The Soviet Union

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 14, 2017 1:16 pm

Declassified Docs Prove US Repeatedly Promised Russia No NATO Eastward Expansion © Sputnik/ Yuryi Abramochkin

20:38 12.12.2017(updated 20:51 12.12.2017)

NATO expansion was a key issue as the US, Western European and Soviet leaders negotiated the reunification of Germany.

US and Western European leaders repeatedly promised their Soviet and Russian counterparts in the early 1990s that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, according to a series of declassified documents posted by George Washington University’s National Security Archive on Tuesday.

"US Secretary of State James Baker’s famous "not one inch eastward" assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991," a press release summarizing the document cache stated.

NATO expansion was a key issue as US, Western European and Soviet leaders negotiated the reunification of Germany, in which the alliance’s boundaries would presumably encompass the former East Germany.

The cache includes a cable from the US Embassy in Bonn informing Washington that German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had urged NATO to rule out an "expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders."

At the time, Genscher also proposed excluding East Germany from NATO's security umbrella after German reunification.

In subsequent years NATO has expanded beyond the former East Germany to include 13 Eastern European countries, the latest being Montenegro's admission in June 2017.

NATO Expansion in Europe

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly stated that the United States failed to uphold its promises, adding that the Ukranian conflict following the 2014 coup that installed a pro-Western government in Kiev has served as a pretext for additional deployments in Europe.

Nevertheless, in 2016, the alliance has decided to approve sending four multinational battalions to each of the Baltic states — namely Lithiania, Latvia and Estonia — and Poland.

Most recently, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance would maintain increased presence in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe "as long as necessary" after the alliance's members had agreed on instituting a new adaptive command structure to improve the alliance’s ability "to improve the movement of military forces across Europe."

https://sputniknews.com/world/201712121 ... sion-nato/
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:07 pm

Before October: The Unbearable Romanticism of Western Marxism
Posted Oct 08, 2011 by Roland Boer

Most Western Marxists suffer from a deep resentment: they have never experienced a successful communist revolution. For some unaccountable reason, all of those successful revolutions have happened in the ‘East’: Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Vietnam and so on. And none of the few revolutions in the ‘West’, from Finland to Germany, were successful. The only exception, Cuba, proves the rule, for the turning of the Cuban revolution to communism and Russian support happened after the revolution.

The resentment of Western Marxists against the successful Eastern revolutions manifests itself in a complex mix of dismissal and unbearable romanticism. As for the latter, it appears in the position that the perfect revolution is yet to come, that it will happen at an undefinable utopian moment in the future. The criteria for what constitutes such a romantic moment constantly shift, depending on which position one takes, but they all remain in the future, have not yet been realised, offer as yet unimaginable qualitative change and certainly don’t need an army. Needless to say, all of the successful Eastern revolutions fail the test, for they inevitably came to grief, were betrayed, fell from grace, turned away from romantic revolutionary ideals. In short, they ‘failed’. And the code word for such ‘failure’ is Stalin. As soon as a revolution becomes ‘Stalinist’ — as they all did according to Western Marxists — then it was not a true revolution after all. The seeds of that failure were already embodied in the moment of revolution itself.

I would like to address this revolutionary romanticism at three levels, one concerning a recent incident in relation to China, another dealing with a curious argument concerning Norway and a third by considering what may be termed ‘fall’ narratives in relation to the first successful communist revolution, namely, the Russian Revolution.

Chinese Communism

Through increasing visits to China, to teach, travel and engage in endless discussions with Marxists, I have found most of my preconceptions thoroughly dismissed and utterly complexified. Slowly, I began to share the sense of my Chinese interlocutors that Western Marxist engagements with China were wanting in sophistication. So I contacted the organisers of an energetic annual conference, a vibrant journal and book series — Historical Materialism. The idea was to arrange for a panel or two on ‘Communism in China Today’ at a couple of conferences. We would gather some Chinese experts who would engage in detailed debate concerning Marxism in China.

The response was disappointing and predictable: ‘Is China really communist anymore?’ ‘Are there any Marxists left in China?’ ‘If so, they do not know what they are talking about’. ‘What about freedom, democracy, workers?’ To the suggestion of a conference panel I received a flat ‘no’, dismissing Marxism in China as at least unsophisticated, if not having betrayed some impossible ideal. I had thought the Historical Materialism people would be more open to a vigorous debate, one that explored issues in a manner that would move past such preconceptions. Yet, this response was also predictable, for I have encountered similar responses from one Western Marxist after another: China is not really communist, so it is not worth considering. Sometimes my interlocutor will suggest that China is ‘evil’, that it is out for world domination, that we need to fear the Chinese Empire. If I press further, my interlocutor will refer to an article in the Washington Post, the New York Times or another Western newspaper as ‘evidence’. And if I refer to a Chinese source, it is dismissed as tainted or unreliable. On such matters, these Western Marxists are no different from bourgeois critics of China.

Norway’s Bourgeois Socialism

The second example is even more astonishing.1 According to some sources in Norway, the country has achieved socialism without a revolution. Forget those messy and ‘failed’ revolutions in the East; in Norway socialism has arrived by peaceful means. The argument may best be described in terms of the following propositions:

The bourgeoisie is absolutely dominant.

It is firmly on the left.

It supports the Norwegian welfare state.

The working class has largely been dismantled, since all its wishes have been met.

The remnant of the working class is firmly right-wing.

The conclusion: Norway is a socialist country.

How might we make sense of these contradictory statements? Let us grant this argument for a moment. That would mean Norway has managed to achieve socialism via a non-revolutionary path. That is, the country is a manifestation of the argument of Bernstein (among the German Social-Democrats at the end of the nineteenth) in which all one needs to do is persuade the bourgeoisie of the benefits of socialism and that class will see the light. At the time, Bernstein soon found himself outside the socialist movement, but perhaps his moment has come — if we are to believe this argument.

Now, I can affirm that Norway is probably one of the most bourgeois places you may visit, an example of the pervasive success of the bourgeois project. The problem is that what passes for ‘socialism’ in the minds of some of its inhabitants is actually good old liberalism in its authentic expression (which leads one to advocate feminism, gays, immigrants etc). So I am left with the question: is Norway really a case of the Bernsteinian exception, so much so that it is an exception to the rest of the world, achieving what can only be a ‘chardonnay socialist’ state? Of course not, for it is another manifestation of the resentment against the successful revolutions of the East, arguing now that the perfect, Western revolution has really happened, paradoxically without a communist revolution.

The Russian Revolution: A ‘Fall’ Narrative

The third instance of unbearable romanticism is manifested in what I call ‘fall’ narratives. By a fall narrative I refer to the story in Genesis 2-3, in which Eve and then Adam eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree (of the knowledge of good and evil) and are thereby banished by God from paradise. This narrative is unwittingly deployed by Western (not even necessarily Marxist) analysts of Eastern revolutions. I take as my example the first successful communism revolution in Russia.

According to these Western analysts, when did the betrayal or fall take place? The least generous suggest that it happened even before the revolution, especially through Lenin’s supposedly devious machinations and his refusal to cooperate with other socialist groups such as the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (both Left and Right wings). An example of this approach may be found in Bruce Lincoln’s two massive works, Passage through Armageddon and Red Victory.2 The second book ends with a section called ‘the revolution consumes its makers’, where the rise of Stalin constitutes the final ‘travesty’ of the revolution. Yet the conditions for that fall were also established in what Lincoln insists calling a ‘civil’ war (despite 160,000 troops from the USA, UK, Greece, Italy, Japan, Germany, Austria, France and Turkey, along with endless equipment, money and logistics support for the White Armies), if not beforehand in the very nature of communism. For Lincoln, communism by its very nature leads to such betrayal. He shows his true colours in his sympathies for the last stand of the White Army in Crimea under Wrangel. This aristocrat was, argues Lincoln, a good tactician and organiser, supposedly trying to ensure a just regime. After his defeat, the departure of about 150,000 whites from Crimea is recounted with a sense of loss.

More often, for Western Marxists at least, the moment of the fall is the October Revolution itself, if not immediately afterwards. From that moment — to give a few of the many formulations — the party and even the working class disintegrate; the Bolsheviks become ‘renegades’; Lenin’s thought loses it coherence; his ‘heroic narrative’ of a victorious working-class socialist revolution begins to come apart; bureaucracy becomes pervasive; a transformation takes place from a flexible, democratic and open party to one of the most centralised and ‘authoritarian’ political organisations in modern history; the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes the dictatorship of the secretariat; the revolution shifts from being a revolution from below to one from above; the democratic soviets crumble before a centralised and dictatorial party.3 The problem with such fall narratives is that they tend to be theological (a fall from paradise) and fail to deal with the complex messiness of history.4 They also assume, as Tamara Prosic has pointed out,5 that communists are perfect human beings who should not ‘sin’. And they neglect Lenin’s repeated point that the revolution itself is easy; far more complex is the construction of communism itself. The result is that even the most sympathetic Marxists prefer the time before October, before the moment of the revolution itself when the Bolsheviks, with massive support, seized power.

Some lament the lost opportunities, suggesting that a broad, cross-party socialist government, such as the one established in the February Revolution, was the ideal.6 Others may actually allow that the brief time after the revolution was valid, but that the ‘civil’ war corroded all the gains, for it was a period of centralised control, tough measures, the Cheka and ‘war communism’, all of which betrayed the revolution.7 A solution for some is to side with Trotsky, arguing that if he had won out over Stalin, the situation would have been far different. This is a classic example of a futile ‘what if’ narrative.

All of them are fall narratives, accounts of betrayal of the communist revolution. Far better, then, to focus on the period before October, since that is where Western Marxists perpetually find themselves. As for me, I prefer the time after October. Why? It is a story of the astonishing survival and success of the revolution against crushing odds. In Russia, the widespread sense was that the new Soviet government would collapse within a matter of days. At the moment of the revolution, the situation was desperate after three years of war with Germany and Austria — in terms of food, fuel for heat, transport, industrial production, along with the spontaneous demobilisation of the army. It became worse after the revolution, with an economic blockade from the rest of the world and another four years of ‘civil’ war in the north, east and south: Denikin, Kolchak, Iudenich, Wrangel led various White Armies, even declaring new states in the territories they conquered. The Poles added a front in the west, rendering the new Soviet state a mere rump of what it was to become. All of them were enthusiastically supported by capitalist powers hostile to the Soviets, in terms of troops, money, equipment and advice. As the contemporary account of Ransome shows so well, the Russians knew they had to overcome this devastation without assistance from outside.8 Yet, through sheer guts, determination and resourcefulness, the communists were successful.

