Russian Liberals and Russian Imperialists Closer to Each Other than Russian Socialists are to Either, Segal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 7 – With regard to their hatred of socialism, Russian liberals and Russian imperialists are “much closer to one another” than either is to socialism and consequently, they often share time on Moscow state television and reinforce both their own attitudes and their disdain for socialism, according to Aleksandr Segal.

            This leads each to a certain “eclecticism” about the USSR, the Moscow political consultant says, with each taking what it likes from the Soviet past and ignoring the rest, thus promoting hostility to socialism as such, precisely what the current Russian regime prefers (svpressa.ru/society/article/318686/).

            “But socialism,” Segal argues, “is a system in which the elements are interconnected in an essential way. Victory in the Great Fatherland War and the nuclear weapon became possible thanks to socialism not in spite of it. Had there been capitalism in the USSR we would have lost as only a planned economy could mobilize and focus on the final result rather than profit.”

            According to Segal, “it is impossible to be a little bit pregnant. Eclecticism in ideology testifies to the lack of systemic thought and as a result to a lack of understanding of the way in which things are interconnected.” And this shortcoming, the analyst says, has a negative impact on the future.

            Today, as a result of such lack of thought, many Russians “feel that the ‘ideal’ picture of ‘the USSR without socialism would be a White Russian dictatorship” even though such  a system would have been “socially unjust and much harsher than the dictatorship of the proletariat” ever was.

            Segal’s remarks come in reaction to a new VTsIOM survey which show that 20 percent of Russians view Mikhail Gorbachev as the most negative Soviet leader, with only a few less viewing Stalin, Khrushchev and Beria in that light, nine percent saying it of Yeltsin, but only five percent of Brezhnev and four percent of Lenin.