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" How far did the USSR ‘democratise’ in the Gorbachev period? "
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My essay was great
I'm doing about russia in history for my gcse's
its a really interesting country but my teacher makes it sound boring. but i luv history so it doesn't bother me
its a really interesting country but my teacher makes it sound boring. but i luv history so it doesn't bother me
MY BRIDE!
BOLSHEVIK GLORY
[URL]http://www.nbp.nad.ru/new/photo/girls/53.htm[/URL]
[URL]http://www.nbp.nad.ru/new/photo/girls/53.htm[/URL]
PERESTROKIA LA LA LA
you're funny-bound
mikelar wrote:
> whats wrong with you? didn't you see how unfunny it was the first
> time?
I'm humour-blind
I don't see the difference between funny and not-funny
> whats wrong with you? didn't you see how unfunny it was the first
> time?
I'm humour-blind
I don't see the difference between funny and not-funny
whats wrong with you? didn't you see how unfunny it was the first time?
what wrote:
> Paradox: wrote:
> The result of the lack of socialist democracy was that by the 1970s,
> the Soviet economy stagnated, and then actually contracted a bit,
> for
> the first time since the second world war. More far-sighted people
> in
> the bureaucracy began to see that more openness and transparency in
> society and in economic planning were necessary. Among the masses,
> especially in Eastern Europe but also in the USSR, there were
> movements toward more democracy. The successes in the USSR and in
> Eastern Europe in the field of education and industrialisation meant
> that working people and the middle layers were far above the
> cultural
> level of the masses of the USSR when Stalin consolidated the power
> of
> the bureaucracy in the late 1920s. This process culminated in
> Gorbachev’s campaign for glasnost and perestroika.
>
> Gorbachev’s proposals went in the direction of introducing gradually
> aspects of bourgeois democracy, not workers’ democracy. That is, his
> proposals didn’t go in the direction of empowering the workers and
> peasants to democratically run their enterprises, or to reviving the
> soviets as real workers and peasants committees to democratically
> run
> the government and the economic plan.
>
> Undoubtedly, Gorbachev’s campaign was welcomed not only by the more
> far-seeing sections of the bureaucracy, but by the Soviet masses as
> well, who wanted to break out of the stifling bureaucratic
> straitjacket and achieve more democratic rights and democratic
> functioning of the government. These aspirations were progressive
> and
> had to be supported.
>
> Under Gorbachev, central control over economic administration was
> dismantled, but it was not replaced by popular control from below.
> The result was that the centre became powerless. It turned out that
> the relaxation of the bureaucracy’s totalitarian control over
> political debate, information and activity led to calling into
> question the power and privileges of the bureaucracy itself. The
> Gorbachev reforms failed. The only way to preserve the bureaucracy’s
> privileged access to consumer goods and services, in the face of the
> disintegrating “command” system, was to “go legit” and link those
> privileges to private property.
>
> Another centrifugal force was national oppression in the Soviet
> Union. One of the features of the Stalinist counter-revolution was
> the reversal of the Bolshevik position supporting national
> self-determination for the oppressed nationalities under tsarism.
> Lenin’s last fight against Stalin revolved around this question.
> Stalin reintroduced Great Russian chauvinism and national
> oppression.
> As the totalitarian grip was relaxed under Gorbachev, the USSR’s
> long
> oppressed national minorities began to demand their rights, which
> led
> to the plans to hold a referendum on the continued existence of the
> Soviet Union itself. These plans led to the abortive coup attempt
> against Gorbachev, the mass resistance to it, the collapse of the
> USSR and Yeltsin’s initial popularity, which he utilised to begin
> the
> transformation to capitalism.
>
> How could the bureaucracy embark on this road without unleashing a
> civil war? When Trotsky outlined the two possible political outcomes
> for the USSR in 1938, he thought that either course would entail a
> violent struggle. In 1938 this was undoubtedly true. Among the
> workers were still the generation of 1917. The great majority of the
> population believed in socialism, even though they chafed under the
> yoke of the Stalinist dictatorship.
>
> It is clear now that the consciousness of the Soviet working class
> in
> 1989 was not as it was in 1938 in spite of the Stalinist terror.
> After 40 more years of stultifying bureaucratic rule, socialist
> consciousness had ebbed, especially in the context of the economic
> difficulties the Soviet Union was facing. Moreover, there was no
> political party that stood for the rebirth of the Soviet Union on
> the
> basis of Leninism, unlike in 1938, when there were still tens of
> thousands of Bolshevik-Leninists alive, even if they were in prison.
> The living link of cadre going back to the revolution had been lost.
> The workers were politically leaderless.
>
> Thus the counter-revolution, begun back in the 1920s when the
> bureaucracy usurped power, reached its culmination in the
> bureaucracy’s project to restore capitalism, and this happened
> without a civil war.
