OK here’s my translation of the second part of that subchapter. This isn’t the most elegant translation, but hell I’m not publishing the thing. All footnotes have been left out, obviously.
Socialism in Russia? By Roy Medvedev Pp. 19-22
But if there was no socialism in the USSR, what kind of society and what kind of socioeconomic structure were built there in the course of the 70 years they existed in our country? Different writers call it different things: an Asiatic mode of production, state capitalism, bureaucratic capitalism, or simply totalitarianism. The philosopher Yu. I. Semenov called the Soviet social structure “politarism,” i.e., government not of the people, but of bureaucrats. Max Schachtman wrote about “bureaucratic collectivism” or “bureaucratic capitalism.” The sociologist A. Tarasov called the Soviet system “etatism” or “superetatism.”
In a posthumously published monograph, Ya. A. Kronford, one of the greatest Soviet social scientists, introduced the term “socialoligarchism” to designate the Soviet system. The author maintained that “This is a new form of society that lies outside of the general boundaries of historical development and includes in itself real elements of parasitism and rot. This structure presents itself with the antagonistically contradictory unification of a formally socially analyzed basis with a state social-oligarchy, which is parasitic on this basis and appropriates for itself a large portion of the social product, more and more deeply deforming the basis and directing its evolution in the direction of a historical dead end.” What terms have different writers not suggested!
Milovan Dzhilas called Soviet society “industrial feudalism,” and Mikhail Voslenskii called it “state feudalism.” The political scientist Oleg Vite invented the term “social industrial-feudal society,” and the sociologist Ovsei Shkaratan and lawyer Georgii Shakhnazarov wrote about “etatism” and “total ideocracy.” The Greek sovietologist K. Kostroriadis wrote about “stratocracy,” i.e., a society run by the military. The philosopher Petr Abovin-Egides called Soviet society “elitorism,” or a state run by an elite. One of the most original characterizations of Soviet society was thought up by Vadim Florov of the Academy of Cosmonautics. He called this society “zaslugism” or “meritism” (from the English word for “zasluga,” “merit”). In the opinion of V. Florov, services (CD – “zaslugi”) performed in different ways the function of capital for society, and all the deserving (CD – “zasluzhennye”) or “servicers” (CD – “zaslugisty”) fulfilled the role of the owners of this capital. “In the person of servicers the bureaucracy assumed its totally complete form – servicocracy (CD – “zaslugokratiya”). The socio-political system, which was presented and understood as socialism, was in essence a system of relations of private property and exploitation. We will call it zaslugism.”
The polemic regarding the terminological designation and definition of the nature of Soviet society has been connected often with different understandings of the nature and definition of socialism itself. The philosopher Aleksandr Zinoviev, who is inclined to paradoxical ideas, attempted to prove a long time before perestroika that Soviet socialism could be considered genuine or “classical” socialism or even “classical” communism. In so doing, A. Zinoviev maintained that the Soviet regime possessed not only a multitude of virtues, but also invisible density, and therefore could not perish. “In the West,” A. Zinoviev remarked, “many have written on the sufferings of the Soviet social structure. Such an assessment is basic nonsense. Communist society is so stable that it is simply impossible for forces within it to develop that would be capable of destroying it from within. It is senseless to hope for radical changes brought about by internal demands in Communist countries in this society in the direction of Western democracy. The Communist countries are developing historically unprecedented means for preserving stability in the sense of the integrity of the country.” After the unexpected and rapid collapse of the USSR and the whole Communist camp, A. Zinoviev changed his opinion only very slightly and repeated the assertion made above -- naturally, the destruction of the USSR and other Communist regimes is explained by this philosopher as being the result not of internal, but of external, causes.
Today there is no need to carry out a polemic with A. Zinoviev, who in his views on the Soviet Communist regime developed an opinion opposite to those of Aleksandr Tsipko or Aleksandr Yakovlev. The Communist regime was very solid, but far from in all respects, and this is completely explicable. In neither the 19th nor the 20th centuries did socialism exist in the form of a clear and definite project, which I will write about later on. It was therefore impossible to construct it on the basis of designs, calculations and schemas that had been worked out earlier and multiply confirmed in theory and practice. It was necessary to move forward on a path of attempts and mistakes, drafting each time only approximate sketches. It is not surprising that the building of Soviet socialism did not only turn out to be not only not overly beautiful and attractive, not only not overly comfortable for its inhabitants, but also not especially solid, although it looked overwhelmingly majestic and frightening – people can differ on their assessments regarding this. During our hard history in the USSR there was no developed or completed system. Yes, and no one yet knows exactly what a “model” socialist system would be – it has never been done, neither in theory nor in practice. However, many relations, social institutions and norms of life that are considered to be socialist and of which all the socialists of the 19th century dreamed were created in the USSR. Some have even been adopted in Western countries. I am therefore in agreement with the historian and publicist V.A. Mindolin, who wrote that “In fact, are relative social security (CD – “zashchishchennost’”), including guaranteed employment, relative social equality, equal educational conditions, free health insurance, and state support for science and culture elements of socialism? Yes, they are. Today they like to call this a ‘social state.’ But the theoretical and practical impulses toward all of this were not developed from nowhere by bourgeois or even state charity or by liberalism, but socialist thought, the socialist movement and the actions of the Soviet state after October 1917.”
“Did we have socialism in our country?”, asked the philosopher Shakhnazarov and answered: “There can be no doubt about this. Qua organization, Soviet society was founded on the principle that we today call social security, i.e., a guaranteed minimum of material and spiritual goods for each member of society. It is another question to what extent the historical conditions of the development of the Soviet state permitted this principle to be brought into life, and to what extent it was distorted during the formation of a new bureaucratic structure and the militarization of the country. It should also be brought to attention that it was only one possible model of socialist development.”
Many objective Western researchers hold this opinion as well. For instance, the famous Polish socialist and participant in the “New Left” movement Adam Shaff wrote “The truth is found in the great contradiction with these simplified approaches after which dreamers run in order to shirk from criticizing socialism. They maintain that a regime that does not correspond to their ideological models cannot be socialist. But a regime can exist that is deformed and historically distorted, but arose in the overthrow of the capitalist order, this meaning that in this sense it deserves to be called by the adjective ‘socialist’. And this is the state of affairs in the countries of ‘real socialism’.”
Socialism, as a worldview, clearly predominated in the consciousness of people of my generation, i.e., people who were born in the 1920s and were educated and raised before the war, during the war and after the war. Yes, of course we did not understand many things and idealized much, but we were sure that in the main we were thinking and acting rightly. I am sure that for people who were born in the 1930s socialism was also the predominant worldview. And an idea that guiding the minds of tens of millions of people is a real social force. Our socialism was limited and primitive, but it was not completely mistaken. But there are no grounds for completely disowning it.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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