Fall of USSR

[Guardia Rossa]

I have heard of some theory that the corrupt nomenklature though that was easier to get richer in capitalism and elected Yeltsin to crush ocidentalists and stalinists alike, but that doesn't makes much sense and whatever.

Could someone explain why the USSR fell? Not the short answer please. I have heard many, noone satisfying and some contradicting.

No militant ideologists here plox.

[Armchair Partisan]

I think the USSR fell pretty much because it fought with an enemy that had a much larger share of the world's resources and thus could pretty much starve it out and/or use economic soft power to infringe upon its sphere - combined with the fact that its economic model (state capitalism), especially in its obscenely bureaucratic form in the USSR, is decent for a developing country but not so good for a premier superpower. All that combined with the fact that the bourgeoisie wanted to follow their class interests, which naturally led to the erosion of the socialist elements of the USSR's superstructure. Meanwhile, the workers had no interest in particularly fighting for the USSR (even if they didn't fight against it) and thus there was nobody left to keep it alive.

Whatever the case, the fall was not the work of a few years - it was the culmination of decades (one can argue about how many decades exactly). In fact, considering that it was the August Coup that led to the dissolution of the USSR, with the previously signed New Union Treaty almost managing to negotiate its continuation (with popular mandate) in the form of the Union of Sovereign States, although with the Baltic republics and maybe 1-2 more seceding, the fall of the USSR as the concept of a multiethnic nation was in no way predetermined - but the destruction of the state capitalist, "bureaucratic collectivist" (or however you wanna call it) economic system was.

[Illegalitarian]

I'm sure there is a long answer out there, but it's really quite simple. Between a faltering economy (due to the uncompromising over emphasis on heavy industry among other things), a stale, out-of-touch nomenklatura, and the fact that it was surrounded by hostile states (not in the geographic sense of course), it was bound to fall apart.

The latter factor made sure than any major social or economic crisis would be exploited to break apart the entire thing. Judging by the 91' referendum it seems like a revolution for a more transparent and democratic "socialism" that was highjacked by the austerity clique of Yeltsin.


Someone will undoubtedly come along and give you a more detailed explanation however

[Tim Cornelis]

http://marxistpedia.mwzip.com/wiki/Soviet_Union#Collapse_and_dissolution

[Sinister Intents]

I am pretty sure Rafiq is going to come along and provide a long, concise, heavily thought out response that answer multiple questions two steps ahead of everyone else.

The USSR was in a chaotic death spiral from it's inception, and it wouldn't have been able to last regardless because of the conditions it arose from and the state capitalist system which couldn't expand like the other capitalist nations against it. The west ensured that they put the USSR in a strangle hold and perpetuated a holy war against perceived heathens.

[Ele'ill]

so are you starting a rafiq street-team

[Sinister Intents]

so are you starting a rafiq street-team

Lol, nah. I just think his posts are pretty great. I look forward to his and several others' responses to this thread.

[BIXX]

It sounds more like you're trying to be his yes-man.

Which, don't get me wrong, every now and then rafiq says some legit shit (broken cock and all that) but for the most part its all shit.

[BIXX]

Also though I wanna say one other thing which is that I don't get why we care why the USSR fell. I'm not even a communist, and I don't think communists should worry about it because it wasn't a good example of a communist movement.

[Sinister Intents]

It sounds more like you're trying to be his yes-man.

Which, don't get me wrong, every now and then rafiq says some legit shit (broken cock and all that) but for the most part its all shit.

Ugh, here goes derailing the thread: I don't agree with Rafiq 100% though I am a fan, there are other users I want to see respond to this thread like 9mm, Danielle ND. I'd also be a terrible "yes-"man"".

How would you respond to the OP? I am no USSR expert, but I threw my 2-cents in. I can't really go on from what I've said, but could elaborate a bit.

[JayBro47]

The Communist International was closed in 1956? And Eurocommunism, correct? Which with Anti-Revisionism was in response to Brezhnevist Invasion of Czechoslovakia? So it lost a lot of it's standing with non-Russians.

[Sewer Socialist]

Oh, shit. Rafiq Street Team should really be the name of my tendency.

Anyway, I'm familiar with the information in the link Tim Cornelis provided, but what I'm confused about is why the USSR didn't stay together as a capitalist state with economic liberalization, a political shift to the right, and electoral restructuring.

[Guardia Rossa]

Also though I wanna say one other thing which is that I don't get why we care why the USSR fell. I'm not even a communist, and I don't think communists should worry about it because it wasn't a good example of a communist movement.

Why exactly?

[RedMaterialist]

I have heard of some theory that the corrupt nomenklature though that was easier to get richer in capitalism and elected Yeltsin to crush ocidentalists and stalinists alike, but that doesn't makes much sense and whatever.

