What the Russian Revolution achieved and why it degenerated

The following article does a good job of analyzing the fall of the Soviet Union and the western reaction to that until it starts to blame much of the fall of the Soviet Union on Joseph Stalin. In actuality it as Stalin who industrialized and modernized the Soviet Union. That’s not to say he did nothing to inflate the Soviet Unions Bureaucracy or to over look his purges. Alan Woods writes this article from a largely Trotskyist view. But much of the rest of this was very good at pointing out the levels of deceit needed by western pundits and writers to smear communist leaders and their achievements. He points to some interesting statistics that show that the Soviet Union had accomplished a lot, economically. Woods points out that the Soviet Union was way ahead of the US in starting a space program. How many other countries in the world could put together a functioning space program?

The fall of the Soviet Union needs to be carefully analyzed. This article is a good step in that direction. Although there parts of this I disagree with, it is worth reading for those things Woods got right. There are probably many reason the Soviet Union deteriorated and finally collapses.  The Third world movements, of which were never specifically pro-Soviet, have completely died out. Apparently these countries were more dependent on the Soviet Union (many indirectly) than we all realized. I have never been a pro-Soviet leftist activist, but I now realized how much we lost when the Soviet Union fell. I have already written on the fall of the Cold war and how we are not better off with out it; Are we really better off without a Cold War? Part 1 and Part 2.

-SJ Otto

From Bolshevik.info:
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution. The apologists of capitalism, and their faithful echoes in the labour movement, try to comfort themselves with the thought that the collapse of the USSR signified the demise of socialism. But what failed in Russia was not socialism but a caricature of socialism. Contrary to the oft-repeated slanders, the Stalinist regime was the antithesis of the democratic regime established by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

"No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the Russian Revolution is one of the greatest events in human history, and the rule of the Bolsheviki a phenomenon of worldwide importance." John Reed, 1st January 1919. (J. Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, p. 13.)

The collapse of the USSR was presented by the defenders of capitalism as the equivalent of the final victory of the “free market economy” over “Communism”. A quarter of a century ago it produced a wave of euphoria in the bourgeoisie and its apologists. They spoke of the end of socialism, the end of communism and even the end of history and ever since then we have witnessed an unprecedented ideological offensive against the ideas of Marxism on a world scale. This irrational exuberance knew no bounds.

[Follow our 1917 anniversary campaign on Twitter and Facebook, and also consider buying a copy of the newly released and updated book Russia: From Revolution to Counter-Revolution]

The then American President George Bush triumphantly announced the creation of a "New World Order" under the domination of US imperialism. "The Soviet Union is no more," wrote Martin McCauley. "The great experiment has failed... Marxism in practice has failed everywhere. There is no Marxist economic model capable of competing with capitalism." (M. McCauley, The Soviet Union 1917-1991, pp. XV and 378) "We Won!" exclaimed the editorial of The Wall Street Journal (24/5/89). It was at this point that Francis Fukuyama udder his notorious prediction: "The period of post-history has arrived... Liberal democracy has triumphed, and mankind has reached its highest wisdom. History has come to an end."

Twenty-five years later, not one stone upon another remains of these foolish illusions. Capitalism has entered into the most serious crisis since the Great Depression. Millions are faced with a future of unemployment, poverty, cuts and austerity. Wars and conflicts ravage the entire planet, the very future of which is placed in jeopardy by the depredations wreaked by the uncontrolled market economy. Now in the cold light of day those triumphalist proclamations sound ironic. The global crisis of capitalism and its effects have falsified those confident predictions. All the lavish promises of milk and honey by the Western leaders that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union have evaporated like a drop of water on a hot stove.

America’s dream of world domination lies buried beneath the smoking ruins of Aleppo. All the triumphalist pronouncements of the bourgeois strategists have been falsified. History has returned with a vengeance. The same Western observers who exaggerated every defect of the Soviet economy are now struggling desperately to explain the manifest failure of the market economy. Now there is only economic collapse, political instability, uncertainty, wars and conflict. The earlier euphoria has given way to the blackest pessimism.

It is for this very reason that the centenary of the Russian Revolution will inevitably be the occasion for an intensification of the vicious anti-Communist campaign. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. The worldwide crisis of capitalism is giving rise to a general questioning of the “market economy”. There is a revival of interest in Marxist ideas, which is alarming the bourgeoisie. The new campaign of slanders is a reflection not of confidence but of fear.

Fear of revolution

History shows that it is not sufficient for the ruling class to defeat a revolution. It is necessary to cover it with slanders, blacken the name of its leaders, and surround it with a cloud of malice and suspicion so that not even the memory of it will remain to inspire the new generations. There is nothing new in this. In the 19th century when the historian Thomas Carlyle was writing a book about Oliver Cromwell he said that before he could begin he had to rescue Cromwell’s body from under a mountain of dead dogs.

