The current “crisis” of the Soviet system about which everybody has been talking must seem very strange to an outside observer: there are no starving crowds or dead bodies along the roads, no riots or clashes with the police, virtually nothing to show or hide on the evening news. Of course, Soviet economic performance is appalling: GNP growth has declined almost to zero; and a 30-percent decrease in oil production has been aggravated even further by the recent drop in the price of oil. To this, add obsolete industrial equipment, chronically ill agriculture, and nearly catastrophic environmental problems, and the resulting picture will seem frightening enough. Yet within the Soviet system, only a fundamental challenge to the principles upon which the regime is built can be seen as a true crisis, and then that challenge can only be taken with full seriousness if it is described in the terminology of Marxism-Leninism.
Such a description is precisely what has been given by Professor Tatyana Zaslavskaya in her famous “Novosibirsk Document.” This influential scholar (the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev himself uses many of her definitions in his speeches) sees the cause of Soviet economic problems in
the lagging of the system of production relations, and hence of the mechanism of state management of the economy which is its reflection, behind the level of development of the productive forces.
Lest anyone wonder about the actual meaning of her definition, Professor Zaslavskaya quotes a classic Marxist formula describing what actually happens in a time of contradiction between “productive forces” and “the system of production relations”:
There ensues either a period of acute socioeconomic and political cataclysms within the given formation, which modify and readjust production relations to the new mode of production, or there comes an epoch of a general crisis of the given social formation and of its downfall caused by a social revolution.
Nor, she adds, is a socialist society miraculously exempt from this general rule:
Attempts at improving production relations, bringing them into greater correspondence with the new demand of productive forces, . . . cannot run their course without conflict.
The Soviet people, then, should brace for a new spell of class struggle in their classless society (or a struggle of “interest groups,” as Professor Zaslavskaya tactfully calls them), because a
radical reorganization of economic management essentially affects the interests of many social groups, to some of which it promises improvements, but to others a deterioration in their position.
And no class (or “interest group”) in history has been known to give up its position without a struggle.
Not surprisingly, Professor Zaslavskaya becomes vague and inconsistent, even evasive, when she defines the “social group” whose interests are antagonistic to the goal of social progress, and whose position, therefore, must “deteriorate” in the forthcoming class struggle. She talks about an “intermediate link of the management” which has acquired more rights and responsibilities than those on the top and at the bottom. She alludes to some bureaucrats at the top who do not want to have more responsibilities requiring better professional qualifications than they possess. She also mentions some officials who “occupy comfortable positions with high incomes and vaguely defined responsibilities.” And she describes a general tendency within the Soviet system to reward those who are more docile instead of those who are more gifted and efficient.
However, these generalized descriptions of personality types and tendencies cannot serve as a substitute for a clear definition of a social group (with common economic interests and a certain place in the system of production relations, as required for Marxist analysis). She comes very close to naming this mysterious group when she says that the “central element in the system of production relations is the dominant form of ownership of the means of production”—a classic Marxist formula. But if she went a bit further and actually named the culprit, she would no longer be an influential Soviet scholar but a dissident, because every schoolboy in the Soviet Union knows that under socialism the means of production belong to the Communist party apparatus, acting on behalf of the “proletariat.”
This is exactly the group (or “New Class,” as Milovan Djilas called it long ago) which occupies the cushiest positions with high incomes and vaguely defined responsibilities, which rewards the docile instead of the gifted, and whose interests are opposed to a radical reorganization of economic management. When Professor Zaslavskaya speaks about the need to shift from “administrative methods to economic means of management,” when Gorbachev, echoing her, emphasizes the need to give more “independence and rights” to enterprises, and when he, finally, says that “It is impossible to achieve any tangible results in any sphere of activity as long as a party official substitutes for a manager,” one has little doubt as to whose interests will be affected by this “reorganization.”
The emerging dilemma is truly paradoxical: if the party retains its control over the economy, socialism will be endangered and will finally collapse; if, however, the party loses its control over the economy (and, therefore, its control over Soviet society), what Gorbachev calls “the position of socialism in the modern world” will collapse just as surely.
In short, the implacable logic of Marxist-Leninist analysis predicts the inevitable demise of socialism. Here indeed is a fundamental crisis of the entire system.
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That system grew out of the compromise between revolutionary ideology and reality that the Communists were forced to make from the very beginning.
According to Lenin’s own theory, the state was supposed to “die out” under socialism. Yet so long as the Communist state was encircled by powerful capitalist enemies, its power had to grow in order to survive and to promote revolution throughout the world. The Soviet state emerged out of this contradiction, according to the laws of dialectics.