Could someone explain why the USSR fell? Not the short answer please. I have heard many, noone satisfying and some contradicting.

No militant ideologists here plox.

After 25 yrs you would think somebody would have figured it out.

A better question would be: why in all of recorded history has no world super power ever just collapsed? No military invasion, no state destroying plague, famine, flood, meteor destruction, etc. In fact this particular state had recently defeated an invasion by one of the most destructive and barbaric forces in history. And this state went from being a peasant, third world feudal country to putting a man in space in less than four decades.

There is no economic, bureaucratic, moral, religious or other explanation for the collapse of the USSR.

Marx, however, provided a clue. A political state exists for one purpose only: the enforced suppression of an exploited class. Once all exploiting classes have been destroyed then there will no longer be a basis for the existence of a state.

There is one caveat. The society which abolishes all classes can only succeed as a world revolutionary state.

[Mr. Piccolo]

It was a "revolution from above" as David Kotz and Fred Weir argued. In short, the nomenklatura eventually came to the conclusion that they were materially better off dissolving the USSR and becoming capitalists or allied to capitalists. Nationalist factionalism among the Soviet elites, and especially Great Russian nationalism supported by men such as Boris Yeltsin, was important in the actual breakup of the country. Yeltsin and others argued that Russians were getting a raw deal out of the Union, arguing that Russians were net producers while the other Republics were net consumers.

This is why the USSR broke up instead of just becoming a authoritarian capitalist state like the People's Republic of China.

Even so, in the 1991 referendum on whether the Union should be preserved, the majority of Soviet citizens voted to maintain the Union. The fact that it was broken up anyway shows how the collapse of the USSR was decided by elites and not the common people, contrary to the Western narrative that the Soviet Union was brought down by popular demand.

http://i52.tinypic.com/19797q.jpg

[#FF0000]

After 25 yrs you would think somebody would have figured it out.

No, this is not how history or historiography work. Hundreds of years on and there are still conflicting and competing interpretations of the French Revolution. History is no more clear cut than politics.


A better question would be: why in all of recorded history has no world super power ever just collapsed? No military invasion, no state destroying plague, famine, flood, meteor destruction, etc. In fact this particular state had recently defeated an invasion by one of the most destructive and barbaric forces in history. And this state went from being a peasant, third world feudal country to putting a man in space in less than four decades.

It didn't "just collapse" though. You're just wholly ignorant of the factors which lead to collapse and still put forward the most out-and-out foolish interpretation of events anyone could ever imagine -- the idea that the USSR collapsed because it had abolished class, and thus, the state collapsed. That is Karl Pilkington-grade stupidity and I seriously implore you to read a book any time you think of posting on this subject ever again.

[Art Vandelay]

The collapse of the USSR was predicted - in a way - in 1936 by Trotsky, in his classic Marxist text 'The Revolution Betrayed.' The Bolsheviks had established a dictatorship of the proletariat in the rise of the October revolution; this state, while politically monolithic, was economically democratic. The analysis Trotsky put forth, was centered on the notion that the Stalinist bureaucracy was not a new ruling class, but rather a Bonapartist caste. He emphatically stated that the soviet state needed democracy to survive like the human body needs oxygen. Without economic democracy, the immense potential of a nationalized planned economy would continue to be squandered and eventually economic stagnation would set in. Either one of two things would happen: (1) the proletariat would rise up in a political revolution and overthrow the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, or (2) the bureaucracy would restore capitalism. And, unfortunately, the latter is precisely what happened.

[Mr. Piccolo]

I should also add that the Soviet intelligentsia (scientists, writers, artists, and other "knowledge workers") had a strong, and probably foundational hand in eventually dissolving the USSR.

Following World War II, the pay gap between Soviet knowledge workers and manual workers declined. As Kotz and Weir noted: “Western visitors frequently heard complaints from Moscow intellectuals like the following: ‘My dacha outside Moscow is right next to one belonging to a truck driver and mine is no better than his.’” Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System, David Kotz and Fred Weir (page 69).

Soviet intellectuals perceived that their Western counterparts were materially much wealthier than they were and had more status than they did under the Soviet form of state socialism. As the Soviet economy began to run into problems in the 1970s, more and more Soviet intellectuals radicalized and became supporters of a turn to capitalism.

Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms only enhanced the capitalist radicalization of sectors of the Soviet elite. Figures such as Alexander Yakovlev and Sergey Zalygin used their positions in various publications and other cultural bodies to attack socialism and spread a liberal-capitalist ideology.

[Rafiq]

Anyway, I'm familiar with the information in the link Tim Cornelis provided, but what I'm confused about is why the USSR didn't stay together as a capitalist state with economic liberalization, a political shift to the right, and electoral restructuring.

