Seven Myths about the USSR

[chlamor]

Seven Myths about the USSR
By Stephen Gowans

The Soviet Union was dissolved 22 years ago, on December 26, 1991. It’s widely believed outside the former republics of the USSR that Soviet citizens fervently wished for this; that Stalin was hated as a vile despot; that the USSR’s socialist economy never worked; and that the citizens of the former Soviet Union prefer the life they have today under capitalist democracy to, what, in the fevered parlance of Western journalists, politicians and historians, was the repressive, dictatorial rule of a one-party state which presided over a sclerotic, creaky and unworkable socialist economy.

None of these beliefs is true.

Myth #1. The Soviet Union had no popular support. On March 17, 1991, nine months before the Soviet Union’s demise, Soviet citizens went to the polls to vote on a referendum which asked whether they were in favor of preserving the USSR. Over three-quarters voted yes. Far from favoring the breakup of the union, most Soviet citizens wanted to preserve it. [1]

Myth #2. Russians hate Stalin. In 2009, Rossiya, a Russian TV channel, spent three months polling over 50 million Russians to find out who, in their view, were the greatest Russians of all time. Prince Alexander Nevsky, who successfully repelled an attempted Western invasion of Russia in the 13th century, came first. Second place went to Pyotr Stolypin, who served as prime minister to Tsar Nicholas II, and enacted agrarian reforms. In third place, behind Stolypin by only 5,500 votes, was Joseph Stalin, a man that Western opinion leaders routinely describe as a ruthless dictator with the blood of tens of millions on his hands. [2] He may be reviled in the West, not surprisingly, since he was never one after the hearts of the corporate grandees who dominate the West’s ideological apparatus, but, it seems, Russians have a different view—one that fails to comport with the notion that Russians were victimized, rather than elevated, by Stalin’s leadership.

In a May/June 2004 Foreign Affairs article, (Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want), anti-communist Harvard historian Richard Pipes cited a poll in which Russians were asked to list the 10 greatest men and women of all time. The poll-takers were looking for significant figures of any country, not just Russians. Stalin came fourth, behind Peter the Great, Lenin, and Pushkin…much to Pipes’ irritation. [3]

Myth #3. Soviet socialism didn’t work. If this is true, then capitalism, by any equal measure, is an indisputable failure. From its inception in 1928, to the point at which it was dismantled in 1989, Soviet socialism never once, except during the extraordinary years of World War II, stumbled into recession, nor failed to provide full employment. [4] What capitalist economy has ever grown unremittingly, without recession, and providing jobs for all, over a 56 year span (the period during which the Soviet economy was socialist and the country was not at war, 1928-1941 and 1946-1989)? Moreover, the Soviet economy grew faster than capitalist economies that were at an equal level of economic development when Stalin launched the first five year plan in 1928—and faster than the US economy through much of the socialist system’s existence. [5] To be sure, the Soviet economy never caught up to or surpassed the advanced industrial economies of the capitalist core, but it started the race further back; was not aided, as Western countries were, by histories of slavery, colonial plunder, and economic imperialism; and was unremittingly the object of Western, and especially US, attempts to sabotage it. Particularly deleterious to Soviet economic development was the necessity of diverting material and human resources from the civilian to the military economy, to meet the challenge of Western military pressure. The Cold War and arms race, which entangled the Soviet Union in battles against a stronger foe, not state ownership and planning, kept the socialist economy from overtaking the advanced industrial economies of the capitalist West. [6] And yet, despite the West’s unflagging efforts to cripple it, the Soviet socialist economy produced positive growth in each and every non-war year of its existence, providing a materially secure existence for all. Which capitalist economy can claim equal success?

Myth #4. Now that they’ve experienced it, citizens of the former Soviet Union prefer capitalism. On the contrary, they prefer the Soviet system’s state planning, that is, socialism. Asked in a recent poll what socio-economic system they favor, Russians answered [7]:

• State planning and distribution, 58%
• Private property and distribution, 28%
• Hard to say, 14%
• Total, 100%

Pipes cites a poll in which 72 percent of Russians “said they wanted to restrict private economic initiative.” [8]

Myth #5. Twenty-two years later, citizens of the former Soviet Union see the USSR’s demise as more beneficial than harmful. Wrong again. According to a just-released Gallup poll, for every citizen of 11 former Soviet republics, including Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, who thinks the breakup of the Soviet Union benefited their country, two think it did harm. And the results are more strongly skewed toward the view that the breakup was harmful among those aged 45 years and over, namely, the people who knew the Soviet system best. [9]

According to another poll cited by Pipes, three-quarters of Russians regret the Soviet Union’s demise [10]—hardly what you would think of people who were reportedly delivered from a supposedly repressive state and allegedly arthritic, ponderous economy.