The new system of government was proclaimed to be a “dictatorship of the proletarians,” which in practical terms meant a dictatorship of the “advance-guard of the proletarians”—the Communist party—ruling on behalf of the proletarians. At that time, the proletarians—industrial workers and poor peasants—constituted barely 10 percent of the population, while the party members constituted about 10 percent of the proletarians. Leaving aside the scope of terror needed for such a tiny minority to rule dictatorially, “partocracy” was the only possible way to resolve the new regime’s fundamental contradiction.
Thus, behind the backs of everyone and every governmental institution, there developed a party “shadow government”—the Central Committee of the CPSU and its respective Departments—overseeing and directing every aspect of work in accordance with ideological requirements. Today, after nearly seventy years, this network of party cells penetrates every institution, from top to bottom, in order to guarantee that each party directive will be carried out to the letter.
The Foreign Ministry of the USSR, like a foreign ministry in any normal state, is preoccupied with its professional duties of maintaining relations, promoting trade, negotiating agreements, and in general advancing the national interests of the Soviet state. But at the same time, the International Department of the Central Commitee is promoting world revolution and making sure that the interests of Communist ideology are given priority over any considerations of diplomacy.
The Ministry of Education is concerned with preparing qualified specialists in every sphere of activity, but its counterparts in the Central Committee are concerned with making a good builder of Communism out of every student. And the Central Committee’s task is given priority when it comes to promotions and appointments, as well as to the content of educational programs.
The Ministry of Defense is responsible for the security of the country, and for training good soldiers and officers. But a corresponding Department of the Central Committee, acting through a Chief Political Directorate of the Army, makes sure that these soldiers are good Soviet soldiers, the liberators of humanity from the chains of capitalism.
The Ministry of Culture is charged with promoting art, literature, and entertainment. But being subordinate to the Department of Propaganda of the Central Committee, its main concern is effective propaganda on behalf of the official ideology. Accordingly, it becomes a ministry of political censorship, weeding out the “wrong” tendencies and promoting the “right” ones.
The intelligence service has the job of collecting military and strategic information about potential enemies, but disinformation, organization of mass movements, “liberation movements,” international terrorism, drug smuggling, etc.—in short, organization of any activity which might destabilize, confuse, or scare other countries into submission—is even more important.
The double structure—established in every sphere of life and on all levels: national, district, regional, local, with vertical and horizontal subordination—is a perfect instrument of control and an ideal system for maintaining socialism at home and spreading it abroad. For the Soviet state is not a state in the traditional meaning of the word; it is the material and operational base of the world socialist revolution. Internally, it maintains a regime of occupation; externally, a state of permanent ideological war. Each needs and feeds the other.
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Of course, the double structure of the Soviet state did not appear overnight, but evolved during the civil war and the subsequent struggle within the party. Initially, party control over the governmental apparatus was introduced because most of the specialists were former “class enemies” and could not be trusted. Even in the Red Army during the civil war, former czarist officers had to be conscripted by the Communists to lead the troops. Since they had to fight against their former colleagues and friends in the White Army, instances of “treason” were quite likely. Therefore, political commissars were appointed to each unit to watch over the officers.
The same was true in other areas, such as education or industry, where old czarist teachers and engineers were equally mistrusted as “class enemies.” The party was small (some estimates show 115,000 members on January 1, 1918; 250,000 in March 1919), and consisted of mostly uneducated people (even by 1927 only 1 percent had graduated from universities, 8 percent had graduated from elementary school, while over 25 percent were registered as “self-educated,” and 2 percent were completely illiterate). For a party of proletarians, this was as it should be.
To say that is not to make a joke, but to point to a very serious contradiction which was never resolved by the leadership. On the one hand, a party of proletarians ruling on behalf of the working class must have in its ranks a clear majority of workers. And indeed, demand for real proletarians was so great that only complete imbeciles were left in the factories or on the farms where they started. On the other hand, this practice, continuing almost until the present day, created an ill-educated and incompetent party bureaucracy.
As far as the “specialists” were concerned, in due course most were replaced by the new “Soviet specialists,” often members of the party. Thus, in the army only 4,500 former czarist officers out of 50,000 were still serving by 1930. The number of party “specialists” in the governmental apparatus increased from 5 percent in 1923 to 20 percent in 1927. But the practice of party control through political commissars persisted, creating conflicts between the more competent specialist and his party controllers, who were usually less competent but more influential.
The considerable resentment thus accumulated acquired a new dimension after Lenin’s death in 1924 and became an essential part of the internal struggle in the party under the new General Secretary, Stalin.
