Why did the Soviets fail?

[which doctor]

Why did the Sovit Union fail in it's task of creating a communist society? They had the revolution going for them. Was is Stalin that caused them to fail? Or was it really never their goal to put communism in effect? My theory is that shit happens. It was a new idea for those times, and a few mistakes were made. They didn't really let the people rule, instead they tried to have just one central leader. Stalin even made things worse for the country by being authoritarian. I will admit that a few good things did happen, but also many bad things happened that overshadow the good ones. What are your thoughts on they the USSR/CCCP failed?

[Master Che]

Stalin ruined everything for them. But the USSR collapsed because of Gorbachev.

[JKP]

Their leninist model never seeked to empower the masses, instead granting a monopoly of power to the party.

Same with all the other leninist revolutions.

[ComradeOm]

The Soviet Union was unable to make the transition to socialism in 1917 because the material conditions did not exist at the time. They did exist two decades later but by then the bureaucracy was too entrenched and unwilling to surrender its power. There's also the fact that Marxism-Leninism failed as an ideology.

Mistakes were no doubt made but Lenin's underlying theories remain valid. We can try and correct those mistakes or we can throw the entire ideology out the window. It would be foolish in the extreme to consider the latter.


Their leninist model never seeked to empower the masses, instead granting a monopoly of power to the party.

Same with all the other leninist revolutions.
Marxism has never sought to grant power to the peasants. I fail to see why Lenin should have done so.

[Zeruzo]

Good book on the subject:

http://www.epo.be/international/bookinfo.php?isbn=D1995USSR

(it's too difficult to just explain it on a message board)

[JKP]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 02:30 AM



Their leninist model never seeked to empower the masses, instead granting a monopoly of power to the party.

Same with all the other leninist revolutions.
Marxism has never sought to grant power to the peasants. I fail to see why Lenin should have done so.
Leninism is in contradiction with marxism on a large number of levels.

[Zeruzo]

Originally posted by JKP+Nov 15 2005, 07:07 PM--> (JKP @ Nov 15 2005, 07:07 PM)
[email protected] 15 2005, 02:30 AM



Their leninist model never seeked to empower the masses, instead granting a monopoly of power to the party.

Same with all the other leninist revolutions.
Marxism has never sought to grant power to the peasants. I fail to see why Lenin should have done so.
Leninism is in contradiction with marxism on a large number of levels. [/b]
Explain...

[Technique3055]

Stalin was creating an incredible economy. Economically, they were on pace to be a huge world power.

Then World War Two happened, and over 25% of industry in the country was destroyed. That could be a problem.

But there were other problems with the Soviet Union other than just WW2. Following that, the Cold War Era caused a good bit of strife, and the fact that they were basically alone in their quest for socialism doesn't help too much either (Sure, Mao was ruling China round the same time period, however I'm not too sure that one country had extraordinary relations with the other. Trying to accomplish communism in a single country is an extremely difficult task. Had the Mensheviks gained power and had they waited for worker upheaval in Europe to start the ball rolling, things could've been different).

[JKP]

Originally posted by Zeruzo+Nov 15 2005, 11:15 AM--> (Zeruzo @ Nov 15 2005, 11:15 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 07:07 PM

[email protected] 15 2005, 02:30 AM



Their leninist model never seeked to empower the masses, instead granting a monopoly of power to the party.

Same with all the other leninist revolutions.
Marxism has never sought to grant power to the peasants. I fail to see why Lenin should have done so.
Leninism is in contradiction with marxism on a large number of levels.
Explain... [/b]
To quote Engels:

"Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once again been filled with wholesale terror at the words 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. Well, good gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship will look like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"


Additionally Leninism argues that will power can change objective conditions; this just spits in the face of historical materialism.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15 2005, 02:24 PM
Stalin ruined everything for them. But the USSR collapsed because of Gorbachev.
Yes im sure all that industrialisation ruined everything, you idiot.


Had the Mensheviks gained power and had they waited for worker upheaval in Europe to start the ball rolling, things could've been different).

