--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> late 1980s. But by 1990 and 1991, main members of
> the
> high elite, ministerial elite, even the army elite,
> certainly the party elite, were seizing state
> property
> for themselves, so while they were stripping the
> state's assets, they had no interest in defending
> it,
> so they simply stepped aside and allowed the
> political
> struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev to unfold,
> and
> it unfolded in the end of the Soviet Union.
>
> Etc.:
> http://www.russiaprofile.org/cdi/2007/1/26/5107.wbp
>
[WS:] So basically he argues that the elite's looting of the country's wealth prompted it to embrace divisive power politics that led to the collapse of the Soviet institutions. In other words, it was the modern equivalent of the old notorious Russian institution of boyarschina (the rule of the gentry) that did the x-USSR in.
Interesting argument, indeed, and pretty much in line with my own views of the subject. What is especially ironic about it is that a very similar thing is going on right now in the US. It remains to be seen if this will eventually do the US in as it did Russia, or the US will survive this elite looting of its wealth. I think it is much more to be looted here, so it may take considerable longer to find out.
I think what can make a diffrence is what Trotsky and Gramsci called "civil society." Trotsky did not use the word, but used the same concept in his _Results and Prospects_ denoting a network of social instituitions in additon to those of the state (see also Durkheim on that). The argument is that "civil society" can function relatively independent of the state - so capturing the state (as in a revolution) doe not necessarily transalte into revolutionary changes. Gramsci argues that absence (Russia) or presence (Western Europe) explain the diffrence between the successful Bolshevik revolution and unsuccessful revolutionary attempts in Western Europe (cf. germany or Italy).
Arguing along the same lines, weak civil society in x-USSR may explain why the war among and pilferage by the elites did the country in, as ther was little to sustain it. Arguably, the US has stronger civil society (or so they say) so it may survive pilferage by the elites.
Wojtek
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