One does not need to refer to the new archival material9 to gain a sense of both how desperate the situation was and how stunning was the victory of the Red Army and thereby the communist revolution against overwhelming forces. One merely needs to read Lenin’s voluminous writings at the time — his texts, talks, telegrams and telephone conversations make it quite clear that it was touch and go for a quite a while.10 But all this is of no interest for romantic Western Marxists, for it merely shows how the revolution fell from grace.



1 The following section comes from a conversation with a Norwegian intellectual.

2 W. Bruce Lincoln, Passage through Armageddon: The Russians in War and Revolution 1914-1918 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).

3 Moira Donald, Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 221-46, Neil Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought (Chicago: Haymarket, 2009), vol. 2, pp. 283-328, Lars T. Lih, Lenin (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), Tony Cliff, Lenin 1917-1923: The Revolution Besieged (London: Bookmarks, 1987), Theodore H. von Laue, Why Lenin? Why Stalin? A Reappraisal of the Russian Revolution, 1900-1930 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Worker, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils, 1905-1921 (New York: Pantheon, 1974 [1958]).

4 Roland Boer, In the Vale of Tears: On Marxism and Theology V, Historical Materialism Book Series (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

5 Personal communication.

6 Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

7 Cliff, Lenin 1917-1923: The Revolution Besieged.

8 Arthur Ransome, The Crisis in Russia (New York: Dodo, 2011 [1921]).

9 Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd.

10 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 47 vols. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960), vols. 23, 26-33, 36, 42.



References

Anweiler, Oskar. The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils, 1905-1921. New York: Pantheon, 1974 [1958].

Boer, Roland. In the Vale of Tears: On Marxism and Theology V, Historical Materialism Book Series. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Cliff, Tony. The Revolution Besieged: Lenin 1917-1923. London: Bookmarks, 1987.

Donald, Moira. Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought. Chicago: Haymarket, 2009.

Laue, Theodore H. von. Why Lenin? Why Stalin? A Reappraisal of the Russian Revolution, 1900-1930. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964.

Lenin, V.I. Collected Works. 47 vols. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960.

Lih, Lars T. Lenin. London: Reaktion Books, 2011.

Lincoln, W. Bruce. Passage through Armageddon: The Russians in War and Revolution 1914-1918. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

———. Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

Ransome, Arthur. The Crisis in Russia. New York: Dodo, 2011 [1921].

Roland Boer is Research Professor in Theology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Visit his blog Stalin’s Moustache: <stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com>.

https://mronline.org/2011/10/08/before- ... n-marxism/

I feel sure I've posted this before, I've certainly read it, but I dunno where and it's worth a re-do.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by chlamor » Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:29 pm

The Russian Revolution - 98th Anniversary : Grover Furr verses Stephen Cohen

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspo ... rsary.html

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Wed Jan 03, 2018 4:43 am

Roland Boer has his own blog. I'm not sure the date of this entry but I imagine you can find it there somewhere as its definitely a theme he's addressed on multiple occasions.

https://stalinsmoustache.org/

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:50 pm

A theme that needs to be addressed on multiple occasions it seems, between the Trots, DSAs & anarchos there's a lot more bullshit than materialism circulating on social media, but it comes down to the same old shit, fantasizing petty booj 'socialism' congenial to their petty booj imaginations.
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:05 pm

On the dissolution of the Comintern
colonelcassad
January 8, 22:56

Image

On the motives of the USSR and Stalin, which led to the dissolution of the Comintern.

On the dissolution of the Comintern

Actually, the Comintern dissolved on its own, insofar as in fact it did not own the situation. By the year 43, the CI was ripe with the opinion that:

a) the Comintern does not influence the situation in the international movement under the conditions of war;
b) parties can and must go through an independent stage of development;
c) the situation not only favors this, but in fact there is no other way, for the war has broken all ties.

Dimitrov put Stalin before the fact, judging by the replicas of Stalin, the question of preserving or dissolving the Comintern, which had become a formal apparatus, was not principled for Stalin.
The Comintern was created in a very specific situation - the situation of the rise of the revolutionary movement throughout the world, accordingly, its structure and apparatus were imprisoned for performing certain functions to support this movement. The first task of CI was - not so much the leadership of the world revolution, as the creation and strengthening of communist parties in the world.

For example, at the First Congress of CI, many parties did not actually exist and were represented by foreign groups in the RCP (B). Because the Comintern received the form of the WORLD COMMUNIST PARTY so that it would be possible in places where the Communist Parties are not weak, or centrally, to maneuver personnel, materials and assist solidary actions. The Comintern was a three-tier structure - the RCP (B.) / VKP (b) as the most mass, developed and ruling party in its country, then the mass parties of other countries (French, German, etc.), which together worked to develop both each other, and the third group of parties - those who have not yet become a mass party. In the atmosphere of the first, the intensifying struggle, secondly,

This structure still worked, when in a peaceful atmosphere there was a struggle against fascism - as the tendency to fascism was a world capitalist trend, mobilization of all forces was required, the parties themselves could not cope with this task.
But everything radically changed with the occupation of a significant part of Europe by Hitler, the entry into the war of the USSR, the conclusion of a treaty with the allies and by 1942 the apparent clarity in the question of who would win whom in the protracted war. In connection with the occupation and design of the bloc of the USSR with the Anglo-Americans, there arose the need:

a) to save the USSR as the ONLY socialist state, and with enormous resources for further use for the benefit of the world revolution;
b) a bloc with patriotically and anti-fascist petty-bourgeois layers. Moreover, during the war this bloc provided real opportunities for strengthening the Communists and winning the revolution in other countries.

For these purposes the Comintern was unnecessary - it was too clumsy for organizing tactical unions of local parties in the constantly changing conditions of the struggle. Moreover, the parties in Europe and in the key countries of Asia and America have already been formed and are fully consolidated for independent work.
It was the OPPORTUNITY of the independent work of each party that made the Comintern superfluous, and not at all the evil will of Stalin.
In other words - while for small groups there were difficult times, the Comintern was needed, after the strengthening of parties it became redundant.

Criticism of the dissolution of the Comintern is based on the thesis that the links between Communists should be as dense as possible, and national and administrative boundaries should be erased. Therefore, the dissolution of CI is presented to them as a violation of this principle. But this is only because these "critics" have never really been engaged in this business, namely, the blurring of borders between the Communists. Therefore, they do not know that the level of the density of ties between Communists depends directly on the situation in which the work of the parties is taking place, and this situation naturally limits the possibilities for such ties. It is also necessary to state in the Charter that CI is a world party, perhaps, but in fact it can be done only under certain conditions - in particular, when world capital will grow to a certain level of globalization, to some degree of homogeneity. A heterogeneous development (as Lenin showed in the work "Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism") is the immanent property of capitalism. Because in fact, in CI different Communist Parties were in varying degrees of closeness with each other, and with the Comintern. At different historical moments, these ties strengthened and weakened, in fact, those ties that were directly carried out with the USSR and, of course, ideological ones were virtually unchanged. Insofar as these unchanging functions were carried out by the Comintern, it was possible to carry out without the CI apparatus, then at the stage when the possibility and necessity of the functioning of independent communist parties arose, the apparatus "fell off itself." Critics, believing the device as ever necessary, fall not only in confrontation with dialectics,

Because the Communist parties really did not lose anything with the dissolution of the Comintern, except for directives:

a) the Comintern's radio station did not cease to function;
b) the magazines and newspapers of the Comintern were replaced by international publications;
c) the financial assistance issues were resolved no worse - through the Cominform created after the war, the institution of international meetings of the Communist Parties and the financial structures of the CPSU (b).

In fact, the budget of the Comintern lost its maintenance costs, which ceased to be decided by the year 43, while the financial flows did not actually stop - the CPSU (B) as it financed most of the CI's international enterprises, and continued to fund coordinated actions and provide aid to weak communist parties. In the conditions of the existence of strong communist parties, the Comintern's assistance became less relevant:

a) international organizations with CI (Mezhrabpom and others) functioned separately separately for a long time, and they did not care whether there was a CI structure over them or not;
b) its own armed forces and organizations separate from local parties did not have CI.

In short, the Comintern lost its name with the dissolution.

A. Lbov

Plus quote:

"On the night of May 19-20, 1943, at a meeting with Stalin, the text of the letter of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern was finally agreed, and then it was sent to the national communist parties." On May 21, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), attended by Manuilsky and Dimitrov , Stalin, according to the reminiscences of the latter, said:

"Experience has shown that under both Marx and Lenin, it is now impossible to direct the working-class movement of all countries of the world from one international center. Especially now, in the conditions of war, when the Communist Parties in Germany, Italy and other countries have the task of overthrowing their governments and carrying out the tactics of defeatism, and the Communist Parties of the USSR, Britain, America, etc., on the contrary, have the task of supporting their governments in every way possible for the speediest defeat of the enemy . We overestimated our strength when they created KI. and thought that we could lead the movement in all countries. It was our mistake. The further existence of the CI is the discrediting of the idea of ​​the International, which we do not want.
There is another motive for dissolving CI, which is not mentioned in the ruling. This is the fact that the Communist parties that are part of the CI are falsely accused of being allegedly agents of a foreign state, and this prevents their work among the broad masses. With the dissolution of the CY, this trump card is knocked out of the hands of the enemies. The step taken will undoubtedly strengthen the Communist Party as a national workers' party and at the same time strengthen the internationalism of the masses, whose base is the Soviet Union. ""

Https://vk.com/prorivists?w=wall-156278021_774 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3920465.html

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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:38 pm

Soviet time capsules: messages from the past with lessons to teach us in 2017

The centenary year of the Russian Revolution has seen the unearthing of time capsules across the former USSR, offering poignant — and sometimes bleakly comic — reflections on mid-century life, and where we’ve gone wrong since

Sasha Raspopina

Image
Soviet time capsules: messages from the past with lessons to teach us in 2017“The country of workers and peasants is storming the stellar ocean!” 1960s poster celebrating the Soviet space program

Soviet writers had a lot of hopes for 2017, from controlling the weather to smart home gadgets — not all of them destined to come true. The centenary of the 1917 Revolution has made this year a landmark in terms of reflecting on the changes and tribulations that the country has been through in the last hundred years, and how our present predicament compares to the bright hopes and dreams of the communist utopia.

One consequence of this is that 2017 has seen an unprecedented unearthing of time capsules in Russia and elsewhere. Most of them are from 1967 and were initially buried as part of the celebrations marking 50 years since the Revolution, with the idea that they would be uncovered as part of Soviet citizens’ glorious celebrations of the October centenary. These are letters to a future that never actually happened, making these time capsules an incredible curiosity, offering perspective on both the past and present. Read on to see what the Soviet citizens of 1967 wanted to say to their comrades of 2017.



“We’re a little jealous of all you who are celebrating the centenary of our Soviet motherland”
Arkhangelsk

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time capsules1Wooden housing in Arctic Arkhangelsk. Image: Kenneth Mikko under a CC licence

A letter in the time capsule of Arctic port city Arkhangelsk, composed by members of the Communist Party’s youth organisation Komsomol, talks about all the work that has been put into renovating the town and its suburbs, transforming them from villages with no roads and wooden barracks for homes into a bustling centre of industry: “The youth of our region is gifting you, the young ones of the 21st century, with Koryazhma that has been turned from a small village into a modern town within ten years, Severdodvinsk that we built on land that used to be swamps, and the colossal wood industry of the North: Kotlass, Solombal and Arkhangelsk factories. We know that you will have better lives than us,” the letter continues. “You will do great things in our galaxy, will make our planet great. We are a little jealous of all you who are celebrating the centenary of our Soviet motherland. But we also know that you will be a little jealous of our restless young generation. We have a clear aim, a great future ahead of us and lots of things to accomplish. We have things that we can invest out hearts, brains, energy and labour in, and this is the source of our happiness.” Russian news website The Insider, which published an overview of the letters retrieved from the time capsules, darkly accompanied this letter with current images of Arkhangelsk: suburbs where people live in wooden barracks and drive on dirt roads.

“You are the lucky generation: wars are just history”

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time capsules novosibirsk“Dear comrades-descendents!”: the opening of the letter concealed in Novosibirsk’s capsule. Image: Studiya Olimp-Film/Youtube

Interestingly, the capsule containing the letter with this message was been retrieved in Ukraine, currently referred to as Europe’s only war zone: “You’ve never had to chant: ‘Shame on the Israeli aggressors!’, you’ve never had to protest the criminal war in Vietnam, read news about provocations in revolutionary Cuba. How far away these events are from you! […] Young crowd of 2017! We are sure that you have justified the trust your heroic predecessors have invested in you, that you have created a new world.” But war and conflicts weren’t the only focus of this letter. Speaking of Heroes of Labour — a Soviet award for those who exceeded planned outputs for factories and industry – the letter lists the names of the award’s recipiants, presumably under the assumption that these would be recognised by future readers. None of them, sadly, have fulfilled their destiny of celebrity. They might not necessarily disapprove, but what would the “60s generation of Komsomol members” think of celebrity dogs on Instagram?



“You are talking with representatives of other galaxies about scientific and cultural collaborations”
Novosibirsk

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time capsules space“In the name of peace and progress!”: a 1960s poster celebrating the Soviet space program

In this capsule, retrieved from the wall of the House of Culture in Novosibirsk, the three-page letter signed by the local Party Committee resembles a chapter from communist sci-fi fan fiction: “Dear descendants, today you are celebrating a unique day: a hundred years of Soviet rule. […] We know our time is interesting, but yours is much more so. We are building communism and you live it. We believe that you have perfectly equipped our blue planet, colonised the Moon, landed on Mars; that you are continuing the exploration of outer space that we, people of the first 50 years, have begun, and that your ships are sailing across the galaxy. We believe you are holding talks about scientific and cultural collaboration with representatives of other galaxies, alien civilisations. We believe that the work that our fathers and grandfathers started 50 years ago and which we share, you will finish and bring to victory.” While the Soviets might be disappointed by Russia’s rockets consistently falling out of the sky and the successes of the capitalist Space X, they’d probably still be quite curious about all the apps that we now have that can model your face and neatly place a dog mask over it.



“You will probably grow gardens in the Arctic Circle”
Murmansk

In far-northern Murmansk, the time capsule had been hidden inside a monument erected in 1967 to celebrate the 101st anniversary of the city. The retrieval took over two hours, as the capsule was buried under two concrete slabs and fixed inside a big concrete block. Judging by these burial techniques, those who created the time capsule definitely thought that our technology would at least be advanced enough to cut through concrete with space-age lasers. The letter hidden inside confirms this: “We have found in the earth of our peninsula the richest deposits of valuable metals and minerals, we have built towns, cities, factories and power plants in the tundra, laid roads, built a navy and learned how to reap a harvest from this meagre polar soil. We have only made our first steps into outer space, and you are probably already flying to other planets. You will uncover many natural secrets, curb nuclear power, tame the forces of nature, improve the climate, grow gardens in the Arctic Circle. Remember us, your predecessors, who built your city and whose lives were sacrificed for the struggle to build communism.”



“You have eliminated harmful bacteria and viruses, ageing and sickness”

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time capsules tiraspolPhotos sealed in the time capsule in Tiraspol. Image: TCB/Youtube

The time capsule letter retrieved in Tiraspol, the second biggest city in Moldova and capital of unrecognised Transnistria, continues the strong sci-fi trends of their Novosibirsk contemporaries: “Dear comrades-descendants, the labourers of the 20th century are writing to you. Tell your children and grandchildren how we struggled for your right to immortality. We lived in heroic times when great discoveries were made, when the world was shaken by revolutions and wars burned the planet. […] You have probably already eliminated all harmful bacteria and viruses and live without ageing or sickness. But it was us who helped you in this, when we discovered the mysteries of cancer and overcame the barrier of tissue incompatibility.” The Insider grimly published some statistics along with the letter, as depressing food for thought on the issue: birthrates in Transnistria are falling fast while mortality rates are growing, and in the last 25 years its population has decreased by 264,000 people — over 35 per cent.



“We address you, those who don’t know what war is”
Okulovka

Another letter that addresses the issue of war and peace was retrieved from a time capsule in a monument in Okulovka, a small town near Velikiy Novgorod in North-West Russia. Apart from the overarching topic of the Second World War, the letter, which was written by the employees of a local paper factory in 1969, unexpectedly touches upon another issue topical for former Soviet countries in the 21st century: decommunisation and the removal of Soviet monuments: “We paid a heavy price of millions of lives for our victory. And today, on 22 June 1969, on the 28th anniversary of the treacherous attack by Nazi Germany on our Soviet country, we address you, those who don’t know what war is. We urge you to remember and respect the memory of those who gave their lives in the fight for socialism, who died defending the freedom of the motherland and European nations from foreign invaders. Guard like sacred relics the monuments we have built to commemorate those who died.” A sombre message, but one founded in an appreciation of life and the possibilities it has to offer — if we’re willing to work for them.

https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles ... -centenery

This is both heartbreaking and heartening.
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 18, 2018 3:41 pm

Mikhail V. Popov – Counterrevolution in the USSR (Михаил Попов- Контрреволюция в СССР)

By Mikhail V. Popov.
Len.ru, 10 April 2017.
Transcript and translation by Srećko Vojvodić.



