Why DID the USSR fall?

[ElectricSheep1203]

And friend and I were debating about politics here in Canada, and is said that electing NDP for the Government in Canada is not going to be enough due to them being social Democratic and what not. He was saying that a Communist government won't work because the USSR failed.

after he said that i did a quick google search to see why it fell, and i was greated mostly with US Funded sites (you could tell since they said the fall of the USSR was a victory, for the west, in freedom and democracy).

I was wodnering if any of you could at least point me in the right direction of where to look.

[fatboy]

Well the USSR started going down around the time of Khrushchev and his revisionist policies such as Capitalist Reforms. And this was only furthered by Gorbachev. Another factor that led into it's demise was Western Bloc countries attack on the USSR.

[GPDP]

Depends on who you ask. Some will point to Gorby's outright intention to obliterate the USSR as it stood. Leninists will point to Khrushchev's revisionism. Trotskyists will say it began with Stalin. Left-communists and anarchists will even argue it was doomed the moment Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power.

[RadioRaheem84]

The US was just as stagnant as the USSR back in the late 70s and was reaching a crisis. The US decided to liberalize and repress labor. I am surprised no one mentions this fact but all eyes were on the collapse of the USSR which surprisingly remained state-capitalist for a very long time after the US decided to liberalize. China liberalized a bit later and Cuba is still going.

[Muzk]

It fell to the beaurocracy; which existed with Stalin already.
It was a loss in terms of central planning and the accomplishments made in industry and agriculture, but it was inevitably going to happen, either the restoration of capitalism or the worker's would finally start the revolution once again.

The beaurocracy was privileged at first, "state-capitalists", and over time they gained more and more, when, finally, the once half way socialist government was full with revisionists, who only had to crush the central planning to now openly become capitalists themselves, by buying the means of production with the money they, as beaurocrats, gained.

You might want to have a read on Trotsky's prediction (http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch11.htm#ch11-3)


Without a planned economy the Soviet Union would be thrown back for decades. In that sense the bureaucracy continues to fulfill a necessary function. But it fulfills it in such a way as to prepare an explosion of the whole system which may completely sweep out the results of the revolution.A less mainstream article on the collapse (http://sfr-21.org/collapse.html)

_______________

But, since you only want a good answer for the question "communism doesn't work because the USSR fell", then you might as well ask what communism is. You won't get an answer. Then, the question proves that he doesn't even know one thing about it; so it might just be meaningless to try and educate if he's not willing to. If he is, good luck

[ElectricSheep1203]

So i can say that the USSR fell because of the bureaucracy that was put in place by Stalin, then the collapse was later accelerated by Gorbachev and Khrushchev with their revisions to the communist state.

thanks for the response guys! :D

[RadioRaheem84]

It's easy: State-Capitalism led to bureaucrats being in control of the means of production and as most nations (including the US) were met with stagnation in the late 70s, they began to liberalize. This was intentional. The old bureaucrats are now the new oligarchs in China and Russia.

[Red Commissar]

I would argue the roots of the USSR's collapse can be found during Brezhnev's reign. He set up the conditions that would lead to their economic problems in the 1980s.

[bailey_187]

So i can say that the USSR fell because of the bureaucracy that was put in place by Stalin, then the collapse was later accelerated by Gorbachev and Khrushchev with their revisions to the communist state.

thanks for the response guys! :D

No. Stalin and the "rise of the buearacracy" was 50 years later. You have gap of 50 years. It also grew more after Krushchev with virtualy no attempts to stop it; contrary to the Trot nonsense they like to repeat, Stalin tried to fight it. Sure, not well enough though.

The Soviet Union did not fall, it was dismantled. The growth of the black market gave the social basis for capitalists to come about. Many of these were in the party and took the USSR apart.

I recommend you read Kenny and Keran's Socialism betrayed and Bahman Azad - Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat. You can read old Trotsky articles if you want, but really, you have a 50 year gap to exlain in which many changes and events in the USSR took place.