Um... Here is the thing, there wasn't a succesfull workers upheavel in Europe. So if we use a bit of common sense we could work out that if the Mensheviks gained power Russia would of stagnated.

[ComradeOm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2005, 02:11 AM
To quote Engels:

"Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once again been filled with wholesale terror at the words 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. Well, good gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship will look like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"


Additionally Leninism argues that will power can change objective conditions; this just spits in the face of historical materialism.
Its funny that Leninists usually get the shaft for being dogmatic and hero worshiping, yet you are the one to roll out a quote from a dead beardy. Have you at any point actually examined the situation in Russia in 1917 and drawn conclusions from that? Lenin was unable to form the dictatorship of the proletariat because the proletariat was not strong enough. Hence the necessity of the alliance with the peasants and the infeasibility of a Commune style government.

Lenin's aim was to use the political superstructure to alter the material conditions and to create a proletariat capable of ruling. Not only was this theory borne through by Stalin (minus the ruling part) but it in no way contradicts Marx's theory of the base and superstructure. Errors were of course made but nothing that can't be rectified by future revolutionaries.

Bah. I’ve no idea why I kept defending this issue.

[JKP]

I'd also like to add that Marx explictly rejected top down liberation.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2005, 06:25 AM
I'd also like to add that Marx explictly rejected top down liberation.
So does Lenin.

[JKP]

Originally posted by Hiero+Nov 17 2005, 12:55 AM--> (Hiero @ Nov 17 2005, 12:55 AM)
[email protected] 17 2005, 06:25 AM
I'd also like to add that Marx explictly rejected top down liberation.
So does Lenin. [/b]
Err no.

He was quite implicit saying that 'it would take 500 years for the masses to achieve socialism", which both in theory and practice require the "leadership" of the vanguard.

[TheComrade]

Lenin didn't care about the revolution - freedom or communism! He was simply after revenge against the Tzars - wasn't his brother mocked and humiliated by a wealthy Tzar linked family (or killed even..)? He fled from fighting in the 1st World War then rushed back once it was over to take control! Tell me if i'm wrong (if I am!)

Hiero - please! don't say 'you idiot' I just find it really horrible and demeaning - i actually agree with your point but it sound so agressive with that on the end...

[Janus]

Lenin wasn't just after revenge, he wasn't that kind of simple minded person or else he never could have attracted support for a revolution. The hanging of his older brother swayed Lenin toward the left and caused him to become defiant towad the monarchy.

The failure of the Soviet system was the greed of the inner party members who had by the late 20th century just replaced the nobility. The party leaders and their families ate the best food, drove the nicest cars, an shopped at special stores. Even Che remarked on this during one of his visits to Moscow "So the proletariat eats off of French porcelain". How could ordinary workers continue to uphold the ideals of self-sacrifice while their leaders paid no heed to it. However, the immediate reason for collapse was that Gorbachev tried to reform the government politically before waiting for economic reforms to grow. This was one of the major errors of Gorbachev and left open the window for protests for change.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by JKP+Nov 18 2005, 01:38 AM--> (JKP @ Nov 18 2005, 01:38 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2005, 12:55 AM

[email protected] 17 2005, 06:25 AM
I'd also like to add that Marx explictly rejected top down liberation.
So does Lenin.
Err no.

He was quite implicit saying that 'it would take 500 years for the masses to achieve socialism", which both in theory and practice require the "leadership" of the vanguard. [/b]
That's centralised leadership. Lenin and all Leninist are class based theorist. Only the proletariat class can bring liberation. To futher educated and lead, a vangaurd is created.

There is no such thing as top down liberation. You are confused on what centralised leadership means.

And where did you get that quote 'it would take 500 years for the masses to achieve socialism". I have never read it.


Hiero - please! don't say 'you idiot' I just find it really horrible and demeaning - i actually agree with your point but it sound so agressive with that on the end...


Sorry.