Because despite the fact that the predispositions to capitalist production had proceeded the collapse of the USSR, or perestroika by several decades (Bordiga said that the bourgeoisie existed within the crevices of Soviet society, rather than simply 'the state'. This is profoundly true - there was no matured, affirmed "bourgeois class" but the predispositions to its existence after the agricultural revolution were there), unlike the Chinese state which was purely devoid of any carcass of a proletarian dictatorship, the Soviet Union was fundamentally incapable of sustaining capitalist development without either a total overhaul of the state bureaucracy, the mechanisms of state power and generally the entire political infrastructure of the country. Even under Gorbachev, a quiet transition to capitalism as was possible in China and Vietnam, that had been the reality of Yugoslavia for most of its existence was simply not possible. While the Soviet mode of production was predisposed to capitalism, the Soviet state was not affirmatively - i.e. it possessed purely a negative role in destroying the remnants of feudalism where the bourgeoisie could not.


I'm not even a communist, and I don't think communists should worry about it because it wasn't a good example of a communist movement.


We don't choose our history, and we don't decide which legacy we get to inherit or not. Whether or not we find the USSR pleasant, whether we don't want to identify with the residue of the October revolution's failure or not doesn't change the fact that it was our failure and yes - an explanation for its nature, and its collapse, is our responsibility. Many reactionary "socialists" like Chomsky had to bypass this problem by claiming that, in a way even rather unprecedented by anarchists in general, that October 1917 was in fact a sham, a coup by some power hungry opportunists or whatever you want. Even if anarchists more or less subscribed to a narrative similar to this, its presentation, its form was wholly a late 20th century phenomena - this cynical bullshit of distancing oneself, or simply re-hashing prevailing anti-Communist sentiment to conform to "socialist" ideas. And alas, while the international worker's movement was crushed (independently of the Soviet Union), while the Left in general collapsed whether or not it was critical of its existence, Chomsky had the nerve to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a "victory" for socialism. Now this is absolutely pathetic. It is an attempt to bypass a fundamental question: The Soviet Union was something you don't want to identify with, and yet, we don't get an explanation as to why or how it became what it did. To claim that it was rotten upon inception is a rotten lie: even the international anarchist forces were enthusiastic about it at least very initially. And those same anarchists still like to tell us their I-told-you-so about how the failure had nothing to do with the ill-intentions of the revolutionaries but to the innate rottenness of the state as an organ of repression.

This is a poor and lazy explanation, but at least it's an explanation. At least it attempts to, at least to a minor extent, recognize that the foundation of the Soviet Union was built upon a (futile) attempt at emancipation. The ultimate sin is to simply distance oneself from the Soviet Union's existence. Look, even if the only relationship you would like to have to the Soviet Union is a critical one - THIS is at least something. To DIS-ASSOCIATE yourself from the history of 20th century Communism, as though it's someone else'es business, is cowardly and dishonest. So whether or not it was a "good" example of a "Communist movement" is irrelevant as to whether it was a Communist movement. It was. It is irrevocably part of our history and burden of redemption remains upon us.


Ugh, here goes derailing the thread: I don't agree with Rafiq 100% though I am a fan, there are other users I want to see respond to this thread like 9mm, Danielle ND. I'd also be a terrible "yes-"man"".


I don't think Mari3L's comment, or anyone else's comments besides Placenta were anything more than light-hearted. However, should you be accused of being a "yes man" in the future, not just for me but for anyone, my advice is to ignore them - it is simply a way for what could only ever be your own struggle for the pursuit of knowledge and theoretical sophistication to be hampered with these stupid infantile games. If anyone for a second thinks that if there is an iota of theoretical strength I have, and without trying to be modest I fully accept that I am rather sub-par compared to those I copy - it is owed to some kind of uniquely personal qualities or whatever they're dead wrong. Most especially for Marxists, no individual can claim anything for our theoretical tradition. We should mimic the spirit of Bordiga (a man who I profess I have mentioned too much already), the spirit of anonymity. Not out of some false modesty, but recognizing that theoretical strength derives from the collective power of the shared collective space of our theoretical tradition, irreducible to any single person.

[Illegalitarian]

I enjoy Rafiq posts. I'm a big Zizek fan so his points usually go down smoothly

[Blake's Baby]

After 25 yrs you would think somebody would have figured it out.

A better question would be: why in all of recorded history has no world super power ever just collapsed? ...

Well, in all of 'world recorded history' there have only been 2 superpowers, the USA and the USSR, and one of them did collapse, so what's your point? 50% of superpowers collapse within 60 years, according to the data we have.

Other empires have collapsed. The British Empire did, going from owning 1/4 of the world to about 1/100 of it in 20 years. That's a pretty catastrophic fall of empire, and for very similar reasons as the USSR - bankruptcy, basically. Neither the British Empire nor the USSR could afford to keep up the empires they'd created. No meteors, famines, pestilence, floods, or barbarian invasions there either.

