synthesis
8th February 2010, 20:23
I. Introductions & the Paradox of Narrator
What was the true nature of the Soviet Union?
Was it a Union of Socialist Republics, as its name would suggest? A benign experiment in socialism, thwarted by the devious hand of Western imperialism?
Was it a "deformed workers' state," as Trotsky argued? An initially satisfactory attempt to bring "power to the people," corrupted by reactionary forces and manipulated into right-wing autocracy?
Was it a perversion of the Revolution into dictatorship, as the anarchists angrily asserted? A victory of statism over democracy at the hands of Lenin and friends?
Was it an egregious instance of "state-capitalism," as the Maoists sought to prove? A once-glorious bastion of proletarian power that devolved into yet another caste society after the death of Stalin?
Or, was it a totalitarian "Evil Empire," as Ronald Reagan's speechwriters valiantly, gallantly proposed? A malignant entity, seeking to expand its web of slavery and repression by any means necessary?
Was it one, none, all of the above?
The answer: Yes. (Sorry.)
Yes, the Soviet Union was the first attempt to implement a fairer economic system on a national level.
Yes, it was authoritarian, it was a caste society, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat," if it ever existed at all, was replaced by a dictatorship of the Party.
And it most certainly was an evil empire, in that every empire is evil to those who are dominated by it.
In hindsight, however, the reality is that none of these perspectives originated in a vacuum. Every single one of these analyses emerged from the political necessity for some kind of historical perspective that could capably promote the agenda of its author while also vilifying the agenda of the author's opponents.
These are not frameworks of understanding, per se, they are narratives with political consequences, and must be addressed accordingly.
Of course, we all know that the best bullshit always originates in a kernel of truth. In turn, the seed of bullshit cannot simply be dismissed outright, as the accompanying narrative can endure and then enthrall a susceptible new generation, tragically incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff and the baby from the bathwater.
First and foremost, context is everything, and no meaningful discussion of history is ever so simple as we'd like to think.
In attempting to objectively revisit the history of the Soviet Union from a sober, materialist point of view, the trappings of many 20th-century historical perspectives reveal themselves to be just that: trappings, superficial and hollow; argumentative, not descriptive.
So what was the true nature of the Soviet Union?
The fundamental problem is that this question implicitly assumes the Soviet Union had a "true nature," incontrovertibly distinguishable from how it existed beforehand and how it exists today, or somehow distinct from the course of progress in the rest of the world, on the basis of its stated ideology.
In case you haven't noticed, the history of the Soviet Union is habitually used in maligning, defending or indemnifying the socialist agenda, so the question of its "historical nature" is an important line of inquiry, even if the answer does not immediately further the socialist cause, or, perhaps, is even non-existent entirely.
II. Back to the Basics
So let's start with what we all know and can agree upon. When analyzing the course of a society's political, economic, and social development, the feudal, agricultural mode of production finds itself violently replaced by the industrial mode of production, with its own set of haves and have-nots.
Marx simply recorded this scientific observation, then used it to predict that the have-nots of industrial capitalism would launch a revolution, as did the have-nots of feudalism, and would eventually usher in the penultimate mode of production: socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the reign of the industrial have-nots.
In 1917, Russia was a feudal empire that sought to compete with Western Europe for colonial hegemony, a rivalry that reached its peak in the First World War. Russia's disastrous performance in the Great War and the subsequent social collapse led to revolts and eventually Marxist revolution.
But here's where it gets a little thorny. Marx wrote in a different time and place from you and I and Lenin. Technology, psychology, and imperialism are all entirely different creatures these days.
At the same time, his context gave him the ability to fully appreciate both the tragedy and the progressive nature of industrial capitalism as it usurped feudalism in Western Europe. Marx saw that the productive powers of capitalism are a source of horrendous inequality, but also that these powers could create a better society, if used for the common good.
Not so in Russia; there, industrial capitalism had not yet become the dominant mode of production. Political discourse was still primarily dominated by the feudalist paradigm.
Let's cut to the chase. Essentially, in the sense of the Marxist progression of production, the October Revolution was the direct Russian equivalent of the French Revolution.
Czar Nicholas played the role of Louis XVI, and Lenin played Robespierre, but the movie was formulaic and the plot predictable. Like everyone else, Marxists in Russia had to adapt their ideology to their circumstances, but Russia's material conditions prevented her socialists from retaining much of the essence of Marxism.
"True Marxism" survives and prospers in crowded cities, mines, and factories, which existed in Russia, but nowhere near the extent that Marx envisioned.
The Marxists of Russia certainly tried, though - that's how we got the Hammer and Sickle as a symbol of communism in the 20th century, instead of just the Hammer. The feudal have-nots had to be accommodated, or else there was no revolution.
Leninism, in turn, also originated in Russian circumstances. The theory of Leninism goes hand-in-hand with the practice of authoritarianism. The Russian proletariat was judged to be incapable of handling its own affairs, so the revolutionary vanguard entered the Marxist lexicon, first to organize the proletariat, then to act on their behalf.
This paradigm serves to deny agency to "the masses" as the Party begins to exert total jurisdiction over who is and is not a "counter-revolutionary" and an "enemy of the proletarian state." The outcome of the Russian Revolution was not the result of diabolical plotting by the Bolsheviks; again, the collision between Marxist theory and Russian realities created an entirely new monster of hierarchy.
This is not unique. At the risk of appearing chauvinistic and insensitive, pre-industrial societies are generally possessed of certain characteristics that are, in turn, rendered obsolete by industrialization. These tendencies are not universal, but they are helpful and informative when attempting to develop a useful framework for analyzing the Soviet Union.
1. "L'etat, c'est moi!"
Whether aristocratic, monarchical, oligarchic or autocratic, the state is proudly, unapologetically authoritarian - a tendency that originates in the salience of scarcity. At the end of the day, the time spent by the ruling class defending their state against moral objection is time they should be putting into suppressing the starving peasant mob outside their door.
2. "Juden Raus!"
Xenophobia and caste systems are profoundly embedded into the social consciousness. Illiteracy and the lack of demographic centralization are key factors. (In other words, we were all born ignorant, but nobody in your twelve-person village can educate you.) Literacy and urbanization are subsequently seen as threats to the pre-industrial ruling class.
3. "Allah u Akbar!"
Religion is, indeed, the opiate of the people. When times are hard, people rely on God to carry on with their lives. In a pre-industrial society, times are hard most of the time, what with all the famine and the disease and the poverty and the repression.
As a result, religion pervades every aspect of pre-industrial society, from the legitimization of the state and status quo to the subconscious thought processes of those lowest on the rungs of the caste system.
These are not universal characteristics, but they certainly influenced the development of the Soviet Union.
III. Translations & Transformations
So what happened with the French Revolution after the revolutionaries put the royalty to the guillotine?
Hey, remember those Enlightenment values, the values that legitimized the French Revolution?
Those values totally turned France on its head in the years to come, right?
They irrevocably invaded every aspect of French life and society, right?
They replaced authoritarianism with liberty, xenophobia with tolerance, and religion with reason... right?
Oh? What's that, you say? Reign of Terror? Who's Napoleon Bonaparte?
Well, who played that role in Russia?
Joseph who?
You get the idea.
Maybe you don't. The point is to reiterate that no ideology exists in a vacuum. Whether it's Marxism or the Enlightenment, ideology must reflect through the prism of material conditions before it is possible to shed any light at all.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the French Revolution of 1793. Are the number of parallels between the two revolutions just coincidental? I would say no.
For example:
Both originated in widespread discontent with the self-interested myopia of the national royalty - not in that of the bourgeoisie.
Both found accomplished leaders, dedicated to the ideology of revolution - Robespierre and Lenin, respectively - who launched "campaigns of terror" against counter-revolutionaries and ultimately emerged victorious from brutal, polarizing civil wars.
Both went on to leave a vacuum of power when they died, a vacuum eventually filled by ambitious authoritarians who paved the way for the global empires of their political descendants.
I think the parallel has been sufficiently established. Let's move away from the French for a second and look more closely at Stalin's reign of power, which represented the nadir of the collision of Marxist ideology with Russian realities.
Lenin was a pragmatist, undoubtedly, but he remained a dedicated progressive, even while in power; the currents of change gave buoyancy to his beliefs. Stalin, on the other hand, was both a pragmatist and a populist. The former requires you to acknowledge your conditions, the latter binds you by them; no small burden for a Marxist in a largely pre-industrial society like Russia.
Stalin's administration consolidated the authoritarian Soviet state, that which was torn from the Czar during the Revolution and haphazardly reconstructed after the Civil War. However, given that Russia was still largely pre-industrial at the time, the strong state was not a new development, and I am curious as to how the industrialization of Russia would have played out had that head of state not headed the state.
Stalin also associated the "worldwide revolution" in rival Trotsky's rhetoric with the latter's "rootless cosmopolitanism," Stalin's euphemism for Jews; this argument that appealed to agrarian Russians for several reasons.