[bailey_187]

Soviet long-term average growth rates
1928-1980: 4.4% per year
1950-1960: 4.7% per year
1960-1970: 4.2% per year
1970-1980: 3.1% per year

American long-term average growth rates
1950-1980: 3.3% per year
1970-1980: 3.0% per year

West European long-term average growth rates
1950-1980: 4.2% per year
1970-1980: 3.0% per year

[manic expression]

Soviet long-term average growth rates
Very interesting, comrade. Where are these numbers from, if you don't mind me asking?

[RadioRaheem84]

Yes, please, do tell.

[bailey_187]

Very interesting, comrade. Where are these numbers from, if you don't mind me asking?

I cant remember and there is no source in the word document i saved them in :confused:

Looking in the book i though i got them from though there are other growth rate stats so i will type them up (from Austin Murphy - The Triumph of Evil, but the source he nots is the IMF):

USSR- 1975-84:4.1%, 1985:1.7%, 1986:3.6%, 1987:2.8%, 1988:5.3%, 1989:3%, 1990:-2.3%*
USA -1975-84:2.5%, 1985:3.2%, 1986:2.9%, 1987:3.1%, 1988:3.9%, 1989:2.5%, 1990:1.2%

*by this time pretty much all remnants of Economic planning had been dismantled, five year plans abandoned and this was the first recession in Soviet history

[bailey_187]

Yes, please, do tell.

If you dispute them you can look them up on IMF etc. They should be roughly the same. (Sorry if u wernt disputing them, your post sounded like it was)

[Kléber]

You can read old Trotsky articles if you want, but really, you have a 50 year gap to exlain in which many changes and events in the USSR took place.Ironically, despite being assassinated and having his work cut short, Trotsky's analysis is much more detailed and materialist than the subjective argument that a monster named Khrushchev fell from the sky one day and brought down a healthy socialist democracy with his evil telepathic powers.


So i can say that the USSR fell because of the bureaucracy that was put in place by Stalin, then the collapse was later accelerated by Gorbachev and Khrushchev with their revisions to the communist state.Not quite. Stalin didn't put the state capitalist bureaucracy in place: it was there from the beginning. Lenin saw the high salaries and privileges of bureaucrats as a retreat from communist principles, and he called this system "state capitalism," but believed that it was necessary to keep the economy together at the time.

What Stalin did was revise the definitions of state capitalism and socialism, and declare that socialism existed in the 1930's, despite the fact that no fundamental social changes, apart from the expansion of state capitalist industry, had taken place. This effectively legitimized bureaucratic exploitation of the working class on a state capitalist basis, and was the most fundamental act of "revisionism" in Soviet/CPSU history.

[bailey_187]

Ironically, despite being assassinated and having his work cut short, Trotsky's analysis is much more detailed and materialist than the subjective argument that a monster named Khrushchev fell from the sky one day and brought down a healthy socialist democracy with his evil telepathic powers.

Have i ever argued that?

[Klashnekov]

It fell to the beaurocracy; which existed with Stalin already.



This shows how little you have read of Lenin. You are nothing but a "quack with a bent for fine words" - Like the rest of you Trotskyites using the exact same phrases to describe already existing problems long before Stalin came to power.

- ‘It will take decades to overcome the evils of bureaucracy. It is a very difficult struggle, and anyone who says we can rid ourselves of bureaucratic practices overnight by adopting anti-bureaucratic platforms is nothing but a quack with a bent for fine words’. (See Lenin: Collected Works Volume 32; pp. 56-57)

[which doctor]

The USSR didn't fail because of Kruschev or Gorbachev, or even because of Stalin. Rather, the limitations of the Russian Revolution were apparent from the very beginning. Perhaps the largest problem was the revolutions incapacity to go international. The failed German Revolution of 1918-1919 is perhaps the greatest moment left unfulfilled in the history of socialist politics. And this was a point in history where people believed the international workers revolution was on the horizon. Imagine two successful simultaneous Marxist revolutions in Europe, there's no telling what could have happened.