Now almost everybody understands that a counterrevolution took place in the USSR. It is so simple to see it since up until then there was socialism in the USSR, as a first phase of communism, whereas now we have a fully established capitalism in Russia. Therefore, it is not that only the counterrevolution happened, but also a restoration has taken place: all bourgeois institutions have been restored and we have a fully-fledged bourgeois state, with bourgeois democracy, as a form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
When did this happen?
Initially, some people deemed that it happened somewhere between the end of 1990 and the beginning of 1991. However, a deeper analysis shows that it was not so. Things do not happen that way.
Transitions from one system to another do not happen instantaneously in history. Let us review some examples. The transition from capitalism to communism took 18 years in Russia and the USSR: between 1917 and 1935. And how long did the transition between the first phase of communism back to capitalism take? This is the question to be deliberated.
When is a state socialist? A state is socialist if the working class holds the power in it. And when does the working class hold the power? The working class holds the power when the dictatorship of the proletariat is being implemented.
Then what is the dictatorship of the proletariat? The dictatorship of the proletariat is, as indicated in Lenin’s Great Beginning, a scientific, Latin-derived, historical-philosophical expression, meaning that only a specific social class, namely urban, factory-based industrial workers are able to lead the whole mass of working and exploited people in the fight for a complete destruction of all classes. To be explicit, this means not only the liquidation of the exploiting classes, but also the elimination of the differences between the city and the countryside, between men of physical and intellectual work.
Then there is another definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which fits our needs in deliberating the counterrevolution in the USSR even better, although it does not contradict the previous definition. This other definition was given by Lenin in his book ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: an Infantile Disorder, and says: “The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle, bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economical, pedagogical and administrative, against forces and traditions of the old society.”
Well, if we pose the following questions:
Are the forces and traditions of the old society disappearing under socialism?
Is not the class struggle waged under socialism against petty bourgeois mentality and attitudes?
Has the working class under socialism completed its task, and have all social classes been completely destroyed, effectively ending class struggle against petty bourgeois mentality and attitudes?
then the answer is:
If you do not fight them, then they fight you!
These are the petty bourgeois mentality and attitudes, which are present and which contradict the interests of the working people in a socialist society. Therefore, if we formulate the questions that way, it will become clear as to when the counterrevolution took place in the USSR: the counterrevolution took place in the USSR when the ruling party voted in its congress for the removal from its program of the centerpiece of Marxism, which is the dictatorship of the proletariat. This happened in 1961, at the XXII Congress. That meant that this Party did not want to wage a persistent struggle against forces and traditions of the old society any more, that it did not want to wage this struggle any more either as a party, or as a leading force of the society, i.e. as a political party, holding in its hands the political power in the state. Consequently, based on the decision of the XXII Congress, the state changed instantaneously its nature: once a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it became a state of the opposite nature.
What does this mean: a state of the opposite nature? It means: the bourgeois state. Some people ask “but where was the bourgeoisie?“ assuming that there was no bourgeoisie under socialism. That is true; there was no bourgeoisie – until the very moment, when this decision was made! However, as soon as it was made, what happened to the state apparatus, which managed the whole economic and political life? It started consisting of those people who, de facto, had a grip on the means of production. Then, if they earlier had to run those means of production for the sake of satisfying the needs of the whole society, in the interests of the working class – which expresses interests of all working people, now they became able to run those means of production for their own interests. In fact, it became their duty! A caste was thus formed which used the means of production for its own interests.
In general, state ownership – if we are talking about it – is not identical to social ownership. State ownership is a form of social ownership only if the state belongs to the working class and acts in the interests of the working class. Therefore, as soon as the state ceases to act in the interests of the working class, the state property becomes property of a part of the society, and the property of a part of the society is private property. That way, beginning in 1961, private property of the ruling nomenclature’s highest echelon appeared in the USSR.
Well, this private property was collectively owned – just as it is in any joint-stock company. In any such corporation private property is not individual, it belongs to all stockholders. In Russia, it happened that initially there was no fragmentation to individual stockholders; instead, everybody of this whole nomenclature highest echelon held it together in their hands. It should be noted that at this level of power only rare individuals remained in working-class positions, while everybody else jumped at the chance to appropriate this common, state property – which was no longer a social property.
We may say that the best solution was found in Belarus. They did not undertake a fragmentation of this common private property. Therefore, state property, as a large private property, remained there. However, in the rest of the USSR, at the easy hands of Chubais, Gaidar and other ideologues: Nemtsov, Iavlinskii, Boldirev and other gurus of liberal capitalism, which did not grow up even to the imperialism, to the state monopoly capitalism, a decision was made to squander this state property, to tear it down to smithereens.
This carve-up did not happen all at once. It was necessary first to bend the adversary; it was necessary to solve the problem that Nikita Khrushchov was solving when he put up the shooting of workers, and their children, in Novocherkassk in 1962. I think that anybody who will be considering this historical fact will have to conclude that if workers were being shot upon orders of the government head, then such a state was not exactly a working class state.
Now, what those workers were demanding? They were demanding only that prices not be increased and tariffs not lowered – the same thing that workers demand all over the world. This is a demand for which nobody in the world, even in the bourgeois world, shoots at workers. Therefore, in this aspect, Khrushchov spat even over those who carry out the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in other countries. Because of this, one may say that so begins, since 1961, the transition stretch from the first phase of communism to capitalism and further, that a political revolution took place at the XXII Congress in 1961.
Accordingly, if we use the term “revolution” to denote transition from one economic order to another then such a process is very lengthy. It is evident that it lasted from 1961 to 1991 – which is a 30 years span – and it is much longer than the 18 years [needed for the transition from capitalism to communism, first in Russia, and then in the whole USSR].
This pushes against the popular notion that the Soviet Union “broke up”. No, it did not break up, it was fought against, from inside and from outside. By both traitors to the cause of socialism, to the cause of the Communist Party and to the cause of the working class within the top leadership, and by the external forces that were invited during Ieltsin’s years into all ministries, to reconstruct everything as a capitalist economy, and to direct it, not even towards interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, but towards the interests of foreign bourgeoisie, and especially those of the American bourgeoisie.
So the whole thing was long lasting, and bears no similarity with a “breakup” of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union resisted for a very long time and we know that there were forces that resisted.
In 1989 the Unified Front of Working People was constituted and I participated in it, together with comrades Pizhov and Krasavin, as candidates for people’s representatives of the USSR from the national-territorial ward of Leningrad. We constituted the Leningrad Section of the Unified Front of Working People and then another such section was constituted in Moscow. Finally, a Joint Front of Working People of Russia was constituted – with the support of our trade unions, of some Party organs and some Party cadres.
The Joint Front of Working People nominated Gen. Makashov for President and Dr. Sergueiev (Economics) – who used to be my Ph.D. thesis opponent – for Vice President, while I was Gen. Makashov’s Advisor. Therefore, it is impossible to say that nobody resisted – as a matter of fact, we resisted a lot. We had constitutive congresses of the communists of Russia – because all Party members who were in the Joint Front organized this constitutive movement, which stood against Gorbachov’s cupula, wrote a corresponding program and in this program we wrote: “Expel from the Party Gorbachov’s anti-communist faction conducting anti-people’s policies.” In my capacity of member of Leningrad Regional Committee, I moved a motion to vote on this proposal at a plenary session of the Leningrad Regional Committee. However, only 17 members of the Committee voted in favour of it, while some people who used to speak a lot about communism, such as Bielov, did not support my motion. They did not want to vote against Gorbachov.
We defended this demand: Dolgov, Jelmeiev and I. We collected Party organizations’ decisions, succeeded in constituting the Communist Party of the RSFSR and participated in authoring its Program. There was no revisionism in this Program and, therefore, those who wanted us to go to capitalism under red flags had to shut down both the CPSU and the CPRSFSR. Well, that was an openly counterrevolutionary action of Yeltsin’s power structure.
At the same time, this struggle never ceased. Russian Communist Workers’ Party and after that Workers’ Party of Russia was constituted – which means that forces, opposed to the counterrevolution, have been acting and keep on acting.
In conclusion, we have to answer the questions from the beginning: “When the counterrevolution began in the USSR, what was its course and what did it consist of?” Here is the answer:
The counterrevolution in the USSR took place in 1961 but its preparations began in 1956 and even earlier. Judging by the attitude towards the foremost person who fought for socialism – comrade Stalin, of his former comrades-in-arms, indicates that even in the Central Committee a counterrevolutionary and anti-communist group was formed. Judging by their voting at the Congress, how they voted unanimously against the dictatorship of the proletariat, it becomes evident how they selected the Congress delegates – which means that Khrushchov’s group functioned well and, not accidentally, managed to intimidate Party officials by killing Beria because this is a dark affair and it is understandable that, as we were told then that Beria was an English spy, it was a fairly ridiculous accusation since Beria supervised both the nuclear program and the missile program, while building, at the same time, Moscow State University. Therefore, when such things are published, and we were observing that those people, who glorified Stalin and, so to say, were putting him on the shield, did not utter a single loud word in his defense during all this time, then it becomes clear why only much later the first pronouncements and correct evaluations of Stalin’s work began – which are now dominant, we may say. At that time, however, nothing of that kind could be heard.
This is what we can say briefly about the counterrevolution in the USSR.

* Mikhail Vasilyevich Popov is a Professor of the Department of Economics and Law at Saint Peterburg State University.
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:05 pm

Roza Shanina- The Soviet Army’s sniper who became the nightmare of the Nazis

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Roza Shanina, In Memoriam.
Ро́за Гео́ргиевна Ша́нина
1924 – 1945.

It was January 28, 1945 when the heroic senior sergeant of the Soviet Red Army, Roza Shanina, died after being seriously wounded in combat. She was 20 years old and already a legendary fighter of the Soviet Army against the Nazis.
Roza Georgiyevna Shanina was born in the village of Yedma, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia to logger Georgiy Mikhailovich Shanin and milkmaid Anna Alexeyevna Shanina. After completing elementary school in Yedma, she studied at a middle school at the nearby village of Bereznik.
In 1938, she walked 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the city of Arkhangelsk, Russia to continue her education. In the same year, she joined All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (Komsomol). In 1941, after the Soviet Union introduced tuition fees for college courses, she took on a job at a kindergarten in Arkhangelsk to help her own finances.
After the Nazi invasion of Soviet Union, she took on yet another role as a firefighter; she often spent many hours on the rooftops at and near the kindergarten of her employment to protect the children and the other employees.
In Dec 1941, her 19-year-old brother Mikhail Shanin was killed in combat at Leningrad, Russia. In 1942, after she completed her studies, she visited the local military commissariat for permission to serve. In Jun 1943, she was accepted in the Vsevobuch universal military training program. After some time, she was accepted into the sniper school; she excelled in this specialty and was offered a position as an instructor, but she turned it down, preferring to go to the front lines.
In Apr 1944, she was made the commander of the all-female 1st Sniper Platoon of the Soviet 184th Rifle Division, in the same month she would kill her first German soldier in Byelorussia and then was awarded the Order of Glory 3rd Class. In Jun 1944, all female snipers in her sector were ordered to be withdrawn, but she (along with many of the women in her platoon) disobeyed her orders and joined an infantry unit. She participated in the Vitebsk–Orsha Offensive in Byelorussia and then the Battle of Vilnius in Lithuania. In Sep, she was awarded the Order of Glory 2nd Class.

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Roza Shanina / Colour by klimbim.

In Oct, she was honored by the Central Committee of Komsomol and received the Medal for Courage. In Dec 1944, she was wounded in the right shoulder by a Nazi German sniper.
In Jan 1945, she received official authorization for her to fight on the front lines. While fighting in East Prussia, her final confirmed kill count reached 59.
On 27 Jan 1945, she was seriously wounded in combat, and died on the following day. Her final rank was senior sergeant. She was initially buried on the shore of the Alle River (German: Alle, Russian: Lava), but her remains were later re-interred to Znamensk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia.

Her death notification was writing:
Please notify Shanina, Anna Alexsandrova, resident in city of Arkhangelsk, 15 Leningrad Avenue, that her daughter Sn. Sergeant Shanina, Roza, in battle for the Socialist Motherland, in loyalty to the military oath, showing heroism and honor, was wounded and died from wounds on 28 January, 1945.
Beginning in Oct 1944, Shanina kept a combat diary against orders; the entries were published in the magazine Yunost in 1965, and the diary collection itself, consisted of three notebooks, was given to the Regional Museum of Arkhangelsk Oblast.

Timeline of Roza’s life.
3 Apr 1924 Roza Shanina was born in the village of Yedma, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia.
11 Sep 1941 Roza Shanina took on a job at kindergarten No. 2 in Arkhangelsk, Russia to help pay for her tuition.
22 Jun 1943 Roza Shanina was accepted into the Vsevobuch program for universal military training.
2 Apr 1944 Roza Shanina was made the commander of the all-female 1st Sniper Platoon of the Soviet 184th Rifle Division.
5 Apr 1944 Roza Shanina killed her first German soldier southeast of Vitebsk, Byelorussia.
17 Apr 1944 Roza Shanina was awarded the Order of Glory 3rd Class while fighting in Byelorussia; she was the first woman of 3rd Byelorussian Front to receive this award.
9 Jun 1944 Roza Shanina was featured on the front page of the Soviet newspaper Unichtozhim Vraga.
22 Jun 1944 Roza Shanina, with the rest of female snipers in her platoon, received orders to be withdrawn from front line combat. She disobeyed her orders and continued to fight with an infantry unit in Byelorussia.
31 Aug 1944 Roza Shanina reached 42 confirmed kills.
16 Sep 1944 Roza Shanina was awarded the Order of Glory 2nd Class.
17 Sep 1944 Soviet newspaper Unichtozhim Vraga credited Roza Shanina with 51 kills.
6 Oct 1944 Roza Shanina began keeping a combat diary against orders.

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Roza Shanina and Alexndra Maksimovna Ekimova.

17 Oct 1944 Roza Shanina visited her family in Arkhangelsk, Russia.
27 Oct 1944 Roza Shanina was awarded the Medal for Courage.
10 Nov 1944 Roza Shanina recorded in her diary the death of her lover Misha Panarin.
12 Dec 1944 Roza Shanina was wounded in the right shoulder by a German sniper.
8 Jan 1945 Soviet 5th Army formally granted Roza Shanina the permission to fight on the front lines.
15 Jan 1945 Roza Shanina reached Eydtkuhnen, Ostpreußen (East Prussia), Germany (now Chernyshevskoye, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia).
16 Jan 1945 Roza Shanina wrote in her diary “What I’ve actually done? No more than I have to as a Soviet man, having stood up to defend the motherland.”