Of course, anti-Semitism has a long and tragic history in Eastern Europe, but there's more to it than that. The "rootless cosmopolitan" is implicitly contrasted with the "good farmer," not a cosmopolitan, roots deeply planted in the ground.
The role of religion is also crucial. Marxism is materialist, true, but the people still need their opiate. In contrast to the scientific approach of "classical Marxism," which recognized the progressive nature of the productive capacity afforded by industrialization, socialists in pre-industrial countries constructed a quasi-religious narrative identifying capitalism as the "Great Satan" and socialism as the "Savior"; privately, this meant that the masses were the "sheep" and the Party was their shepherd.
Finally and most importantly, Stalin sought to build his credibility as a Russian nationalist, in contrast to the internationalism of "rootless cosmopolitans" like Lenin and Trotsky - in spite of Stalin's Georgian ancestry. At the same time, instead of "worldwide revolution," Stalin promoted "socialism in one country," which would then "spread outwards."
Sounds like a pretty solid excuse for imperial expansion, right?
Hey, do you remember how this all started? The imperial ambitions of the Czardom and what not? The ambitions that ultimately facilitated its downfall in 1917?
They didn't die with the Czar. At some level, the Party recognized that the Soviet Union was simply a leaner, meaner, more efficient vessel of the Russian Empire.
The Soviet Union - the territories directly under Russian control - represented the "old" empire, that which sought territory and direct hegemony. The Cold War signified Russia's status as a "new" empire, that which seeks labor and resources but only uses its military as a last resort, such as in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Of course, the Czar's imperial ambitions ended in World War I, which was in turn a result of internal competition among the Western European colonial powers. World War II, then, heralded the decline of those same Western European colonial powers on a global scale.
The empires of Western Europe, weakened by war, could not maintain direct control over their colonies, eventually leaving a vacuum of power, waiting to be substantiated.
America and Russia, then, started their new relationship with a bang by carving out their own pieces of Germany. America emerged from WWII stronger than it started, so it wasted no time putting West Germany in its pocket with the Marshall Plan, while Russia, having suffered losses beyond comparison, also wasted no time in gutting East Germany for its industry and resources.
VII. Consequences and Conclusions
Thus began a pattern that would dominate global politics for the next forty years. Obviously, the Cold War was not a struggle of freedom against exploitation, of liberty against slavery, or of socialism against capitalism.
These struggles existed, to be sure, but they became subsumed into the broader paradigm of neo-colonial competition between the U.S. and Russia.
The Cold War, therefore, was simply another War by Proxy between two imperial powers, masquerading under the guise of ideology. Once the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, little changed.
Sure, the standards of living have gone down in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union, while overt inequality has shot through the roof.
But that is too limited a perspective.
Globalization is more influential now than ever. Russia is still competing with America over their mutual imperial ambitions, for example in South Ossetia and Georgia. The government is still strongly authoritarian, and freedom of speech only applies to those who tow the Party line.
Finally, the country is still run by an oligarchy. It is composed of a legitimate bourgeoisie instead of a transient, transitory "dictatorship of the proletariat," but the personnel is largely the same.
And you know what?
It's a good thing.
Not for those dominated by this paradigm, certainly, but for us. Let's look at the big picture. At least these imperialists aren't claiming to represent socialist ideals while they pursue hegemony in the developing world.
The Russian Revolution makes sense as a bourgeois revolution, but it was not a victory for socialism. It was a victory for Russia.
The other side of the coin is that the fall of the Soviet Union was a victory for socialism, albeit only in a symbolic sense, and it will be some time before anyone will recognize it as such.
So, yes, the story of the Soviet Union is complex and multifaceted. In different times and in different places, it was a union of socialist republics, it was a deformed worker's state, it was a statist caste system, and it was an evil empire.
More importantly, it was none of these things.
In hindsight, these are all simply narratives with fundamentally political origins. They do not aim to be accurate, nor do they seek to provide meaningful insight for the modern socialist. These narratives exist to prove a point, one that serves the purpose of the narrator.
In so doing, however, they manipulate the discussion so as to avoid addressing the decrepit ideologies moldering underneath their foundation. These narratives are true in some ways and false in others, but most importantly they are bullshit.
The bullshit has been piling up for so long that it clouds our vision. As 21st-century socialists, we're way overdue to "clean house."
Time to grab your shovel and get to scooping.
