Re: Why did the USSR fall?

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> "Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx> 04/26/00


CB , yours truly had said:

So, some form of sharp centralism was inevitable, if
> there was to be a socialist country at all in the face of total
> imperialist war on all socialist countries, no revolution in another ,
> big , industrial country, etc.
>
> The personage of Stalin is highly contingent. Stalin could have been
> hit by a lightening bolt in 1917, and there still would have been a
> militarized , centralized task to be fulfilled to survive the Civil
> War and the inevitable hi tech imperialist hit that the Nazi attack
> actualized.


 Nestor dijo:

But imagine that Lenin had remained alive, and had been in the lead.
The question is: was it inevitable that the whole thing moved the way
it did?

_____________

Charles dijo: Recall that Lenin emphasized the iron discipline of the 
Bolsheviks in
certain times before 1917 as a very critical reason for its success. This was
quasi-military discipline and centralism.

Then there was War Communism and the Red Terror in the Civil War era.

Lenin was Party central committee member, and chair of the Council of People's
Commissars , or somesuch, in periods of highly centralized organization.

Like any average Leninist, I automatically imagine that Lenin would have done 
better
than Stalin :>). Theoretically, wouldn't even Stalin agree that Lenin would 
have done
better than Stalin ? Of course, to even speculate on  that is historical
counterfactual based on two BIG MAN making a DIFFERENCE in history is an 
extremely
inappropriate project for historical materialism.

It was not inevitable that the whole thing moved the way it did. There could 
have been
a revolution in an advanced capitalist country or two, like Germany and France, 
and
then we would have had it, the rev. Less need for centralism and militarism in 
the SU.
No , WWII, no Nazis.




>
> CB: The best thing the Soviet Union could and China can do for the
> world revolution is survive, and survive as socialist. It is not their
> main job to make _revolution_ in other countries, though there is
> proletarian internationalism.

The problem with Stalin is that while one may debate whether the
Soviet leadership had a right to dismiss revolutions abroad, more or
less on the lines you state, the  right they _did not have_ (and
which ultimately brought havoc on the SU itself) was to barbarize
political debate within the socialist camp in order to STIFFLE
revolutions abroad. Spain, China, are but two examples.

____________

CB: I would not say that proletarian internationalism trucks with _dismissing_
revolutions abroad. However, the SU could not be a main cause of revolution in 
other
countries. The revolutions had to have their major causes inside the nations
themselves.


Also, I ain't been anykind of barbarian in debates on revolution here abroad 
from the
SU, and the SU had something to do with me becoming a Marxist and the SU in no 
way
influenced me to be barbaric in political debate within the socialist camp in 
order to
stiffle revolutions. And I know people directly and reports and documents of 
thousands
more who were similarly influenced as me by the SU, including going back the 
whole
period to 1917and before; and including with respect to Spain and China. So, the
influence of the SU in this regard has been not just bad, but good as well.

I am not clear on the materialist status of "barbarization" of debate, 
especially with
respect to debate in the U.S. or many other countries where the SU had no state 
force
influence, but completely the contrary would render a party a target of and 
extremely
outgunned before the bourgeois state apparatus. In the U.S. now, and for the 
most of
the history of U.S. communism, communists who have supported the Soviet Union 
have
been so delegitimized and criminalized that they could not possible form as 
armed or
forceful units, and did not babarize the socialist debate in any material sense 
of
"barbarize".

CB

_______________


[...]

At the same time, I tend to agree with what follows.
>
> By the way, Russia is not quite got its capitalist act together
> sufficient that we can say it is a capitalist country. So, it is not
> clear that China can go all the way capitalist on historical examples.





Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx