Does Gorbachev get too much flack?

[Illegalitarian]

Everyone loves to hate Gorby, from Marxist-Leninists to anarchists, but it seems to me as if perhaps too much blame is placed upon him for the dismantling of the USSR. While his reforms did greatly exacerbate the economic problems of the union, it seems as if he genuinely tried to do right by its citizens and give them what they wanted.

I believe he would have honored the 91' referendum to keep the USSR intact had he not been effectively couped, it seems like Yeltsin was the architect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and perhaps it would still be around today if not for Yeltsin's power grab.


So why do so many people lay the blame on Gorbachev's shoulders when it was clearly Yeltsin who made sure the union would fall into the hands of the IMF and other sources of western capital?

[Martin Luther]

Yes, but only because his policies were the culmination of a long process of capitalist restoration, not his sole effort to turn the USSR into a liberal state.

[The Red Star Rising]

Gorbachev inherited a country that Brezhnev before him ran roughshod and mismanaged to the point where Kruschev's dream of surpassing the Capitalist states had been allowed to stagnate to fatten an overbloated army (when you have forty thousand nuclear weapons, nobody is going to be stupid enough to wage a war that also requires 30 million soldiers on top of that) and overweighted focus on heavy industry. Yelstin and the Red Army being boneheaded morons sealed the deal and drove things to the point of no return.

Gorbachev seemed to have wanted to try his hand at being Kruschev and try for a repeat of the Kruschev thaw. But rather than a Union victorious he got a Union addled by extensive corruption, resource sinks like you wouldn't believe (there was literally like, a Warsaw Pact Army to every NATO Corps/Division staring each other down), an increasingly entrenched bureaucracy, and had lagged behind technologically in a few places where you generally don't want to be behind (Computer Science was the big one).

Oh and generally speaking, the Warsaw Pact nations were not managed properly (creating a nest of problems where there could have been firm allies), the diplomatic situation with China was a disaster (what could have been firm allies instead became at best, frenemies) and the CIA went around toppling any remotely Soviet friendlyAmerican unfriendly nations it could to isolate the USSR. Being isolated meant encouraging even more fattening of the military, a military that would probably never face it's intended opponent in battle.

If, instead of Brezhnev we got another Kruschev, there could very well still be a Soviet Union that was as prosperous as the west around right now and Central Asia and Eastern Europe would be considerably less of a clusterfuck.

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't blame Yeltsin or Gorbachev. It was the structure of the Soviet Union, an ineffective and inefficient form of capital management, that more or less compelled the leadership to reform towards more effective and efficient forms of the management of capital.


If, instead of Brezhnev we got another Kruschev, there could very well still be a Soviet Union that was as prosperous as the west around right now and Central Asia and Eastern Europe would be considerably less of a clusterfuck.

This is idealist nonsense, and very similar to Stalinist nonsense about revisionism.

It should be no surprise that Stalinists will prove again and again to have an incomplete understanding of materialism -- as with any discussion on this subject the blame is placed on revisionism. The leadership of the Soviet Union was bound to material conditions, which could not be overcome through sheer ideology. Central planning proved an effective instrument for the mobilisation of the resources, raw materials and labour-power, in the Soviet territory. It proved a comparatively ineffective instrument for further, innovation-based capital accumulation, or economic growth. As early as 1936, the returns on the mobilisation of resources began to slow. Subsequent Soviet leaders were not moved by ideology, they were moved by improving the Soviet economy's effectiveness and efficiency. Central planning was poorly designed for the implementation of innovative technology, a requirement for the continual revolutionising of the methods of production. Enterprise managers frustrated and sabotaged their implementation. As such, capital accumulation was frustrated. This caused slowdowns in economic growth, from slower growth rates, to stagnation, to negative economic growth towards the end of the 1980s.

Soviet leaders sought to remedy this by introducing market-oriented reforms, which they hoped would diminish the enterprise managers' obstruction of implementing innovative technology. Gorbachev merely did the same. In his case, bureaucrats frustrated perestroika, so he designed glasnost. Glasnost opened the floodgates for the collapse. If Kruchev or Stalin were born in 1931 and either had managed to become leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, they would have pursued roughly the same policies as Gorbachev.