Suggested reading:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
By Kun Fana; Thanks to Kleber, Intelligitimate, FSL, and robbo203 for their contributions
What was the true nature of the Soviet Union?
Was it a Union of Socialist Republics, as its name would suggest? A benign experiment in socialism, thwarted by the devious hand of Western imperialism?
Was it a "deformed workers' state," as Trotsky argued? An initially satisfactory attempt to bring "power to the people," corrupted by reactionary forces and manipulated into right-wing autocracy?
Was it a perversion of the Revolution into dictatorship, as the anarchists angrily asserted? A victory of statism over democracy at the hands of Lenin and friends?
Was it an egregious instance of "state-capitalism," as the Maoists sought to prove? A once-glorious bastion of proletarian power that devolved into yet another caste society after the death of Stalin?
Or, was it a totalitarian "Evil Empire," as Ronald Reagan's speechwriters valiantly, gallantly proposed? A malignant entity, seeking to expand its web of slavery and repression by any means necessary?
Was it one, none, all of the above?
The answer: Yes. (Sorry.)
Yes, the Soviet Union was the first attempt to implement a fairer economic system on a national level.
Yes, it was authoritarian, it was a caste society, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat," if it ever existed at all, was replaced by a dictatorship of the Party.
And it most certainly was an evil empire, in that every empire is evil to those who are dominated by it.
In hindsight, however, the reality is that none of these perspectives originated in a vacuum. Every single one of these analyses emerged from the political necessity for some kind of historical perspective that could capably promote the agenda of its author while also vilifying the agenda of the author's opponents.
These are not frameworks of understanding, per se, they are narratives with political consequences, and must be addressed accordingly.
Of course, we all know that the best bullshit always originates in a kernel of truth. In turn, the seed of bullshit cannot simply be dismissed outright, as the accompanying narrative can endure and then enthrall a susceptible new generation, tragically incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff and the baby from the bathwater.
First and foremost, context is everything, and no meaningful discussion of history is ever so simple as we'd like to think.
In attempting to objectively revisit the history of the Soviet Union from a sober, materialist point of view, the trappings of many 20th-century historical perspectives reveal themselves to be just that: trappings, superficial and hollow; argumentative, not descriptive.
So what was the true nature of the Soviet Union?
The fundamental problem is that this question implicitly assumes the Soviet Union had a "true nature," incontrovertibly distinguishable from how it existed beforehand and how it exists today, or somehow distinct from the course of progress in the rest of the world, on the basis of its stated ideology.
In case you haven't noticed, the history of the Soviet Union is habitually used in maligning, defending or indemnifying the socialist agenda, so the question of its "historical nature" is an important line of inquiry, even if the answer does not immediately further the socialist cause, or, perhaps, is even non-existent entirely.
II. Back to the Basics
So let's start with what we all know and can agree upon. When analyzing the course of a society's political, economic, and social development, the feudal, agricultural mode of production finds itself violently replaced by the industrial mode of production, with its own set of haves and have-nots.
Marx simply recorded this scientific observation, then used it to predict that the have-nots of industrial capitalism would launch a revolution, as did the have-nots of feudalism, and would eventually usher in the penultimate mode of production: socialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the reign of the industrial have-nots.
In 1917, Russia was a feudal empire that sought to compete with Western Europe for colonial hegemony, a rivalry that reached its peak in the First World War. Russia's disastrous performance in the Great War and the subsequent social collapse led to revolts and eventually Marxist revolution.
But here's where it gets a little thorny. Marx wrote in a different time and place from you and I and Lenin. Technology, psychology, and imperialism are all entirely different creatures these days.
At the same time, his context gave him the ability to fully appreciate both the tragedy and the progressive nature of industrial capitalism as it usurped feudalism in Western Europe. Marx saw that the productive powers of capitalism are a source of horrendous inequality, but also that these powers could create a better society, if used for the common good.
Not so in Russia; there, industrial capitalism had not yet become the dominant mode of production. Political discourse was still primarily dominated by the feudalist paradigm.
Let's cut to the chase. Essentially, in the sense of the Marxist progression of production, the October Revolution was the direct Russian equivalent of the French Revolution.
Czar Nicholas played the role of Louis XVI, and Lenin played Robespierre, but the movie was formulaic and the plot predictable. Like everyone else, Marxists in Russia had to adapt their ideology to their circumstances, but Russia's material conditions prevented her socialists from retaining much of the essence of Marxism.
"True Marxism" survives and prospers in crowded cities, mines, and factories, which existed in Russia, but nowhere near the extent that Marx envisioned.