Of course another problem for the Russian Revolution was the peasant question, which posed a question unique at that time to Russia. Not too long following the revolution, a series of opportunistic decisions were made, such as the NEP, and the coopting of the soviets by the Communist Party. I don't think there's much of a point to blaming certain historical figures for their actions. Although the potential for international socialism the Russian Revolution was supposed to hail in vanished soon after it began, the Soviet Union nevertheless continued to pose the 'socialist question' throughout the duration of the 20th century.

[RadioRaheem84]

If you dispute them you can look them up on IMF etc. They should be roughly the same. (Sorry if u wernt disputing them, your post sounded like it was)


Not at all. I want them for my notes. :)

[RadioRaheem84]

Well how many factories were there to take over in largely agricultural 1917 Czarist Russia? I assumed the 'state-capitalist' measures were taken to largely industralize the nation? This was accelarated during Stalin's reign. Is this about right?

[cenv]

We need to be careful not to blame the failure of the USSR on historical figures. It doesn't matter whether the USSR's demise started under Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, etc. Trying to explain how the world's first socialist revolution shriveled up and died by pointing fingers at a few bureaucrats isn't going to win anyone over to our point of view -- it's just going to reinforce non-Marxists' belief that we're capable of nothing beyond the most pathetic analysis of the USSR.

Marx predicted that modern technology would outgrow the framework of capitalism, creating the seeds of communist revolution in the most advanced countries. Instead, the USSR's revolution arose in backwards, semi-feudal conditions. A lot of people pinpoint bureaucracy as some evil force that tainted the glorious workers' revolution, but we need to look at bureaucracy in context. Without supporting revolutions in more advanced countries, "socialism" in the USSR would've had to be either very centralized or simply nonexistant. The bureaucratization of the USSR was all but inevitable.

There's two lessons we need to draw from the USSR experience if we want to learn from history.

1) The USSR didn't fall apart because a few bureaucrats somehow hijacked the pure socialist revolution. It collapsed because it took place in some of the shittiest conditions imaginable.

2) Any revolution that takes place in the first world is going to occur under very different conditions. This means we have a lot more to work with. But we can't just try to apply the USSR's model to modern conditions and hope that technological development will stop it from falling apart this time. We can't make the mistake of picking up the socialist paradigm developed for a backwards semi-feudal country and superimposing it on modern first-world conditions. We need to develop a revolutionary praxis tailored specifically to the conditions we live under now.

Oh, and to the OP, tell your friend to get his head out of his ass. This isn't Russia, and it's not 1917. :) Anyway, the way to spread our ideas isn't to try beat a dead horse and try to get people to like the USSR -- we need to put the USSR in perspective by explaining what Marxism means in the 21st century and how its application is necessarily different.

The USSR wasn't the crowning pinnacle of the international communist movement. It was the shaky first attempt to walk upright.

[ElectricSheep1203]

ahh i think i get it now. The reason why the USSR was dismantled was due to the wrong conditions first off all. Russia in 1917 wasn't industrialized, and to say the least it was a poor country economically. because of those factors, the resources were not the best to work with, and that resulted in a somewhat shaky of a base.

Next was the state-capitalism and the black market worked its way into the government of the USSR, which shook the already unstable base. Throw in the amount of wars, and political lip service coming from all sides, it eventually became too much.

i think i may have an idea as to why it happened.

thanks again guys. really helped me out :)

[Agnapostate]

Did it? I'm not a fan of the command economy or what I perceive as authoritarian political organization, but the USSR was dissolved against the will of a popular majority.

[Muzk]

The Soviet Union did not fall, it was dismantled. The growth of the black market gave the social basis for capitalists to come about. Many of these were in the party and took the USSR apart.Which only went in there because of the failures of the beaurocracy.
"Growth of the black market"
The beaurocracy did a zig-zag course, in which it once tried to slowly collectivize the agriculture, then, because it horribly failed, they gave the kulaks their land and livestock back, only to later radically collectivize everything. There was no black market; it was intended by the state to give the kulaks the freedom of speculating with food. The only black market I could think of were the people selling self-made goods, but then you won't become a capitalist by selling some hats now do you...

Let's not forget how the beaurocrats in the soviets didn't let lower class people in.


