Dissolution of the soviet union the people's choice?

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

In my history book, it says sometime In the end of re soviet union, democracy was introduced by Gorbachev. It also said that people voted out communists from government positions. Is the dissolution of the su the peoples choice, or was it another story of "I'm not getting food, maybe I'll get food if I elect this guy"(not literal, take it as a broad example)
Or was it something else completely??

[Art Vandelay]

I could be wrong as I am no soviet history buff, I think I maybe heard Ismail say it one, but there was a vote in 1991 to see if the majority of the population wanted to dissolve the soviet union, the majority did not want to.

[Grenzer]

No, this is not quite true. At least not in the sense that it was the people's choice.

Gorbachev was an avowed anti-communist who plainly stated that his goal was to destroy communism. Really it's arguable that the process of ending the USSR began with Krushchev's "Secret Speech" in 1956. The ruling elite in the USSR decided to start dismantling their socialist policies and essentially make themselves into bourgeois. By the 1980's, it made more sense for the Russian bourgeoisie to eliminate the USSR all together, and it seems that Gorbachev's accession to power was only a natural outgrowth of this.

So in a way, it was the people's choice. The top 1% of people.

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm

[Zealot]

The people wanted to keep it. Hell, I think even Gorbachev wanted to keep it and make it capitalist but because he was a failure it ended.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Really it's arguable that the process of ending the USSR began with Krushchev's "Secret Speech" in 1956. The ruling elite in the USSR decided to start dismantling their socialist policies and essentially make themselves into bourgeois.

Why would this make sense? Bureaucrats are not bourgeois and I can't see why its in their interest to "make themselves" into a bourgeois class within a capitalist economy.

[Geiseric]

Isn't it part of marxism, anarchism, communism inheritly to destroy the state? The soviet state functioned as any other did, and obviously didn't represent the working class... So I don't see why anybody should support it, it offered nothing to actual workers movements or revolutionary situations.

[Jose Gracchus]

The State simply collapsed, it doesn't make so much sense to speak of any particular 'man' doing it, though Gorbachev obviously had a meaningful role.

[La Comédie Noire]

It was a complicated situation in regards to your average soviet citizen. Some were drawn by the allure of western consumer culture, thinking that's what capitalism would do for them, some were indifferent or at least appeared indifferent whether from fear of reprisal or political cynicism, while still others were openly against the restoration of capitalism, being perceptive enough to realize what it would mean for them.

And what do ya know, the negative nancys turned out to be right. The Russian Federation and the Eastern Bloc are now an on going tragedy full of unspeakable horrors that would put 19th century Whitechapel to shame.

[Grenzer]

Why would this make sense? Bureaucrats are not bourgeois and I can't see why its in their interest to "make themselves" into a bourgeois class within a capitalist economy.

I never said bureaucrats, I said the ruling elite; which is altogether an entirely different matter. Rulers make policy, bureaucrats enforce it. They changed the system to their benefit, and when the Soviet Union was dissolved, these were the people who primarily owned the means of production. This is the definition of the bourgeoisie. Do you think the post-Soviet bourgeois simply sprang into existence magically? Now that doesn't make sense.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The people started to vote out the communists, but wanted to keep the USSR as a geo-political entity. There was a USSR-wide referendum on this, though I don't know how impartial it was.

However, later on I think that many non-Russian nations were generally supportive of independence, despite the disastrous end in the Balkans.

[GatesofLenin]

What do you comrades think would've happened to the Soviet Union if Lenin lived past 1924? I'm currently reading a book by Slavoj Zizek that claims that Russia was the most democratic country in the world between the first and second revolution.

[tir1944]

No,the vast majority of people (even outside RSFSR) voted for the Union to remain on the Referendum.
So the dissolution of the USSR was actually anti-democratic (and anti-human).

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

[A Marxist Historian]

I could be wrong as I am no soviet history buff, I think I maybe heard Ismail say it one, but there was a vote in 1991 to see if the majority of the population wanted to dissolve the soviet union, the majority did not want to.

Speaking as a true Soviet history buff, I'll note that Ismail was quite correct, there was such a referendum, just a few months before the USSR collapsed, and the vote was no.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I never said bureaucrats, I said the ruling elite; which is altogether an entirely different matter. Rulers make policy, bureaucrats enforce it. They changed the system to their benefit, and when the Soviet Union was dissolved, these were the people who primarily owned the means of production. This is the definition of the bourgeoisie. Do you think the post-Soviet bourgeois simply sprang into existence magically? Now that doesn't make sense.

But, see, the bureaucrats in the USSR *were* the ruling elite. No diff whatsoever. There weren't any secret masters behind the curtain. There was no bourgeoisie, because the USSR wasn't capitalist.

The post-Soviet bourgeoisie did pretty much spring up out of nothing. Some of them were former bureaucrats, usually middle or low level rather than top, some were black marketeers, some were just people who were there at the right time in the right place and played their cards right.

I happen to know one. He was a pretty good nature photographer and Gorbachev fan who was visiting my town when the collapse happened. He went around to all the friends of my girlfriend claiming he was a dirt poor persecuted reformer and victim of the Soviet system and needed money for an operation for his very pretty wife. Managed to collect a few hundred US dollars, maybe a thousand, hopped his plane back to Siberia, and parlayed that into being the big deal local capitalist in his home town.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

The people started to vote out the communists, but wanted to keep the USSR as a geo-political entity. There was a USSR-wide referendum on this, though I don't know how impartial it was.

However, later on I think that many non-Russian nations were generally supportive of independence, despite the disastrous end in the Balkans.

The Baltic countries definitely wanted their independence, and probably Georgia too. In Latvia and Estonia, Russians, about a quarter of the population, are an oppressed minority denied their civil rights. The Baltic peasants after all had been pro-Hitler during WWII, and eagerly collaborated in the Holocaust. Others, nah. Ukrainians were of two minds about it, eastern Ukraine no, western, conquered from Poland and not originally part of the USSR, yes. And still are.

The only people who really seriously and desperately wanted their independence were and are the Chechens, but that is more independence from Russia than from the USSR.

In Russia, Yeltsin won an election in 1990, though when he ran, it wasn't totally clear to everyone that he was running against communism, after all he'd been in the Politburo till Gorbachev kicked him out of it. He ran as a Russian nationalist more than as a free marketeer.

Basically, the idiotic "gang of seven" coup against Gorbachev led to the collapse of the regime, and Yeltsin filled the vacuum. The rallies he was able to organize in Moscow were quite a bit smaller than the anti-Yeltsin rallies Stalinist leftovers organized against him a few months later. But he knew what he was doing, and they did not. In fact they were more interested in allying with right wing Russian nationalists and fascists than in trying to bring back the old Soviet Union.

To finally consolidate his power he had to dissolve the elected Russian parliament at gunpoint in '93, even shelling it at one point.

-M.H.-