The Marxists of Russia certainly tried, though - that's how we got the Hammer and Sickle as a symbol of communism in the 20th century, instead of just the Hammer. The feudal have-nots had to be accommodated, or else there was no revolution.
Leninism, in turn, also originated in Russian circumstances. The theory of Leninism goes hand-in-hand with the practice of authoritarianism. The Russian proletariat was judged to be incapable of handling its own affairs, so the revolutionary vanguard entered the Marxist lexicon, first to organize the proletariat, then to act on their behalf.
This paradigm serves to deny agency to "the masses" as the Party begins to exert total jurisdiction over who is and is not a "counter-revolutionary" and an "enemy of the proletarian state." The outcome of the Russian Revolution was not the result of diabolical plotting by the Bolsheviks; again, the collision between Marxist theory and Russian realities created an entirely new monster of hierarchy.
This is not unique. At the risk of appearing chauvinistic and insensitive, pre-industrial societies are generally possessed of certain characteristics that are, in turn, rendered obsolete by industrialization. These tendencies are not universal, but they are helpful and informative when attempting to develop a useful framework for analyzing the Soviet Union.
1. "L'etat, c'est moi!"
Whether aristocratic, monarchical, oligarchic or autocratic, the state is proudly, unapologetically authoritarian - a tendency that originates in the salience of scarcity. At the end of the day, the time spent by the ruling class defending their state against moral objection is time they should be putting into suppressing the starving peasant mob outside their door.
2. "Juden Raus!"
Xenophobia and caste systems are profoundly embedded into the social consciousness. Illiteracy and the lack of demographic centralization are key factors. (In other words, we were all born ignorant, but nobody in your twelve-person village can educate you.) Literacy and urbanization are subsequently seen as threats to the pre-industrial ruling class.
3. "Allah u Akbar!"
Religion is, indeed, the opiate of the people. When times are hard, people rely on God to carry on with their lives. In a pre-industrial society, times are hard most of the time, what with all the famine and the disease and the poverty and the repression.
As a result, religion pervades every aspect of pre-industrial society, from the legitimization of the state and status quo to the subconscious thought processes of those lowest on the rungs of the caste system.
These are not universal characteristics, but they certainly influenced the development of the Soviet Union.
III. Translations & Transformations
So what happened with the French Revolution after the revolutionaries put the royalty to the guillotine?
Hey, remember those Enlightenment values, the values that legitimized the French Revolution?
Those values totally turned France on its head in the years to come, right?
They irrevocably invaded every aspect of French life and society, right?
They replaced authoritarianism with liberty, xenophobia with tolerance, and religion with reason... right?
Oh? What's that, you say? Reign of Terror? Who's Napoleon Bonaparte?
Well, who played that role in Russia?
Joseph who?
You get the idea.
Maybe you don't. The point is to reiterate that no ideology exists in a vacuum. Whether it's Marxism or the Enlightenment, ideology must reflect through the prism of material conditions before it is possible to shed any light at all.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the French Revolution of 1793. Are the number of parallels between the two revolutions just coincidental? I would say no.
For example:
Both originated in widespread discontent with the self-interested myopia of the national royalty - not in that of the bourgeoisie.
Both found accomplished leaders, dedicated to the ideology of revolution - Robespierre and Lenin, respectively - who launched "campaigns of terror" against counter-revolutionaries and ultimately emerged victorious from brutal, polarizing civil wars.
Both went on to leave a vacuum of power when they died, a vacuum eventually filled by ambitious authoritarians who paved the way for the global empires of their political descendants.
I think the parallel has been sufficiently established. Let's move away from the French for a second and look more closely at Stalin's reign of power, which represented the nadir of the collision of Marxist ideology with Russian realities.
Lenin was a pragmatist, undoubtedly, but he remained a dedicated progressive, even while in power; the currents of change gave buoyancy to his beliefs. Stalin, on the other hand, was both a pragmatist and a populist. The former requires you to acknowledge your conditions, the latter binds you by them; no small burden for a Marxist in a largely pre-industrial society like Russia.
Stalin's administration consolidated the authoritarian Soviet state, that which was torn from the Czar during the Revolution and haphazardly reconstructed after the Civil War. However, given that Russia was still largely pre-industrial at the time, the strong state was not a new development, and I am curious as to how the industrialization of Russia would have played out had that head of state not headed the state.
Stalin also associated the "worldwide revolution" in rival Trotsky's rhetoric with the latter's "rootless cosmopolitanism," Stalin's euphemism for Jews; this argument that appealed to agrarian Russians for several reasons.
