The CPSU's Congress
USSR ingly putting forward policies which would combine the denationalizations of Thatcher, the Tory anti-union laws, and the continuation of mass unemployment with some increased public spending and more support for domestic manufacturing industry.
offers few surprises
There is a significant section of the bourgeoisie which is prepared to consider this as an alternative to the
Tories.
Given the decline of the Tory vote has therefore been a growing there discussion in the bourgeois press on
TWO FALLACIOUS views of Soviet reality prevail today in the the desirability, or otherwise, of an
Alliance/Labour coalition after the
The first presents the Soviet Union essentially as a rigid and totalinext general election. For example,
The Economist on March 1 wrote:
tarian society. In this view the bureaucracy's control of all social life
"Labour is not a mass party and is the cause of a near-total resistance to change. The bureaucracy never will be again. The local governhas supposedly managed to accommodate everything into its system - ment politicians who will dominate
Labour in the 1990s know that.
the black market, corruption, criminality, economic dysfunctions,
They have joined hands with the the attraction of the Western model of consumption. The apolitical single-issue, non-socialist campaigns outlook of the population seems to be the ultimate proof of the with the electicism of any American bureaucracy's success. The system, therefore, can reproduce itself power-broker. They might - just might - be convinced that Labour's hopes of government rest on finding
A good many of the right-wing dissidents go even further in such common ground with the Alliance.
assessments, on which evidently most of the bourgeois "Soviet-
If Mr. Kinnock is as keen on power as he says, he should be telling his that the days of splendid party
The second view, on the contrary, presents Soviet society as essenisolation are over."
tially dynamic. Economic progress, the rise in the standard of living
Various ideologists advising the and the increasing skills of the workers are supposed to explain both right wing of the Labour Party have also been putting forward similar the lack of popular political opposition and the constant pressure
Marx ism
Today, perspectives.
the for progressive reforms, which the bureaucracy cannot forever avoid.
journal of the Euro-Communist wing
What has been on the agenda since Stalin's death in 1953, according to of the Communist Party, has long advocated a coalition this view, are successive waves of reforms. And these are bringing the between Labour and the Alliance.
Soviet Union ever closer to the model of socialist society envisioned
28, the Labourite New
Statesman's editorial said: *This week,
Gorbachev's reforms are viewed as simply the latest in a long the fifth birthday of the SDP, marks an event of tribal rather than ideoloseries demonstrating the vitality and the basic health of the society.
gical significance. The SDP is cele-
The course of radical reforms and democratization will be irreverbrating the event. So are some on the left - good riddance to the traitors.
But the only tribe that can take any
This second view prevails not only in the pro-Soviet Communist - is the collection parties and the Cuban Communist Party. It also shows up increasingly warriors with the blue face paint: the among the Eurocommunists and, indeed, in a growing wing of Euro-
Conservative Party. As long as their opponents remain divided, they stand pean social democracy, especially in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) - chance of winning the major
Thatcher
The government has weakened seriously the last over year. The bourgeoisie is attempting policies of to maintain the essential
Thatcher in place while recognising that it may be necessary to make some limited concessions in the field of social expenditure. At the general election key sections of the ruling class will continue to support the
Tories, but they are now giving much attention to the question greater of forcing Labour into some sort of coalition with the Alliance.
The fight against the Tories and against form of coalitionism any is now even more clearly at the top of the political agenda.
12
West. indefinitely. ologists" agree. by Marx and Lenin.
The dune of radical rotors
sible. of West Germany. (1) ERNEST MANDEL
An objective analysis of the Soviet reality and its evolution over the last 30 years leads to the conclusion that both of these views are incorrect. They do not take into account the nature and the contradictory evolution of Soviet society, which consists precisely of a combination of dynamism and immobility.
The dynamism is the result of the economic and social growth, which is very impressive over the long term even though it is slowing down each year. This growth has profoundly changed the country relative to what it was in 1940, in 1950 or even in 1960.
The immobility is the result of the bureaucracy's iron grip on the state and society. This straitjacket is an obstacle to future growth. It
1. See in particular the comments of the Czech Communist emigre leader, Mlynar, in the West German revue, zialismus,' April, 1986. On the other hand. in a recent book Zhores Meduedeu expresses a more sober and pessimistic view of Gorbache's goals and methods. ('Gorbachev," Basil Blackwell, London, 1986.) In a similar see Marie Lavigne in 'Le Monde Diplomatique, February, 1986.
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986
deprives the country - especially the working masses, the youth, the creative intelligentsia, women, national minorities, the "nouveaux pauvres" [new poor] - of a large share of the fruits of past growth.
Today this contradiction dominates the situation in the Soviet Union and will determine its immediate future. It explains the preoccupations, the anxiety, indeed even the anguish of the Gorbachev leadership team. It is the source at the same time both of its populist demagogy about the need for "radical reforms" and of its inability to achieve such reforms to an extent that could give momentum to economic growth. "Non-event" or "Reform on the move"?
This contradiction dominated the preparation for the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as well as the debates of the congress held in March this year. It was to be expected, then, that in broad terms the two parallel interpreabove would be found in the assessanalysts. Some of them maintain that it was a disappointing nothing happened - a "non-event" as it were. Others it the confirmation that "reform" is on the move and that
In an earlier article devoted to the months of the Gorbachev era, I described the project of the new Kremlin chief as a bureaucratic reform of the bureaucracy. (2) The substance of the 27th CPSU Congress completely confirms this assessment.
The congress was first and foremost of bureaucrats, not of as much, if not more than preceding congresses. Of the 88 speeches given from the rostrum at the congress, only eight - less than ten per cent -can be attributed to workers actually working in an enterprise, and that only in the vaguest sense of the word. Even significant: although women represented 27 per cent of the delegates to the congress, only seven were able to take the platform - less than 8 per cent of the speakers.
To the Central Committee, composed of 307 members, 15 women were elected. Not a single woman was elected to the Political Bureau composed of 12 members and seven candidate-members. One woman was elected to the Secretariat of the Central Committee without being included in the Political Bureau. In the combined membership of the
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986
Political Bureau and the Secretariat among the membership of 26. should suffice to confirm the judgement of revolutionary Marxists on the cracy - it is not a party of the working class. (3) But at the same time, this bureaucracy job security (at least at the previous level), which it had Leonid Brezhnev. He had come into power, as he himself said, in order to secure the "respect for the cadres," a respect that Khrushchev had sorely tested. Gorbachev, on the contrary, shook up the cadres, pursuing the trail already blazed by Yuri Andropov.
Again the statistics are eloquent. At the top of the hierarchy, following have been replaced: 5 of the 12 members of the Political Bureau, 10 of the 24 department heads on the Central Committee, 30 of the 80
4 of the 15 first secretaries of the Communist parties of the
50 of the 159 regional first secretaries of the CPSU of 320 members of the former Central Committee. The purge at the summit was a radical one, even if Gorbachev, in his report to the 27th 'demand' (made by whom?) for a purge of the party as a whole.
The bureaucratic nature of the Congress, too, appeared in the careful orchestration of the event down to the last detail - all spontaneity was absent. All the speeches were prepared advance, read, according to a deadly dull division of labor. The only moment of relaxation was provided by Gorbachev himself fulsome homage being paid to him by a certain Kulijanov, first secretary of the cinematographic workers'
March 1, 1986). But, here, who is to say that this incident was not also a prearranged
Fundamentally, the 27th Congress brought up nothing new. The objectives for the year 2000 were known in advance: to double production, to ensure access to individual housing families, to regularize supplies and increase agricultural production in a spectacular way. These goals confirmed by
The principal means envisaged to get the economic and social growth started again were defined as follows at the plenum of the Central Committee in April 1985:
• A simultaneous reinforcement of the central authority of the plan and the autonomy of the factory managements, with a reduction in power of the intermediate bodies such as the ministries.
