Russia Proves Marx Wrong: For Its Elite, Being Doesn’t Define Consciousness, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 13 – Marxists argue and many non-Marxists accept that “being defines consciousness and the economic basis the political superstructure,” Igor Eidman says.  But in fact, the experience of the Russian elite over the past 25 years proves just the reverse: they may wear Armani suits, but they remain Stalinist guards.

            Their consciousness has not changed even though their appearance has, the Russian sociologist observes. “They have become major property owners, control factories and yachts, travel throughout the world, their children study in the best universities, and their wives dress in fashionable designer smocks” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5C3A540A95290).

            But underneath those externalities which impress so many, Eidman continues, their comments and actions demonstrate that they remain what they were, “Stalinist guards” in boots and jackets who view those below them with contempt and who are prepared to suppress them when those above call for it.

            “No fashionable suit will make out of a prison guard a civilized human being,” he says. “No property will transform him into a respectable bourgeois. The guars alays will operate on the basis of crude force, showing contempt for the rights and freedoms of others and using their dependent position to denigrate and rob them.”

            Today’s Russian ruling elite, “inherited this guard’s world view from its Stalinist forefathers, and there is thus nothing surprising when it justifies the GULAG and restores the cult of the main guard of all times and peoples – Stalin.”  Indeed, it would be surprising if such people would do anything else.

            It is bad enough that Marxists believed the nonsense that putting such people in suits and having them own property would transform Russia, but it is far worse that those who claimed to have been the greatest opponents of the Soviet system did the same, counting on economic change alone to change the political and economic culture of that country.

            After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Western governments rushed to proclaim as the new Russian elites, counting on changed economic circumstances to change them from Stalinists into supporters of democracy.  That of course didn’t happen, and Eidman is absolutely right to point out that it hasn’t.

            Far more will be needed, and it will have to begin with the recognition that to change politics, one must use political means rather than assuming that economics alone will do the job.