- ‘It will take decades to overcome the evils of bureaucracy. It is a very difficult struggle, and anyone who says we can rid ourselves of bureaucratic practices overnight by adopting anti-bureaucratic platforms is nothing but a quack with a bent for fine words’.Quack quack! If you think Stalin was so awesome - why did he declare socialism when there was a beaurocratic class living off of the labour of the lower class people?


The USSR didn't fail because of Kruschev or Gorbachev, or even because of Stalin. Rather, the limitations of the Russian Revolution were apparent from the very beginning.Then you go on by naming some problems which can be easily overcome through central planning; but they are not the main factors. From the very beginning the beaurocracy should have been fought by the working class; no Stalin or any other beaurocrat for that matter could have done a thing. Like Stalin even wanted to, he believed in socialism to exist when the living standard was much lower than that of the advanced capitalist nations! Don't forget the beaurocracies failures of central planning - five year plans need correction once experience has been made, some areas of industry and agriculture can't exist without the other one, an equal balance had to be found, yet every objection to the beaurocracy's plan was silenced at once!


Well how many factories were there to take over in largely agricultural 1917 Czarist Russia? I assumed the 'state-capitalist' measures were taken to largely industralize the nation? This was accelarated during Stalin's reign. Is this about right?Yes they were accelerated, but then they produced masses of goods which had no quality at all, like the tractors, it was easier for the farmers to use their old tools than to afford a tractor, it simply wouldn't earn them enough before it would break.
Of 100 cars 55 would be able to drive at a time, in america trucks were able to drive up to 100.000 km a year, while the USSR ones could barely do 20.000, the cost for cars in reparation was twice as high as for new built ones... The productivity was lower than that of the advanced nations too; simply because the workers weren't qualified for such work.


The bureaucratization of the USSR was all but inevitable.
No, beaurocracy(a government) is possible without a beaurocratization with 3 simple rules:
1. beaurocrats may not earn more money than the average worker
2. workers may recall beaurocrats through their soviets at any time
3. beaurocrat positions must rotate

Only this type of government is able to wither away.

It collapsed because it took place in some of the shittiest conditions imaginableThe beaurocracy is part of the "shitty" condition.


Did it? I'm not a fan of the command economy or what I perceive as authoritarian political organization, but the USSR was dissolved against the will of a popular majority.Are you sure? Why didn't they overthrow their state capitalist regimé then? They failed to give their people a good life; which should have been the crown of socialism.
"But war made it impossible to give the people a good life!"
Why did the useless beaurocrats then gained privileges noone else had?

[bailey_187]

Which only went in there because of the failures of the beaurocracy.
"Growth of the black market"
The beaurocracy did a zig-zag course, in which it once tried to slowly collectivize the agriculture, then, because it horribly failed, they gave the kulaks their land and livestock back, only to later radically collectivize everything. There was no black market; it was intended by the state to give the kulaks the freedom of speculating with food. The only black market I could think of were the people selling self-made goods, but then you won't become a capitalist by selling some hats now do you

Are you fucking Trots incable of looking at the Soviet Union after the genius Trotsky was put down? Fucking hell. We are talking about the END of the USSR and you are talking about fucking Kulaks and food speculation still.

"you won't become a capitalist by selling some hats now do you"
:confused:




Yes they were accelerated, but then they produced masses of goods which had no quality at all, like the tractors, it was easier for the farmers to use their old tools than to afford a tractor, it simply wouldn't earn them enough before it would break.

Farm workers didnt buy tractors...Tractors were owned by the state.
"I visited the same farm four years later and found astonishing changes...several of the Tartar tractor drivers...showed me with pride their new tractor barn of comparativly well-cared for machines. They had become fair mechanics and nearly all machinary on hnd was in working order" - John Scott - Behind the Urals pg98
But no no, the fucking wooden plows were better than the tractors right?



Of 100 cars 55 would be able to drive at a time, in america trucks were able to drive up to 100.000 km a year, while the USSR ones could barely do 20.000, the cost for cars in reparation was twice as high as for new built ones... The productivity was lower than that of the advanced nations too; simply because the workers weren't qualified for such work..

