Shortly after Boris Yeltsin and his group formally dissolved the USSR in December 1991, CIA Director Robert Gates announced with great enthusiasm that communism and the Soviet Union were dead. Now, some 15 months later and in a less enthusiastic mood, Gates says that the U.S. influence in the former USSR is "marginal."While the second statement does not exactly contradict the first, it nevertheless throws an important light on the direction in which events are moving. What prompted Gates' shift to explain U.S. interests as marginal are undoubtedly the growing attacks in Russia on Yeltsin's reactionary reforms, as well as on foreign interests that support Yeltsin and his cabal.
There is no question that immediately after the dissolution of the USSR and Yeltsin's initiation of his capitalist reforms, there was a growing belief, at least in the West, that the masses had lost interest in socialism and were putting their faith in Yeltsin and his counter-revolutionary group.
But 15 months is a long time when inflation is growing by leaps and bounds, when production continues to drop at a faster and faster rate (the State Statistics Committee now reports a 20 percent decline in the first three months of 1993 compared to last year), and when fears of further deterioration in the living standards continue unabated. That is why such old hands of the imperialist establishment as Richard Nixon have had to join the Clinton administration in promoting a campaign for the U.S. government to allocate more and more funds to Yeltsin, in the form of either loans or credits. More and more pronouncements are made urging the imperialist allies to produce not just programs but more finances.
Just in case this campaign might lag, someone has come forward who had stood on the sidelines: James Baker III, who served as secretary of state during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Baker has made an urgent plea in Newsweek magazine (dated April 5) in what seems like an answer to Gates. "Some in the West," he says, "argue for a wait-and-see policy. These advocates of inaction contend that all the Western democracies can do is wait out the political storm in Moscow. I believe such an approach would be both dangerous and naive. It is dangerous because the stakes are critical to Western [imperialist--S.M.] interests. It is naive because while Western influence may be marginal . . . the outcome may be determined precisely by what happens at the margin."
With respect to Yeltsin, Baker said, "He is well known to be an instinctive and some say an impulsive politician." That happens to be true. "And some critics question his commitment to democracy. But in my many meetings with him," says Baker, "I've seen his instincts at work time and time again and they have always moved toward democratic practices, toward free markets and above all toward cooperation with the West."
It would be wrong to assume that there is an actual split among the U.S. imperialists on their attitude toward the struggle in the former USSR. But it is important to notice that the re-emergence of the struggle there is significant enough, even at this early stage, to have caused dissension within the ruling establishment as represented by the former CIA director and the former secretary of state.
Essence of the struggle
The progressive, anti-imperialist and working class movement needs to focus not only on the internal struggle in the former USSR, which of course is fundamental, but also must take into account the external pressure from the imperialist colossus. One can only wonder what feverish hands were working in the U.S. to produce this monstrosity called a compromise between the Yeltsin forces and the Congress.
We know of at least four ways in which the U.S. government openly intervened to force a capitulation. First, Clinton's press secretary, George Stephanopoulos, made a statement within hours of Yeltsin's first decrees in which he said the U.S. government unequivocally supported Yeltsin. Then Bill Bradley and Richard Lugar, speaking for the Democrats and Republicans in the Congress, appeared on TV to endorse this position. They then got Britain, France, Germany and other imperialists to throw in their weight. And finally, Secretary of State Warren Christopher went before the Council on Foreign Relations with a hard-line speech threatening the return of the Cold War if the Congress tried to impeach Yeltsin or cut his powers.
It is absolutely indispensable to keep in mind the fundamental class forces involved in the struggle and not to give undue weight to this or that incident, thereby losing the threads to the main contenders in the arena. The form of the struggle is one thing, its essence is another.
Basically, it is a struggle between the working class, the collective peasantry, the urban and village poor, as against the urban bourgeoisie. But where is the working class? Why does it not speak in its name? Who in the Congress speaks for the workers?
The social composition of the Congress at the present time consists of a small number who openly speak in the name of communism. The rest to one degree or another are former communists, at least in name. They differ from the workers on the basis of their social standing. They are a privileged stratum in the population with emoluments that distinguish them socially from the workers. These privileges and emoluments, perhaps even their lives, would be endangered if the Yeltsin counter-revolution completely triumphed. Privatization on the scale that Yeltsin calls for means their virtual destruction.
Yet the difference between their social position and that of the workers is the basis for their conciliatory tendency to Yeltsin. This is the material force that lies behind the continued groping toward compromise. If the situation in the country were such that economic stability could be attained on the present level, such wheeling and dealing and compromising could go on forever.
But the economic debacle that has followed the dismantling of socialist construction without the ability to carry through capitalism raises the fundamental problem: Which side will win out? It is this that will ultimately sweep the ground out from under the feet of the compromisers.
Compromise in U.S. history
We are again obliged to invoke an analogy from U.S. history--the struggle between the North and the South. Going back as far as 1819 and all the way up to 1850, there were continual compromises made between the two social systems--chattel slavery and capitalism. Henry Clay (1777-1852) was the speaker of the House of Representatives, similar in position to the head of Russia's Congress, Ruslan Khasbulatov. Clay became known as the Great Compromiser after he reached an agreement with the vice president, John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). Under the Missouri Compromise, Missouri entered the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
For a while, the compromise worked. But the headlong sweep of industrialization made it impossible for the South to stay in the Union--not because this or that compromise was insufficient, but because the ground was being pulled from under the system of chattel slavery, as against the Northern wage-slave system.
Over the long run, chattel slavery was uneconomical as against wage slavery, with its much higher productivity based on "free" labor. The wage workers could be "freed" from their jobs and homes as the labor market demanded. The employers were freed from any responsibility to them, especially as cheap labor flooded in with each new wave of immigration.
Khasbulatov has tried to compromise by agreeing to some of what Yeltsin wanted, such as a vote of confidence and a referendum on a new bicameral system of parliamentary rule.
This compromise calls for a referendum, which supposedly is a democratic measure. In reality, it can turn out to be the very opposite. It depends on time and circumstance. Who will conduct the referendum? Who commands the police and the military? Who controls the media? Who enjoys an endless source of bribery and corruption from foreign sources? Who could create pogroms? In a word, who is really in authority at the time of the referendum?
Yeltsin has just issued decrees doubling the minimum wage and creating other benefits for workers. How will the Congress handle this unrestrained demagogy?
The question of elections is not what is uppermost in the minds of the people--it's the return to the worst evils of capitalist exploitation. But the way this is formulated by the Congress, which has called for a referendum on the "economic and social policies of Yeltsin," is so vague that it cannot excite revolutionary passion or even understanding.
A coalition government?
The worst aspect of the dealings between the Congress leaders and Yeltsin is the formers' call for a government of national reconciliation--a fanciful way of calling for a coalition government with Yeltsin. What could this possibly achieve? The greatest danger at the moment is the Congress leaders' policy of restraining the masses from taking the road of struggle in the streets.
The truth of the matter is that they are fearful of the masses. They hope that Yeltsin will be able to obtain some sort of a deal with Clinton at the Vancouver summit. This may sound paradoxical in light of the entire course of the parliamentary struggle they are carrying on, but their fear of the masses is what motivates them to this contradictory line. They are pushed in that direction by their material interests.
In the meantime, they have nothing to offer the masses and have adjourned for the time being in a moment of crisis. Since we referred to the Civil War in the U.S., let's invoke Lincoln's famous words: "When the people tire of their government, they have a right to change it. And failing this, they have a revolutionary right to overthrow it."