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

"Lenin did not care about the revolution - he did it because his brother was mocked by the tzar" ??!! Wtf man?
Lenin was an incredible man - a great theorist and organiser.
And whether the USSR failed is a metter of opinion. It might have failed to build a perfect communist utopia (as has every other revolution), yet it achieved many communist ideals. It didn't fail because of Gorbachev either (although he certainly did his bit) - its decline started way before that, with the massive help of external forces.

[enigma2517]

Lenin's aim was to use the political superstructure to alter the material conditions

Yeah theres the problem right there.

The economy (and material conditions) influence politics, not the other way around. I mean you could try...and acheive limited sucess of course. For instance, Maoism in third world countries would be pretty helpful.

Likewise, I don't think that Leninism or any other vanguardist theory has any place for communists living in industrial nations. At this point, its a pretty backward and ahistorical argument.

[vladimirm]

A communist revolution should be intitiated after an industrial revolution.
Russia was forced into a communist revolution before htey could make hte transition to industrialisation.
Many Russians are in fact confused as to the reason teh soviet union collapsed, teh main reason was when gorbechev attempted to undo the damage caused by stalin via his policies of glesnot and pestroika a coup was attempted adn gorbechev kidnapped. when the coup failed there was lef ta hollow feeling as those who believed in personal power over power ot the peopel fought each other. the soviet union simply faded into obscurity.

[JKP]

Originally posted by Comrade [email protected] 20 2005, 09:56 AM
"Lenin did not care about the revolution - he did it because his brother was mocked by the tzar" ??!! Wtf man?
Lenin was an incredible man - a great theorist and organiser.
And whether the USSR failed is a metter of opinion. It might have failed to build a perfect communist utopia (as has every other revolution), yet it achieved many communist ideals. It didn't fail because of Gorbachev either (although he certainly did his bit) - its decline started way before that, with the massive help of external forces.
Do you even know what communism is?

There was nothing "communistic" about the soviet union.

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

"Likewise, I don't think that Leninism or any other vanguardist theory has any place for communists living in industrial nations. At this point, its a pretty backward and ahistorical argument."

How can it possibly be ahistorical and backward? Once again we face this problem of belief in "pure socialism". It is namely this which is ahistorical and can't be tested against history. The "pure socialists" dont explain how a revolutionary society would be organised, how rebellion would be thwarted, how bureaucray would e avoided or resources allocated, political differences settled or who would defend society from invasion. They instead offer vague statements about how thw proletariat themselves would own and control the mens of produciotn and win through creative struggle. Hence why, again, they support evry revolution except the one which succeeds.

Pure socialists have this vision of a society with no bad acts or corruption or criminal abuse of state power and when reality proves to be different and more difficult, they announce that "they feel betrayed".

They oppose the soviet model but offer little evidence to show what other route could have been taken.

"Many Russians are in fact confused as to the reason teh soviet union collapsed, teh main reason was when gorbechev attempted to undo the damage caused by stalin via his policies of glesnot and pestroika a coup was attempted adn gorbechev kidnapped. when the coup failed there was lef ta hollow feeling as those who believed in personal power over power ot the peopel fought each other. the soviet union simply faded into obscurity."

Russians are confused because the forces that made the USSR collapse wanted them to be confused. Gorbachev did not destroy the USSR singlehandedly. It was the whole succession of leaders after Stalin and of course the powers that constantly waged a war against the ussr. From 1918, when trrops from UK, France, US, Germsny were sent to suport the whites in the civil war, through to "operation dropshot" in 1946 when a plan wasdrefated in the US to bombard the ussr with atom bombs, to the psychological war waged after that. Here is an extract from an article written by Allan Dulles, the CIA Director. only have the text in Russian so I will interpret:


" Th war will finish, everything will quieten down, will settle. And we will throw everything we have - all the gold, all our material strength into the dumbing down, the brainwashing of people...The human brain, its conscience, can be changed.
Having planted chaos in the Soviet Union, we will secretly swap their values for false ones and make them believe in these false values. How? We will find our allies and helpers in Russia itself.
Episode by episode a giant tragedy will unfold - the tragedy of the death of the most rebellious people, the complete non-reversible death of their self-consciousness...
From literature and culture, for example, we will gradually remove all social essence,we will break the artist's habits, remove their desire to busy themselves with depiction...research of those processes which occur in the depths of the masses of people.
We will support and promote so called artists, who will start to spread the cult of sex, rape, sadism, betrayal, basically, all immorality.
In the ruling government we will plant chaos and confusion, we will secretly, but actively encourage petty tyrrany, bribery, unscrupulousness. Beurocracy and procrastination will be portrayed as good. Honesty and goodness will be laughed at and won't be needed by anyone anymore, they will turn into a thing of the past. Rudeness and arrogance, lies and trickery, alcoholism and narcomania, an animal-like fear of each other, shamelessness, betrayal and nationalism, hatred between people, and especially of the Russian people - all this we will dexterously advocate. A

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

Sorry about the cut off. It finishes:

"And only a few, a very few will understand or even realise what is going on. But these people we will turn into laughing stocks, put them into a hopeless position, turn them into the outcasts of society. We will rip out spiritual roots, vulgarise and destroy the foundatios of spiritual essence. We will start working on people from young, teenage years, our main bet will be on the young. We will mae it rotte, will corrupt and seduce the youth. We will turn them into cynics, vulgar people, cosmopolitans"..

Sounds remarkably like what happened huh?...

[vladimirm]

That sounds very much teh same as the way in which todays governemtns opress information.
Very very few people know that the western world interferred in the russian civil war, even less know htat churchill himself organised an attack upon archanglesk

[Comrade Yastrebkov]

Exactly. They don't want us to know these things. That's why they encourage the population - especially the young people- to be stupid. Like a herd of cattle. That's why theyre pushing to legalise all sorts of drugs and have now legalised all-hour pub licensing. You know the tzar tried to do that in Russia - tried to get the population drugged up on vodka so they couldnt think for themselves.

[vladimirm]

All governments eventually become aristocratic, they fail to do the most important job of hte aristocrat which is to step aside.
What better way to form a police state thatn ot encourage a yob culture??

[Scarlet]

The Soviets fail? :blink: ... Not at all - As I type the Glorious Leader Vlad' Putin is ammassing Nuclear Arms to bring the Union back. The Soviets never failed, they were just drove underground ...

[sfliberty]

The reason that the soviets failed is simple...Communism doesn't work. Government doesn't work, it's inefficent, and is eventually going to fail. Something is going to eventually happen to make it fail. Government at all levels will fail eventually.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 12:04 AM
The reason that the soviets failed is simple...Communism doesn't work. Government doesn't work, it's inefficent, and is eventually going to fail. Something is going to eventually happen to make it fail. Government at all levels will fail eventually.
So if government doesn't work, and the absence of government [Communism] doesn't work, what exactly are you proposing we do, comrade?

[Amusing Scrotum]

Exactly. They don't want us to know these things. That's why they encourage the population - especially the young people- to be stupid. Like a herd of cattle. That's why theyre pushing to legalise all sorts of drugs and have now legalised all-hour pub licensing. You know the tzar tried to do that in Russia - tried to get the population drugged up on vodka so they couldnt think for themselves.

(Emphasis added)

I know this is a bit off topic, but why exactly are you opposed to the legalisation of drugs and 24 hour hour pub licensing?

Also many of this boards most intelligent members are regular drug takers. So the idea that drugs stop you thinking critically seems unlikely.

[viva le revolution]

Originally posted by Armchair [email protected] 21 2005, 07:30 AM


I know this is a bit off topic, but why exactly are you opposed to the legalisation of drugs and 24 hour hour pub licensing?

