Joanna has asked me to translate some more of Medvedev's book Socialism and Russia? -- what am I, a freakin' translation service? (joke, joke!) -- so here's the first couple of pages of Chapter Two. I'm doing this quickly at an Internet-cafe so don't expect marvels. Hope people are enjoying this!
Socialism in Russia? By Roy Medvedev?
Chapter Two The Collapse of Really Existing Socialism in the USSR
The ideological retreat of the CPSU
The fall of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the regime of really existing socialism in the USSR, and the ideological and political implosion of the CPSU were all very complicated processes that it is difficult to analyze. Crisis had been taking blace inside the Party and its ideology over the course of many decades. As early as in the 1960s-70s the CPSU as a political and ideological organization was in a state of dumb defensiveness (CD -- "glukhaya oborona," lit. "deaf defense"), avoiding any innovations, including in its economic policy. This defensiveness was replaced by a retreat, which became more and more disorganized and humorous, and then shifted into collapse and destruction, which took place very quickly and immediately in many areas. During this there was almost no opposition either from the leadership of the CPSU, or from Party activists, or from the ideological services of the Party. It was a chaotic and almost uncontrolled process without any clear logic. Few understood who was in retreat and who was on the attack. This was the beginning of everything that we now call the "Time of Troubles" (CD -- "smutnoe vremya"; Medvedev, as Solzhenitysn does, is comparing the 1990s to the period of chaos and war that preceded the founding of the Romanov dynasty), but during the middle of the 1960s many of us spoke of it as "perestroika." The countless documents, announcements, resolutions, and critical publications from 1987-1991 that are stored in my archives can explain the events of those critical years but little, as the real processes corresponded poorly to what was published in the newspapers and magazines. Therefore, I will to a large extent rely on my own observations and impressions.
In the spring of 1988 I obtained the possibility of cooperating with newspapers and magazines in Moscow, in the provinces and in the Union Republics of the USSR. The politics of "glasnost" had brought about a transformation, and it was directed primarily in criticisms of the regime and the crimes of Stalinism. I appeared with lectures and reports in many institutes, military academies, enterprises, schools, publishing houses and several Union Ministries. The "blank spots" in the history of the USSR and CPSU had been washed out, and the interest in a correct and nondistorted history was enormous. However, the criticism of faults, errors and crimes was already at that time growing over into a criticism of the entire Soviet past and all the policies of the USSR and CPSU at all points in their histories.
In the spring of 1989 I was elected a People's Deputy of the USSR, and then a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from the Khoroshevskii voting district of the city of Moscow. The election campaign was unusual and instructive. Almost immdiately after these elections I was restored into the ranks of the CPSU, from which I had been expelled in 1969 as the author of the book "Let History Judge: The Genesis and Results of Stalism." In the spring of 1990 I was elected a member of the CC of the CPSU during the 28th Party Congress as a part of the Ideological Commission of the CC. In the course of two years I actively cooperated with all the main newspapers and magazines of the CPSU and appeared in Party gatherings, meetings of the Secretariat of various organizations, in Party activist circles in Moscow and the provinces, in ministries and facilities, including the Directorate of Foreign Intelligence in Yasenevo. In 1990-1991 I received many letters from members of the CPSU both with expressions of support and with clear disapproval. I participated in the work of the Ideological Apparatus and Plenums of the CC of the USSR and spoke with many prominent members of the Party leadership. Thus, I was able to look at the life of the CPSU from the inside. It was a time of a deep crisis in the Party and its clear ideological wavering. However, none of the leaders of the Party understood the sharpness of the crisis and had a clear plan for overcoming it. The conception of "New Thinking" was the guiding one, but no "Nothing Thinking" actually appeared. We heard only general declarations and slogans -- "we can't live like this" or "let's live amicably, helping each other." There was neither a clear political goal nor hard political will.
(I'll continue tomorrow. That's enough for now!)
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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