What they needed was a bit of Taylorism right?





Are you sure? Why didn't they overthrow their state capitalist regimé then? They failed to give their people a good life; which should have been the crown of socialism.
"But war made it impossible to give the people a good life!"
Why did the useless beaurocrats then gained privileges noone else had?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991

[Muzk]

Are you fucking Trots incable of looking at the Soviet Union after the genius Trotsky was put down? Fucking hell. We are talking about the END of the USSR and you are talking about fucking Kulaks and food speculation still.

If a giant tree falls down for some odd reason, I don't analyze the top, I analyze the bottom.
The roots of the beaurocracy lie deep within, and the ones who watered it aren't Gorbachov or the krushshevites...



Farm workers didnt buy tractors...Tractors were owned by the state.
But no no, the fucking wooden plows were better than the tractors right?Trotsky or John Scott. Who's to trust here? A guy who visited, probably even told the beaurocracy he's coming, or the leader of the left opposition?

Voting is overhyped, remember the swedes or whoever it was banning minaretts? They wouldn't get up to fight against it.
Voting is much easier than actually doing something... and we can see how democratically the voting was. It got ignored, the USSR ain't there anymore.

[bailey_187]

If a giant tree falls down for some odd reason, I don't analyze the top, I analyze the bottom.
The roots of the beaurocracy lie deep within, and the ones who watered it aren't Gorbachov or the krushshevites....

erm...i was talking about the BLACK MARKET being a social basis for capitalists rising in the USSR. Then you go and fucking talk about Kulaks speculating etc which was in the 1920/30s. You are unable to look at the USSR post-1939 because you dont have the great Trotsky telling you what happened. If i was talking about bureacracy, then you could say about looking at the roots, but im not, im talking about the black market that grew up post-ww2 and bloomed in the 60s/70s.
You read a couple ML articles and you try argue from ML and think your and ML, you read a couple of Trot articles and think your a Trot, you're a joke.



Trotsky or John Scott. Who's to trust here? A guy who visited, probably even told the beaurocracy he's coming, or the leader of the left opposition?
LOL Trots and their endless obesseion wit bureacracy is hilarious. So fucking what if he "told them he's coming"? What you want him to do? Swim across the berring straights and hope no one notices? How the fuck would you expect someone to enter any country without "telling the bureacracy"?
Have you read Scott's book? Its very criticial of the purges in it. Who's to trust? Well, John Scott had no poltical agenda - Trotsky did. John Scott was in the USSR to give first hand accounts - Trotsky did not.



Voting is overhyped, remember the swedes or whoever it was banning minaretts? They wouldn't get up to fight against it.
Voting is much easier than actually doing something... and we can see how democratically the voting was. It got ignored, the USSR ain't there anymore.
But clearly it showed that there was not popular support for the dissolution of the USSR. Sure, enthusiasm in the USSR had waned, but people still wished to keep the USSR. What it needed was a Cultural Revolution to sweep away the degenerates in the party, the bureacrats (dont get a boner), and the black marketeers

[Muzk]

In soviet russia, bailey purges YOU!

[btpound]

Well how many factories were there to take over in largely agricultural 1917 Czarist Russia? I assumed the 'state-capitalist' measures were taken to largely industralize the nation? This was accelarated during Stalin's reign. Is this about right?

Check this (http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/index.htm) out. Made by the CIA in 1929.

[RadioRaheem84]

Check this (http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/index.htm) out. Made by the CIA in 1929.


CIA wasn't around in '29. Who published it?

[Dimentio]

And friend and I were debating about politics here in Canada, and is said that electing NDP for the Government in Canada is not going to be enough due to them being social Democratic and what not. He was saying that a Communist government won't work because the USSR failed.

after he said that i did a quick google search to see why it fell, and i was greated mostly with US Funded sites (you could tell since they said the fall of the USSR was a victory, for the west, in freedom and democracy).

I was wodnering if any of you could at least point me in the right direction of where to look.

The first observation is that your friend either must be right-wing or simply very apolitical and really indifferent.

