Russia: The Soviet System and After

 

V. I. Lenin makes a speech at the Third Congress of the Communist International, Moscow, 1921.

Photo from the Marxists Internet Archive at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/photo/1921/026.htm

 

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Content quiz next time.

 

Classify the Russian regime:

 

Number and kinds of rulers

 

Absolute monarchy under czars

Authoritarian/Totalitarian under Communism. Worst under Stalin.  Political totalitarianism: Control everything: Centralize power, arrested/killed millions, show trials, terror, secret police.  Economic totalitarianism: Get rid of last private property, execute rich peasants in the way, plan economy.  No room outside state for politics, economy, social organization.

Today--Semi-democratic (qualified democracy, strong authoritarian features). More democratic in the mid-1990s than it is today.

 

Political Culture--"community-held beliefs, feelings, and values that influence political behavior" transmitted through socialization (family, media, literature). 

 

Russians tend to be collectivist, messianic. They hate to see others get ahead/hostility toward individual ambition, seek a strong leader, long for Soviet superpower greatness, are suspicious of institutions (parties, for example).

 

Political development—Is Russia a modern state based on laws/rules/institutions, a charismatic one based on personal authority or a traditional state based on tribe or monarchy? 

 

Today, under Putin and his protege Medvedev, somewhere between modern and charismatic. It's a complex state but with power heavily centered on the figure of Putin and his promise of re-creating a great Russia.

 

Economic development--In economic terms, is it modern with relatively high levels of per capita income, a low share of the population in agriculture, long life spans, high literacy, or more traditional with high shares of the population in agriculture, living in rural areas, less literate, shorter life spans, smaller per capita incomes? 

 

It's on the low end of the modern when compared to US, UK, and France: per capita income GDP PPP$ 15,800, urbanization 73%, share of population in agriculture (4.1%), life span (66 years), TFR 1.41, high literacy (99%).

 

Economic System

 

Soviet times--socialist, @98% of economic activity controlled by the state.  Today, for-profit framework but strong state participation in the economy. Creeping re-nationalization under Putin (Yukos/Khodorkovsky).

 

Soviet Model

 

Influenced other states: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba. 

Important legacies for politics in Russia and other post-Communist and Communist states.

 

Based on ideology ("Political ideology is a comprehensive set of beliefs about the political world—about desirable political goals and the best ways to achieve those goals."):

 

Marxism-Leninism, Marxism, as modified by Lenin (Pronunciation from VOA: vlah-DEE-m-ear   ill-YIHCH   LEH-nihn, If you ever want to know a foreign pronunciation, check http://names.voa.gov/)

 

Marxism

Communist Manifesto, 1848

Economic structure underpins the political structure (economy=structure, politics, culture, religion=superstructure)

Dialectical materialism

     Dialectics—stemming from Hegel’s ideas, analysis of process, change rather than static conditions

     Materialism—everything arises from the relations of production (one's relationship to the factors of production, below)

Factors of production=land, labor, and capital

“bourgeois democracy”-- voting limited, Industrial Revolution, long hours, low pay, ill health. Bourgeois-people of the cities, those with capital, own factories.

Revolution led by working class (proletariat), spontaneous and global, beginning in the most developed nations (Britain)

History an inexorable progression.  Capitalism’s contradictions inevitably lead to socialism which will lead to Communism.  Society progressing from primitive Communism to slave society to feudalism to semi-feudalism to capitalism to socialism to Communism.

Class struggle is the driving force of world history (Nobles against kings, bourgeois against nobles, workers against bourgeois-revolution to come!)

  

Leninism

Built on Marx but had to explain why the revolution had not happened as Marx had predicted ("What is to be Done?" 1902, "Imperialism" 1916)

Capitalists using imperialism, penetration of backward regions, to pass on benefits to workers (embourgeoisement of the workers). Workers are bought off and thus revolutionary consciousness not raised.  Those most exploited in peripheral regions, not most advanced areas.

Revolution needs to be led by a vanguard party, otherwise workers just develop trade union consciousness. Revolution doesn't just happen spontaneously

Democratic centralism. "Democracy" but must be led by a hardcore and have complete discipline.  Enemies will try to maintain power or re-take power through stealth and/or force.

 

So, Lenin and his Bolsheviks (a faction of the Russian Communist movement) took power in Russia in 1917 and set about trying to create a workers' state, a state that would control all political and economic power notionally for the common interest of all the working people (which would be most of the people, which would thus make the regime "democratic").  The party and state attempted to put in place Marxism-Leninism.

 

Nature of the Soviet Political System

Dominated by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 6-10% of the population

Party practiced democratic centralism as its form of democracy. So, doesn't meet our definition of democracy: people didn't rule, rights and freedoms not protected. Notionally democracy WITHIN the Communist Party, but actually strongly led from the top.

Leading position of party guaranteed in constitution and law (though constitution and law didn't mean much)

Top party leaders maintained through 1) parallel hierarchy/interlocking personnel, 2) circular flow of power, 3) nomenklatura system, 4) ideological legitimacy, 5) nationalism (Olympics, space milestones, military parades)

Opposition controlled through internal security service, Cheka/KGB and gulags (forced labor camps), murder, lack of access to social perks, spying on one another. 

Important to note that the system was more brutal at some times than at others.  Stalin brutal, later people learn rules, out-of-bound markers. As long as they didn't cross lines, pretty much left alone, allowed to grumble.

Freedoms constrained (religion, assembly, association, media).  Limited underground publications, known as samizdat.