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Roza Shanina / Colour by klimbim.

17 Jan 1945 Roza Shanina wrote a letter to a friend, in which she noted that she might be on the verge of being killed in combat as the numbers of her battalion dwindled.
24 Jan 1945 Roza Shanina made her final entry in her combat diary.
27 Jan 1945 Roza Shanina was seriously wounded while shielding a wounded artillery officer.
28 Jan 1945 Roza Shanina passed away in near the Richau estate three kilometers (1.9 miles) southeast of the village of Ilmsdorf, Ostpreußen (East Prussia), Germany (now Novobobruysk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) from wound received in combat on the previous day.
Sources: ww2db.com / rozasdiary.com / Wikipedia.
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Re: The Soviet Union

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 01, 2018 6:22 pm

Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work?

Compared to capitalism, the USSR’s publicly owned, planned economy worked remarkably well.

By Stephen Gowans

The Soviet Union was a concrete example of what a publicly owned, planned economy could produce: full employment, guaranteed pensions, paid maternity leave, limits on working hours, free healthcare and education (including higher education), subsidized vacations, inexpensive housing, low-cost childcare, subsidized public transportation, and rough income equality. Most of us want these benefits. However, are they achievable permanently? It is widely believed that while the Soviet Union may have produced these benefits, in the end, Soviet public ownership and planning proved to be unworkable. Otherwise, how to account for the country’s demise? Yet, when the Soviet economy was publicly owned and planned, from 1928 to 1989, it reliably expanded from year to year, except during the war years. To be clear, while capitalist economies plunged into a major depression and reliably lapsed into recessions every few years, the Soviet economy just as unfailingly did not, expanding unremittingly and always providing jobs for all. Far from being unworkable, the Soviet Union’s publicly owned and planned economy succeeded remarkably well. What was unworkable was capitalism, with its occasional depressions, regular recessions, mass unemployment, and extremes of wealth and poverty, all the more evident today as capitalist economies contract or limp along, condemning numberless people to forced idleness. What eventually led to the Soviet Union’s demise was the accumulated toll on the Soviet economy of the West’s efforts to bring it down, the Reagan administration’s intensification of the Cold War, and the Soviet leadership’s inability to find a way out of the predicament these developments occasioned.
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Every year, from 1928 to 1989, except during the war years, the publicly owned, planned Soviet economy reliably expanded, providing jobs, shelter, and a wide array of low- and no-cost public services to all, while capitalist economies regularly sank into recession and had to continually struggle out of them on the wreckage of human lives.
By the 1980s, the USSR was showing the strains of the Cold War. Its economy was growing, but at slower pace than it had in the past. Military competition with its ideological competitor, the United States, had slowed growth in multiple ways. First, R&D resources were being monopolized by the military, starving the civilian economy of the best scientists, engineers, and machine tools. Second, military spending had increased to meet the Reagan administration’s abandonment of detente in favour of a renewed arms race that was explicitly targeted at crippling the Soviet economy. To deter US aggression, the Soviets spent a punishingly large percentage of GDP on the military while the Americans, with a larger economy, spent more in absolute terms but at a lower and more manageable share of national income. Third, to protect itself from the dangers of relying on foreign imports of important raw materials that could be cut off to bring the country to its knees, the Soviet Union chose to extract raw materials from its own vast territory. While making the USSR self-sufficient, internal sourcing ensnared the country in a Ricardian trap. The costs of producing raw materials increased, as new and more difficult-to-reach sources needed to be tapped as the older, easy-to-reach ones were exhausted. Fourth, in order to better defend the country, the Soviets sought allies in Eastern Europe and the Third World. However, because the USSR was richer than the countries and movements it allied with, it became the anchor and banker to other socialist countries, liberation movements, and states seeking to free themselves from despoliation by Western powers. As the number of its allies increased, and Washington manoeuvred to arm, finance, and support anti-communist insurgencies in an attempt to put added strain on the Soviet treasury, the costs to Moscow of supporting its allies mounted. These factors—corollaries of the need to provide for the Soviet Union’s defence—combined to push costs to the point where they seriously impeded Soviet economic growth.

With growth slowing, and the costs of defending the country increasing, it appeared as if it was only a matter of time before the USSR would find itself between the Scylla of an untenable military position and the Charybdis of arms race-driven bankruptcy. Mikhail Gorbachev, the country’s last leader, faced a dilemma: he could either bankrupt the economy by trying to keep pace with the Americans on arms spending or withdraw from the race altogether. Gorbachev chose the latter. He moved to end the Cold War, withdrawing military support from allies, and pledging cooperation with the United States. On the economic front, he set out to transform the Soviet Union into a Western-style social democracy. However, rather than rescuing the country from a future of ever slowing economic growth, Gorbachev’s capitulations on foreign and economic policy led to disaster. With the restraining hand of the Soviet Union lifted, the United States embarked on a series of aggressions around the world, beginning with Iraq, proceeding to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, and then Libya, with numerous smaller interventions in between. Gorbachev’s abandonment of economic planning and efforts to clear the way for the implementation of a market economy pushed the country into crisis. Within five years, Russia was an economic basket case. Unemployment, homelessness, economic insecurity and social parasitism (living off the labour of others) returned with a vengeance.

On Christmas Day, 1991, the day the USSR officially ended, Gorbachev said, “We live in a new world. The Cold War is finished. The arms race and the mad militarization of states, which deformed our economy, society and values, have been stopped. The threat of world war has been lifted” (Roberts, 1999). This made Gorbachev wildly popular in the West. Russians were less enthusiastic. Contained within Gorbachev’s words was the truth about why the world’s first conscious attempt to build an alternative to capitalism had been brought to a close. It was not because the Soviet economic system had proved unworkable. On the contrary, it had worked better than capitalism. The real reason for the USSR’s demise was that its leadership capitulated to an American foe, which, from the end of World War II, and with growing vigour during the Reagan years, sought to arms race to death the Soviet economy. This was an economy that worked for the bottom 99 percent, and therefore, if allowed to thrive, would have discredited the privately owned, market-regulated economies that the top one percent favoured and benefited from. It was this model of free enterprise and market regulation which made vast wealth, security and comfort the prerogatives of captains of industry and titans of finance, and unemployment, poverty, hunger, economic insecurity, and indignity—the necessary conditions of the top one percent’s riches—the lot of everyone else.

The 21 years since the defeat of the USSR have not been kind. Stalin, under whose tutelage the world’s first publicly owned, planned economy was built, once issued a prophetic warning: “What would happen if capitalism succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries. The working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost” (Stalin, 1954). And just as Stalin had accurately prophesied 10 years before Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, that his country had only 10 years to prepare for an attack, so too did he accurately foresee the consequences of the Soviet Union’s falling to the forces of capitalism. An era of the blackest reaction has, indeed, set in. Washington now has more latitude to use its muscular military to pursue its reactionary agenda around the world. Public ownership and planning hang on in Cuba and North Korea, but the United States and its allies use sanctions, diplomatic isolation and military harassment to sabotage the economies of the hold-outs (as they did the Soviet economy), so that the consequences can be falsely hung on what are alleged to be the deficiencies of public ownership and planning. They are in reality the consequences of a methodical program of low-level warfare. Encouraged to believe that the Soviet economic system had failed, many people, including both communist supporters and detractors of the Soviet Union, concluded that a system of public ownership and planning is inherently flawed. Communists abandoned communist parties for social democratic ones, or abandoned radical politics altogether. Social democrats shifted right, eschewing reform, and embracing neo-liberalism. In addition, Western governments, no longer needing to blunt the appeal of public ownership and planning, abandoned the public policy goal of full employment and declared robust public services to be no longer affordable (Kotz, 2001). At the same time, privatization in the former Soviet Union and formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe expanded the global supply of wage-labour, with predictable consequences for wage levels worldwide. The Soviet Union’s defeat has ushered in a heyday for capital. For the rest of us, our throats, as Stalin warned, have been seized.

The world’s largest capitalist economies have been in crisis since 2008. Some are trapped in an austerity death-spiral, some in the grips of recession, most growing slowly at best. Austerity—in reality the gutting of public services—is the prescribed pseudo-remedy. There is no end in sight. In some parts of Europe, official unemployment reaches well into the double-digits, youth unemployment higher still. In Greece, a country of 11 million, there are only 3.7 million employed (Walker and Kakaounaki, 2012). Moreover, the crisis can in no way be traced to an outside power systematically working to bring about capitalism’s demise, as the United States and its allies systematically worked to bring about the end of public ownership and planning in the USSR. Yet, free to develop without the encumbrance of an organized effort to sabotage it, capitalism is not working. Few point this out. By contrast, the Soviet model of public ownership and planning—which, from its inception was the target of a concerted effort to undermine it—never once, except during the extraordinary years of World War II, stumbled into recession, nor failed to provide full employment. Yet it is understood, including by some former supporters of the Soviet Union, to have been unworkable. Contrary to a widely held misconception, the experience of the Soviet Union did not demonstrate that an inherent weakness existed within its publicly owned, planned economy that doomed it to failure. It demonstrated, instead, the very opposite—that public ownership and planning could do what capitalism could not do: produce unremitting economic growth, full employment, an extensive array of free and nearly free public services, and a fairly egalitarian distribution of income. Moreover, it could do so year after year and continued to do so until the Soviet leadership pulled the plug. It also demonstrated that the top one percent would defend private ownership by using military, economic, and ideological means to crush a system that worked against them but worked splendidly for the bottom 99 percent (an effort that carries on today against Cuba and North Korea.)

The defeat of the Soviet Union has, indeed, ushered in a period of dark reaction. The way out remains, as ever, public ownership and planning—which the Soviet experience from 1928 to 1989 demonstrates works remarkably well—and struggle against those who would discredit, degrade or destroy it.

What Soviet public ownership and planning did for ordinary citizens of the USSR

The benefits of the Soviet economic system were found in the elimination of the ills of capitalism—an end to unemployment, inflation, depressions and recessions, and extremes of wealth and poverty; an end to exploitation, which is to say, the practice of living off the labour of others; and the provision of a wide array of free and virtually free public services.

Among the most important accomplishments of the Soviet economy was the abolition of unemployment. Not only did the Soviet Union provide jobs for all, work was considered a social obligation, of such importance that it was enshrined in the constitution. The 1936 constitution stipulated that “citizens of the USSR have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with quantity and quality.” On the other hand, making a living through means other than work was prohibited. Hence, deriving an income from rent, profits, speculation or the black market – social parasitism – was illegal (Szymanski, 1984). Finding a job was easy, because labour was typically in short supply. Consequently, employees had a high degree of bargaining power on the job, with obvious benefits in job security, and management paying close attention to employee satisfaction (Kotz, 2003).