[Armchair Partisan]

Also though I wanna say one other thing which is that I don't get why we care why the USSR fell. I'm not even a communist, and I don't think communists should worry about it because it wasn't a good example of a communist movement.

Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't want to get involved in any of the mudslinging here or stuff like that, but I did lurk a long time before I started posting and that included reading quite a lot of your posts. IIRC you've admitted not to be a socialist, a communist, an anarchist, or a revolutionary. What exactly are you then?


I should also add that the Soviet intelligentsia (scientists, writers, artists, and other "knowledge workers") had a strong, and probably foundational hand in eventually dissolving the USSR.

Following World War II, the pay gap between Soviet knowledge workers and manual workers declined. As Kotz and Weir noted: “Western visitors frequently heard complaints from Moscow intellectuals like the following: ‘My dacha outside Moscow is right next to one belonging to a truck driver and mine is no better than his.’” Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System, David Kotz and Fred Weir (page 69).

Out of curiosity, was that decline in the wage gap caused by the intellectuals' wages falling, or the workers' wages rising? I think the former is more likely to breed these attitudes, although a capitalist mentality encourages them in any case.

[Sinister Intents]

@Armchair Partizan: PC is an anti capitalist with a considerable anarchist lean. He espouses some influence from egotism and primitivism. You don't need to apologize to him for asking your question. Echo and I used to be friendly but that fell apart and it's my fault.

Also I wonder if the USSR could've survived at all? Would it make a difference even if it still existed?

[BIXX]

We don't choose our history, and we don't decide which legacy we get to inherit or not. Whether or not we find the USSR pleasant, whether we don't want to identify with the residue of the October revolution's failure or not doesn't change the fact that it was our failure and yes - an explanation for its nature, and its collapse, is our responsibility. Many reactionary "socialists" like Chomsky had to bypass this problem by claiming that, in a way even rather unprecedented by anarchists in general, that October 1917 was in fact a sham, a coup by some power hungry opportunists or whatever you want. Even if anarchists more or less subscribed to a narrative similar to this, its presentation, its form was wholly a late 20th century phenomena - this cynical bullshit of distancing oneself, or simply re-hashing prevailing anti-Communist sentiment to conform to "socialist" ideas. And alas, while the international worker's movement was crushed (independently of the Soviet Union), while the Left in general collapsed whether or not it was critical of its existence, Chomsky had the nerve to say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a "victory" for socialism. Now this is absolutely pathetic. It is an attempt to bypass a fundamental question: The Soviet Union was something you don't want to identify with, and yet, we don't get an explanation as to why or how it became what it did. To claim that it was rotten upon inception is a rotten lie: even the international anarchist forces were enthusiastic about it at least very initially. And those same anarchists still like to tell us their I-told-you-so about how the failure had nothing to do with the ill-intentions of the revolutionaries but to the innate rottenness of the state as an organ of repression.

This is a poor and lazy explanation, but at least it's an explanation. At least it attempts to, at least to a minor extent, recognize that the foundation of the Soviet Union was built upon a (futile) attempt at emancipation. The ultimate sin is to simply distance oneself from the Soviet Union's existence. Look, even if the only relationship you would like to have to the Soviet Union is a critical one - THIS is at least something. To DIS-ASSOCIATE yourself from the history of 20th century Communism, as though it's someone else'es business, is cowardly and dishonest. So whether or not it was a "good" example of a "Communist movement" is irrelevant as to whether it was a Communist movement. It was. It is irrevocably part of our history and burden of redemption remains upon us.

This is actually a better response than I was expecting. Though, I do find it flawed. Yeah its part of communist history. I'm not saying y'all shouldn't claim that. I am saying that in the search for solutions is irrelevant as the USSR wasn't a very good example of communism. That isn't cowardly, that just saying that you don't need to do that- you're time, IMO, would be better spent searching for ways to create communism constituting itself against capital, and a favorite line I've heard from you is how you dislike looking to the past for that shit. So why bother with the USSR?

[BIXX]

Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't want to get involved in any of the mudslinging here or stuff like that, but I did lurk a long time before I started posting and that included reading quite a lot of your posts. IIRC you've admitted not to be a socialist, a communist, an anarchist, or a revolutionary. What exactly are you then?

I'm similar to an anarchist but not one, I would say you could lump me in with the broader nihilist category even though I'd say that doesn't completely explain me. I have influences from primitivism, egoism, insurrectionalism, queer theory, feminism, and recently communization. I'm not entirely sure how I'd describe that set other than the fact that traditional analysis has failed to explain my experiences (the fucked up shit capital/civilization has done to me) in an accurate way.


I love this question. Cause my answer is always evolving a bit.

[Rafiq]

This is actually a better response than I was expecting. Though, I do find it flawed. Yeah its part of communist history. I'm not saying y'all shouldn't claim that. I am saying that in the search for solutions is irrelevant as the USSR wasn't a very good example of communism. That isn't cowardly, that just saying that you don't need to do that- you're time, IMO, would be better spent searching for ways to create communism constituting itself against capital, and a favorite line I've heard from you is how you dislike looking to the past for that shit. So why bother with the USSR?

The point isn't to re-make the USSR but recognize that the October revolution was wrought out of conditions that still exist, and therefore requires the question of how to avoid failure again.

[BIXX]

The point isn't to re-make the USSR but recognize that the October revolution was wrought out of conditions that still exist, and therefore requires the question of how to avoid failure again.
Except those conditions don't still exist. Yeah capitalism exists, but it has changed.

[Rafiq]

Except those conditions don't still exist. Yeah capitalism exists, but it has changed.

And it remains capitalism. I didn't say that conditions are identical in general, but that the same ones that make communism possible still exist.

[BIXX]

And it remains capitalism. I didn't say that conditions are identical in general, but that the same ones that make communism possible still exist.
OK, granted, if communism has ever been possible within the context of capitalism it is still possible. But I really don't think the USSR provides much useful information to create communism. Again when I'm saying communism I mean "communism that constitutes itself against capital". I just don't think the USSR gives us any helpful ideas surrounding what communists ought to do.

[Rafiq]

Why doesn't it? This question is already the answer.

[BIXX]

Why doesn't it?

Because it had absolutely no chance of constituting itself against capital.

[Sinister Intents]

Because it had absolutely no chance of constituting itself against capital.

The USSR or the idea of communism in general?

[BIXX]

The USSR or the idea of communism in general?
The USSR. I have my reservations about communism too, but I'm being generous today.

[Rafiq]

Because it had absolutely no chance of constituting itself against capital.

Again: why?

[RedMaterialist]

Because it had absolutely no chance of constituting itself against capital.

No chance? It destroyed the then existing Tsarist state and nationalized all capital assets. It transformed a mostly peasant economy into an industrial giant. The big capitalists, as a class, simply left the SU. They then financed Hitler to try and destroy the "Bolsheviks".

Millions of petit-bourgeois remained after the revolution. Numerous studies have shown how they tried to hide from the Stalinist state: forging new birth certificates, moving away from the cities and towns where they had been living, fabricating work histories, destroying family histories, etc. Not surprisingly this led to false accusations, charges of treason and show trials.

Communism has no choice but to "constitute" itself out of capitalism, first by establishing a socialist transition leading to the collapse of the socialist state. Communism will then constitute itself as a stateless society, but only after a world wide revolution. Ultimately the Soviet transition out of socialism had to fail because the soviet state collapsed when surrounded by hostile capitalist states.

[RedMaterialist]

Well, in all of 'world recorded history' there have only been 2 superpowers, the USA and the USSR, and one of them did collapse, so what's your point? 50% of superpowers collapse within 60 years, according to the data we have.

Other empires have collapsed. The British Empire did, going from owning 1/4 of the world to about 1/100 of it in 20 years. That's a pretty catastrophic fall of empire, and for very similar reasons as the USSR - bankruptcy, basically. Neither the British Empire nor the USSR could afford to keep up the empires they'd created. No meteors, famines, pestilence, floods, or barbarian invasions there either.

Britain is a junior partner in the US empire. In some ways London is a more powerful center of finance than NY. But even if you consider the British empire to no longer exist, it's decline was the result of two world wars.

Rome is the classic super power; also, the Aztecs, maya, Byzantines, austro-Hungarian, Mongols, pre-revolutionary France, the Spanish empire, the Prussian empire, the third reich, Tsarist Russia. All destroyed by military invasion or revolution.

No doubt none was as dominant as the US and the USSR, except possibly Rome and Britain.

[RedMaterialist]

Communism could stand agaist Capitalism and win.

If German Revolution had a more Leninist pose then a Luxembourgist, and the damn poles didn't re-created the meaning of miracle, Communism would have a way stronger base and could use the casus belli of being attacked by the allies at various places to capture geopolitically strategic areas and industrially/demographically rich places. That would give them a way stronger base and could have brought Trotsky in, and could erase Nazism from the roots.

That could mean, together wich a Chinese revolution and some arab socialist revolution, world revolution, accordingly at least to Mackinder, and the revolution would remain internationalist as it encompassed many nationalities instead of Russian and russian-influenced nationalities. That would also probably mean a united URSS encompassing more then half of Eurasia......

(sorry for bad english)
(sorry if I'm saying something VERY VERY stupid, that's my opinion based on the little I know.)

