Chris Doss writes:
"I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the dissolution of the USSR by its member republics has got to be just about the dumbest geopolitical move I can think of in living memory (that is, if what you care about is conditions in the FSU, and not becoming tsar of your little piece of the FSU, which was what the elites in Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, etc., were after). Gorby (and Bush I, by the way) were both 100% correct in predicting it would be a disaster."
But wasn't the problem that the economic order under the old USSR was simply incapable of producing a national division of labour, and accelerated these fragmentary trends? I can't quite believe that the break-up was just a subjective error. All of the unpleasant ethnic conflicts are merely expressions of that underlying fault, it would seem to me. (I think Trotsky said a long time ago that socialism in one country would lead to the disaggregation of the Communist International along national lines, and this is merely the working out of that trend.)
-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'