As for USSR's fall. It could have survived, if it had been supported by the "elite cadres" of the party. The USSR was a de-facto class society for most of its existence, as it was composed of two distinct groups ~ Party members and the rest.

In order to gain access to the means of production in the USSR, you had to work in the state apparatus. Reaching a certain degree of influence there necessitated party membership.

It is true that there were economic problems due to the centrally planned economy which obviously was not tuned to appreciate consumer quality and which fostered inefficiency, waste and corruption. But the USSR could have survived those problems. A lot of countries with a lot graver examples of economic mismanagement (Indonesia, the Philippines, etc) have survived with their borders mostly intact.

The reason why the USSR collapsed was that certain factions within the bureaucracy saw the continued existence of the USSR as a hindrance to their ability to exploit their privileges over the means of production. By slashing the Union and privatising its resources, these (most often regional) elites could then acquire direct control over the resources which earlier only indirectly had benefitted them.

Lastly, I want to finish with this observation.

The matter is not whether or not resources are state-owned or not. The matter is who is in control of the means of production in a society. Is it the majority, or a minority?

[Dimentio]

The USSR didn't fail because of Kruschev or Gorbachev, or even because of Stalin. Rather, the limitations of the Russian Revolution were apparent from the very beginning. Perhaps the largest problem was the revolutions incapacity to go international. The failed German Revolution of 1918-1919 is perhaps the greatest moment left unfulfilled in the history of socialist politics. And this was a point in history where people believed the international workers revolution was on the horizon. Imagine two successful simultaneous Marxist revolutions in Europe, there's no telling what could have happened.

Of course another problem for the Russian Revolution was the peasant question, which posed a question unique at that time to Russia. Not too long following the revolution, a series of opportunistic decisions were made, such as the NEP, and the coopting of the soviets by the Communist Party. I don't think there's much of a point to blaming certain historical figures for their actions. Although the potential for international socialism the Russian Revolution was supposed to hail in vanished soon after it began, the Soviet Union nevertheless continued to pose the 'socialist question' throughout the duration of the 20th century.

Rather stick the head into a mixer than leaving the entire world into the hands of one vanguard party, aiming to establish a state with unregulated power into their hands and absolute control of the means of production delivered to them.

[which doctor]

Rather stick the head into a mixer than leaving the entire world into the hands of one vanguard party, aiming to establish a state with unregulated power into their hands and absolute control of the means of production delivered to them.
I don't have a clue what you're trying to say.

[Dimentio]

I don't have a clue what you're trying to say.

I don't think that it was the lack of an international revolution which was the biggest hindrance to the Soviet experiment. I think the fact that the power was in hands of the Bolshevik Party, an organised minority, was the deciding factor into determining the fate of the USSR, its rise, its peak and its fall. Throughout its history, the USSR was an absolutist oligarchy, more or less conciously governed by a new ruling class consisting of administrators organised in a ruling party. If a vanguard party had arisen and taken all of Earth, I don't see why it would have been a different outcome. Heck, even if it had been three Earths, it wouldn't at all matter.

[ComradeOm]

CIA wasn't around in '29. Who published it?According to the title page, the Soviet Union Information Bureau. This was a Soviet propaganda group in America that was headed by (http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/138/1/97) Boris Skvirsky - the Soviet ambassador (or at least unofficial representative) in Washington. So its effectively a propaganda sheet... but then that should be apparent from the introduction alone. On the plus side the official Soviet statistics that the report uses should be relatively sound (compared to later figures at least). Still wouldn’t take it at its word though

[x359594]

...Stalin didn't put the state capitalist bureaucracy in place: it was there from the beginning. Lenin saw the high salaries and privileges of bureaucrats as a retreat from communist principles, and he called this system "state capitalism," but believed that it was necessary to keep the economy together at the time.

What Stalin did was revise the definitions of state capitalism and socialism, and declare that socialism existed in the 1930's, despite the fact that no fundamental social changes, apart from the expansion of state capitalist industry, had taken place. This effectively legitimized bureaucratic exploitation of the working class on a state capitalist basis, and was the most fundamental act of "revisionism" in Soviet/CPSU history.

