this key juncture. Subsequently unable to distinguish friend from foe in the military-spying apparatus, the regime was now crucially weakened. It was in this window of opportunity that Yeltsin rose to power and in which his aligned forces, against the will of Gorbachev, had the Soviet Union dissolved and "shock therapy" implemented in Russia. Gorbachev, from the start, had been attempting to act in the interests of the old class of "black market" capitalists, but had found that in so doing he was forced to give rise to the contradictions that would ultimately undermine the regime. This outcome was by no means inevitable. Had the military-spying apparatus-led forces won their coup attempt in 1991, the Soviet Union might still exist today.

Hopefully that clarifies things a bit.

[RED DAVE]

Contrary to Trotskyite logic, when Gorbachev came to ascendancy, the Soviet Union was on no level a progressive country.I guess you mean the orthodox Trotskyists, who maintained the fantasy of the degenerated workers state.


We see these particularly in the liquidation of the dictatorshipWhat dictatorship of the proletariat. What the USSR had, from the late 120s on, was state capitalism and the dictatorship of the party, which was transformed, almost seamlessly for the ruling class, into private capitalism.

No one has ever shown any meaningful changes in the relations of production, that is the control of surplus value, between the final ascendency of Stalin and the present capitalist Russia. The workers worked for wages then and now. They controlled neither production on the workplace level nor on the national level then or now.

RED DAVE

[Kayser_Soso]

No one has ever shown any meaningful changes in the relations of production, that is the control of surplus value, between the final ascendency of Stalin and the present capitalist Russia. The workers worked for wages then and now. They controlled neither production on the workplace level nor on the national level then or now.

RED DAVE


Seamlessly? I take it you've never been to Russia.

[What Would Durruti Do?]

Trotsky also "predicted" that socialism was so entrenched in the USSR that it any attempt to overthrow it would be extremely bloody, possibly resulting in civil war.

You disagree with that?

[RED DAVE]

What the USSR had, from the late 120s on, was state capitalism and the dictatorship of the party, which was transformed, almost seamlessly for the ruling class, into private capitalism.
Seamlessly? I take it you've never been to Russia.I specifically said "seamlessly for the ruling class". Have they been suffering?


No one has ever shown any meaningful changes in the relations of production, that is the control of surplus value, between the final ascendency of Stalin and the present capitalist Russia. The workers worked for wages then and now. They controlled neither production on the workplace level nor on the national level then or now.How about answering this one.

RED DAVE

[Comrade_Stalin]

:laugh: I don't know what your picture was their comrade Kleber, but it is :lol: that it didn't show up.

[Dean]

From my point of view, we do have to understand some of the motives to understand the methods. Too many people simply say Gorbachev led a great conspiracy to undermine the regime. I disagree. Whatever he says about this now, the dissolution of the USSR was by no means consciously his will, but one of a variety of possible results of his policies as their consequences so happened to play out.

Great post, and very interesting!

[Kléber]

Contrary to Trotskyite logic, when Gorbachev came to ascendancy, the Soviet Union was on no level a progressive country.Trotskyists defended the USSR in WWII after one of the most violent suppressions in labor history, so yes, we would also defend it, despite the fact that some Stalinists scream because the name of their great leader has been profaned in this revisionist nation.. We defended it not because of love for Stalin or Gorbachev but because the reason its enemies wanted to destroy it was to eliminate the one thing progressive left about it, the public property system left over from 1917. Trotsky believed in defending Soviet property against all enemies internal and external. Indeed, the proletariat suffered greatly from privatization. If the Left Opposition had not been massacred in 1937, there would have still been a vanguard present with a mass strategy to oppose privatization. That probably would have worked better than the "hardline" byzantine coup attempt.


The Soviet economy precisely from the time of Khrushchev then naturally began to fray and weaken as it became progressively more parasitic.Lenin said that "state capitalism" exists wherever bosses are getting paid ten times as much as workers. How did "socialism" supposedly get established under Stalin, when he maintained capitalist wage differences, massacred all political opposition, and oversaw the expansion of bureaucratic and military privileges like special stores and restaurants into which workers were not allowed?

According to official figures, Soviet society actually got less parasitic under Khrushchev. Obviously, corruption was not officially noted, and the social differences were actually widening. But the perspective that "this all started in 1953 when the great man died" is individualistic and lame. Corruption and state capitalism have their roots not in the death of a Great Socialist Man, but in Soviet society from the very beginning under Lenin; Lenin criticized these aspects of society, analyzed them honestly, but they were legitimized by Stalin's rule since he declared "socialism" to exist while they were still around. That is why Stalin, not Khrushchev, is the revisionist to blame here. Declaring that socialism existed was an abandonment of the struggle for it.


Trotsky also "predicted" that socialism was so entrenched in the USSR that it any attempt to overthrow it would be extremely bloody, possibly resulting in civil war.Yes, Trotsky failed to predict that decades of exploitation in the name of "socialism," and purging of socialist opposition, could produce a working class that had lost the consciousness, willpower and organization to defend itself.

[Kayser_Soso]

I specifically said "seamlessly for the ruling class". Have they been suffering?



The full restoration of capitalism in Russia chucked out many members of the old ruling class and replaced them with new ones, so you could say that. It was anything but seamless, and while there was no civil war, it was far from bloodless.

[Comrade_Stalin]

There one thing I agree with the Trotskyists about, it is that privatization is bad for workers.

[RED DAVE]

I specifically said "seamlessly for the ruling class". Have they been suffering?
The full restoration of capitalism in Russia chucked out many members of the old ruling class and replaced them with new ones, so you could say that. It was anything but seamless, and while there was no civil war, it was far from bloodless.Okay.

What I would like to see is a concrete analysis of the relationship of the old bureaucratic ruling class of state capitalism and the new ruling class of corporate capitalism, plus a analysis of what portions of the Russian economy are still in state hands. I have read that there is a strong overlapping between the ownership/control of the remaining state economy and the corporate economy.

Interestingly, the economy of Taiwan went through a similar development from the capitalist side. After WWII a state capitalist economy was built, which gradually has been transformed into a corporate economy, with no pretenses that the economy was ever socialist.

RED DAVE