>
> But the process has not been without resistance by the workers.
> There
> have been regional and local strikes and demonstrations, some that
> have resisted police violence. There are indications that worker
> resistance is becoming more organised, but it has yet to take on a
> nationwide character.
>
> I have left out the parallel and intertwined developments that were
> occurring at the same time in the countries of Eastern Europe. For a
> more complete picture, they should be included. But here I want to
> note only certain aspects of the history of Eastern Europe after the
> second world war.
>
> With the exception of Yugoslavia, the social transformations in
> these
> countries were carried out under conditions of occupation by the
> Soviet army. To be sure, workers were mobilised to support the
> overthrow of capitalism, but in a tightly controlled way. Stalin so
> feared that things might get out of hand (as later happened with
> regard to China) that he arrested and shot his loyal followers who
> were at the heads of the local Communist parties. So in addition to
> the imposition upon these countries of Stalinist regimes along with
> the social transformation, these regimes were very weak, and
> depended
> on Soviet troops, who were seen as foreign occupiers. This was one
> of
> the reasons there were real attempts to break out of the Stalinist
> straitjacket in Eastern Europe and not in the Soviet Union in the
> postwar years.
>
> The first of these was the 1953 worker uprising in East Germany. It
> was suppressed by Soviet troops, but forced some economic
> concessions
> from the Kremlin. In Poland in 1956 and in 1970, there were powerful
> mass movements for socialist democracy that the bureaucracy was able
> to coopt over time with the threat of Soviet troops in the
> background.
>
> The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 succeeded in toppling the
> bureaucratic regime. The army went over to the side of the workers,
> and the secret police was smashed. A government led by the liberal
> Communist Imre Nagy came into power, which included old time
> socialists. This was only a decade after the end of the second world
> war. Hungarians remembered vividly the Nazi occupation and that
> particularly horrible form of capitalist rule. The new government
> pledged to preserve the social gains of the workers’ state, but to
> introduce democracy. Soviets (councils) of workers, soldiers and
> peasants appeared. If this development had been allowed to continue
> and a democratic workers’ state had been established, this would
> have
> had a profound impact on the rest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet
> Union itself. The Kremlin felt mortally threatened, and moved to
> crush the uprising with tanks.
>
> Similarly, when the “Prague spring” erupted in Czechoslovakia in
> 1968, under the slogan of “Socialism with a human face!” the USSR
> again invaded.
>
> I think the last effort to democratise one of the workers’ states on
> a socialist basis in Eastern Europe was the upsurge of the
> Solidarity
> trade union in Poland. Solidarity’s 1980 program, adopted after long
> debates in the workplaces, would have led to a working class and
> egalitarian government on the basis of retention of the nationalised
> and planned economy. The imposition of martial law to suppress
> Solidarity, with the threat of a Soviet invasion in the background,
> seems to have been the last straw to break the back of hope for
> socialist renewal in Eastern Europe. Solidarity itself split and
> disintegrated, and what later emerged as “Solidarity” had lost the
> spirit and content of the 1980 program.
>
> When the mass movements for democracy erupted in Eastern Europe at
> the end of the 1980s, pro-capitalist elements were able to take the
> leadership. While these mass movements for democracy were
> progressive
> and had to be supported by Marxists, they were unable to move toward
> socialist democracy.
>
> In both the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, nationalism and
> racism have flared, including into wars. At bottom, the failure of
> these bureaucratised workers states to solve the many national
> questions throughout the region, and their perpetuation of national
> oppression, is at fault. To this we must add the Stalinist turn away
> from internationalism, with a resultant increase in xenophobia and
> outright racism. Black socialists from the US who travelled to
> Eastern Europe in the 1980s reported they felt the racism. The turn
> to capitalism, with its attendant negative impact on the welfare of
> the workers, rising unemployment and so forth, is creating new
> fertile ground for racism, and it has exploded far beyond what it
> was
> before the collapse.
>
> We have also seen sharp blows dealt to women since the turn toward
> capitalism. The Stalin counter-revolution also reversed Bolshevik
> policy in this field. While the Bolsheviks weren’t able to realise
> their program of the gradual socialisation of domestic labour due to
> the poverty and devastation of the country, the Stalinists once
> again
> placed the burden of such labour on the backs of women in fact and
> in
> theory, in their program. But still there were gains in health care,
> care of the aged, education and employment for women in these
> bureaucratised workers’ states. The turn towards capitalism has
> caused unemployment among women to soar, prostitution to become
> rampant and sexist ideology to flourish.
