A soviet view on the collapse of the USSR

Welcome to the forum Mighty.

The question has of course been answered before, but the answers need to be repeated again and again since this is a leftist site and we hope to analyze past mistakes in order to avoid them in the future. The question has been answered in numerous ways, since among the Left there is of course a variety of viewpoints. I will give you my 'conservative Marxist-Leninist' opinion, and will note that I have spent countless hours on this topic which is of great personal importance to me, given that I was born in and spent part of my childhood in the USSR prior to its dissolution:

Gorbachev in my view was a political idealist whose dominant personal qualities were vanity and weakness of will. His idealism led him to believe in the social democratic alternative to socialism in politics and economics, and to abandoning the Soviet Union's allies all over the world in the interests of world peace, cooperation and inclusion of the USSR in 'the common European home'. His personal vanity and popularity in the countries of Europe and North America led him only to increase the tempo at which the USSR abandoned its Marxist-Leninist ideals and sought integration with the West. His personal weakness of will prevented him from decisively intervening in the hot spots of local civil war in various regions of the USSR in the late 1980s, and he listened to advisers and friends like Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev who were outright counterrevolutionaries with pure hatred in their hearts not only for socialism but the USSR itself. Gorbachev was easily influenced by crowds of liberalized Muscovites portending to represent the whole country, he was sensitive to the opinions of liberal Soviet journalists and those of the West, and his main goal according to numerous personal accounts was to avoid repression and bloodshed. It is for this reason that in each vital instance that called for decisiveness, he cowered away from responsibility. The last instance of this was of course in December 1991, where he refused to arrest the three traitors meeting in Belovezhsk to formally break up the country. In the area of economics, Gorbachev and his team appeared entirely incompetent, based on the measures proposed and implemented. The laws on State Enterprises and Cooperatives in 1987 and 1988 were not thought through to conclusion, resulting in all sorts of economic irregularities and the legalization of black market speculators' money, and the decision to disassemble the planning mechanism in May 1988 created chaos that fed anti-socialist and nationalist separatist political groupings then being allowed to form.

Here are some materials on the subject which you might find interesting:

The first is an essay I wrote last year which discusses the concept of glasnost, and notes that the historical process of glasnost in the USSR must be separated from the concept of 'openness' in media and social life. It notes that in actuality the Gorbachev government effectually waged an information war against the old tenets of Soviet socialism, promoting first a liberal socialism and eventually full-on bourgeois democracy and market fundamentalism, as odd as that may sound:

http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=110&t=52073

More threads from this site on the topic (obviously not exhaustive):

http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=123&p=795790

http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=51871

http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=128&t=41537

A couple books and articles I'd recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/071780738X
-> An excellent Marxist-Leninist analysis, albeit somewhat unvarnished in parts

http://www.amazon.ca/Revolution-Above-Demise-Soviet-System/dp/0415143179
-> A non-socialist analysis, although Kotz does seem to sympathize with some Soviet ideals, and does discuss some of the major errors of perestroika.

http://www.amazon.com/Destruction-Soviet-Economic-System-Insiders/dp/0765602644
-> An excellent economic analysis which incorporates first hand accounts from managers on the ground who discuss how the planning system was ripped apart between 1987 and 1988 while a market system failed to form, causing economic chaos and subsequent social unrest.

Sam Marcy's analysis from the time:

http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/index.htm

Unlike some contemporary Russian communists who continually exalt the hybrid capitalist system with socialist characteristics which has proven successful in China, I haven't lost faith in planning, given that the corporations that run the contemporary world regularly take advantage of the benefits of computerized centralized planning. I appreciate very much Andropov's approach to work discipline and localized experimentation (in the sphere of collective farms, for instance). However, I don't think Andropov had the time necessary to evaluate the important role to be played by computers in the future of socialist planning. I think the 12th Five Year Plan drafted in 1984 and proposed in 1985 was overall in line with the development needs of the country, given that they took a tremendous interest in the computerization of the country's economy and education system. This thread has some interesting discussion about the plans:

http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=128&t=46060

Although Gorbachev presided over the introduction of this plan, it was really drafted collectively during Chernenko's brief reign, and Gorbachev quickly proved how little interest or faith he had in the continuation of socialist planning between 1987 and 1988.


Personally I believe that an even more aggressive approach would be ideal, such as the implementation of Viktor Glushkov's grand plans to computerize planning on a national level. For more on Glushkov and other cyberneticists see this article by MIT researcher Slava Gerovitch:

[url]web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf[/url]

Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, two British socialists with economics and computer science backgrounds, have some very interesting and simultaneously depressing articles on the potential for the computerization of planning in the USSR. I say depressing because they calculate that it was precisely in the late 1980s and early 1990s that computing power was reaching a sufficient magnitude to be relatively effectively used by Soviet planning agencies to efficiently plan the economy. Most of these articles were written in the 1990s, and obviously the real calculating power of computers has only increased since that time. Here are some of their articles:

[url]ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/soviet_planning.pdf[/url]

http://www.helmutdunkhase.de/aer.pdf

[url]ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/calculation_debate.pdf[/url]

...