Of course, anti-Semitism has a long and tragic history in Eastern Europe, but there's more to it than that. The "rootless cosmopolitan" is implicitly contrasted with the "good farmer," not a cosmopolitan, roots deeply planted in the ground.
The role of religion is also crucial. Marxism is materialist, true, but the people still need their opiate. In contrast to the scientific approach of "classical Marxism," which recognized the progressive nature of the productive capacity afforded by industrialization, socialists in pre-industrial countries constructed a quasi-religious narrative identifying capitalism as the "Great Satan" and socialism as the "Savior"; privately, this meant that the masses were the "sheep" and the Party was their shepherd.
Finally and most importantly, Stalin sought to build his credibility as a Russian nationalist, in contrast to the internationalism of "rootless cosmopolitans" like Lenin and Trotsky - in spite of Stalin's Georgian ancestry. At the same time, instead of "worldwide revolution," Stalin promoted "socialism in one country," which would then "spread outwards."
Sounds like a pretty solid excuse for imperial expansion, right?
Hey, do you remember how this all started? The imperial ambitions of the Czardom and what not? The ambitions that ultimately facilitated its downfall in 1917?
They didn't die with the Czar. At some level, the Party recognized that the Soviet Union was simply a leaner, meaner, more efficient vessel of the Russian Empire.
The Soviet Union - the territories directly under Russian control - represented the "old" empire, that which sought territory and direct hegemony. The Cold War signified Russia's status as a "new" empire, that which seeks labor and resources but only uses its military as a last resort, such as in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Of course, the Czar's imperial ambitions ended in World War I, which was in turn a result of internal competition among the Western European colonial powers. World War II, then, heralded the decline of those same Western European colonial powers on a global scale.
The empires of Western Europe, weakened by war, could not maintain direct control over their colonies, eventually leaving a vacuum of power, waiting to be substantiated.
America and Russia, then, started their new relationship with a bang by carving out their own pieces of Germany. America emerged from WWII stronger than it started, so it wasted no time putting West Germany in its pocket with the Marshall Plan, while Russia, having suffered losses beyond comparison, also wasted no time in gutting East Germany for its industry and resources.
VII. Consequences and Conclusions
Thus began a pattern that would dominate global politics for the next forty years. Obviously, the Cold War was not a struggle of freedom against exploitation, of liberty against slavery, or of socialism against capitalism.
These struggles existed, to be sure, but they became subsumed into the broader paradigm of neo-colonial competition between the U.S. and Russia.
The Cold War, therefore, was simply another War by Proxy between two imperial powers, masquerading under the guise of ideology. Once the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, little changed.
Sure, the standards of living have gone down in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union, while overt inequality has shot through the roof.
But that is too limited a perspective.
Globalization is more influential now than ever. Russia is still competing with America over their mutual imperial ambitions, for example in South Ossetia and Georgia. The government is still strongly authoritarian, and freedom of speech only applies to those who tow the Party line.
Finally, the country is still run by an oligarchy. It is composed of a legitimate bourgeoisie instead of a transient, transitory "dictatorship of the proletariat," but the personnel is largely the same.
And you know what?
It's a good thing.
Not for those dominated by this paradigm, certainly, but for us. Let's look at the big picture. At least these imperialists aren't claiming to represent socialist ideals while they pursue hegemony in the developing world.
The Russian Revolution makes sense as a bourgeois revolution, but it was not a victory for socialism. It was a victory for Russia.
The other side of the coin is that the fall of the Soviet Union was a victory for socialism, albeit only in a symbolic sense, and it will be some time before anyone will recognize it as such.
So, yes, the story of the Soviet Union is complex and multifaceted. In different times and in different places, it was a union of socialist republics, it was a deformed worker's state, it was a statist caste system, and it was an evil empire.
More importantly, it was none of these things.
In hindsight, these are all simply narratives with fundamentally political origins. They do not aim to be accurate, nor do they seek to provide meaningful insight for the modern socialist. These narratives exist to prove a point, one that serves the purpose of the narrator.
In so doing, however, they manipulate the discussion so as to avoid addressing the decrepit ideologies moldering underneath their foundation. These narratives are true in some ways and false in others, but most importantly they are bullshit.
The bullshit has been piling up for so long that it clouds our vision. As 21st-century socialists, we're way overdue to "clean house."
Time to grab your shovel and get to scooping.
Suggested reading:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
By Kun Fana; Thanks to Kleber, Intelligitimate, FSL, and robbo203 for their contributions