>
> The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe has not been as
> catastrophic as in Russia, but it too has been marked by great
> losses
> for the working class. Workers in both the republics of the former
> USSR and Eastern Europe remember the social conquests they used to
> take for granted. They will resist more and more what the transition
> to capitalism is bringing and will bring down upon them. It is
> through these struggles that socialist consciousness can once again
> emerge, and new revolutionary socialist parties built. The workers
> of
> the former USSR and Eastern Europe know they do not want to go back
> to Stalinism. They are learning and will learn that capitalism is
> not
> the answer.
>
> I have one thing to say.
>
> I disagree.
Don't spam.
> Paradox: wrote:
> The result of the lack of socialist democracy was that by the 1970s,
> the Soviet economy stagnated, and then actually contracted a bit,
> for
> the first time since the second world war. More far-sighted people
> in
> the bureaucracy began to see that more openness and transparency in
> society and in economic planning were necessary. Among the masses,
> especially in Eastern Europe but also in the USSR, there were
> movements toward more democracy. The successes in the USSR and in
> Eastern Europe in the field of education and industrialisation meant
> that working people and the middle layers were far above the
> cultural
> level of the masses of the USSR when Stalin consolidated the power
> of
> the bureaucracy in the late 1920s. This process culminated in
> Gorbachev’s campaign for glasnost and perestroika.
>
> Gorbachev’s proposals went in the direction of introducing gradually
> aspects of bourgeois democracy, not workers’ democracy. That is, his
> proposals didn’t go in the direction of empowering the workers and
> peasants to democratically run their enterprises, or to reviving the
> soviets as real workers and peasants committees to democratically
> run
> the government and the economic plan.
>
> Undoubtedly, Gorbachev’s campaign was welcomed not only by the more
> far-seeing sections of the bureaucracy, but by the Soviet masses as
> well, who wanted to break out of the stifling bureaucratic
> straitjacket and achieve more democratic rights and democratic
> functioning of the government. These aspirations were progressive
> and
> had to be supported.
>
> Under Gorbachev, central control over economic administration was
> dismantled, but it was not replaced by popular control from below.
> The result was that the centre became powerless. It turned out that
> the relaxation of the bureaucracy’s totalitarian control over
> political debate, information and activity led to calling into
> question the power and privileges of the bureaucracy itself. The
> Gorbachev reforms failed. The only way to preserve the bureaucracy’s
> privileged access to consumer goods and services, in the face of the
> disintegrating “command” system, was to “go legit” and link those
> privileges to private property.
>
> Another centrifugal force was national oppression in the Soviet
> Union. One of the features of the Stalinist counter-revolution was
> the reversal of the Bolshevik position supporting national
> self-determination for the oppressed nationalities under tsarism.
> Lenin’s last fight against Stalin revolved around this question.
> Stalin reintroduced Great Russian chauvinism and national
> oppression.
> As the totalitarian grip was relaxed under Gorbachev, the USSR’s
> long
> oppressed national minorities began to demand their rights, which
> led
> to the plans to hold a referendum on the continued existence of the
> Soviet Union itself. These plans led to the abortive coup attempt
> against Gorbachev, the mass resistance to it, the collapse of the
> USSR and Yeltsin’s initial popularity, which he utilised to begin
> the
> transformation to capitalism.
>
> How could the bureaucracy embark on this road without unleashing a
> civil war? When Trotsky outlined the two possible political outcomes
> for the USSR in 1938, he thought that either course would entail a
> violent struggle. In 1938 this was undoubtedly true. Among the
> workers were still the generation of 1917. The great majority of the
> population believed in socialism, even though they chafed under the
> yoke of the Stalinist dictatorship.
>
> It is clear now that the consciousness of the Soviet working class
> in
> 1989 was not as it was in 1938 in spite of the Stalinist terror.
> After 40 more years of stultifying bureaucratic rule, socialist
> consciousness had ebbed, especially in the context of the economic
> difficulties the Soviet Union was facing. Moreover, there was no
> political party that stood for the rebirth of the Soviet Union on
> the
> basis of Leninism, unlike in 1938, when there were still tens of
> thousands of Bolshevik-Leninists alive, even if they were in prison.
> The living link of cadre going back to the revolution had been lost.
> The workers were politically leaderless.
>
> Thus the counter-revolution, begun back in the 1920s when the
> bureaucracy usurped power, reached its culmination in the
> bureaucracy’s project to restore capitalism, and this happened
> without a civil war.
>
> But the process has not been without resistance by the workers.
> There
> have been regional and local strikes and demonstrations, some that
> have resisted police violence. There are indications that worker
> resistance is becoming more organised, but it has yet to take on a
> nationwide character.
>
> I have left out the parallel and intertwined developments that were
> occurring at the same time in the countries of Eastern Europe. For a
> more complete picture, they should be included. But here I want to
> note only certain aspects of the history of Eastern Europe after the
> second world war.