Stalin had to build his personal authority in a tough competition with “old revolutionaries,” who even in 1927 constituted three-quarters of the leadership, while being only 1.4 percent of the total membership. By combining promotion of new members with purges of old, and by increasing the power of the party apparatus, Stalin consolidated his position. This meant an even more complete double structure. In 1925, the apparatus constituted only 2.5 percent of the membership; by 1939, it was 10 percent. After the mass terror of the 1930’s, the party could not be challenged by anybody. Its power became enormous, its privileges huge. Total membership was 1,589,000 and at least half of them were no longer proletarians. Thus, the formation of a double structure was completed by the end of the 1930’s, with its innermost core—the party apparatus—reaching its maximal power.
This new class of bosses, of professional leaders, and of organizers was and has remained the very embodiment of revolutionary ideology, its priests and caretakers. For without the ideology, they are nothing but a bunch of careerists and cynical parasites. As long as ideology reigns, however, they are omnipotent. There is no law, human or natural, which they cannot cancel: “Our task,” declared one of them, “is not to study the economy, but to change it. We are not bound by any law. There are no such fortresses which Bolsheviks could not storm.”
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After Stalin’s death, the appalling state of the Soviet economy and its centralized inflexibility forced Khrushchev to attempt a reorganization. Basically, he tried to subordinate the party to the economy, so to speak, by giving priority to economic factors over ideological ones. To no avail. The people he shifted and shuffled were the same old party bureaucrats, and bureaucracy only multiplied as a result of all his desperate efforts to loosen central control of the economy.
Khrushchev was pensioned off as a “voluntarist” who rocked the boat too much, but the problem refused to depart with him. His successors, Kosygin and Brezhnev, divided the functions of state and party leadership between them. Kosygin represented the interests of the government (and, therefore, the need for reforms), while Brezhnev embodied the interests of the party apparatus. However, it soon became clear which of these two sets of interests was the more important. Kosygin’s reforms turned out to be modest: all he achieved was to insist that state-run enterprises should be self-sufficient and should bring profits instead of losses. Even this simple economic wisdom was never fully accepted. Kosygin’s reforms were largely watered down by his colleagues from the party apparatus and then quietly sabotaged by the middle management of the bureaucracy.
Still, Kosygin’s efforts were not entirely in vain: his campaign for reforms generated debates within the Soviet hierarchy, and a barely noticeable split into two trends: “managers” and “ideologists” (the actual terms they used). Certainly, there was no questioning by the managers of Communist ideology or its ultimate goals. Rather, the argument was over how to achieve these goals better and more efficiently. According to Marx, said the managers, economic relations are the essence of history, a material force which moves society, and we are Marxists, are we not? Indeed, we are, replied the ideologists, but Lenin wrote that the “idea which comes to possess the masses becomes a material force,” and we are Leninists, are we not?
As this debate proceeded, a number of interesting new industrial experiments were carried out, and these were written up ecstatically in the Soviet newspapers of the 1960’s. But this early euphoria evaporated as it became evident that the experiments illustrated all too clearly the superiority of capitalist over socialist methods. Although these capitalist methods would undoubtedly foster more rapid economic growth, the state would no longer maintain its control over economic life. More importantly, party control of the economy would be rendered both superfluous and impossible. As between economic growth and party control, the choice fell on the latter. And with good reason.
There are currently 18 million party members, roughly 6.5 percent of the population, or about 10 percent of its adult part. The ruling elite, the nomenklatura, is estimated at between 3 and 5 million, families included. It is impossible to determine how many of them are “ideologists,” but whatever they believe in, they stand to lose a great deal, perhaps even everything, from a real diminution of party control. Because it is to the party, not to their skills or talents, that they owe their positions, they would have no chance of remaining on the same level in any other socio-political system (if, indeed, there is such a level of power and privilege under any other system). Besides, many might be held responsible for crimes and corruptions committed in the service of the regime, if this regime were ever to change dramatically (as has happened in China).
For these reasons, the partocrats prefer a longer course of economic decline, a slower way of death, should the worst become inevitable. Dangerous as such a continuous decline of the Soviet economy is, it would mean only a gradual defeat of the socialist forces, with the ultimate catastrophe postponed for perhaps fifteen to twenty years. By contrast, radical economic reforms mean for the partocrats an immediate ouster and a loss of status, and without even any guarantee that the cause of socialism can thereby be saved.
On the other hand, the “managers” apparently think that they do not stand to lose anything, except their ideological chains. Being competent specialists, better educated, and more confident, they believe they will remain on the same level (or even higher) in a more competitive society. The top echelon of “managers” in the nomenklatura probably hope to become the sole masters of the country once the partocrats are removed.