Myth #6. Citizens of the former Soviet Union are better off today. To be sure, some are. But are most? Given that more prefer the former socialist system to the current capitalist one, and think that the USSR’s breakup has done more harm than good, we might infer that most aren’t better off—or at least, that they don’t see themselves as such. This view is confirmed, at least as regards life expectancy. In a paper in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, sociologist David Stuckler and medical researcher Martin McKee, show that the transition to capitalism in the former USSR precipitated a sharp drop in life-expectancy, and that “only a little over half of the ex-Communist countries have regained their pre-transition life-expectancy levels.” Male life expectancy in Russia, for example, was 67 years in 1985, under communism. In 2007, it was less than 60 years. Life expectancy plunged five years between 1991 and 1994. [11] The transition to capitalism, then, produced countless pre-mature deaths—and continues to produce a higher mortality rate than likely would have prevailed under the (more humane) socialist system. (A 1986 study by Shirley Ciresto and Howard Waitzkin, based on World Bank data, found that the socialist economies of the Soviet bloc produced more favorable outcomes on measures of physical quality of life, including life expectancy, infant mortality, and caloric intake, than did capitalist economies at the same level of economic development, and as good as capitalist economies at a higher level of development. [12])

As regards the transition from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy, Pipes points to a poll that shows that Russians view democracy as a fraud. Over three-quarters believe “democracy is a facade for a government controlled by rich and powerful cliques.” [13] Who says Russians aren’t perspicacious?

Myth #7. If citizens of the former Soviet Union really wanted a return to socialism, they would just vote it in. If only it were so simple. Capitalist systems are structured to deliver public policy that suits capitalists, and not what’s popular, if what’s popular is against capitalist interests. Obamacare aside, the United States doesn’t have full public health insurance. Why not? According to the polls, most Americans want it. So, why don’t they just vote it in? The answer, of course, is that there are powerful capitalist interests, principally private insurance companies, that have used their wealth and connections to block a public policy that would attenuate their profits. What’s popular doesn’t always, or even often, prevail in societies where those who own and control the economy can use their wealth and connections to dominate the political system to win in contests that pit their elite interests against mass interests. As Michael Parenti writes,

Capitalism is not just an economic system, but an entire social order. Once it takes hold, it is not voted out of existence by electing socialists or communists. They may occupy office but the wealth of the nation, the basic property relations, organic law, financial system, and debt structure, along with the national media, police power, and state institutions have all been fundamentally restructured. [14]

A Russian return to socialism is far more likely to come about the way it did the first time, through revolution, not elections—and revolutions don’t happen simply because people prefer a better system to the one they currently have. Revolutions happen when life can no longer be lived in the old way—and Russians haven’t reached the point where life as it’s lived today is no longer tolerable.

Interestingly, a 2003 poll asked Russians how they would react if the Communists seized power. Almost one-quarter would support the new government, one in five would collaborate, 27 percent would accept it, 16 percent would emigrate, and only 10 percent would actively resist it. In other words, for every Russian who would actively oppose a Communist take-over, four would support it or collaborate with it, and three would accept it [15]—not what you would expect if you think Russians are glad to get out from underneath what we’re told was the burden of communist rule.

So, the Soviet Union’s passing is regretted by the people who knew the USSR firsthand (but not by Western journalists, politicians and historians who knew Soviet socialism only through the prism of their capitalist ideology.) Now that they’ve had over two decades of multi-party democracy, private enterprise and a market economy, Russians don’t think these institutions are the wonders Western politicians and mass media make them out to be. Most Russians would prefer a return to the Soviet system of state planning, that is, to socialism.

Even so, these realities are hidden behind a blizzard of propaganda, whose intensity peaks each year on the anniversary of the USSR’s passing. We’re supposed to believe that where it was tried, socialism was popularly disdained and failed to deliver—though neither assertion is true.