>
> With the exception of Yugoslavia, the social transformations in
> these
> countries were carried out under conditions of occupation by the
> Soviet army. To be sure, workers were mobilised to support the
> overthrow of capitalism, but in a tightly controlled way. Stalin so
> feared that things might get out of hand (as later happened with
> regard to China) that he arrested and shot his loyal followers who
> were at the heads of the local Communist parties. So in addition to
> the imposition upon these countries of Stalinist regimes along with
> the social transformation, these regimes were very weak, and
> depended
> on Soviet troops, who were seen as foreign occupiers. This was one
> of
> the reasons there were real attempts to break out of the Stalinist
> straitjacket in Eastern Europe and not in the Soviet Union in the
> postwar years.
>
> The first of these was the 1953 worker uprising in East Germany. It
> was suppressed by Soviet troops, but forced some economic
> concessions
> from the Kremlin. In Poland in 1956 and in 1970, there were powerful
> mass movements for socialist democracy that the bureaucracy was able
> to coopt over time with the threat of Soviet troops in the
> background.
>
> The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 succeeded in toppling the
> bureaucratic regime. The army went over to the side of the workers,
> and the secret police was smashed. A government led by the liberal
> Communist Imre Nagy came into power, which included old time
> socialists. This was only a decade after the end of the second world
> war. Hungarians remembered vividly the Nazi occupation and that
> particularly horrible form of capitalist rule. The new government
> pledged to preserve the social gains of the workers’ state, but to
> introduce democracy. Soviets (councils) of workers, soldiers and
> peasants appeared. If this development had been allowed to continue
> and a democratic workers’ state had been established, this would
> have
> had a profound impact on the rest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet
> Union itself. The Kremlin felt mortally threatened, and moved to
> crush the uprising with tanks.
>
> Similarly, when the “Prague spring” erupted in Czechoslovakia in
> 1968, under the slogan of “Socialism with a human face!” the USSR
> again invaded.
>
> I think the last effort to democratise one of the workers’ states on
> a socialist basis in Eastern Europe was the upsurge of the
> Solidarity
> trade union in Poland. Solidarity’s 1980 program, adopted after long
> debates in the workplaces, would have led to a working class and
> egalitarian government on the basis of retention of the nationalised
> and planned economy. The imposition of martial law to suppress
> Solidarity, with the threat of a Soviet invasion in the background,
> seems to have been the last straw to break the back of hope for
> socialist renewal in Eastern Europe. Solidarity itself split and
> disintegrated, and what later emerged as “Solidarity” had lost the
> spirit and content of the 1980 program.
>
> When the mass movements for democracy erupted in Eastern Europe at
> the end of the 1980s, pro-capitalist elements were able to take the
> leadership. While these mass movements for democracy were
> progressive
> and had to be supported by Marxists, they were unable to move toward
> socialist democracy.
>
> In both the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, nationalism and
> racism have flared, including into wars. At bottom, the failure of
> these bureaucratised workers states to solve the many national
> questions throughout the region, and their perpetuation of national
> oppression, is at fault. To this we must add the Stalinist turn away
> from internationalism, with a resultant increase in xenophobia and
> outright racism. Black socialists from the US who travelled to
> Eastern Europe in the 1980s reported they felt the racism. The turn
> to capitalism, with its attendant negative impact on the welfare of
> the workers, rising unemployment and so forth, is creating new
> fertile ground for racism, and it has exploded far beyond what it
> was
> before the collapse.
>
> We have also seen sharp blows dealt to women since the turn toward
> capitalism. The Stalin counter-revolution also reversed Bolshevik
> policy in this field. While the Bolsheviks weren’t able to realise
> their program of the gradual socialisation of domestic labour due to
> the poverty and devastation of the country, the Stalinists once
> again
> placed the burden of such labour on the backs of women in fact and
> in
> theory, in their program. But still there were gains in health care,
> care of the aged, education and employment for women in these
> bureaucratised workers’ states. The turn towards capitalism has
> caused unemployment among women to soar, prostitution to become
> rampant and sexist ideology to flourish.
>
> The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe has not been as
> catastrophic as in Russia, but it too has been marked by great
> losses
> for the working class. Workers in both the republics of the former
> USSR and Eastern Europe remember the social conquests they used to
> take for granted. They will resist more and more what the transition
> to capitalism is bringing and will bring down upon them. It is
> through these struggles that socialist consciousness can once again
> emerge, and new revolutionary socialist parties built. The workers
> of
> the former USSR and Eastern Europe know they do not want to go back
> to Stalinism. They are learning and will learn that capitalism is
> not
> the answer.
>
> I have one thing to say.
>
> I disagree.
Don't spam.
Yeski
Page: