Beyond Perestroika: The Future of Gorbachev's USSR

230 Pages·1988·4.884 MB·English

by  Ernest Mandel

Beyond Perestroika
The Future of Gorbachev's USSR
•
ERNEST MANDEL
Translated by Gus Fagan
l'
VERSO
London · New York
Published by Verso 1989
© 1989 Ernest Mandel
All rights reserved
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London WlV 3HR
USA: 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001-2291
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mandel, Ernest
Beyond perestroika : the future of
Gorbachev's USSR.
I. Soviet
I. Title
947.085'4
ISBN 0-86091-223-X
ISBN 0-86091-935-8 Pbk
US Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mandel, Ernest.
Beyond Perestroika : the future of Gorbachev's USSR/Ernest
Mandel.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-86091-223-X: $42.50. - ISBN 0-86091-935-8(pbk.): $14.95
I. Soviet Union-Politics and government-1982- 2. Soviet Union-
Economic conditions-1978- 3. Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergaevich, 1931-
1. Title.
DK288.M35 1988
947.085'4-dc19
Typeset by Leaper & Gard Ltd, Bristol
Printed in Great Britain by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd
To the memory of
Pierre Frank
and
Emile Van Ceulen

Contents
Preface IX
1 The Objective Contradictions of Soviet Society 1
2 The Rebirth of Public Opinion 17
3 The Deepening Crisis of the Soviet System 30
4 Gorbachev: his Background and what he Represents 45
5 Perestroika and Gorbachev's Economic Reforms 56
6 Glasnost and Gorbachev's Political Reforms 68
7 Gorbachev and the Limits of Destalinization 85
8 The Ideological-Moral Crisis 100
9 Gorbachev's Foreign Policy 117
10 The 'Socialist Camp', the Communist Parties and the
Social Democracy 135
11 The Dilemmas of Gorbachev 151
12 The Dialectic of Reform and Social Movement 167
13 The Future of Gorbachev's Reforms 182
Notes 196

Preface
The changes currently taking place in the Soviet Union are the most
important international development since May 1968, if not since the
victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949. They are having a profound
effect on the whole world situation and those effects will make them
selves felt for years if not decades to come. They will stamp their mark
on the social and political dynamic in key sectors of the world. The fact
that the people of the main capitalist countries will no longer be repelled
by the political system of the Soviet Union, although socially and econ
omically it will remain unattractive, is in itself a major change in what
has been a constant factor in the world since the end of the Second World
War. The essential change in the situation is not so much the democratic
reforms that have been introduced or that will be introduced in the near
future. Nor is it the personal role of Gorbachev and his undoubted
success in the field of public relations, although we shouldn't under
estimate the importance of these phenomena. The most important
change has been the reemergence of the independent mass political
activity of the Soviet working class, as evidenced in at least sixty major
strikes in two years, many lesser disputes, often involving democratic
rights, and massive mobilizations in Estonia and Armenia.
For more than forty years the working classes of the Soviet Union
and of the United States of America, the two largest and most highly
qualified working classes in the world, constituting more than one
quarter of the whole world working class, have been absent from the
political scene, as actors with a minimum of class independence. This has
been an essential factor in the relation between the classes on an inter
national level and has been one of the principal factors acting as a brake
on the world struggle for socialism. The fact that the Soviet workers
ix
x Beyond Perestroika
have begun to act on the political plane constitutes a major change in the
world situation. It is comparable, in its significance, to a resurgence of
independent class activity on the part of the American workers, a
resurgence which, at a single stroke, would radically transform the whole
world situation. The events in the Soviet Union today will facilitate this
development which is not only possible but, all appearances to the
contrary, is actually inevitable. Two facts already underline the prog1es
sive dynamic of this evolution. The first is the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan, a withdrawal caused in part by the growing opposition
within the Soviet Union itself and the second is the impossibility today
of a Soviet military intervention in Eastern Europe as happened in East
Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Such intervention is ruled out today because it would not be tolerated by
public opinion within the Soviet Union. These are two very significant
changes in the world situation which have already been brought about
by the changes within the Soviet Union.
There are certain features of the analysis offered in this book to which
we would like to draw attention. We do not seek to explain the current
transformations in the Soviet Union in terms of the personal role of
Gorbachev, nor do we see them as the result of his particular initiatives
or projects. For us, Gorbachev and Gorbachevism are more the product
of all the contradictions that have characterized Soviet society since the
death of Stalin. We also reject any interpretion of those transformations
which sees them as exemplifying an alleged constant feature of Russian
history, namely, that change can only come from the top. Such a vision
of Russian history and politics seriously underestimates the scope of
peasant rebellions throughout Russian history and ignores the scale and
the spontaneity of the mass involvement in the three great revolutions of
this century: in 1905, February 1917 and October 1917. It also ignores
the colossal transformation of that country which has taken place since
the thirties and forties. The Soviet Union today is not only modernized
and urbanized, with an urban majority which is already second gener
ation: it is a society which, in terms of scientific and cultural qualifi
cations, is one of the most developed in the world. A quarter of all the
world's scientists are Soviet and 40 per cent of its working class has
some form of diploma in higher education. Soviet workers have an
interest in science and in literary and artistic culture to an extent that
bears no comparison with the workers of any other country. The scale of
the production of literary and scientific journals, of novels and collec
tions of poetry, is indicative of this. Under those circumstances, the
continued existence of a mediocre living standard, of an oppressive and
brutal political regime, of structures of domination and control which
are both ineffective and universally rejected, has become intolerable for
Preface xi
the mass of the Soviet people and not just for the intelligentsia.
Gorbachev and Gorbachevism are the product of this contradiction
between all the dynamic forces of Soviet society and all its conservative
structures. It is a specific crisis of this system which has been developing
for decades, most clearly expressed in the constant decline in economic
growth and in the social misery of millions of its citizens. Over the past
ten years there has been a growing awareness of this crisis within a
number of important milieus. Public opinion has been irreversibly
awakened. Herein lies the cause of the transformations that are now
taking place. Gorbachev represents the response of the modernist wing
of the bureaucracy to the threat to the stability of its rule represented by
this crisis and by the rise of public awareness. To channel these changes
and to try to keep them under the bureaucracy's control - this is the
historical project of the Gorbachev wing of the Soviet bureaucracy.
Hence the panic which we can observe among the more lucid of
Gorbachev's supporters. 'If these radical reforms do not succeed in
reversing the crisis, then the Soviet Union, within very few years, will be
technologically a second-rate power, a fact which would have unavoid
able consequences from the point of view of national defence.' This is
the conviction which animates and motivates the Gorbachev wing. It is a
conviction firmly based in reality.
Gorbachev has set in motion a dialectic, which should not be under
estimated, between reforms from above and increasing pressure from
below accompanied by independent mass action pushing in the direction
of greater reforms. Although the root cause of this transformation is to
be found in the depths of Soviet society, there is no denying the deton
ating effects of Gorbachev's initiatives. From the point of view of the
political role which he plays in this process of transformation,
Gorbachev is indeed a remarkable political leader. The parallel which
springs to mind, although one should be aware of the limits of every
historical analogy, is that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like Roosevelt,
Gorbachev leads one of the key countries of the world. He exercises power
through the medium of persuasion and manipulation without recourse to
the apparatus of repression or terror; he confronts a specific society which,
after an unprecedented development, is faced with a profound crisis which
threatens to undermine the fundamental values on which this development
was based; and he is convinced that a rapid and thorough reform is neces
sary to avoid an explosion, even a revolution. Like the big bourgeoisie in the
USA at the time of Roosevelt, the top levels of the Soviet bureaucracy, in
their majority, fail to comprehend the scale of the crisis and the need for
radical reform. There are also other similarities: the appeal to the popular
masses while at the same time trying to keep the popular mobilization
under control and compatible with the survival of the system; the wide-