Of course, that anti-Soviet views have hegemonic status in the capitalist core is hardly surprising. The Soviet Union is reviled by just about everyone in the West: by the Trotskyists, because the USSR was built under Stalin’s (and not their man’s) leadership; by social democrats, because the Soviets embraced revolution and rejected capitalism; by the capitalists, for obvious reasons; and by the mass media (which are owned by the capitalists) and the schools (whose curricula, ideological orientation and political and economic research are strongly influenced by them.)

So, on the anniversary of the USSR’s demise we should not be surprised to discover that socialism’s political enemies should present a view of the Soviet Union that is at odds with what those on the ground really experienced, what a socialist economy really accomplished, and what those deprived of it really want.

1.”Referendum on the preservation of the USSR,” RIA Novosti, 2001, http://en.ria.ru/infographics/20110313/162959645.html
2. Guy Gavriel Kay, “The greatest Russians of all time?” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), January 10, 2009.
3. Richard Pipes, “Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004.
4. Robert C. Allen. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution, Princeton University Press, 2003. David Kotz and Fred Weir. Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System, Routledge, 1997.
5. Allen; Kotz and Weir.
6. Stephen Gowans, “Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work?” what’s left, December 21, 2012.
7. “Russia Nw”, in The Washington Post, March 25, 2009.
8. Pipes.
9. Neli Espova and Julie Ray, “Former Soviet countries see more harm from breakup,” Gallup, December 19, 2013, http://www.gallup.com/poll/166538/forme ... eakup.aspx
10. Pipes.
11. Judy Dempsey, “Study looks at mortality in post-Soviet era,” The New York Times, January 16, 2009.
12. Shirley Ceresto and Howard Waitzkin, “Economic development, political-economic system, and the physical quality of life”, American Journal of Public Health, June 1986, Vol. 76, No. 6.
13. Pipes.
14. Michael Parenti, Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, City Light Books, 1997, p. 119.
15. Pipes.

https://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/12/23 ... -the-ussr/

Original Thread Here:

http://www.thebellforum.net/Bell2/www.t ... l?t=108809

[blindpig]

USSR 1991 – History did not end with the counterrevolution; Socialism is timely and necessary

By Nikos Mottas*.

It was December 26, 1991 – 25 years ago- when the red flag with the sickle and hammer was lowered from the Moscow Kremlin. It was then, during the cold days of December, when the first socialist state of the world, the homeland of the world's proletariat, bent under the weight of the counterrevolution. Four days before, on December 22nd, the leaderships of three of the largest Soviet republics had decided the dissolution of the USSR, while the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been outlawed on summer of the same year.

The events of December 1991 sealed the victory of the counterrevolution, as the result of a process which officially began in 1985 with the Perestroika and reached its peak in 1989 with the overthrow of Socialism. Of course, the roots of the counterrevolution can be traced back in a series of revisionist-opportunist decisions taken at the CPSU's 20th Congress back in 1956.

In 1991, the homeland of the heroic bolsheviks, the homeland of Lenin and Stalin, the homeland of General Zhukov, of Yuri Gagarin and Dmitri Shostakovich, the homeland of the Soviet people became loot in the hands of the Russian bourgeoisie, of the oligarchs who emerged from the leadership of Perestroika. Even the opinion of the Soviet people (in the referendum of March 17, 1991, 76% of the voters supported the existence of the USSR) had been ignored by the perpetrators of the counterrevolution.


“The Soviet red flag is no longer waving in the domes of the Kremlin. Its lowering sealed with a dramatic and symbolical way the end of the 74-year old course of the first socialist state in the world. For a moment the clocks indicators remained motionless, marking the critical moment. The hearts of many million workers in all over thr world stopped beating, weighting the magnitude of the loses”.


- Rizospastis daily (KKE newspaper), 28 December 1991.

The immense social achievements of the USSR were succeeded by illusory promises by the new capitalist Russian government for- supposedly- more democracy, for more social freedoms and for a free-market economy which would improve the people's lives. The so-called “shock therapy”, which included several policies of economic liberalisation during the 90s, had multiple negative effects in people's lives: rapid increase of social inequalities, destruction of the socialist welfare state, extreme increase of poverty for the working class, decrease of the life extectancy rate, resurgence of nationalist claims between former soviet republics and the emergence of economic oligarchs as actual rulers of the new capitalist Russian state.


Yeltsin and Gorbachev: Permanently in the darkest pages of History.

Twenty-five years after the counterrevolution in the USSR, the majority of the Russian people- especially the older generations- think that life under Socialism was better. The restoration of Capitalism brought an unprecedented barbarity in almost every sector of public life; a barbarity which benefited the few and aggravated the situation for the majority. On March 2016, a survey conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Center (VTsIOM) showed that more than half of Russians (64%) would vote to maintain the Soviet Union if a referendum were held today. This figure increases from 47% among those 18-24 to 76% among respondents age 60 and more.

During the same period (March 2016), a similar survey by the Levada Center Survey in Russia showed that nore than half (56%) of the Russians regret the collapse of the USSR and 58% of the survey's participants would welcome the revival of the socialist system. Back in 2013, a survey by the Russia's Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) , showed that 60% of Russians think that the life in the Soviet Union had more positive than negative aspects.


The same kind of nostalgia for the USSR exists also in other former Soviet republics, like Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan etc, where the policies of monopoly capitalism have swept away any social privileges achieved by the working class people during Socialism.

The various apologists of capitalism, who advocated the concept of the “end of History” in the beginning of the 90s, have already been refuted. Despite the fact that the counterrevolutionary events in the USSR and Eastern Europe significantly deteriorated the correlation of forces internationally, it becomes clear that Socialism is timely and necessary. The impasses of rotten capitalism, which creates crises, poverty, unemployment, misery and wars, consist a solid proof that nothing has end.

The people, the working class in all over the world must organize their counter-attack, to strengthen the bastions of resistance against capitalist exploitation and imperialist barbarity and create the preconditions for the ultimate victory of Socialism. The red flag, with sickle and hammer, will rise again.

*Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism, a PhD candidate in Political Science, International Relations and Political History.

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/12 ... -with.html

[blindpig]

“Gulag Archipelago”: Exposing the anticommunist fabrications of Solzhenitsyn

By Nikos Mottas*.
Originally published in atexnos.gr.
Translated from Greek.

One of the most famous and celebrated works of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the “Gulag Archipelago”, has been for a long time a kind of “holy bible” for every anticommunist. Firstly published in 1973, it- supposedly- consists an analytical record of the conditions existed in the so-called “labour camps” of the Soviet Union. Within the framework of the slanderous anticommunist campaign, bourgeois historiography has extensively promoted Solzhenitsyn's work as a source of arguments about the so-called “Stalinist dictatorship” and “communist crimes” in the Soviet Union.

However, there is a fundamental problem in the work of the deeply reactionary Solzhenitsyn: Gulag Archipelago is a completely antiscientific book, based almost entirely in rumors, speculations, third party opinions as well as interpretations of opinions by Solzenitsyn himself! In other words, the reader of this book becomes “hostage” of a novel type, unverifiable, recording to alleged events by Solzenitsyn and others who supposedly “saw”, “heard” or “learned” something.

Even people who have nothing friendly to say about Stalin admit that Solzhenitsyn's work is nothing but fairy tales. Let's see what trotskyite historian and writer Vadim Z. Rogovin writes: “Solzhenitsyn’s work, much like the more objective works of R. Medvedev, belong to the genre which the West calls "oral history," i.e., research which is based almost exclusively on eyewitness accounts of participants in the events being described. Moreover, using the circumstance that the memoirs from prisoners in Stalin’s camps which had been given to him to read had never been published, Solzhenitsyn took plenty of license in outlining their contents and interpreting them” [1]. In fact, Solzenitsyn edited and cited, according to his own reactionary views, third parties' testimonials in which he added anticommunist fabrications thus creating the “Archipelago” fairy tale.

Solzhenitsyn's first wife, Natalya Reshetovskaya, seems to confirm the fact that “Gulag Archipelago” consists a fictional and completely non-scientific book. In her autobiography published in 1974 under the title “Sanya: My Life with Alexandr Solzhenitsyn”, Reshetovskaya actually challenges the validity of what Solzenitsyn writes in “Gulag Archipelago”. According to Reshetovskaya, she was “perplexed” by the fact that the the book was accepted by the western (capitalist) world as “the solemn, ultimate truth”, saying that the significance of his ex-husband's work had been “overestimated and wrongly appraised”. [2]. Furthermore, Reshetovskaya unveiled that Solzhenitsyn himself did not regard the book as “historical research, or scientific research, but it was rather a “camp folklore” collection!

More or less, Reshetovskaya actually says that “Gulag Archipelago” isn't a work that should be taken seriously or accepted as a valid source. The fact that Solzhenitsyn's book is full of lies and inaccuracies is something that can be confirmed by a comparison of the data presented in the “Gulag Archipelago” with the real numbers. There lies a significant problem for the credibility of the much celebrated “nobelist” and former Nazi collaborator Solzhenitsyn: He presents fake numbers!

The following chart, published at the official journal of the Union of American Historians, includes the overall statistical data for the custodial population in the USSR from 1934 to 1953, during a period of Joseph Stalin's leadership. Let's now see how the numbers, researched and checked by bourgeois scientists and published at the American Historical Review, refute Solzhenitsyn's anticommunist fabrications.



1st : Alexander Solzhenitsyn's argument about 60 million deaths (!) at the Soviet labour camps consists a product of his deeply anticommunist fantasy and profound lie.

2st : Solzhenitsyn's argument about 25 million detained people at the labour camps (“gulags”) in 1953 is a vulgar lie. In 1953, the overall number of the imprisoned people was not over 2.5 million. Two million were criminal prisoners, convicted for crimes or ordinary criminal law.

3rd: In the peak of his anticommunist paranoia, Solzhenitsyn had claimed that the total number of victims during Stalin's period were... 110 million people! If this ridiculous claim was correct then, normally, the Soviet Union's population during Stalin's leadership (1924-1953) should have been decreased significantly. However, statistical data about the USSR's population prove exactly the opposite!

On January 1926, the population of the Soviet Union was 148.6 million people. Fifteen years later, on June 1941 the population had been increased to 196.7 million. A decrease in USSR's population took place between 1941 and 1946 (170.5 million), which is explainable by the huge casualties of the country during the Second World War. After the War, during the period 1946-1951, the Soviet Union's population increased again, reaching 182.3 million people on January 1951 [4]. As for the annual birth rate in the USSR between 1920 and 1950, it is extremely insufficient in order to overlap (in terms of population) the number of the supposed “million deaths” of the Stalin era [5].

Solzhenitsyn is proved to be a blatant liar. Nonetheless, if someone isn't convinced yet about the anticommunist fabrications of Solzenitsyn and the other “stalinologists” (e.g. Robert Conquest), there is more to come.

After the victory of counterrevolution and the overthrow of socialism in the USSR, the bourgeois government of Boris Yeltsin decided to open the official soviet state archives, hoping that they would find evidence about the “million victims of the stalinist era”. But, what did the official soviet state archives reveal? They revealed that the actual number of those who were sentenced to death during the period of Stalin's leadership, from 1923 to 1952, is between 776,000 and 786,000 people [6]. The “million victims of stalinism” that Solzhenitsyn, Conquest and other pathetic anticommunists wrote about, consist propagandistic fairy tales.

Taking all the above into account, we can now ask a final question: How credible is an anticommunist fairy tale that is full of inaccuracies and monstrous lies? How serious must someone take the fabrications of Solzhenitsyn about Socialism, the USSR and Stalin? We leave on literature critics to evaluate “Gulag Archipelago” as a novel. But what is clear and beyond doubt is that Solzhenitsyn's book is a non-scientific, anticommunist fabrication full of lies and slanders. In a few words, nothing more or less than the spiritual product of a nazi collaborator, a reactionary and a fascist.

NOTES:


[1] Rogovin, Vadim. 1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror, Mehring Books, 1998.
[2] Reshetovskaya, Natalya. Sanya: My Life With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Indianapolis/New York, Bobbs-Merrill Co, 1974. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world ... gulag.html.
[3] The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 1017-1049.
[4] Andreev, E.M., et al., Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922-1991. Moscow, Nauka, 1993.
[5] BT.Urlanis, Trends in fertility level in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the years of Soviet rule, 1980.
[6] Getty J.A, Rittersporn G, Zemskov V. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Prewar Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence, American Historical Review, 98:4, Oct. 1993.

* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of 'In Defense of Communism'.

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/0 ... osing.html