After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, all the memories of Cromwell and the English bourgeois revolution had to be erased from the collective memory. The restored monarchy of Charles II officially dated its reign from the 30th January 1649, the date of the execution of Charles I, and all references to the republic and its revolutionary deeds were to be obliterated. The upstart Charles II was so carried away by the spirit of spite, hatred and revenge, that he went so far as to dig up Oliver Cromwell's corpse, which was then subjected to a public hanging at Tyburn.

The same malice and spite born of fear is what motivates the present efforts to deny the gains and revolutionary significance of the Russian Revolution and blacken the memory of its leaders. The systematic falsification of history now being undertaken by the bourgeoisie, although somewhat more subtle than the posthumous lynchings of the English monarchists, is in no way morally superior to them. Ultimately it will prove no more effective. The locomotive of human progress is truth, not lies. And the truth will not remain buried for all time.

For the best part of three generations, the apologists of capitalism vented their spleen against the Soviet Union. No effort or expense has been spared in the attempt to blacken the image of the October Revolution and the nationalised planned economy that issued from it. In this campaign, the crimes of Stalinism came in very handy. The trick was to identify socialism and communism with the bureaucratic totalitarian regime which arose from the isolation of the revolution in a backward country.

The hatred of the Soviet Union shared by all those whose careers, salaries and profits derived from the existing order based on rent, interest and profit, is not hard to understand. It had nothing to do with the totalitarian regime of Stalin. The same "friends of democracy" had no scruples about praising dictatorial regimes when it suited their interests to do so. The "democratic" British ruling class was quite happy to see Hitler coming to power, as long as he put down the German workers and directed his attentions to the East.

Winston Churchill and other representatives of the British ruling class expressed their fervent admiration for Mussolini and Franco, right up to 1939. In the period after 1945, the Western "democracies", in the first instance the USA, actively backed every monstrous dictatorship, From Somoza to Pinochet, from the Argentine junta to the Indonesian butcher Suharto who climbed to power over the corpses of a million people with the active support of the CIA. The leaders of the Western democracies grovel before the blood-soaked regime of Saudi Arabia that tortures, murders, flogs and crucifies its own citizens. The list of these barbarities is endless.

From the standpoint of imperialism, such regimes are perfectly acceptable, provided they based themselves on private ownership of the land, banks and big monopolies. Their implacable hostility to the Soviet Union was not, then, based on any love of freedom, but on naked class interest. They hated the USSR, not for what was bad in it, but precisely for what was positive and progressive. They objected, not to Stalin's dictatorship (on the contrary, the crimes of Stalinism suited them very well as a convenient means of blackening the name of socialism in the West), but to the nationalised property forms which were all that remained of the gains of October.

This rewriting of history reminds one forcibly of the old methods of the Stalinist bureaucracy which placed history on its head, turned leading figures into non-persons, or demonised them, as in the case of Leon Trotsky, and generally maintained that black was white. The present writings of the enemies of socialism are no different, except that they slander Lenin with the same blind hatred and spitefulness that the Stalinists reserved for Trotsky.

Some of the worst cases of this kind are to be found in Russia. This is not surprising, for two different reasons: firstly, these people have been raised in the Stalinist school of falsification, which based itself on the principle that truth was only an instrument in the service of the ruling elite. The professors, economists and historians were, with a few honourable exceptions, accustomed to adapt their writings to the current "Line". The same intellectuals who sang the praises of Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army and leader of the October Revolution, a few years later had no qualms about denouncing him as an agent of Hitler. The same writers who fawned on Joseph Stalin the great Leader and Teacher soon jumped the other way when Nikita Khrushchev discovered the "personality cult". Habits die hard. The methods of intellectual prostitution are the same. Only the Master has changed.

There is also another quite separate reason. Many of the capitalists in Russia not long ago carried a Communist Party card in their pocket and spoke in the name of "socialism". In fact, they had nothing to do with socialism, communism or the working class. They were part of a parasitic ruling caste which lived a life of luxury on the backs of the Soviet workers. Now, with the same cynicism that has always characterised these elements, they have openly gone over to capitalism. But this miraculous transformation cannot be consummated so easily. These people feel a compelling need to justify their apostasy by heaping curses on what they professed to believe in only yesterday. By these means they try to throw dust in the eyes of the masses, while salving their own consciences – always supposing that they possess such a thing. Even the worst scoundrel likes to find some justification for his actions.

What the Revolution achieved

The regime established by the October Revolution was neither totalitarian nor bureaucratic, but the most democratic regime yet seen on earth. The October Revolution radically abolished private ownership of the means of production. For the first time in history, the viability of a nationalised planned economy was demonstrated, not in theory but in practice. Over one-sixth of the earth's surface, in a gigantic, unprecedented experiment, it was proved that it was possible to run society without capitalists, landowners and moneylenders.

Nowadays, it is fashionable to belittle the results achieved, or even to deny them altogether. Yet the slightest consideration of the facts leads us to a very different conclusion. Despite all the problems, deficiencies and crimes (which, incidentally, the history of capitalism furnishes us in great abundance), the most astonishing advances were achieved by the nationalised planned economy in the Soviet Union in what was, historically speaking, a remarkably short space of time. This is what provoked the fear and loathing which characterised the attitude of the ruling classes of the West. This is what compels them even now to indulge in the most shameless and unprecedented lies and calumnies (of course, always under the guise of the most exquisite "academic objectivity") about the past.

The bourgeois have to bury once and for all the ideals of the October Revolution. Consequently, the collapse of the USSR was the signal for an avalanche of propaganda against the achievements of the planned economies of Russia and Eastern Europe. This ideological offensive by the strategists of Capital against "communism" was a calculated attempt to deny the historical conquests that issued from the Revolution. For these ladies and gentlemen ever since 1917 the Russian Revolution was a historical aberration. For them, there can only possibly be one form of society. Capitalism in their eyes had always existed and would continue to do so. Therefore, there could never be any talk of gains from the nationalised planned economy. The Soviet statistics are said to be simply exaggerations or falsehoods.

"Figures can't lie, but liars can figure." All the colossal advances in literacy, health, social provision, were hidden by a Niagara of lies and distortions aimed at obliterating the genuine achievements of the past. All the shortcomings of Soviet life – and there were many – have been systematically blown up out of all proportion and used to "prove" there is no alternative to capitalism. Rather than advance, there was decline, they now say. Rather than progress, there was regression. "It has been claimed that the USSR in the eighties was as far behind the United States as was the Russian Empire in 1913," writes economic historian, Alec Nove, who concludes that "statistical revisions have had a political role in de-legitimising the Soviet regime..." (Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, p. 438)

Against this unprecedented campaign of lies and slander, it is essential that we put the record straight. We do not wish to overburden the reader with statistics. However, it is necessary to demonstrate beyond any doubt the tremendous successes of the planned economy. Despite the monstrous crimes of the bureaucracy, the unprecedented advances of the Soviet Union represent not only a historic achievement, but are, above all, a glimpse of the enormous possibilities inherent in a nationalised planned economy, especially if it were run on democratic lines. They stand out in complete contrast to the crisis of the productive forces of capitalism on a world scale today.

Unprecedented advance

The October revolution of 1917 brought about the greatest advance of the productive forces of any country in history. Before the revolution in czarist Russia was an extremely backward, semi-feudal economy with a predominantly illiterate population. Out of a total population of 150 million people there were only approximately four million industrial workers. That means it was far more backward than Pakistan at the present time.

Under frightful conditions of economic, social and cultural backwardness, the regime of workers' democracy established by Lenin and Trotsky began the titanic task of dragging Russia out of backwardness on the basis of a nationalised planned economy. The results have no precedent in economic history. Within the space of two decades Russia had established a powerful industrial base, developed industry, science and technology and abolished illiteracy. It achieved remarkable advances in the fields of health, culture and education. This was at a time when the Western world was in the grip of mass unemployment and economic collapse in the Great Depression.

The viability of the new productive system was put to a severe test in 1941-45, when the Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany with all the combined resources of Europe at its disposal. Despite the loss of 27 million lives, the USSR succeeded in defeating Hitler, and went on, after 1945, to reconstruct its shattered economy in a remarkably short space of time, transforming itself into the world's second power.

Such astonishing advances in a country must give us pause for thought. One can sympathise with the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution, or oppose them, but such a remarkable transformation in such a short space of time demands the attention of thinking people everywhere.

In a period of 50 years, the USSR increased its gross domestic product nine times over. Despite the terrible destruction of the Second World War, it increased its GDP five times over from 1945 to 1979. In 1950, the GDP of the USSR was only 33 per cent that of the USA. By 1979, it was already 58 per cent. By the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was a formidable industrial power, which in absolute terms had already overtaken the rest of the world in a whole series of key sectors. The USSR was the world's second biggest industrial producer after the USA and was the biggest producer of oil, steel, cement, asbestos, tractors, and many machine tools.

Nor is the full extent of the achievement expressed in these figures. All this was achieved virtually without unemployment or inflation. Unemployment like that in the West was unknown in the Soviet Union. In fact, it was legally a crime. (Ironically, this law still remains on the statute books today, although it means nothing.) There might be examples of cases arising from bungling or individuals who came into conflict with the authorities being deprived of their jobs. But such phenomena did not flow from the nature of a nationalised planned economy, and need not have existed. They had nothing in common with either the cyclical unemployment of capitalism or the organic cancer which now affects the whole of the Western world and which currently condemns 35 million people in the OECD countries to a life of enforced idleness.

For the rest click here.