In the course of historical evolution, every social system has gone through a series of paroxysms, the result of deep-going class contradictions which have come to the fore. The deeper the crisis, the more acute the political struggle becomes.
Often it reaches the proportion of a struggle between two divergent class camps. The cry everywhere, especially if the crisis is protracted, is for firm leadership, for decisive steps to resolve it. All the louder are the cries when the suffering of the masses becomes pronounced and widespread.
Vacuum of leadership
Occasionally, however, regardless of how severely the class camps are affected, a vacuum of leadership tends to draw out the crisis. Such a situation occurred immediately after the First World War in Italy. There the crisis reduced itself to a struggle between two camps, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But there was no firm or decisive leadership on either side and the crisis seemed to deepen rather than become ameliorated.
Under these circumstances, individuals who up until then have played no prominent role at all in politics, figuring if at all in a peripheral sense, suddenly ponder the nature of the crisis and take it upon themselves to solve it, even if they have to change or jump from one class camp to another.
Such was the case of Benito Mussolini. He was the editor of a socialist weekly but by no means a leader in the Italian working class movement. Yet, because of the vacuum created in the working class movement at the time, and seeing that the bourgeoisie was paralyzed, he seized the moment, put together what was called a black shirt army, and set up a dictatorship, not of the working class which he had originally represented, but of the bourgeoisie.
There is no denying that the crisis in the Soviet Union today, by its protracted character and its severity, has raised similar questions.
Rise of Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin, who has just been elected President of the Russian Republic, was a loyal party official who rose to the ranks of the Politburo. His one outstanding accomplishment known of here in the West was that he facilitated the technical side of the construction of a gas pipeline to Western Europe, a project which the Reagan administration fought bitterly to obstruct.
The new Politburo that took over from the old guard after Gorbachev's election as general secretary of the party in 1985 really gave no indication of what was in store for the future. Its promises of change, while sounding grandiloquent, were muted by comparison with earlier standards. Certainly it gave no hint that such a momentous crisis would be caused by its innovations and its plans to restructure virtually all social relations.
Whatever was agreed to in secret in the early days of the new Politburo, Yeltsin soon became a vociferous opponent. Contemporary historians lack information on precisely what he opposed from the point of view of political program, and how profound were the plans of the Politburo for restructuring social relations, that is, class relations.
The Gorbachev restructuring was first presented to the world as a highly attractive plan for modernizing the scientific-technological apparatus and raising the growth rate of the Soviet economy. Surely this could not evoke great opposition.
But Yeltsin knew more than others, and his anxiety to be ahead of the game caused his ouster. It was not long before the bourgeoisie recognized in him the impatient bourgeois reformer with a flare for demagogy and outreach to the imperialist bourgeoisie.
His appeal to 19th Party Conference
Then came the 19th Party Conference in 1988. Seeing how successful it was in the eyes of the imperialist bourgeoisie, seeing the flattery that was poured on the conference and on Gorbachev in particular, Yeltsin attempted to regain his post in the Politburo. He went so far as to make a contrite appeal to the conference itself for rehabilitation. While it was perfectly in line with the so-called new democratic procedures of the conference to readmit him, the debate showed that there was a great deal of apprehension about him and his program.
But the conference was too giddy with its own success. Most of the delegates were preoccupied with the praise it received outside of the USSR. The public was thrilled to hear all the new promises and economic proposals, even though they all ran contrary to past custom and procedures, especially in agriculture and heavy industry.
Most of all the conference neglected to seriously consider the national question, treating the Azerbaijanis and the Armenians more or less as orphans without giving their struggle any serious attention.
The real crisis of the USSR began after that conference.
All those who had planned the introduction of a capitalist market, the decollectivization of the land, and the partial conversion of some elements of industry into free enterprises along with joint ventures and the like, did so, it appears now, in the firm belief that once the plans were adopted on paper and started to be put into operation, the party could be relied upon to carry them out.
Taking the party for granted
It was assumed that, under the whiplash of Gorbachev's attack on the bureaucratism and "command" economy of previous administrations, the party hierarchy and most of all the ranks would loyally support the new course. What a howling blunder! Slowly and gradually it dawned upon even the most unquestioning in the party apparatus that these plans would not get the compliance of the mass of the workers and peasants, on whom they were to be dumped.
The Gorbachev administration had been most concerned with the attacks of the "conservatives," the traditional loyalist leadership. Soon enough, however, it became clear that the real attacks were from the right, and were becoming louder and more impudent with each passing day. Go faster, faster, was their slogan.
It should be noted that those associated with the bourgeois reform of the Soviet economy are actually divided into two groups.
There are those who believe that introducing and widening the capitalist market is compatible with the state ownership of the means of production and with a planned economy. They are mostly to be found in the governmental apparatus and in the party.
The other group, the more significant one for the fate of the USSR, is not at all interested in the maintenance of any vestige of socialism. It is for the reintroduction of capitalism. For them, the reforms are merely a stepping stone and a disguise for counterrevolution. It is this group which is growing, while confusion reigns supreme in the first group.
A great many, sensing a sinking ship, have slowly found their way out of the party. This in turn has weakened both the party and the government. Gorbachev's own performance in taking on the exalted post of president while at the same time denigrating the party has encouraged the exodus.
