Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 20 – “It is time to
acknowledge the responsibility of the successful minority before the 90 percent
of [Russian] citizens, whose hopes for a better future were deceived” following
the collapse of the Soviet system, and for that minority to make changes “in
the interests of the majority which suffered these losses,” according to Igor
Eidman.
Only by doing so, he argues, can
Russians who consider themselves to be democrats succeed in forming a mass
opposition movement, one that will not pursue the restoration of the
dictatorship of the past but pursue movement “forward to a more just and
rational society which corresponds to the demands of the time and new
technological and information possibilities.”
Its “main taks will be the
deprivation of the financial-bureaucratic oligarchy of power and property, the
establishment of a system of exploitation of the resources of the country in
the interests of the majority of the population, and the formation of all
insittutions of administration on the basis of direct democracy” (echo.msk.ru/blog/igeid/804056-echo/).
“The chief result of the events of
August 1991,” the Moscow sociologist argues, is that “the Soviet bureaucracy
obtained as property the economic resources of the country which had been under
its administration.” Everything else, he
says, was “secondary” to that. A small share of the population benefitted; but
a far larger one suffered.
Among the other consequences which
may be called “secondary,” Eidman says, were “the disintegration of the empire,
the replacement of a planned economy with a market-based one, a reduction in
the standard of living of the majority of the population, a broadening of
certain civic freedoms … the introduction of formal multi-party system and
formally competitive elections to positions of power.”
Such an understanding of what has
actually taken place in Russia has become possible because “nine anti-Soviet
myths” by which the Soviet intelligentsia lived have now been shown since 1991
to be precisely that “myths” rather than a description of reality, Eidman
continues. And he considers each of them
in turn.
The first myth that has been dispelled
was that “the destruction of socialism will bring happiness or at the very
least democracy to the peoples of the USSR.”
The three Baltic countries managed that but no one else. Elsewhere there was established “an eastern
despotism even harsher than CPSU rule or imitation democracy.”
Not surprisingly only ten percent of
Russians say that they were winners from this process, and that is not even to
take into consideration the irreversible losses from military conflicts both
within the Russian Federation and across the former Soviet space.
The second myth now in ruins is that
markets will “destroy the deficit and lead to plenty.” Because subsidies disappeared with the
planned economy, “a significant portion of society began to eat worse,” even
while the more well-off portions of the population lived better than ever.
The third myth which its believers must
face is the notion that “a market economy is always more effective than a socialist
one.” It can be but isn’t necessarily
so. Russia with its market economy
recovered to the pre-1991 level only after 17 years and only because of rising
international prices for oil and gas.
The fourth myth that has dissolved is
that “private property is always better than public property.” That too may be true in certain
circumstances, but in the case of Russia, those who became the new owners were
the old “medieval feudals” who behaved accordingly. This was symbolized by “the
neo-Saltykhovs driving Mercedes.”
The fifth myth Eidman says has collapsed
is that of “the full personal freedom under capitalism.” That people were not free under communism is
obvious, but that they could become completely free under capitalism alone is
an unattainable dream. “If earlier there was one all-seeing eye of the KGB, now
many companies spy on their workers.”
The sixth myth involves the idea that
the collapse of the Soviet Union would result in the appearance of “an Upper
Volta with rockets.” It is true that the
kind of capitalism which came to Russia was of the “wild ‘African’” kind but
the presence of the rockets continued to make the country a real power even
without a domestic base.
The seventh myth, Eidman says, is that
the privileges of the bureaucracy under socialism would disappear under
capitalism. Instead, what has happened is just the reverse with the standard of
living of the top elite vastly greater than that of the senior party and state
officials and even more vastly greater than ordinary Russians.
The eighth myth beloved of the Soviet
intelligentsia was that the end of communism would also mean the end of those
who did not work but lived on the system. In fact, if anything, their number
has increased at least to judge by the constantly increasing size of the
government bureaucracies.
And the ninth myth which has now
dissipated is that “the West is the best friend of freedom and human rights in
Russia.” Where is the West today when there are several thousand political
prisoners in the post-Soviet states? The
existence of such people has not interfered with Western cooperation with the
dictatorial leaders of these states.
Until recently and likely again, Putin
has been treated as a full partner of the West. “Could one imagine Brezhnev in
this role? And he didn’t kill off his
opponents with polonium, bomb Grozny, dissolve parliament with tanks or
conducted himself as brutally as Yeltsin and Putin.”
For the capitalists in the West, none of
this appears to matter as long as they can make a profit. As Eidman observes,
“the West is interested above all in one right, the right of private property
over the means of production and the right of its entrepreneurs to freely make
money in all countries of the world. Everything else for the Western ruling elite
is a smokescreen.”
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