Socialism in Russia? By Roy Medvedev pp. 16-19
Was It Socialism? (Part One)
The unexpected and rapid collapse of the communist regimes in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe again made socialism both as an idea and as a societal structure the object of polemics and political struggle. In our country, a resolute criticism of Stalinist totalitarianism and the later authoritarian systems quickly grew into a criticism of Marxism and Leninism, and then of the very idea of socialism. In the opinion of the popular publicists of “perestroika” Aleksandr Tsipko and Larisa Piyashava is only a “tangential,” marginal and little-known idea of the 19th century. Therefore, it did not warrant such a large place in the life of the 20th century. This was a strange attempt to contest the ideological and political choice made by not less than the third of humanity to travel on the route of socialism. It is not hard to persuade oneself that in the 19th century socialism was not some sort of mighty ideological movement. However, the dead ends into which global capitalism had gotten itself in the first half of the 20th century, two World Wars, fascism, colonialism and imperialism – all this predictably advanced socialism as an idea, as a practical task, and as an alternative to capitalism for the peoples of many countries.
It is well known that in Russia the ideas of socialism were not connected only with the names of Georgii Plekhanov and V.I. Lenin. Such great Russian philosophers and thinkers as N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, I. Ilin, K. Losskii, V. Rozanov, G. Fedotov, P. Florenskii, S. Frenk, L. Shestov, and many others related to the conception of socialism with respect, although none of them considered himself a Marxist. The Russian publicist G. Tulchinsii has written about this with great regret. All these people, Tulchinsii wrote, had deeply lost their way. “In the works of F. von Hayek, K. Popper, M. Voslenskii, M. Dzhilas and I. Shafarevich, the meaning of socialism has been persuasively and from different positions revealed not only as an incoherent practical program leading society into a historical dead end, but also as a self-contradictory theoretical conception. We therefore must reject socialism completely.” In today’s Moscow, one can find and read the works of all the authors referred to by G. Tulchinsii and decide whose conclusions are more fundamental. There was criticism of socialism in the 19th century, but almost all the opponents of the idea were criticizing their own conceptions of socialism.
Doubts in the rightness and worth of socialism not just as an unrealizable project but even as an idea were heard at the very end of the 20th century even among many proponents of socialism. This caused alarm in people who continued to consider themselves socialists. The Russian philosopher and publicist Grigorii Vodolazov wrote, “Alas, they are burning manuscripts and beautiful ideas rather often perish, not leaving a trace. The socialist idea, one of the most ancient and greatest political ideas, is threatened today by three main dangers. The first is from its direct opponents, the second from its ‘friends,’ who are worse than enemies, and the third from the inability of its supporters to contribute to the idea features corresponding to our era and move it from the heights of ideological abstractions into the language of concrete political programs. We cannot let a great idea die!” “Socialism,” the philosopher Aleksandr Buzgalin says, “is experiencing a crisis, but not a crash. To overcome this crisis it is necessary to ponder the heroic and tragic experience of the struggle for socialism in the 20th century and work out a new theory and strategy and advance new Left ideas that adequately answer the demands of the third millennium.” But to advance new socialist conceptions and political progams it is necessary to examine what happened to earlier conceptions and programs. What sort of socialism was built in the Soviet Union, and was Soviet society socialist?