Your argument, in my view, is exactly what Trotsky said, that socialism in one country is not possible. The SU proved that socialism can begin in one country, but that it must extend internationally, otherwise there is the risk of the sudden collapse of the isolated socialist state. In this sense the capitalists were right in accusing the Bolsheviks of exporting revolution. But could Stalin have successfully expanded the revolution, even if he had wanted? I doubt it.

[#FF0000]

All destroyed by military invasion or revolution.

And what happened at the end of the USSR doesn't constitute a "revolution"?

[RedMaterialist]

And what happened at the end of the USSR doesn't constitute a "revolution"?

No, that wasn't a revolution. Unless you believe Yeltsin was a world-historical revolutionary figure. A revolution which destroys a state or society is a violent, bloody thing. The British revolutions, American, French, 1848, Paris commune, Russian, German, US and Spanish civil wars, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, South African, Venezuelan, all protracted and bloody. Ruling classes obviously do not give up without a fight.

The so-called Velvet Revolutions or Arab spring, failed (esp in Egypt) for the same reason the Paris commune failed: they did not destroy the old state and create a new one, they merely tried to "take hold of the existing state."

[BIXX]

Again: why?

Because from from its very inception it didn't constitute itself against capital. The fact is an entirely separate opposition to the USSR would have been required to come into play that did constitute itself against capital in order to have made saving the Russian experiment worth our breath.

[BIXX]

No chance? It destroyed the then existing Tsarist state and nationalized all capital assets. It transformed a mostly peasant economy into an industrial giant. The big capitalists, as a class, simply left the SU. They then financed Hitler to try and destroy the "Bolsheviks".

Millions of petit-bourgeois remained after the revolution. Numerous studies have shown how they tried to hide from the Stalinist state: forging new birth certificates, moving away from the cities and towns where they had been living, fabricating work histories, destroying family histories, etc. Not surprisingly this led to false accusations, charges of treason and show trials.

Communism has no choice but to "constitute" itself out of capitalism, first by establishing a socialist transition leading to the collapse of the socialist state. Communism will then constitute itself as a stateless society, but only after a world wide revolution. Ultimately the Soviet transition out of socialism had to fail because the soviet state collapsed when surrounded by hostile capitalist states.

None of what you're describing here can be described as constituting itself against capital.

[John Nada]

I have heard of some theory that the corrupt nomenklature though that was easier to get richer in capitalism and elected Yeltsin to crush ocidentalists and stalinists alike, but that doesn't makes much sense and whatever.

Could someone explain why the USSR fell? Not the short answer please. I have heard many, noone satisfying and some contradicting.

No militant ideologists here plox.It's rather complicated, like so many things in life. It's hard to just stick to what happened in the USSR itself. Almost entire Eastern bloc crumbed and restored capitalism too. Also it's simplistic to say Stalin took over and fucked it all up when it lasted nearly 40 years after his death. Nor is it as easy to say that revisionist just took over right after his death and fucked it up. The seeds existed under Stalin too, with his mistaken declaration that capitalism could only be restored from outside. Even Trotsky thought that the workers would overthrow an attempt to restore capitalism, and spreading the revolution to the west would prevent that in the first place. However, we now know that counterrevolution can occur from within, even if the revolution spreads.
Russian Civil War: Over a dozen countries invaded Russia to aid counterrevolutionaries who wanted to strangle the first successful proletarian revolution in it's crib. Millions died. The proletariat(already a minority) was decimated and much of the infrastructure was destroyed. This weakened the Communist's base, so they had to reconstruct.

The economy was in shambles. The vast majority belonged to the peasantry, with a sizable petty-bourgeoisie and rich peasantry. NEP was implemented as a strategic retreat to rebuild. Many rich peasants and petty-bourgeois grew richer.

Later, NEP was abolished. Industrialization and collectivization was carried out. The remnants of the rich peasants and petty-bourgeoisie were officially liquidated. A new generation of proletarians and Communist cadre arose. Most of the economy was centralized under control of the DotP in alliance with the small peasantry, though not without hardship and problems.

Nevertheless, ex-class elements remanded. Factions and parochial interests took hold in the party and bureaucracy. Opportunists and careerists entered the government. However, there was still a revolutionary hold on the Soviet people.

WWII starts. The fascists destroyed much of the country, killing 27 million people. A lot of honest Communist and workers were killed. Millions were wounded. A lot of infrastructure was destroyed.

Fortunately the fascists were driven out and eliminated. The revolution and socialist construction broke out of capitalist encirclement, encompassing 1/3 of the world. This is the formative years of the new generation of the Communists and Soviet proletariat.