It was not ideology, or different ideological positions of individual leaders of the USSR, that caused the collapse of the USSR, but economics. Yet, unsurprisingly, materialism escapes notice in the Stalinist perception of the collapse of the USSR.

"The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. "

(Engels)

[RedWorker]

I generally agree with Tim's post, but... surely the reforms would have come earlier or later, but couldn't ideology play a small role temporarily?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't think it's anything overly personal, just the guy was at the head of the movement to restore the free-market element of capitalism in the USSR. I have no love for the USSR, especially in its overtly capitalist form of the 70s and 80s, but Gorbachev deserves his reputation as an internationally renowned capitalist.

[Illegalitarian]

I have a hard time chalking it up to some notion of determinism, as if it was absolutely going to happen no matter what. Saying that Stalin being in Gorb's place would have resulted in the same exact thing happening is just simply wrong, as if he would have been a different man entirely.


I don't think it's anything overly personal, just the guy was at the head of the movement to restore the free-market element of capitalism in the USSR. I have no love for the USSR, especially in its overtly capitalist form of the 70s and 80s, but Gorbachev deserves his reputation as an internationally renowned capitalist.


But see, that's the thing. There was a very real desire for social and political openness within the USSR and eastern bloc, a desire for democracy and freedom of speech, freedom of press, etc, and it seems as if he was merely trying to fulfill that desire. It of course caused a bit of civil unrest which the west capitalized on, causing Yeltsin to rush in and grab the reigns before anyone could really do anything about it (and all of the other eastern-bloc reformers, too, because rushing in and advocating a ship-jump to the other team was a seemingly good way to rise to power.).

It seems as if none of the citizens of these nations wanted their "socialist" welfare states or economies to be dismantled, but this came along as a price to pay for political reform that would undoubtedly bring in reformers that would tie these nations to the west. Dealing with the devil, the same way Tito did, would of course lead to collapse of the entire thing. I don't think we can blame Gorbachev for not having the foresight to see this.

[Црвена]

The USSR had failed at socialism and was gradually becoming more capitalistic anyway...it was only a matter of time until it got a blatantly liberal ruler, I think...

[Illegalitarian]

I think even without Yeltsin we would have possibly seen the USSR survive with Dengist-style market reforms. Not like the USSR hadn't sold out a long time before that anyways

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

In the final days of Democratic Germany, when the workers were demanding "an egalitarian Leninist party", Gorbachov announced socialism was a failure, withdrew all support from East Germany and gave his blessing to the process that led to the capitalist unification of Germany (something that many people on this site undoubtedly found very appealing).

Fuck Gorbachov and that alien mind-control parasite masquerading as a mole on his head.

[Sea]

Gorbachev got too much forehead.

[Illegalitarian]

In the final days of Democratic Germany, when the workers were demanding "an egalitarian Leninist party", Gorbachov announced socialism was a failure, withdrew all support from East Germany and gave his blessing to the process that led to the capitalist unification of Germany (something that many people on this site undoubtedly found very appealing).

Fuck Gorbachov and that alien mind-control parasite masquerading as a mole on his head.

Interesting, do you have any sources I can read more from with regards to the demands of the DDR citizens?

That's why fascinates me the most about the collapse, the often overlooked fact that the people protesting their governments throughout Eastern Europe were calling for more political freedoms and an accountable government, but most were indeed, as I said and you pointed out here, not calling for the collapse of the economic system or social benefits that characterized the M-L states.

Which makes me wonder why the actual communist parties in these nations collapsed and how the west was easy to get a foot hold in these nations so easily.

Sadly there isn't much reading material out there that goes into detail about the actual desires of the working people of these nations and it's just assumed that they wanted the neoliberal shock therapy austerity that came to be in the post-soviet states.

[RedWorker]

@870: Yeah, because Gorbachev would have been able to implement a workers' state with some law. No. And by "withdrew all support" you mean refusing to crush people with the military?

P.S. I don't subscribe to weird Trotskyist theories about workers' states.


capitalist unification of German

Like the GDR wasn't under the capitalist mode of production?


Which makes me wonder why the actual communist parties in these nations collapsed

Maybe because nobody in there was a communist.

[ℂᵒиѕẗяᵤкт]

I think Gorbachev does get too much flak, although I'll never call him a genuine communist.