I think this is true as far as it goes, but there's more to the story. In order for the USSR, after the Revolution, to direct the expansion of the economy, it had to concentrate in its hands all economic resources, through confiscation and nationalization. Agriculture was collectivized to allow mechanization and to allow the state to extract a surplus for investment in industrial development. The central planning bureau produced economic schedules which brought about the rapid growth of heavy industry. The entire social and political life of the nation was subordinated to the tasks of fulfilling the Plans and industrializing the economy. After a period of time, the collectivization and industrialization plans produced the industrial development which the Revolution demanded. At this point, the USSR turned from a progressive force for economic development into a reactionary one that existed mainly to safeguard its privileged position.

The central planning apparatus outlived its purpose, and the bureaucratic control and regimentation which enabled the economy to expand so swiftly now acts as a brake on further growth and development. The only possible solution is a decentralization of the economic apparatus, which produces a separate manager class that is hostile and antagonistic to the interests of the ruling state apparatus. The conflict deepened until the manager class is strong enough to bring down the Soviet state, destroying it and substituting in its place a Western-style republic with a capitalist economy.

Thus, contrary to the assertions of those who claim that the USSR collapsed because it "didn't work", the system fell precisely because it did work--it produced the mechanization and modernization which was demanded by historical and economic circumstances. By constructing the industrial base which is needed for success in a world economy, the bureaucrats completed their task, and had to give way to a new economic structure, one which is capable of taking this industrial base and expanding it to global proportions.

Contrary to what apologists for the USSR would have us believe, the Soviet Union is not an example of international socialism. It is instead an example of revolutionary nationalism, fueled by the desire to free the nation from the domination of the industrialized countries. The history of the USSR does not describe the transition from capitalism to socialism to communism. It is instead an example of a neo-colony from feudalism to state capitalism and thence to bourgeois capitalism, from the rule of the landed aristocracy through the rule of the state bureaucrat to the rule of the capital-owner. It is a system that is born from the contradictions of a dying feudal system and a rising capitalist system which is too weak to take its place.

[which doctor]

I don't think that it was the lack of an international revolution which was the biggest hindrance to the Soviet experiment. I think the fact that the power was in hands of the Bolshevik Party, an organised minority, was the deciding factor into determining the fate of the USSR, its rise, its peak and its fall. Throughout its history, the USSR was an absolutist oligarchy, more or less conciously governed by a new ruling class consisting of administrators organised in a ruling party. If a vanguard party had arisen and taken all of Earth, I don't see why it would have been a different outcome. Heck, even if it had been three Earths, it wouldn't at all matter.
But really what else could have made a revolution in Russia besides an organized minority? Considering the repressive nature of the Tsarist state at the time, it would have been impossible to form a mass, revolutionary, democratic party. They were left with no other choice than to be an elusive, conspiratorial group. I used to be a self-styled anti-vanguardist too, until I came to a two simple conclusions. First, class consciousness develops unevenly, so some people will have a better idea of which way to take the revolution than others. Secondly, it makes sense for these people to organize together and to play a leading role in the revolution. The German Revolution had no vanguard and no leaders. Correspondingly, the German Revolution was a very confusing affair. The German workers armed themselves, took to the streets, and occupied lots of important buildings, but they were left with the question of "Now what?", a question that revolutionary leadership could have helped give direction too. Rosa Luxemburg was aware of this problem, but she really didn't have anytime to organize, since she was only released from prison in the midst of the revolution, and murdered shortly thereafter, by people commisioned by the very party she had once been a member of (SPD).

If you really think that the Soviet Union was ruled by an "absolutist oligarchy" throughout its rise, peak, and fall, I seriously suggest you open a dictionary and look up the words 'absolutist' and 'oligarchy,' then undergo an extensive study of the Russian Revolution. This was the first successful workers revolution, so of course it was anything by a smooth transition and it was fraught with problems.

The belief that Stalin was just a continuation of Lenin's project is one that's common to both Stalinists and various 'anti-authoritarians,' but it's also one that neglects an historicist approach to the problems and practical limitations of the Russian Revolution.