In conclusion I must say that a reasonable analysis of the Soviet economy even in 1985 could not say that it was in crisis, although it had some chronic problems, associated with its autarkic development and the lack of modernization of plant and planning tools. In 1985 the USSR remained the #2 economy in the world, exporting machine tools to 70 countries (including Western Europe), and by some indicators outproducing even the United States, which had at the time begun to outsource its jobs and destroy its industrial infrastructure. In fact, if you read a bit about the 1987 Law on State Enterprises and the 1988 Law on Cooperatives, and think about the decision to virtually disassemble the planning mechanism in May 1988 Party Conference, you'll realize that it was precisely when the reformers decided to tinker with market mechanisms and rip out planning that the economy fell into crisis and the famous 'inefficiency of the Soviet model' became known to the world.

The Mighty O wrote:

On another note what kind of economic systems do other Communist countries like Cuba, Laos and Vietnam have, are they planned or a hybrid similar to China. Also Belarus has kept many of the soviet style economics like the planned economy, is this in collapse and stagnation or has it powered through and maybe we could take an example out of their book on planned economys in the 21st century?

So far as I'm aware, Vietnam and Laos have hybrids similar to China, and Cuba has begun introducing limited market reforms over the last several years. Belarus is similar in many ways, although they don't have the development of productive forces leading to socialism and communism as the main goal. Basically a series of state companies and government services employ the large majority of the population, and produce for export as much as possible agricultural and industrial goods in exchange for energy, materials, and consumer goods. Belarus' system and experience stems from its geographic location between Europe and Russia, two capitalist and imperialist power centers. In all the countries you've mentioned, planning on a macro level continues to exist, and the state has certain priorities that have to be carried out according to long range plans. However, these plans are interlinked with the market system, and hence the planning isn't of the kind people like Glushkov and others were talking about in the USSR from the 1960s. The further academic study and eventual implementation of real non-market economic planning in the 21st century will be the task of those market socialist countries (like China) which have the economic power, global authority and resources to do so.

Redgoast wrote:

If you go on youtube and look for RT (russian TV) their channel has quite a few specials, as well as recent interviews with Gorbachev about that period. There are also clips from American news programs of ordinary russians giving interviews 10 days after the fall of the soviet union talking about the differences and changes that are taking place during that period. You should check some of that out as well.

Good point Redgoast, but we should remember that RT has many of the same political biases that Western academia and media do when discussing the Soviet collapse, although there are nuances. While RT may discuss some positive aspects of the USSR, their position is that of the contemporary Kremlin line, which is that many aspects of Soviet existence, including the planned economy, were untenable over the long term.

Quote:

Whether Gorbachev retracted from his version of market socialism or perestroika or not, the collapse of the USSR was bound to happen. Vindictiveness among Party apparatchiks was the main factor. When Gorbachev went against Yeltsin, he should had emerged a winner with Kruchyov surely siding with him. But no, Kruchyov intimidated him thereby making him a larger prey to stalk and kill rather than Yeltsin. It was a slugfest between the two with Kruchyov falling out. Yeltsin finally emerged as winner with Putin as successor. It was a terrible accident which nobody had predicted. An act of God! (if ever there is a God).

Calling the collapse inevitable or an act of God is ridiculous. In a Soviet-type society, the bureaucracy, while making moves and demands on its own, has no main inevitable trajectory (such as the accumulation of personal wealth, or the desire for more regional autonomy) which cannot be safe-guarded against by a competent General Secretary. In Gorbachev's case, elements of the Party became vindictive toward him not as a result of his initial decision to continue the Andropov cleanup of geriatrics and corrupted bureaucrats, but when he began to systematically destroy the Party's role in Soviet the economy and society in the late 1980s, and when it was becoming increasingly evident that his actions in the areas of both foreign and domestic policy were bringing about the collapse of socialism and of the USSR's role in the world as an antagonist to imperialism. Kryuchkov and the other members of Gorbachev's cabinet were not too vindictive. They were way too soft on Gorbachev, and were limited first by the immense powers accumulated in the General Secretary's hands, and second by their own personal weaknesses (needing to include some conservatives on his cabinet, Gorbachev intelligently worked to surround himself with people that couldn't stand up to him, who may have been poor or mediocre performers but good, spineless bureaucrats whose conservative status quenched much of the revolutionary agitation which might have come up against Gorbachev from inside the Party as the reform process moved further and further).

Who are you portending to be, Alma Ata, and when was your article published in the Moscow News? If you had anything negative to say about Gorbachev, you probably wouldn't find it in the Moscow News until about 1990 or so, given that from 1986 to about 1990 that paper was one of the 'flagships of glasnost' controlled by the Yakovlev media machine, After that it was controlled by outright anti-Soviet liberals, who I doubt would find it interesting to publish a socialist critique of Gorbachev's 'market socialism'.