Heavy use of propaganda, exhortations to emulate selfish socialists.

Political leaders as “New Elite.”  Does not become a class-less society as Marx had envisioned.  Party/state elite have access to special stores, dachas on the Crimean Sea; their kids have access to the best schools and thus better jobs in the future, travel abroad.

 

Nature of the Soviet Economic System

 

State Ownership and Control of the Factors of Production (land, labor, capital)

    Under Stalin, violent takeover, particularly in the rural areas. Many wealthy resisted and were killed.  Famine cost millions of lives.

 

Central Planning of Production (Five-year Plans, Gosplan)

Other notes:

Why was the political-economic system organized as it was?

·         Ideology, but much of what the Russians created was wholly new.  Why the way it was rather than some other way?

·         Authoritarian traditions of Russia (political cultural explanation)

·         Russians an “apocalyptic people” according to Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev.  Interested in end-time movements. Communist ideology fits the mold (political cultural explanation). 

·         Inheritance of the tsars (historical/cultural). Refer to Russian government as "Kremlin" whether tsars, USSR, or Russia today.

·         Geography (geographic explanation). 

·         No tradition of capitalist economic development in Russia (economic explanation). 

·         Group/collective traditions of the village level, essentially a peasant society writ large (sociological explanation)

Why reform under Gorbachev (Pronunciation from VOA: mihk-hah-EEL  gahr-bah-CHAH-F) in the mid-1980s?

·         Remember failures of Soviet system because it ultimately failed. But, we also need to remember the great successes that it experienced: fighting off Germans despite having most advanced parts of the country under occupation during World War II, launching Sputnik (ICBM rocket technology) in 1957, fought the US in many corners of the globe for domination, industrializing a backward peasant country in a single generation.

·         But, as time passed the system bureaucratized, “gray Soviet leaders” like Brezhnev. 

·         Techniques that were used to achieve rapid industrialization exhausted.  Squeezed every penny out of agriculture to fund industrialization.  No more capital left.

·         Dire economic crisis in which the Soviet Union found itself (Gorbachev: “It is impossible to retreat” and “history has not given us much time.”  Previous model “insolvent.”).  Types of problems: bottlenecks, scarcity (not prices), lack of productivity and efficiency. 

·         Star Wars, defense competition with the US left the system with no money to invest, heavily burdened the state.   

How did Gorbachev attempt to reform the Soviet Union? (What reforms and how carried out?)

Great catch phrases were perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness)

·         International Relationships: Part of this was greater openness to the outside world, restructure important international relationships.  Developed “new thinking.” Needed to get arms competition with the United States under control (along with assuring peace in other foreign relationships) so that defense expenditures could be cut. This led Gorbachev to pioneering efforts to reduce East-West tension-arms control agreements, troop withdrawals from Europe, withdrawal from Afghanistan, support of Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, abatement of tensions with China (border), allowing Eastern European satellites to spin free.

·         Politics.

        Often said that the difference between the Chinese reforms and Gorbachev’s reforms is that the Chinese have concentrated on economic reform, while eschewing political reform, while Gorbachev concentrated on political reform and didn’t do enough to reform the economy.  There was some method behind Gorbachev’s madness. 

        Gorbachev felt that resistance to economic change needed to be compelled by drawing new reformist individuals into the political process. How do you get over cultural problem of work ethic (lousy)?  Need to open up space for people to discuss failings of current system, so that rational fixes (work harder) become possible. 

        By opening up the political process, democratizing, Gorbachev thought that he was making allies for himself and bringing them into the political system. 

        As the story is told, Gorbachev wound up unleashing a tidal wave of frustration, criticism of the regime, criticism of himself for not going far enough or going too far, demands for greater freedoms, demands for recognition of a legitimate role for non-Communists in the political system, eventually the abandonment of the CPSU’s monopoly on power. 

        Rapid but unplanned process whereby: more room for discussion allowed, reduction in level of fear in the system, election of a restructured parliament (still one party but now with dissenters), end of the CPSU’s monopoly on power (1990), elections for presidency of the Russian Republic won by Boris Yeltsin (Gorbachev’s bete noir)—institutional position by which to oppose hardliners (which included at times Gorbachev as he moved away from reform in an attempt to hold the USSR together), new union treaty, coup (August 1991), and dissolution of CPSU after coup, dissolution of the USSR (December 1991).

·         Economics—Gorbachev wanted limited marketization to encourage greater efficiencies in the system.  He wanted greater enterprise responsibility for profit/loss/management decisions (like hiring and firing), respond to reality in production decisions.  This devolution of production decisions to the enterprise was also intended to help the state budget by getting enterprises off the state dole.  Wanted to allow elections of enterprise heads to get rid of the worst Communist apparatchiks.  Allowed small-scale private enterprises (restaurants and services, for example) and joint ventures with foreign corporations.

Did Gorbachev’s reforms succeed or fail?

·         Depends on whose eyes you are looking through.

Mainstream Russian view: Destroyed the country, lost the empire and pre-eminent place in world affairs, caused incomes to fall, turmoil and instability, used force when came under the influence of hardliners (Baku, Vilnius, Riga).

·         From goals that Gorbachev set for himself to reform the Soviet Union and make it a strong country?  No.  And, certainly Gorbachev didn’t mean to turn himself out of a job.

·         But what is the time horizon?  If 50 years from now, Russia is again a great country, could we say that this was a great success, that reforms were necessary and had to be painful?

 

Last updated: September 15, 2011.

tanp@uncw.edu

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