By the time of Gorbachev, capitalist restoration was already a fact of life in the Soviet Union. It's just that, rather than private citizens, government officials who had benefitted from opportunistic revisionism were now the owners of means of production, and they would famously become the Russian oligarchs. I think Gorbachev was trying to work within that framework, although his own reforms ended in economic disaster for the vast majority of people.

He didn't stab the Soviet Revolution in the back. He just put the final nail in the coffin.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

the idea that DDR workers were walking around demanding a Leninist party/society in the late 1980s is a bit preposterous. Perhaps some were, but to say that this was the unfailing sentiment of the majority is just unfounded. Unless somebody wants to provide evidence of this?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

@870: Yeah, because Gorbachev would have been able to implement a workers' state with some law. No. And by "withdrew all support" you mean refusing to crush people with the military?

P.S. I don't subscribe to weird Trotskyist theories about workers' states.

You don't appear to understand "weird Trotskyist theories about workers' states" either, as no one said Gorbachov could have "implemented a workers' state" (what?). Our position was that the USSR was a degenerated workers' state, and the DDR a deformed workers' state. It was a matter of protecting the nationalised planned economy against capitalist restoration.

And Gorbachov withdrew the Soviet forces - which were sympathetic to socialism and would have gone over to the workers in the event of a political revolution (as in Hungary) - so that the army of the Bonn regime could take over. Some improvement. At least people like Lothar de Maizière were not crushed, and that's all that matters to our liberals who want to be socialists.


Like the GDR wasn't under the capitalist mode of production?

Ah, sure it was, that is why the East German economy imploded after the capitalist reunification that so many people on the ostensible left fought for. Because transitioning from one form of capitalism to another does that. Just as the transition from manufacture-oriented to finance capitalism left the economies of the UK and France is complete disarray and collapse.


Maybe because nobody in there was a communist.

Unlike Podemos, of course.


the idea that DDR workers were walking around demanding a Leninist party/society in the late 1980s is a bit preposterous. Perhaps some were, but to say that this was the unfailing sentiment of the majority is just unfounded. Unless somebody wants to provide evidence of this?

"For an egalitarian Leninist party" was literally a banner that was unfurled, if I'm not mistaken, when E. Krenz was booed off stage when addressing a gathering of workers. There were also the major demonstrations in Treptow Park and so on. Any overview of the period should mention that - there was a massive ICL report on that, but I don't think it's online. There is literally video evidence as well - when reporters asked the workers on the streets what they wanted, the answer was never "liberal capitalism", it was almost always "socialism".

[Tim Cornelis]

Some anecdotal evidence about individual workers supporting socialism over capitalism is not really convincing when we look at the 1990 East German parliamentary elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_general_election,_1990

Right-wing 'Alliance for Germany': 48% of the votes.
Centre-left 'Social-Democratic Party': 21% of the votes.
Left-Wing 'Party of Democratic Socialism': 16% of the votes.
Etc.

United Left was the only far-left party, and far from your idealtypical Leninist vanguard. It only received 0.2% of the votes.

Turnout in this election was 93%.

So if some significant proportion of the population preferred socialism over capitalism, then 1) it was still only a significant minority and 2) they associated socialism with social welfare policies and not socialism in the Marxist sense.

Arguing that there was some movement for socialism in East Germany amounts to self-delusion. Protecting a 'nationalised planned economy' amounts to protecting one form of capitalism over another. The notion that any of these regimes were some kind of deformed/degenerated workers' state rests on the wrong premise that property relations precede relations of production. Therefore, nationalisation removes the bourgeoisie and abolishes capitalism. In Marxism, in contrast, it is the relations of production that determine the legal structure and not vice versa. Leninists of all stripes generally maintain the opposite, the change in the judicial form of property relations is sufficient to effect a social revolution. Maintaining this wrong premise leads to all kinds of bizarre conclusions, from zealously defending one form of capitalism over another to championing imperialist actions as liberation. The 'nationalised planned economy' was not some progressive system worth rallying behind that only required political revolution for vindication, it was an inherently flawed economic system that disappeared due to the absolute over-accumulation of capital. That such a system is associated with socialism by Leninists spells bad news for future socialist revolutions.