Somebody has already said of this new class of managers or “meritocrats” that they are “the grave-diggers of Communism.” In the long run, perhaps, they may turn out to be just that. But let us have no illusions: these “reformers” are no more eager than the old partocrats to bury Communism. Being specialists, they are willing to run the risk of reforms in order to save the socialist cause. Being younger, they do not want to preside over the downfall of their regime. It is less clear, however, how much they understand of the system’s limitations on the one hand or the possible consequences of needed reforms on the other.
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And Gorbachev? Is he one of them, as many seem to believe? We do not really know, but assuming that he is, he will find himself basically in the same situation Khrushchev did twenty years ago. His reforms will have to be implemented through the same party apparatus whose power they inevitably serve to diminish. And since the General Secretary has no other instrument of control over the country, by reducing the power of the party apparatus he will be reducing his own as well.
During Andropov’s brief reign, according to some accounts, “hundreds of persons who held real power either in Moscow or in the provinces were removed. Thousands of middle-echelon officials were replaced or shifted to other duties.” The purge continues, but even if Gorbachev places like-minded people in every position of influence in the country, he is bound to discover what Napoleon discovered when he appointed his brother to be the “king” of a conquered country: the brother became a real king in due course, and acted accordingly. Khrushchev made a similar discovery: it was the very people he himself had chosen and promoted who removed him when they felt he had gone too far.
This structural constraint alone makes far-reaching reforms quite impossible. Yet if they do not reach far enough, they will not work. The time when the government could govern, leaving the party to conduct propaganda, is long past. Once revolutionary enthusiasm died, the party had to rely on its exclusive right to promote and to dismiss, to enrich and to impoverish any individual in the country. Now, if people are going to be promoted according to their talents and rewarded according to their performance, who will bother to join the party? And if people are not treated according to their merits, where is the reform?
So far Gorbachev has not unveiled his plan of reorganization. We can only guess its main features from the hints he has dropped in his early speeches. Amid invigorating appeals for better discipline, he emphasizes once again Kosygin’s principle of “self-sufficiency,” which must be introduced this time “in reality,” and he threatens, like Khrushchev, to eliminate many bureaucratic governmental institutions. His constant theme is the need to give more rights and independence to enterprises, to simplify central planning, and to institute a “revolutionary shift” to the latest technology. Thus far the program looks like a fairly minimal adjustment within the system.
But Gorbachev’s other ideas are bound to be more controversial. For example, his remedy for agriculture is believed to be the “family-based productive link system” (zveno) which was tested in experiments of the 1960’s with spectacular results but was rejected as an attempt to restore capitalism. The question remains whether Gorbachev will actually try to pursue such ideas.
Two variables will largely determine the answer: first, the behavior of the West; second, the behavior of the Soviet population.
If the West, repeating the mistake it made in the 1970’s version of détente, provides assistance on a great scale, then the Soviet regime can get away with minimal reforms for another decade before coming to its next major crisis. In other words, the scale of reform will be inversely proportional to the scale of Western economic assistance.
Moreover, if the West goes on protecting and perpetuating the external Soviet empire by recognizing Soviet client-states and providing them with economic help (Central Europe, Mozambique, Angola, and, perhaps soon, Vietnam), then the economic burden of empire will continue to be reduced and the risk of its collapse will be diminished, thus slowing down the drive for more radical changes in the Soviet economy. If, however, the West dissociates itself from these regimes, and instead supports resistance movements, then the pressure to improve the performance of the Soviet economy will increase dramatically. Equally, any slowdown in military competition, or any sweeping arms-control or arms-reduction agreements, will only serve to reduce the need for reforms.
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As for the second variable, the possible response of the Soviet people, the question is how far reform must go in order to evoke their enthusiasm. How big must the new incentives be in order to increase productivity to the required level?
One must remember that at least three generations have grown up under the present system, watching the slow destruction of their country, culture, and fellow countrymen. There is hardly a family which has not experienced repression at some point or other. For three generations these people have been obliged to listen to and to repeat the obvious lies of official propaganda and to be cheerful at the same time because it is antisocial not to be cheerful in a socialist paradise. This contradiction between reality and propaganda alone is sufficient to produce profound psychological damage, to say nothing of the ever-present fear, suspicion, and misery.