In spite of the revolution finally spreading to other countries, the cost was great. If you look at on average who was hit the hardest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wwii_casualties#Human_losses_by_country , the Eastern bloc countries were among the worst. For example, China was second in total body count, at 10-20 million killed. Poland, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, east Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary all suffered huge losses. Many were also wounded. Much of the infrastructure was ruined. The Holocaust nearly wiped out the Jewish and Roma peoples. Tens of millions were left orphaned and widowed. Potential revolutions in other countries, like France and Italy, were thwarted. Korea, already an ex-oppressed colony and wrecked by the war, was split in two. More destruction was rained down by the imperialists in the Korean war, killing and wounding many Chinese troops too.

All this with the looming threat of nuclear destruction, starting an arms race between the US and USSR.

After WWII, the economy needed to be reconstructed. Restitution was taken from former Axis countries. The Eastern Bloc turned down the Marshal Plan. The Eastern Bloc managed to rebuild, though not to the extent of the West(which had the advantage of imperialist super-profits from colonies, semi-colonies and neo-colonies).

After the war, outwardly the Soviets appeared united. However like it always was, there were various faction riving for power.

There was an attempt at "reforms" under economic planner Nikolai Voznesensky's faction. Inflation rose up, which was very unpopular. The death penalty, abolished in 1947, was reinstated. Voznesensky was executed.

Stalin was old. When he died, a power struggle ensued. The Beria-Molotov-Malenkov faction squared off against the Khrushchev-Zhukov faction. Beria was removed with the support of Molotov, Khrushchev and Malenkov. Khrushchev then turned on Malenkov and Molotov with the backing of Zhukov. Khrushchev denounced Stalin in his "Secret Speech" known only to a few thousand Party members, the CIA and US newspapers. A takeover attempt by Malenkov was blocked by Khrushchev and Zhukov. Khrushchev's faction, fearing a military faction led by Zhukov, forced him out. Later Khrushchev himself was disposed by Brezhnev's faction.

On foreign relations, Yugoslavia broke with the Eastern Bloc. Hungary was invaded by the USSR. China and Albania broke with the USSR. Czechoslovakia was invaded. Many of the Soviets actions alienated foreign allies, with them declaring the Soviet Union social imperialists and state capitalist.

On the economy, many "reforms" were implemented over the years. Under Khrushchev, the state tractor station were turned over to individual collective farms, centers of commodity production. The tractor stations were responsible for providing the farms with equipment and plowing the fields, but now were a site for speculation. It may seem like a small thing, but it directly contradicts Marx's and Engels's advice on how to handle the peasantry, in a country that was largely agrarian. This damaged the relation between the proletariat and peasantry. This and the ill-fated Virgin Lands program damaged Soviet agriculture.

A series of so-called "reforms" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Reform_in_the_Soviet_Union) were implemented over the years. It increasingly tied the worker's pay to performance and emphasized the role of "profitability" in planning. Under the guise of "de-centralizing", different sections of industry competed against one another. It wasn't giving workers more control, but making the bureaucracy more parochial. Supposedly just a simulation, the law of value drove production. As these capitalist "reforms" got implemented, the economy got worse and worse.

Something that some advocated to aid planning was cybernetics. It was an idea of Victor Glushkov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Glushkov . Some in the bureaucracy supported it in theory, but it was never implemented in full. Many planners didn't want to lose their job. Liberals hated it because they didn't like thought of more government control. The military didn't want to share the technology and a network with the civilians. It was an idea debated from above, so the workers didn't really push for it. The Soviets could've beat the US to the internet right there.

Something I found strange is the Soviets never seemed to have gotten rid of the gold standard. The ruble was pegged to the British pound and convertible into gold. Yet supposedly planning was based on "use value" and the exchange value was just called "value. Value was quantified in rubles. Which means they were planning around the market value of the pound and gold, and not socially-necessary labor time. A gold fetish.

Yet it doesn't seemed to have ever crossed their minds to just go with fiat currency. Surely a superpower with a planned economy and later many allies they could've made the ruble just some way to quantify labor expenses, across the Eastern Bloc nations. The planned economies would've been in a better position to pull it off than the capitalist nations who did it first(when it shouldn't have been possible, according to orthodoxy).:confused:

At the same time, the USSR and many of it's allies started taking loans from capitalists, IIRC start somewhat in the 70's but accelerated in the 80's. The USSR was "running out of money" by the 90's. If they defaulted, the agricultural sector was not thought able to replace the imports lost.