Some writers maintain that socialism was built in the Soviet Union, and that this socialism completely corresponded to the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But it was terrible. “It was precisely socialism that was born in Russia,” one of the most radical Moscow publicists of the beginning of the 1990s, A. Sher, announced. “And this horrible structure corresponded completely to the definition of socialism. ‘Stalinism’ is a terminological lightning rod invented in order to place the guilt of socialism on one evil-minded person, Stalin, who was a typical product of the system. Utopians, communists, socialists, and anarchists of all countries who propose the insidious idea of collectivism place the blame on the bestiality of Stalinism. All leftist power-seekers, careerists, fanatics, putschists, and even naïve workers and peasants, are guilty, as are idealists who believe in fairy tales about a future paradise, guilty are the ??? (CD -- “sartroidy” – I don’t know this word, it’s pretty fancy) who control minds with the lie of socialism and defend the Red monster – all the giant army of deception, envy, and self-love, which created socialism in Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Albania, Guinea, Algeria, and Iraq and spread the poison of collectivism throughout the world.” Even such a persuaded and resolute opponent of all types and forms of socialism as Igor Shafarevich was milder. He agreed that Soviet socialism corresponded completely to the socialist idea, which is the spreading of antihuman and inhumane forces that have long existed. In Russia, it was socialism that tried to annihilate the family and religion, private property and individuality. “Socialism is eternal and inevitable, as the struggle of life and death is inevitable. And people who are taken with socialist ideology poorly understand the nature of this goal.”
Of course, there have been completely opposite judgments that socialism was built in the Soviet Union and that it was a remarkable achievement. In one Marxist journal, Elena Tkacheva wrote that “Our country overcame illiteracy and the spiritual slavery of the people before the lords as early as before the war. In the 1930s, there was a Golden Age of talent and love of work. We had theaters and artists, musicians and writers, artists and athletes so gifted that not one Western civilization has seen the like. This is due to the fact that the construction of socialism took place under J.V. Stalin, who tore away whole layers of parasites – stockbrokers and bankers, businessmen and other bloodsuckers, who flourish under capitalism. Our grandfathers and fathers built a society of social justice, and this evoked great respect for the Soviet state in the best people in Western countries.” However, Sergei Kara-Murza believes that the “Golden Age” of Soviet socialism existed not under Stalin, but after his death. “We must tell people honestly,” he has said, “that the majority of our citizens will not for a long time, possibly never, live as well as they did in post-Stalin Soviet socialism. On the whole, Soviet socialism was a unique, miraculous form of achievement in all socio-economic areas. Today it is hard to explain how we got to that point – how unlikely it was. We must bow before the Russian people of the first half of the 20th century. They selflessly built on their bones a kind, peaceful, economic and generous society. The economy was extraordinarily, unexplainably effective. Many forces united to remove us from that system, and they succeeded.”
I remember both the Stalin and Brezhnev eras in the life of Soviet society well, and I cannot share the rapture of either E. Tkacheva or S. Kara-Murza. Of course, I also cannot support the angry tirades of I. Shafarevich and A. Sher. I believed in socialism, but was never satisfied with the state of affairs in Soviet society.
Above, I presented extreme points of view that will find few supporters. It is more common to encounter a different assertion: no socialism whatsoever was built in the Soviet Union, neither as a social and economic system, neither as a people’s or proletarian state. One of the creators of the theory of “developed,” and then “real,” socialism in the USSR Anatolii Butenko maintains now that there was no socialism in the Soviet Union. “Not one self-respecting sociologist or political scientist will ever call the structure that was built in the USSR socialism,” announced A. Butenko. “In no way was it socialism: we have never had either humane, or democratic, or with a human face, or without it, either mature, or immature socialism. It was a bureaucratic system in which the means of production and government were alienated from the workers.” In agreement with S. Butenko is the philosopher Igor Chubais, a proponent of the Russian Idea and opponent of both the Communists and the liberals headed by his younger brother A. Chubais. “Not one foreign occupier did such harm to the USSR,” I. Chubais has written, “as the government of the Soviets did. The Communist government annihilated the living spirit of Russia – its churches, its monasteries – the sources of national culture, in order to replace the deracinated Russian idea with the Communist one. It was a catastrophe surpassing in scale even the nightmare of the Holocaust, although to this day it is modestly called ‘illegal repressions of the period of the cult of personality.’” But it was not socialism. With respect to the discussions in the years of perestroika I will remark that there was no socialism in the USSR – not genuine, not developed, and not with some deformations. (CD – due to the peculiarities of Russian punctuation, it is unclear whether the last two sentences are a continuation of the Chubais quote, or Medvedev’s own words.)
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com