Also many of this boards most intelligent members are regular drug takers. So the idea that drugs stop you thinking critically seems unlikely.
Seems like a lack of clarity on this topic.
The cia introduced drugs on a massive scale in the ghettos just as the black panthers were at their peak, in the sixties, yuppy peety bourgeois stoners hitchhiked onto the bandwagon of antagonism with actual political concerns.
shouldn't these then, taking your perspective into account, be lauded as triumphs of liberty?
first off, shouldn't our main issue be with class struggle and freedome from capitalist oppression and resistance of imperialism, instead of some petty fight for the legalization of drugs, which has no significant consequence.

[encephalon]

The Soviet Union was authoritarian from the beginning; in fact, a prime bolshevik principle was to be authoritarian. They weren't named "bolshevik" because they had the support of the majority population. That was actually the Socialist Revolutionaries.

In my opinion, which isn't entirely verifiable (along with any other opinion on the subject), I'd say the Bolsheviks tried to implement a system without first considering the historical circumstances necessary to carry it out. Primarily, they relied on authoritarianism to "root out" dissent, and russia simply did not have the economic circumstances necessary to create a socialist society--which is why they depended on authoritarianism in the first place.

What they did have, as opposed to most other areas on the globe, was the soviet, an already established economic and cultural fusion that somewhat resembled socialist goals. This led to heavy reliance on the soviet--which was, honestly, already hopelessly overtaken by capitalism. Even if it hadn't been, they still would have had problems adapting the soviet nsystem to modern forms o production.

[ComradeOm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 09:41 PM
The Soviets fail? :blink: ... Not at all - As I type the Glorious Leader Vlad' Putin is ammassing Nuclear Arms to bring the Union back. The Soviets never failed, they were just drove underground ...
[Simpsons mode]That's what we wanted you to think![/Simpsons mode]

[Amusing Scrotum]

Seems like a lack of clarity on this topic.
The cia introduced drugs on a massive scale in the ghettos just as the black panthers were at their peak, in the sixties, yuppy peety bourgeois stoners hitchhiked onto the bandwagon of antagonism with actual political concerns.
shouldn't these then, taking your perspective into account, be lauded as triumphs of liberty?

Am I advocating the "flooding" of illegal drugs into poor communities? ....fuck no, so don't make things up.

I am however advocating the legalisation of all drugs and this would not only be a triumph of "liberty" over puritanical morals, but also a triumph of common sense.


first off, shouldn't our main issue be with class struggle and freedome from capitalist oppression and resistance of imperialism, instead of some petty fight for the legalization of drugs, which has no significant consequence.

Firstly, quite a few studies have concluded that the legalisation of drugs would have significant consequences. These consequences would include less deaths from illegal substances, a reduction in drug related crime and a lower amount of drug addicts.

These things seem pretty significant to me.

Secondly, yes we should concern ourselves with the resistance to Capitalist oppression. However we must not exclude other things, we must still tackle racism and sexism and therefore I think we must also tackle drug prohibition.

After all, we are in the "business" of liberating people from class oppression and therefore the puritanical morals of class systems must also be crushed.

[Lev]

seems to be some remarkably unmarxian explainations about the russian revolution on this board. At no point has anyone made any attempt to look at material circumstances and the balance of class forces etc..

Someone said that Russia "wasn't ready" for socialism, well yes, thats what lenin thought originally but the actual specific historical conditions led him to change his mind. Lenin came to accept Trotsky's theory of permanant revolution and combined and uneven development, that whilst russia contained immensley backward elements and still hadn't fully cast away feudal relations, the power and potential of the INTERNATIONAL proletariat was a different matter. The russian proletariat had quite obvioiusly shown their advanced nature in 1905, the first occurance of the mass strike and the first example of the organic creation of a soviet, a multi-party workers council where delegates where at all time revocable and accountable. With the existence of factories like the Putilov works, the intensity of russia's strike movement its a-historical rubbish to complain the material conditions didn't exist within Russia and internationally.

Its not true that the bolsheviks were authoritarian from the start, the bolsheviks at all points argued for self-emancipation, "all power to the soviets" and the soviets of workers soldiers and peasants deputies voted overwhelmingly the bolsheviks into power and support the crucial decrees on peace, bread land etc.