The current condition of the Soviet people is not simply one of disillusionment, apathy, or resignation. It is a biological exhaustion, a fatigue of human material. The signs of this are high infant mortality, low birthrate (below replacement level among the Russians and some other nationalities), life expectancy of about sixty, and an exceptionally high percentage of children born physically and mentally handicapped (about 6-7 percent by the end of the 1970’s, and projected to be 15 percent by the end of the 1990’s). The latter is partly due to massive environmental pollution, but it is mainly a product of alcoholism.
Contrary to popular belief, the current epidemic of alcoholism has little to do with traditional Russian drinking habits. Thus a pre-revolutionary Russian encyclopedia indicates that in 1905 about 50 percent of men and 95 percent of women were total abstainers. (For comparison, per-capita consumption was much smaller than in the United States today.) A document smuggled out of the Soviet Union in 1985 shows an enormous increase in alcohol consumption. It asserts that, in 1979, only 0.6 percent of men and 2.4 percent of women were abstainers, and only 5 percent of young people under age eighteen. In 1983, according to this document, there were 40 million “medically certified alcoholics” in the Soviet Union, and the number was estimated as growing to 80 million by the year 2000, which would be 65 percent of the working population.
In addition to these signs of degeneration, there is widespread dissent. This should not be understood in narrowly political terms; it is broader and deeper than that. Professor Zaslavskaya explains it in the “Novosibirsk Document” as follows:
Even with the most rigid regimentation of behavior in the economic sphere, the population is always left with a certain choice of reactions to the governmental restrictions, which it does not necessarily . . . accept. Hence a possibility of overt and covert conflicts between the interests of the groups and of the society. When the established norms and rules affect the vital interests of certain groups of the population, . . . the latter often find a way to shirk the restrictions and to satisfy their demands. When the state takes more strict measures to curb undesirable types of activities, the population responds by finding more subtle patterns of behavior, which will secure satisfaction of its demands in the new conditions, etc. Thus, reciprocally oriented behavior and interactions, of the state on the one hand, . . . and of socioeconomic groups, on the other, represent an important part of the social mechanism of economic development.
Needless to say, the same kind of implicit “dialogue” occurs between the regime and society in all spheres of life, not just in economic relations. In the latter sphere this “dialogue” has led to the development of a black market of many semi-legal activities, and of corruption and theft of public property. In other spheres, it has led to cultural, nationalist, and political dissent.
The black market is everywhere. A general shortage of consumer goods and food, of services and materials, has made it necessary for the people to develop their own system of distribution. The government has tried to fight it tooth and nail (since the early 1960’s, a wide variety of these activities is punishable by death), but the system has continued to grow into a huge and intricate network of underground business and industry. Quite often even the party bosses, top governmental executives, and the police have become involved or have been bribed to cover up this activity. Few have been caught.
One can only guess what effect corruption on this scale is having on the top echelon of power. As far as the general population is concerned, however, the effect has clearly been profound. If nothing else, people have become less dependent on official favors and state distribution, while becoming more and more cash-oriented.
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To sum up, nearly seventy years of ruthless and unscrupulous Communist rule have destroyed the trust which may have existed originally between the Soviet rulers and the people. The people can hardly expect significant improvements as a result of any within-the-system reforms because the very idea of this system has outlived itself. But even if the system is dismantled, it could take a couple of generations before the people recover completely. Collectivized farmers have to learn how to be peasants, “proletarians” have to learn how to be workers, surviving craftsmen have to teach their skills to new generations.
Surely, Gorbachev cannot count on the millions of “medically certified alcoholics” to sober up suddenly and to become Stakhanovites, even if he pays them five times the present level of wages. If they were capable of sobering up, they would already have joined one or another of the semi-legal businesses existing in the country. Whatever Gorbachev’s reforms are going to be, then, they must appeal to those who are interested in working and earning, which means that they must compete in incentives and rewards with the black market.
It is of some interest to note what Gorbachev wants to do with the economy; it is far more interesting to see what the economy will do with Gorbachev as he learns what Lenin discovered sixty-five years before him: that the “marketplace is stronger” than socialism. The best guess is that Gorbachev will choose socialism—which is to say the rule of the party—over the marketplace. Thus he has only three options: He could introduce no changes, and then philosophically watch over the slow disintegration of the empire, the loss of superpower status, and the final collapse of the system, perhaps within fifteen or twenty years. Second, he could adopt a Chinese-type version of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), only to see himself swept away by rising inflation, unemployment, industrial unrest, and disintegration of the party system—and with no real hope of avoiding the final collapse. Third, he could follow the example of Brezhnev in getting the West to bail him out with enough aid and trade to postpone the day of reckoning for several more decades.
In the final analysis, then, it is the West that must choose between the death of Communism in the 20th century and its survival into the 21st.
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