Article 41 of the 1977 constitution capped the workweek at 41 hours. Workers on night shift worked seven hours but received full (eight-hour) shift pay. Workers employed at dangerous jobs (e.g., mining) or where sustained alertness was critical (e.g. physicians) worked six or seven-hour shifts, but received fulltime pay. Overtime work was prohibited except under special circumstances (Szymanski, 1984).

From the 1960s, employees received an average of one month of vacation (Keeran and Kenny, 2004; Szymanski, 1984) which could be taken at subsidized resorts (Kotz, 2003).

All Soviet citizens were provided a retirement income, men at the age of 60, and women at the age of 55 (Lerouge, 2010). The right to a pension (as well as disability benefits) was guaranteed by the Soviet constitution (Article 43, 1977), rather than being revocable and subject to the momentary whims of politicians, as is the case in capitalist countries.
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That US citizens had to pay for their healthcare was considered extremely barbaric in the Soviet Union, and Soviet citizens “often questioned US tourists quite incredulously on this point.”
Women were granted maternity leave from their jobs with full pay as early as 1936 and this, too, along with many other benefits, was guaranteed in the Soviet constitution (Article 122, 1936). At the same time, the 1936 constitution made provision for a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens, while the revised 1977 constitution obligated the state to help “the family by providing and developing a broad system of childcare…by paying grants on the birth of a child, by providing children’s allowances and benefits for large families” (Article 53). The Soviet Union was the first country to develop public childcare (Szymanski, 1984).

Women in the USSR were accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life (Article 122, 1936), including the equal right with men to employment, rest and leisure, social insurance and education. Among its many firsts, the USSR was the first country to legalize abortions, which were available at no cost (Sherman, 1969). It was also the first country to bring women into top government positions. An intense campaign was undertaken in Soviet Central Asia to liberate women from the misogynist oppression of conservative Islam. This produced a radical transformation of the condition of women’s lives in these areas (Szymanski, 1984).

The right to housing was guaranteed under a 1977 constitutional provision (Article 44). Urban housing space, however, was cramped, about half of what it was per capita in Austria and West Germany. The reasons were inadequate building in Tsarist times, the massive destruction of housing during World War II, and Soviet emphasis on heavy industry. Prior to the October Revolution, inadequate urban housing was built for ordinary people. After the revolution, new housing was built, but the housing stock remained insufficient. Housing draws heavily on capital, which the government needed urgently for the construction of industry. In addition, Nazi invaders destroyed one-third to one-half of Soviet dwellings during the Second World War (Sherman, 1969).

City-dwellers typically lived in apartment buildings owned by the enterprise in which they worked or by the local government. Rents were dirt cheap by law, about two to three percent of the family budget, while utilities were four to five percent (Szymanski, 1984; Keeran and Kenny, 2004). This differed sharply with the United States, where rents consumed a significant share of the average family budget (Szymanski, 1984), and still do.

Food staples and other necessities were subsidized, while luxury items were sold well above their costs.

Public transportation was efficient, extensive, and practically free. Subway fare was about eight cents in the 1970s, unchanged from the 1930s (Szymanski, 1984). Nothing comparable has ever existed in capitalist countries. This is because efficient, affordable and extensive public transportation would severely limit the profit-making opportunities of automobile manufacturers, petroleum companies, and civil engineering firms. In order to safeguard their profits, these firms use their wealth, connections and influence to stymie development of extensive, efficient and inexpensive public alternatives to private transportation. Governments, which need to keep private industry happy so that it continues to provide jobs, are constrained to play along. The only way to alter this is to bring capital under public control, in order to use it to meet public policy goals set out in a consciously constructed plan.

The Soviet Union placed greater stress on healthcare than their capitalist competitors did. No other country had more physicians per capita or more hospital beds per capita than the USSR. In 1977, the Soviet Union had 35 doctors and 212 hospital beds per 10,000 compared to 18 doctors and 63 hospital beds in the United States (Szymanski, 1984). Most important, healthcare was free. That US citizens had to pay for their healthcare was considered extremely barbaric in the Soviet Union, and Soviet citizens “often questioned US tourists quite incredulously on this point” (Sherman, 1969).

Education through university was also free, and stipends were available for post-secondary students, adequate to pay for textbooks, room and board, and other expenses (Sherman, 1969; Szymanski, 1984).

Income inequality in the Soviet Union was mild compared to capitalist countries. The difference between the highest income and the average wage was equivalent to the difference between the income of a physician in the United States and an average worker, about 8 to 10 times higher (Szymanski, 1984). The elite’s higher incomes afforded privileges no greater than being able to acquire a modest house and car (Kotz, 2000). By comparison, in 2010, Canada’s top-paid 100 CEOs received incomes 155 times higher than the average full-time wage. The average full-time wage was $43,000 (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2011). An income 10 times larger would be $430,000—about what members of the capitalist elite make in a single week. A factor that mitigated the modest degree of Soviet income inequality was the access all Soviet citizens had to essential services at no, or virtually, no cost. Accordingly, the degree of material inequality was even smaller than the degree of income inequality (Szymanski, 1984).

Soviet leaders did not live in the opulent mansions that are the commonplace residences of presidents, prime ministers and monarchs in most of the world’s capitals (Parenti, 1997). Gorbachev, for example, lived in a four-family apartment building. Leningrad’s top construction official lived in a one-bedroom apartment, while the top political official in Minsk, his wife, daughter and son-in-law inhabited a two-bedroom apartment (Kotz and Weir, 1997). Critics of the Soviet Union accused the elite of being an exploiting ruling class, but the elite’s modest incomes and humble material circumstances raise serious doubt about this assessment. If it was indeed an exploiting ruling class, it was the oddest one in human history.

The Soviet economy’s record of growth under public ownership and planning

From the moment in 1928 that the Soviet economy became publicly owned and planned, to the point in 1989 that the economy was pushed in a free market direction, Soviet GDP per capita growth exceeded that of all other countries but Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. GDP per person grew by a factor of 5.2, compared to 4.0 for Western Europe and 3.3 for the Western European offshoots (the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) (Allen, 2003). In other words, over the period in which its publicly owned, planned economy was in place, the USSR‘s record in raising incomes was better than that of the major industrialized capitalist countries. The Soviet Union’s robust growth over this period is all the more impressive considering that the period includes the war years when a major assault by Nazi Germany left a trail of utter destruction in its wake. The German invaders destroyed over 1,500 cities and towns, along with 70,000 villages, 31,000 factories, and nearly 100 million head of livestock (Leffler, 1994). Growth was highest to 1970, at which point expansion of the Soviet economy began to slow. However, even during this so-called (and misnamed) post-1970 period of stagnation, GDP per capita grew 27 percent (Allen, 2003).
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The i-Phone. Produced by free enterprise? Guess again.
While Soviet GDP per capita growth rates compare favorably with those of the major capitalist economies, a more relevant comparison is with the rest of the world. In 1928, the Soviet Union was still largely an agrarian country, and most people worked in agriculture, compared to a minority in Western Europe and North America. Hence, the economy of the USSR at the point of its transition to public ownership and planning was very different from that of the industrialized Western capitalist countries. On the other hand, the rest of the world resembled the Soviet Union in also being largely agrarian (Allen, 2003). It is therefore the rest of the world, not the United States and other advanced industrialized countries, with which the USSR should be compared. From 1928 to 1989, Soviet GDP per capita not only exceeded growth in the rich countries but exceeded growth in all other regions of the world combined, and to a greater degree. Hence, not only did the publicly owned, planned economy of the Soviet Union outpace the economies of richer capitalist economies, it grew even faster than the economies of countries that were most like the USSR in 1928. For example, outside its southern core, Latin America’s GDP per capita was $1,332 (1990 US dollars), almost equal to the USSR’s $1,370. By 1989, the Latin American figure had reached $4,886, but average income in the Soviet Union had climbed far higher, to $7,078 (Allen, 2003). Public ownership and planning had raised living standards to a higher level than capitalism had in Latin America, despite an equal starting point. Moreover, while the Soviet peacetime economy unfailingly expanded, the Latin American economy grew in fits and starts, with enterprises regularly shuttering their doors and laying off employees.

Perhaps the best illustration of how public ownership and planning performed better at raising living standards comes from a comparison of incomes in Soviet Central Asia with those of neighboring countries in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1928, these areas were in a pristinely pre-industrial state. Under public ownership and planning, incomes grew in Soviet Central Asia to $5,257 per annum by 1989, 32 percent higher than in neighboring capitalist Turkey, 44 percent higher than in neighboring capitalist Iran, and 241 percent higher than in neighboring capitalist Pakistan (Allen, 2003). For Central Asians, it was clear on which side of the Soviet Union’s border standards of living were highest.

US emulation of Soviet public funding of R&D

Advocates of a free enterprise economy would have you believe that public ownership and planning stifle innovation, while free enterprise encourages it. If that is the case, how do we explain:

• That the Soviet Union beat the United States into space in the 1950s, piling up a record of firsts in space exploration, and consequently setting off a panic in Washington?
• Most of the innovations in the United States, from the internet to Google’s search engine algorithm to advanced drugs and the i-Phone, are based, not on private investment, but government funding?

In fact, the truth about innovation is the exact opposite of what free-enterprise promoters would have us believe. It is not free enterprise, but planning and public funds, that drive it.

Soviet accomplishments in space, considered in light of the mistaken view that the USSR was always a poor second-best to the supposedly more dynamic United States, is truly startling. Soviet achievements include the first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human in orbit, first woman in orbit, first spacewalk, first moon impact, first image of the far side of the moon, first unmanned lunar soft landing, first space rover, first space station and first interplanetary probe. The panic created in Washington after the allegedly innovation-stifling Soviet economy allowed the USSR to beat its much richer ideological rival into space galvanized the United States to take a leaf from the Soviet book. Just as the Soviets were doing, Washington would use public funds to power research into innovations. This would be done through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The DARPA would channel public money to scientists and engineers for military, space and other research. Many of the innovations to come out of the DARPA pipeline would eventually make their way to private investors, who would use them for private profit (Mazzucato, 2011). In this way, private investors were spared the trouble of risking their own capital, as free enterprise mythology would have us believe they do. In this myth, far-seeing and bold capitalists reap handsome profits as a reward for risking their capital on research that might never pay-off. Except this is not how it works. It is far better for investors to invest their capital in ventures with less risk and quicker returns, while allowing the public to shoulder the burden of funding R&D with its many risks and uncertainties. Using their wealth, influence and connections, investors have successfully pressed politicians into putting this pleasing arrangement in place. Free enterprise reality, then, is based on the sucker system: Risk is “socialized” (i.e., borne by the public, the suckers) while benefits are “privatized” (by investors who have manipulated politicians into shifting to the public the burden of funding R&D.)

A study by Block and Keller (2008) found that between 1971 and 2006, 77 out of R&D Magazine’s top 88 innovations had been fully funded by the US government. Summarizing research by economist Mariana Mazzucato, Guardian columnist Seumas Milne (2012) points out that the

[a]lgorithms that underpinned Google’s success were funded by the public sector. The technology in the Apple iPhone was invented in the public sector. In both the US and Britain it was the state, not big pharma, that funded most groundbreaking ‘new molecular entity’ drugs, with the private sector then developing slight variations. And in Finland, it was the public sector that funded the early development of Nokia – and made a return on its investment.

Nuclear power, satellite and rocket technology, and the internet are other examples of innovations that were produced with public money, and have since been used for private profit. US president Barack Obama acknowledged the nature of the swindle in his 2011 State of the Nation Address. “Our free-enterprise system,” began the president, “is what drives innovation.” However, he immediately contradicted himself by saying, “But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need.”

All of this points to two important facts. (1) The United States kick-started innovation in its economy by emulating the Soviet model of state-directed research because free enterprise was not up to the task. (2) Rather than emulate the Soviet model for public benefit, the United States channels public money into R&D for private profit. From the second point can be inferred a third: The fact that the Soviets socialized the benefits that flow from socialized risk, while the United States privatizes them, reflects the antagonistic nature of the two societies: One, a mass-oriented society organized to benefit the masses; the other, a business society organized to benefit a minority of business owners. Capitalism, as the US president acknowledges, does not promote innovation, because “it is not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research.” On the other hand, state-directed funding is the source of innovation. Clearly, then, a political agenda has nurtured two myths: (a) That a system of public ownership and planning stifles innovation; (b) That the profit system stimulates it.

Why growth slowed

While the Soviet economy grew rapidly from 1928 to 1989 it never surpassed the economies of North America, Western Europe and Japan. Consequently, the USSR’s per capita income was always less than that of the industrialized capitalist economies. The comparative disadvantage in incomes and living standards was falsely attributed to the alleged inefficiencies of public ownership and planning, rather than to the reality that, having started further back than the rich capitalist countries, the Soviet Union had more ground to cover. When the race began in 1928, the Soviet Union was still a largely agrarian country while the United States was industrialized. Hence, the Soviet Union had to cover ground the United States had already covered when Russia was under the stifling rule of Tsarist tyranny. Moreover, it had to do so without riches extracted from other countries, as the United States, Britain, France and Japan had based part of their prosperity on exploiting their own formal and informal empires (Murphy, 2000). True, the USSR did have an empire of sorts—countries in Eastern Europe over which it exercised hegemony, but, except in the early post-WWII years, these countries were never exploited economically by the Soviet Union. If anything, the Soviets, who exported raw materials to Eastern Europe in return for manufactured goods, came out on the losing end of its trade relationship with its satellites. So long as they remained part of the Warsaw Pact—a defensive alliance formed after and in response to the creation of NATO—and maintained some semblance of public ownership and planning, Moscow allowed its Eastern European allies to chart their own course. Soviet hegemony, then, was limited to enforcing these two conditions (Szymanski, 1979).

By the mid-1970s there was serious concern in Washington that the Soviet economy was on a course to overtake that of the United States. Since Washington always pointed to the United States’ greater average income and higher living standards to mobilize the allegiance of its population to the free enterprise system, a Soviet lead would deal a mortal blow to the legitimacy of US capitalism. Careful estimates prepared in the United States showed that Soviet gross national product was gaining on that of the United States. In 1950, the Soviet economy was only one-third the size of the US economy but had grown to almost one-half only eight years later (Sherman, 1969). From the perspective of planners in Washington in the late 1950s, the danger loomed that at current rates of growth, the Soviet economy would overtake the US economy by 1982. At that point, the entire foundation of the US population’s belief in the legitimacy of free enterprise—that it produced higher living standards than public ownership and planning—would crumble. Something had to be done.

By 1975, the CIA estimated that the Soviet economy was 60 percent as large as the US economy (Kotz and Weir, 1997). However, Soviet economic growth was starting to slow. According to figures provided by Allen (2003), Soviet GDP per capita grew at an annual rate of 3.4 percent from 1928 to 1970, but at less than half that rate, 1.3 percent, from 1970 to 1989. Had the United States, alarmed at being beaten into space, and agitated by what seemed to be the very real prospect of being overtaken economically by the USSR, set out to sabotage Soviet economic progress?

The Cold War was never going to be kind to Soviet growth prospects. Soviet leaders recognized that a planned, publicly owned economy was an anathema to the captains of industry and titans of finance who use their wealth and connections to dominate policy in capitalist countries. The USSR had been invaded multiple times, and on two occasions by aggressive capitalist powers with the objective of wiping the Soviet system off the map. In order to deter future aggressions, it was necessary to keep pace militarily. Therefore, the Soviet Union struggled as best as it could to achieve a rough military parity to maintain a peaceful coexistence with its capitalist neighbours (Szymanski, 1979).

However, the smaller size of the Soviet economy relative to that of its ideological competitors created problems. The necessity of maintaining a rough military parity would mean spending a far higher percentage of GDP on the military compared to what the United States and other NATO countries spent on their armed forces. Resources that could otherwise have been deployed to industrial expansion to help the country catch up economically had instead to be channelled into self-defence (Murphy, 2000). From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Soviets spent 12 to 14 percent of their GDP on the military (Szymanski, 1984; Allen, 2003), a figure that would grow even higher later, when the Reagan administration hiked US military spending, anticipating a Soviet effort to keep up that would harm the USSR’s economy.

Another constraint imposed on the Soviet economy by the need to deter military aggression was the monopolization of R&D resources by the military. Keeping pace militarily involved an unceasing battle to catch up to US military innovations. When the United States exploded the first atom bomb in 1945, the Soviet Union raced to match the United States’ grim scientific feat, which it did four years later. The US introduction of the hydrogen bomb in 1952 was quickly followed by the Soviets exploding their own hydrogen bomb a year later. A US first in submarine-launched nuclear missiles was matched by the USSR a few years after. No major weapon was developed by the USSR first, with a single exception—the ICBM. Unlike the United States, the USSR had no military bases ringing its ideological rival, and therefore needed a way of delivering nuclear warheads over long distances. However, the aim was self-defence, and that the Soviet Union was usually in catch-up mode on weapons systems demonstrated that the United States was spurring the Cold War forward, not the USSR. For the Soviets, the Cold War was economic poison. For the Americans, the Cold War was a way to ruin the Soviet economy.

Because self-defence was a priority, the USSR’s best scientists and engineers were channelled into the military sector (Sherman, 1969). Soviet consumer goods were often said to have been of low quality, but no one ever said the same about Soviet military equipment. The reason why is clear: the military got first dibs on the best minds and best equipment and was never short of funding. There is a subsidiary point: high-quality Soviet arms were produced by a system of public ownership and planning, despite the myth that such a system is incapable of producing high-quality goods (Kotz, 2008). The necessity of channelling the bulk of, and best, R&D resources to the military meant that other sectors suffered, and GDP growth was impeded. For example, the Soviets floundered in their efforts to increase petroleum production because the metals, machinery, scientists and engineers needed to boost oil output were detailed to the military sector (Allen, 2003). Half of the machine tools produced and at least half of the R&D expenditures were going to the defence industry (Schweizer, 1994).

Another reason for the post-1975 slowdown in the Soviet economy was that the USSR had become ensnared in a Ricardian trap (Allen, 2003). The Soviet Union had an abundant supply of all the raw materials an industrial economy needed, and at first, they were easy to reach and therefore could be obtained at low cost. For example, in the early years of the USSR’s industrialization, open pit mines were dug near industrial centres. Minerals were close to the surface and could be transported over short distances to nearby factories. Therefore, production and transportation costs were minimal. However, over time, the minerals that were close to the surface were scooped out and pits became deeper and narrower. At deeper depths, the quantity of minerals that could be extracted diminished and the costs of reaching them increased. Eventually, the mines were exhausted, and new mines had to be opened, but at greater distances from industrial centres, which meant higher costs to transport raw materials to factories. The Soviet petroleum industry was equally caught in a Ricardian trap. In the early 1970s, the USSR was spending $4.6 billion per year to maintain its oil industry. As oil became more difficult to reach, the Soviets had to drill deeper and through harder rocks. Costs increased, reaching $6.0 billion by the end of the decade. By the early 1980s, costs had climbed to $9.0 billion a year (Schweizer, 1994). The Soviets could have escaped the Ricardian trap by shopping around for less expensive imports. However, that would have left them vulnerable to supply disruptions. The United States and its allies—who would always be hostile to the USSR, except when expediency dictated temporary alliances or easing of tension—could interdict raw materials heading to the USSR to bring the Soviet economy to its knees or extort concessions. In other words, given the very high likelihood that the United States would exploit opportunities to place the Soviet Union at a disadvantage, shopping around for cheap imports, rather than implementing a policy of resource self-sufficiency, was not a realistic option.
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Soviet achievements in space: The first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human in orbit, first woman in orbit, first spacewalk, first moon impact, first image of the far side of the moon, first unmanned lunar soft landing, first space rover, first space station and first interplanetary probe.
Another reason the Soviet economy slowed was that the costs to the USSR to support its allies began to mount to unsustainable levels. One way to bolster self-defence is to find friends who share the same enemy, and the Soviet Union set out to expand its alliance of friends by providing economic and military assistance to countries and movements hostile to the forces of reaction. In doing so, it became the banker for national liberation movements, Eastern European socialist countries, and various Third World countries seeking to escape and remain free from domination by powerful capitalist states. By 1981, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies had 96,000 economic advisers in 75 countries and 16,000 military advisers in 34 countries, together with a contingent of 39,000 Cuban troops in Africa, an army for which Moscow was ultimately footing the bill. At the same time, the Soviets were picking up the tab for 72,000 Third World students enrolled in Soviet and East European universities (Miliband, 1989). By 1980, Moscow was spending $44 billion a year on its allies (Keeran and Kenny, 2004). It gave $4.5 billion in aid to Warsaw from August 1980 to August 1981 alone to help contain the US-supported Solidarity movement (Schweizer, 1994). Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan was draining the Soviet treasury to the tune of $3 to $4 billion per year. In other words, the costs of sustaining allies had grown enormous, raw material costs were mounting, the best scientists, engineers and machine tools were being monopolized by the military, and military expenditures were consuming a punishingly large percentage of national income.

A large part of the predicament the Soviets found themselves in was due to a decision the Reagan administration had taken to try to cripple the Soviet economy. In October 1983, US president Ronald Reagan unveiled what would become known as the Reagan Doctrine. “The goal of the free world must no longer be stated in the negative, that is, resistance to Soviet expansionism,” announced the US president. Instead, the “goal of the free world must instead be stated in the affirmative. We must go on the offensive with a forward strategy of freedom” (Roberts, 1999). This was a declaration of the end of détente. The gloves were off.

More formally, the Reagan Doctrine was spelled out in a series of national security decision directives, or NSDDs. NSDD-66 announced that it would be US policy to disrupt the Soviet economy, while NSDD-75 committed the United States to trying to drive up costs in the Soviet economy in order to plunge the USSR into a crisis. The Soviet economy was to be squeezed, and one of the ways was to induce Moscow to increase its defence budget (Schweizer, 1994). A hi-tech arms race would be the key. It would not only force Moscow to divert more resources to the military, but would channel even more of the USSR’s scientists, engineers, machine tools, and budget into military R&D, reducing productive investments and hobbling the civilian economy even more than the Cold War already had. The aim was to force the USSR “to expend precious lifeblood to run a race against a more athletic foe” (Schweizer, 1994), a foe which had a larger economy and more resources to last the race because it had started at a higher level of development and was plundering various countries around the world of their riches.
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The Reagan Doctrine was spelled out in a series of national security decision directives, or NSDDs. NSDD-66 announced that it would be US policy to disrupt the Soviet economy, while NSDD-75 committed the United States to trying to drive up costs in the Soviet economy in order to plunge the USSR into a crisis.
Over the first six years of his presidency, Reagan more than doubled US military expenditures, buying 3,000 warplanes, 3,700 strategic missiles, and close to 10,000 tanks (Schweizer, 1994). To keep up, Soviet military spending, previously at 12 to 14 percent of GDP, started to climb. Already twice as large as the United States’ as a percentage of national income (Silber, 1994) the defence budget grew larger still. Military expenditures increased by 45 percent in five years, considerably outpacing growth in the Soviet economy. By 1990, the Soviets were spending more than 20 percent of the country’s GDP on defence (Englund, 2011). At the same time, Moscow increased its military R&D spending nearly two-fold. In the spring of 1984, Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko announced that ‘the complex international situation has forced us to divert a great deal of resources to strengthening the security of our country” (Schweizer, 1994).

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration had taken a page out of Che Guevara’s book. The Argentine revolutionary had called for not one, not two, but three Vietnams, to drain the US treasury. Turning Che’s doctrine against communism, CIA Director Bill Casey called for not one, not two, but a half a dozen Afghanistans. To bog down the Soviets in “their own Vietnam,” the Afghan mujahedeen were showered with money and arms. In Poland, financial, intelligence, and logistical support was poured into the Solidarity movement, forcing Moscow to increase support to the Polish government (Schweizer, 1994).

The Soviet media complained that the United States wanted to impose “an even more ruinous arms race,” adding that Washington hoped the Soviet economy would be exhausted (Izvestiya, 1986). Soviet foreign secretary Andrei Gromyko complained that the United States’ military build-up was aimed at exhausting the USSR’s material resources and forcing Moscow to surrender. Gorbachev echoed Gromyko, telling Soviet citizens that,

The US wants to exhaust the Soviet Union economically through a race in the most up-to-date and expensive space weapons. It wants to create various kinds of difficulties for the Soviet leadership, to wreck its plans, including in the social sphere, in the sphere of improving the standard of living of our people, thus arousing dissatisfaction among the people with their leadership (Schweizer, 1994).

Capitulation

By the mid-1980s, it was clear in both Washington and Moscow that the Soviet Union was in trouble. It was not that the system of public ownership and planning was not working. On the contrary, recognizing the advantages of the Soviet system, the United States itself had emulated it to stimulate innovation in its own economy. Moreover, the Soviet economy was still reliably expanding, as it had done every year in peacetime since Stalin had brought it under public control in 1928. However, defending the country in the face of a stepped up Cold War was threatening to choke off economic growth altogether. It was clear that Moscow’s prospects for keeping pace with the United States militarily, while at the same time propping up allies under attack by US-fuelled anti-communist insurgencies and overthrow movements, were far from sanguine. The United States had manoeuvred the Soviet Union into a trap. If Moscow continued to try to match the United States militarily, it would eventually bankrupt itself, in which case its ability to deter US aggression would be lost. If it did not try to keep pace, it could no longer deter US aggression. No matter which way Moscow turned, the outcome would be the same. The only difference was how long it would take the inevitable to play out.

Gorbachev chose to meet the inevitable sooner rather than later. His foreign affairs adviser, Anatoly Chernayaev, recalls that it was “an imperative for Gorbachev that we had to put an end to the Cold War, that we had to reduce our military budget significantly, that we had to limit our military industrial complex in some way” (Schweizer, 1994). The necessity of reining in the defence budget was echoed by another Gorbachev adviser, Aleksandr Yokovlev, who would later recall that “It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it” (Blum, 1995). Gorbachev therefore withdrew support from allies and pledged cooperation with the United States. This was a surrender. The capitulation was hidden behind honeyed phrases about promoting international cooperation and fostering universal human values, but the rhetoric did not hide the fact that Gorbachev was throwing in the towel. He described the surrender as a victory for humanity, declaring that he had averted “the threat of nuclear war,” ended the “nuclear arms race,” reduced “conventional armed forces,” settled “numerous regional conflicts involving the Soviet Union and the United States,” and replaced “the division of the European continent into hostile camps with … a common European home” (Gorbachev, 2011). In reducing the threat of a global nuclear conflagration, Gorbachev had indeed achieved a victory for humanity. However, the victory was brought about by caving in to the United States, which was now free to run roughshod over countries that were too weak to refuse US demands that they yield to US political, military and economic domination.
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Gorbachev is still widely admired in the West, but his popularity stops at the Russian border. A March 2011 poll found that only one in 20 Russians admire the Soviet Union’s last leader, and that “perestroika,” the name for Gorbachev’s move toward a market economy, “has almost purely negative connotations”
On domestic matters, Gorbachev—who identified himself with the virtually social democratic position of the Italian Communist Party (Hobsbawm, 1994)—tried to turn the Soviet Union into a Western-style social democracy (Roberts, 1999). He cited the need to reverse the slowdown in the Soviet economy as his rationale for the transition (Gorbachev, 1988). Economic growth had certainly slowed, and there was indeed a danger that continued slow growth would threaten the country’s position vis-à-vis its capitalist rivals. However, Gorbachev’s solution amounted to, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” The planning apparatus, which had unfailingly charted a course for unremitting growth during peacetime, was dismantled, in order to move the economy toward regulation by market forces. Rather than boosting economic growth, as Gorbachev hoped, the abandonment of planning did the very opposite. The economy tumbled headlong into an abyss, from which the USSR’s successor countries would not emerge for years. As one wag put it, “Stalin found the Soviet Union a wreck and left it a superpower; Gorbachev found it a superpower and left it a wreck.” Gorbachev is still widely admired in the West, but his popularity stops at the Russian border. A March 2011 poll found that only one in 20 Russians admire the Soviet Union’s last leader, and that “perestroika,” the name for Gorbachev’s move toward a market economy, “has almost purely negative connotations” (Applebaum, 2011).

The superior system

With few exceptions, what passes for serious discussion of the USSR is shot through with prejudice, distortion, and misconception. Locked in battle with the Soviet Union for decades, Washington deliberately fostered misunderstandings of its ideological foe. The aim was to make the USSR appear bleak, brutal, repressive, economically sluggish and inefficient—not the kind of place anyone of sound mind would want to emulate or live in. Today, scholars, journalists, politicians, state officials, and even some communists repeat old Cold War propaganda. The Soviet economy, in their view, never worked particularly well. However, the truth of the matter is that it worked very well. It grew faster over the period it was publicly owned and planned than did the supposedly dynamic US economy, to say nothing of the economies of countries that were as undeveloped as the USSR was in 1928, when the Soviet economy was brought under public control. The Soviet economy was innovative enough to allow the USSR to beat the United States into space, despite the United States’ greater resources, an event that inspired the Americans to mimic the Soviet Union’s public support for R&D. Moreover, the Soviet system of public ownership and planning efficiently employed all its capital and human resources, rather than maintaining armies of unemployed workers and inefficiently running below capacity, as capitalist economies regularly do. Every year, from 1928 to 1989, except during the war years, the Soviet economy reliably expanded, providing jobs, shelter, and a wide array of low- and no-cost public services to all, while capitalist economies regularly sank into recession and had to continually struggle out of them on the wreckage of human lives.

The US National Intelligence Council warns ominously that a crisis-prone world economy could produce chaos and distress on an even greater scale than the last crisis (Shanker, 2012). Offering a “grim prognosis” on the world economy, the UN warns of “a new global recession that mires many countries in a cycle of austerity and unemployment for years” (Gladstone, 2012). Yet at the same time, we are told that the Soviet economy never worked, and that capitalism, with its regular crises, and failure to provide employment, food, clothing and shelter to all, is both the only game in town and the superior system. Clearly, it is neither superior—on the contrary, it is clearly inferior—nor it is the only choice. Not only can we do better, we have done better. It is time to tear down the wall of politically engineered misconceptions about public ownership and planning. For too long, the wall has kept us from seeing a viable alternative model to capitalism whose track record of unequalled success points to a realistic and possible future for the bottom 99 percent—a future free from unemployment, recessions, extremes of wealth and poverty, and where essential goods and services are available at no cost to all.

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https://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/12/21 ... mies-work/

What Gowans says here is very good, but he ignores the rot in the Communist Party which made leaders of men like Gorby and his decisions possible. There were pro-market voices in the Party since the Thirties, this was probably because of taking vast numbers of petty booj into the Party. This had been a necessity at that time, the proletariat and peasants initially simply didn't have the skills required to run a modern economy. Jobs of responsibility required Party membership, a matter of security. The Soviets had to 'make sausage'. Stalin (and the war)kept these reactionary tendencies in check but once he was gone the rot spread, though it was long before it could manifest.

My first instinct is to say that we must be more rigorous, but that's always true. In this case I think the issue is at least somewhat mitigated by the fact that workers are much more educated and might much more easily adapt to the necessary tasks. We cannot tolerate the petty booj mentality, it is nothing but ruling class ideas.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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