Under the exigencies of the economic crisis, Gorbachev thought the extreme rightists would be his most enthusiastic supporters, as they were during the very early days of his administration when the fight was against the conservatives. However, they have instead become the most demagogic of his opponents, utilizing the notorious failure of his economic schemes.
Political importance of economy
The miners' strike of last year put all of the political groupings on notice that if they hope to regain standing, they have to deal with the economic questions first and foremost. The inability of the government's economic officials to put through any workable scheme which would first and foremost improve the food situation made them an easy target for the real bourgeois restorationists.
The miners' strike polarized Soviet society, but its demands were still at the stage of economism at a time when the struggle for state power is of primary significance -- socialism or capitalism. Gorbachev is not really giving leadership which has any progressive meaning so far as the working class is concerned.
The attempt of his various planning commissions to introduce a capitalist market economy and to partially dismantle socialist enterprises runs against the grain of the Soviet working class as well as the collectivized peasantry (let them not be underestimated) and has proved unworkable--something his planners never really thought through.
They are too tantalized and mesmerized by a temporary economic conjuncture in some of the leading imperialist countries to take into account the long-term inevitability of capitalist crisis and the collapse of the so-called free enterprise system, as happened in the late 1920s.
It's important to know that while around 1,300 joint ventures have been registered with the Soviets, 140 of them involving American companies, only about 200, or less than 15%, are operating. (Washington Post, May 27)
Prices and votes
The genius of Gorbachev's economic advisers is demonstrated by the fact that they announced their plans for a regulated market on May 22, seven days before the election in the Russian parliament for president, in which Yeltsin was considered the principal candidate. Gorbachev was forced to announce that the plans approved by the cabinet would eventually double average food prices and that the price of bread would triple beginning July 1. This is the first increase in the price of bread in 30 years.
What bourgeois parliament would let itself in for such a debacle as to announce price increases in food and other commodities seven days before a crucial election?
It gave a field day for all the reactionaries, all the pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist forces to rally behind Yeltsin.
The truth of the matter is that, strong as is the resurgence of the bourgeoisie in the USSR today, it is nowhere near making an open bid for power. For that reason, Yeltsin, a former Politburo member and long-standing communist with accomplishments of a sort in the party, is a significant help to them. He is a screen behind which they can hide.
Moreover, Yeltsin has his international connections, and is vying with Gorbachev to win the support of the U.S., such as it is, for which Gorbachev is bargaining at the summit meeting with Bush at this very moment. It is no wonder that a Soviet observer accused the reformers of wanting to sell out the Soviet Union's natural resources to the multinational corporations. (New York Times, May 27)
The summit: the struggle continues
Regardless of the outcome of the summit meeting, and whether it ends on a conciliatory note, the relationship is still a struggle between two diametrically opposed social systems based upon antagonistic classes. The military posture of the U.S. does more to confirm this than anything else.
Writing on the Op-ed page of the May 29 New York Times, Nikolai Chervov, a colonel general and member of the Soviet General Staff, noted that while the U.S. and USSR have made progress in reducing strategic nuclear forces, and the USSR has reduced its ground troops in Europe, the U.S. refuses to discuss naval reductions and the elimination of naval tactical nuclear weapons.
"In our view, this means that the U.S., while agreeing to the reduction of both sides' ground forces, is striving to develop its Navy so as to achieve military superiority, and use this to pressure the Soviet Union.
"We are concerned about the hundreds of U.S. military bases encircling the Soviet Union....
"On top of this is the `Star Wars' program; the new Stealth B-2 bomber, which is a first-strike weapon, and thousands of long-range air- and sea-launched nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
"In addition, the U.S. has refused to stop nuclear tests, and plans to equip its tactical aircraft in Europe with new nuclear-tipped cruise missiles that could hit targets beyond the Urals." It is a gloomy picture that the Soviet general presents on the eve of the summit meeting.
Soviet workers still offstage
The working class is still not showing any signs of rising to the realization that it is the most important political element in Soviet society and that politically and constitutionally it is the state. Its intervention in the political affairs of the internal struggle is still of a limited character, confined to trade union demands rather than for a revolutionary reconstitution of the present order of managing the economy.
The urgent task of the working class movement is to not merely pose demands here and there but to assume control of the political process. In no other way is it possible to reinforce the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry in alliance with all the progressive popular forces of the Soviet Union on a democratic, centralized basis.
Most urgent of all is the reestablishment of international class solidarity with the workers in all the republics, especially those who have suffered under the policies of the Gorbachev administration, to return to the revolutionary internationalist policies of Leninism which were the envy of the whole world and a beacon light to all of the oppressed peoples.
Yeltsin's policy is one of Great Russian chauvinism, the most vile of demagogies. He is in effect taking a leaf from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who before his departure from the USSR wrote a letter to the Central Committee urging not just the independence of the Russian republic but the ouster of the other republics from the Soviet Union!
The fiasco of having Gorbachev plead for the reforms, including the price increases, on an unscheduled nationwide TV appearance and on the eve of a summit meeting smacks of the poorest sort of bourgeois politics and demonstrates that not only is there no unanimity in his cabinet but there seems to be no concern for his own political future.
But the struggle is far from over. On the contrary, it seems to us that it is first opening up.