In fact the bolsheviks programme for the peasantry was the programme of the gutless Socialist Revolutionary kerensky who could not implement it through the structures of the provisional government.

It is quite clear that the distinguishing factor of the october revolution is not the attainment of Bolshevik power but of soviet power. Its also worth mentioning that the majority of Socialst Revolutionaries split to from the Left SR's who supported the Bolsheviks moves to grant power to the workers councills.

The bolsheviks were only able to implement the revolution with the highest development of urban proletariats consciousness, these material conditions are undeniable.

The relationship between party and class is detailed well by Tony Cliff. He explains it cleary by saying that a revolutionary movement is like steam, it is potentially massively powerfull but can dissapate quickly, whilst the party is the piston that directs the energy.

The bolshevik party was well placed in october revolution not to argue for bolshevik power, but to build the confidence of the class and their new power structures and to push for people to take power into their own hands.

The bolsheviks wer called the bolsheviks because Lenin won a majority of votes in the 1903 party congress, and, at the time of the October the Bolsheviks had won control of the Petrograd soviet, the Moscow soviet and enjoyed the support of the left-SR's representing the peasantry who followed the lead of the industrial working class throwing off the yoke of oppression.

What makes people thing that a man like Lenin, from petti-bourgois stock, would think that the easiest way for him to attain power and get revenge for his brothers death is to organise working class circles, be exiled, chased and hated by the state, isolated at periods, printing presses raided, key bolsheviks victimised and even murdered in their thousands.

What man hell bent on attaining power himself goes through the painfull task of organising and intervening in the day to day struggle of the working class and then translating it into the revolutionary reconstitution of society????

This is not the traditional route that the petty-bourgious attains power in the current political system.

Marxism is a living ideology, leninism is not a variant of marxism, but only the application of marxism to unfolding concrete realities.

Engels talks about the realities of the paris commune because that is the time in which he lived and generalised from. Lenin was able ot extend marxist theory of the party because he confronted new realities such as the 1905 revolution and its defeat and the first world war etc.

Just as the paris commune shaped what marxists understand as the transition to socialism, the 1905 revolution in particular threw up noew forms of organisation and methods of translating the economic to the political and the strike movement to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

All the questions of the russian revolution have to be taken and looked at with the same dialectical method we apply to all situations.

That means that looking at the balance of social forces in the civil war period has to inform our understanding of the rise of stalin, and also how the existence of sponateous workers struggle in the soviet union in the form of the workers councils in hungary in 56 and the solidarnosc mass strike movement in the 80's in poland.

In my eyes supporting the legacy of Stalin because he industrialised the country is bankrupt!

Capitalism industrialises society in brutal circumstances but we consider these things historically progressive. That doesn't mean that they require political backing from socialists!!!

I believe that there was a dynamic within the soviet union from around 1928 which pushed towards war and competition for accumulation between itself and other nationa states and areas of capital accumulation. This internal dynamic is the exploitation of the russian proletarian by the stalinist ruling class, the control and organisation of the surplus produced by russian workers and the reinvestment of that towards accumulation, particularily in the arms industry means that russia under stalin wasn't communist, wasn't socialist, wasn't a workers state and doesn't deserve any reminiscence from socialists who stand in the tradition of the working class liberating themselves from the chain of oppression



shit my fingers wouldnt stop moving

apologies. hope this contributes to the debate

dan

[voice of the voiceless]

Excellent reply...you have succesfull undermined the division suffered by people on this board.

Lenin was the only defender of marxism and was not a sectarian leader/ dictator / whatever else people call him.

Your coherence shines out from the rest of the posts, thankyou for enlightenment. Oh and funny everyone shut up after your post teehee.

[Lev]

i fucking love lenin!

woohoo

its important to reestablish him as part of the genuine tradition otherwise I'm afraid potential revolutionary situations will continue to come and go and now with all this global warming shit its like there's a time limit as well. Scary

dan