Die Neue Zeit
17th December 2007, 06:11
Russia 1917 and the global revolution (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/646/russia.htm)
Aside from the rather lively analysis of the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian civil war, and the material conditions behind Stalin's rise to power, Russian Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky made a rather curious link between the "socialist" primitive accumulation pursued by the Stalin the regime and the Great Depression, even though the latter started in 1929.
Then in 1928-29, around the time when the great depression was starting, something happened that was not really noticed by historians for quite some time. In both Russian and western writing of history it was very difficult to consider that the fact that these two things were happening simultaneously was not simply an accident. They were not. I spent quite a lot of time studying the archives of the Soviet economy, which is now referred to as the Russian Government Archives of Economy (previously the People’s Economic Archives).
I discovered that the great depression was a huge setback for the whole Soviet industrialisation project, which was based on exporting grain and importing technologies in order to develop. This plan was destroyed by the great depression.
Secondly, the global crisis rapidly brought to the surface the many contradictions that were built into NEP, including the price gap between industrial and agricultural products.
What puzzles me, though, is that Kagarlitsky doesn't mention directly the Scissors Crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scissor_crisis) of 1923, which occurred years before the Great Depression.
Is it possible that Trotsky and Preobrazhensky advocated "rapid industrialisation" earlier - in spite of the inevitable increase in the rise of bureaucracy (as left-communists have aptly pointed out) - in order to ease the burden on the peasantry?
Reading the archives, it is clear how afraid the Soviet leadership was of the whole system falling apart. There was a real possibility of a complete decomposition of the Soviet state in the period of the great depression. That was resolved through the second coming of confiscations - the first had started under war communism. This time confiscation was not about feeding the proletarian cities, but about exporting peasant products to the global capitalist market at knock-down prices.
How was it achieved? Again it was through violence and repression, but this time it was clear that a return to NEP would be impossible afterwards. So the only real outcome was the establishment of a system which we now refer to as Stalinism - or the Soviet Union, as it actually came to develop.
Had Lenin been able to resume his active work (having been incapacitated in 1922), would he have remained as staunchly pro-NEP as he was initially, and as Bukharin continued to be?
[Leo: Once again, thanks for pointing out the four positions regarding the matrix of internationalism-versus-realpolitik and the economy.]
Aside from the rather lively analysis of the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian civil war, and the material conditions behind Stalin's rise to power, Russian Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky made a rather curious link between the "socialist" primitive accumulation pursued by the Stalin the regime and the Great Depression, even though the latter started in 1929.
Then in 1928-29, around the time when the great depression was starting, something happened that was not really noticed by historians for quite some time. In both Russian and western writing of history it was very difficult to consider that the fact that these two things were happening simultaneously was not simply an accident. They were not. I spent quite a lot of time studying the archives of the Soviet economy, which is now referred to as the Russian Government Archives of Economy (previously the People’s Economic Archives).
I discovered that the great depression was a huge setback for the whole Soviet industrialisation project, which was based on exporting grain and importing technologies in order to develop. This plan was destroyed by the great depression.
Secondly, the global crisis rapidly brought to the surface the many contradictions that were built into NEP, including the price gap between industrial and agricultural products.
What puzzles me, though, is that Kagarlitsky doesn't mention directly the Scissors Crisis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scissor_crisis) of 1923, which occurred years before the Great Depression.
Is it possible that Trotsky and Preobrazhensky advocated "rapid industrialisation" earlier - in spite of the inevitable increase in the rise of bureaucracy (as left-communists have aptly pointed out) - in order to ease the burden on the peasantry?
Reading the archives, it is clear how afraid the Soviet leadership was of the whole system falling apart. There was a real possibility of a complete decomposition of the Soviet state in the period of the great depression. That was resolved through the second coming of confiscations - the first had started under war communism. This time confiscation was not about feeding the proletarian cities, but about exporting peasant products to the global capitalist market at knock-down prices.
How was it achieved? Again it was through violence and repression, but this time it was clear that a return to NEP would be impossible afterwards. So the only real outcome was the establishment of a system which we now refer to as Stalinism - or the Soviet Union, as it actually came to develop.
Had Lenin been able to resume his active work (having been incapacitated in 1922), would he have remained as staunchly pro-NEP as he was initially, and as Bukharin continued to be?
[Leo: Once again, thanks for pointing out the four positions regarding the matrix of internationalism-versus-realpolitik and the economy.]