Paresh Chattopadhyay:

"Lenin conceives socialism basically in terms of ownership form of the means of production rather than in terms of the (social) relations of production. And he posits 'social ownership' of the means of production (in socialism) against capitalism's private ownership uniquely in the sense of "private ownership of separate individuals"�.16 Here again Lenin is several steps backward compared to Marx. For Marx juridical relations (forms) have no independent existence, they simply arise from the economic, that is, production relations. In other words it is the production (economic) relations which determine the ownership relations and their specific forms, not inversely. Secondly, Marx had already shown on the basis of his close observation of capitalism's development how its forms of ownership changed in response to the needs of capital accumulation. The ownership form of which Lenin speaks was indeed the initial form in capitalism, directly taken over from the Roman law. However, in the course of capital's development the requirements of capital's accumulation dictated a change in the ownership form from individual to collective capitalist ownership, which signified "abolition of private ownership within the capitalist mode of production itself"�, as Marx clearly noted. The relevant texts of Marx were already available quite some time before Lenin wrote his text from which our citation comes. Lenin's concept of private ownership was of course the dominant concept in the Second International "Marxism"� taken over from bourgeois jurisprudence. Similarly, social ownership in Lenin (for socialism) does not mean society's ownership that is, direct appropriation by society itself. It is rather state ownership where the state is by supposition a working class state.17 This identification of state ownership with ownership by the whole society is, again, absent from Marx's texts. Indeed, far from social ownership being identical with (working class) state ownership, socialism - even in its Leninist identification with Marx's lower phase of communism - excludes not only individual private ownership of the means of production but also (working class) state ownership, inasmuch as the first phase of the Association arrives on the historical scene only at the end of the transformation period coinciding with the end of the proletariat and its political rule ("state"� if you like). The mode of appropriation becomes for the first time directly social. This is the real social ownership that Marx envisages."

https://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay

[Rafiq]

But such a position is only to be expected - trying to redeem failed struggles of the past is precisely all Leninism could be today. Attempting to fit these historic-catastrophic events within the paradigm of a belief system which was fundamentally de-legitimized and utterly destroyed as a result of these events, is a natural response for the role-playing socialist.

Leninism, in the end, was completely and parasitically dependent on the endevours of 20th century Communist states, and the failure of the October revolution. And today this failure remains uncontested and the whole of the world's left had to pay the price.

But it isn't simply a matter of repeating past mistakes - the October revolution wasn't a mistake. It's a matter of deriving positions from dogmas of the past, it is a matter of deriving your politics from struggles which no longer have any context today, struggles which have long been over. But because everything, including the insignificant left fits in the political, ideological totality of our capitalist order - in the process of deriving their positions from struggles of the past, they are actively shaping and adopting positions which are fundamentally petite bourgeois in the present.

While there are noticeable achievements from "real-existing Socialism", ultimately, it was a catastrophic failure. The point is not that we should contest whether it was a failure, where we should concern ourselves is the argument that posits why.

I think any Communist should absolutely regard Gorbachev for a piece of shit - sure he was not himself responsible for this failure, but he was - a kind of a historical agent which manifested this failure. Symbolically, he represents our defeat. Gorbachev actively participated in the de-legitimization of the Left, and the legacy of the Communist struggle even as far back as the Paris Commune. We will bury the Gorbachev's of the previous era solely in the revival of the proletarian movement as such - and the revival of modern revolutionary politics.

[Red Commissar]

Gorbachev was the end result of a long decay of the USSR, but he did not help himself by surronding himself with people like Alexander Yakovlev, who was one of the major figures behind perestroika and glasnost. I remember reading an article about Yakolev written before he died in 2005 that showed him as pretty unapologetic about the Soviet Union's collapse- one gets the impression that he had hoped for it to happen in the first place. He had also been active in a lot of the groups who've been dedicated to exposing various abuses and crimes of the Soviet Union that've become prominent in much of Europe.

[Homo Songun]

I don't think it is enough to say that Gorbachev was merely a product of the system. Sam Marcy compellingly describes the long range, step-by-step plans of Gorbachev and his faction and how they were informed by a specific world-view. I'm convinced that Gorbachev is neither a hapless victim of circumstance nor a muddled fuck-up trying to "empirically" fix socialism.

http://www.workers.org/marcy/perestroika/

I don't think his basic analysis necessarily precludes the notion that capital(ists) was restored sometime before his rise to power. However he does make it clear that his rise engendered a qualitative change in the means of production with the collapse of the Soviet Union.