On July 14, 1991, the Soviets ask to join the IMF, 4 months after the referendum to preserve the USSR, and a month after Yeltsin is "elected" President of the Russian Soviet Republic. The USSR had an estimated $70-60 billion in debt. August 24, Gorbachev dissolves the Communist Party Central Committee, a few days later days later indefinitely suspends the CPSU. At the same time it's reveled that the Soviet only have 1/5 of there gold reserves, priced at $3 billion, and grain harvests were going to be far less than before. In October, Gorbachev agrees to to market "reforms" in exchange for IMF observer status. On November 22, 1991, the Soviets get $1 billion dollar loan from the IMF, and 3.9 billions in debt relief. December 1, Ukraine declares independence, and on December 8, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus decide to dissolve the USSR. By Catholic/Protestant Christmas, Gorbachev resigns, and the Russian flag is raised.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/29/world/toward-the-summit-soviet-bid-to-join-imf-still-a-puzzle.html http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-09-30/news/9103140641_1_individual-soviet-republics-senior-imf-official-soviet-union http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/30/business/estimate-on-gold-worsens-outlook-for-soviet-union.html http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-11-20/news/9104150134_1_republics-soviet-army-foreign-debt http://articles.latimes.com/1991-11-22/news/mn-47_1_soviet-union

Strange how wherever the IMF goes, misery follows. It seems like the leadership thought they had the chance to officially become bourgeois and took the risk as the PRC had earlier. But the fact that Gorbachev and Yeltsin got as high up in the Communist Party(which it's successors are dominated by revisionists), and the masses didn't rise up to stop it, says it was rotten with counterrevolution by then. Hopefully someday the people of the fSU will get another shot at revolution, but do better this time. At least we all could learn the lessons from the failure(and successes) of the SU, so as not to repeat the mistakes.:hammersickle:

[Rafiq]

Because from from its very inception it didn't constitute itself against capital. The fact is an entirely separate opposition to the USSR would have been required to come into play that did constitute itself against capital in order to have made saving the Russian experiment worth our breath.

What are the qualifications for "constituting oneself against capital" and why? Finally, WHY were they unable to do this upon inception where another "opposition" would have been able to?

[The Disillusionist]

I enjoy Rafiq posts. I'm a big Zizek fan so his points usually go down smoothly

I'm a big fan of rampant narcissism, so I also find Rafiq's posts to be quite enjoyable.

Kidding. We've had our conflicts, but I have to admit that he puts much more effort and thought into his posts than many others.

Finally, I don't really care why the USSR fell, beyond the most immediate analysis. It fell quite a while ago, and is no longer relevant in my opinion. But continue your discussion.

[Guardia Rossa]

Big Badass text
Thanks dude!

[G4b3n]

Stalin may have been a douche who repressed the workers he ruled over as opposed to leading. But not even bourgeois economists can deny that Stalinism as an economic system was very viable and extremely impressive in terms of pure statistics. I would look to the stagnation of the Brezhnev years and the correlation of the so called "revisionist" camp to see where the downturn began. It didn't just fall out of nowhere, it was coming since the 70s.

[RedMaterialist]

Stalin may have been a douche who repressed the workers he ruled over as opposed to leading. But not even bourgeois economists can deny that Stalinism as an economic system was very viable and extremely impressive in terms of pure statistics. I would look to the stagnation of the Brezhnev years and the correlation of the so called "revisionist" camp to see where the downturn began. It didn't just fall out of nowhere, it was coming since the 70s.

One of the most well known bourgeois economists, Paul Samuelson, had this to say about the Soviet Union economy in 1989:


contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the soviet economy is proof that...socialist command economy can function and even thrive. (Samuelson, Paul. Economics, 13th edition. 1989, page 837. McGraw hill.)

Nobody, of course, remembers Samuelson for that.

[Mr. Piccolo]

Out of curiosity, was that decline in the wage gap caused by the intellectuals' wages falling, or the workers' wages rising? I think the former is more likely to breed these attitudes, although a capitalist mentality encourages them in any case.

My understanding is that after World War II, manual workers saw their pay increase, so it was more of a relative decline for the intellectuals. Before the end of World War II, knowledge workers often had significantly better pay than manual workers. The theory was that to build socialism and modernize the USSR you had to develop a class of knowledge workers in science, engineering, education, law, etc.

After World War II, manual laborers were given higher pay to compensate them for working in jobs that were usually more dangerous, more physically demanding, more tightly supervised, and more dependent on the vagaries of the availability of raw materials and machines.

Even so, knowledge workers still generally had access to better housing than manual laborers, and most importantly, the intellectual workers had more connections to the official governing institutions of the Soviet state, which explains why the pro-capitalist intellectuals were able to have such an outsized influence on the country. Even if Soviet intellectuals were paid about as much or even less than manual workers, they had more influence within the Soviet press, educational institutions, and the Communist Party.

[JayBro47]

Red-Matierialism:

Soviet Social-Imperialism? The Invasion of Czechoslovakia criticized by other Communists? invasion of prague '68 was an example of the ussr running iut of positive/progressive steam, compared to berlin or stalingrad during ww2. i

[etiennel]

I'd say a mixture of Stalinism and pressures from capitalist countries.