• Greater discipline on the job especially, calculating workers' wages on the basis of their individual
• The creation of agro-industrial committees to stimulate the moderni-
A broadening of the area of commodity production in agriculture and services, but not in industry.
• Priority to high technology and to the industries that are supposed to promote it - electronics, electric machines, lasers, biogenetics, scientific equipment - in order to close the technological gap between the Soviet Union and the imperialist
• Top priority accorded to the modernization of existing plants rather than the construction of new ones.
• A crack-down on corruption, the black market, illegal middlemen (tolkachi), etc.
There is nothing at all new in this. It even falls short of what was promann at the beginning of the 1960s
Kosygin at beginning of the 1970s. And, besides, the numerous defects in the Soviet of the 27th Congress, literally identical to those denounced by Georgy Malenkov more than 30 years ago. (4)
The stress placed in all the reports on the role of the cadres confirms the impression that it is essentially through greater discipline inside the
La more careful of officials that the Gorbachev administration hopes to achieve these objectives. "Make way for the efficient technoerat" word of the hour. The ritualistic appeals to the "participation of the rank and file" can throw only the most naive off the track. The bogus innocents pretend to believe them when they are not expressing their skepticism in whispers.
true that a new proposal emerged in Gorbachev's report: the
'International Viewpoint,' No. 83, meetings at least once a year. and for several years now, most Communists So reads a letter from a reader of 'Pravda, January 1, 1986. Ryzhkou denounces the fact that more than 300,000 half-built projects have remained unfinished some of them for many years. Between 1981 and 1984, the production costs of such projects had already exceeded the original estimates by 24%. worker, GS Kostenko, revealed to the Congress that one brickyard has been in the process of construction in Bamouskaia for ten years! ("Prauda," March 3, 1986)
13
The 27th Congress of the CPSU in session: can you spot the woman?
СЬЕОЛІ
КПоС
creation of what he calls "councils of worker collectives" in the factories. However, these councils will be appointed, not elected. (5) They will be composed - if indeed they ever see the light of day, which is not certain - representatives management, of party committees, of the trade unions and of the komsomols [Soviet youth organizations], of brigades and of "workers and experts" (that is, technicians). The bureaucracy's control is thus assured in advance. We are a long way from genuine, democratically elected workers' councils. Socialist democracy still only an air bubble
If socialist democracy was mentioned in Gorbachev's report and if this theme cropped up again in several delegates' speeches, the proposals and commentaries on this question were of a vagueness that was more than merely prudent. These proposals were not even trial balloons. They were air bubbles that vanish in an instant.
"We must remember that, for Lenin, the very essence of Soviet power lay in the self-administration of the workers," proclaims Gorbachev with the turn of a phrase. But, the 14 specifies: administration cannot be developed outside of the state institutions, but must occur within them." We are not, then, dealing with new bodies, but under the bureaucracy's power.
Gorbachev allusion to extending the power of the elucidation. But he immediately ad mitted that all of these institutions very few material said, "Those who surplus produet, control the society." In the Soviet Union the central state apparatus controls the social surplus product. There is no question of the slightest relaxation of this control. Gorbachev proclaimed that long the enthusiastic applause of the bureaucratic participants at the congress. It was even one of the frenetic peaks of the congress.
There followed another air bubble, this affirmation from Gorbachev: "It is time to implement the necessary corrections to our electoral practices." Which ones? The congress pants and the Soviet masses were left with little to go on. No clarification
"The trade unions are doing everything necessary to ensure discipline at work and to increase productivity," "However, when it comes to defending the workers' legitimate interests, the improvement of working conditions, the effort to avoid accidents, the construction and operation of hospital services, of sport and culture demonstrating in any of these areas persistance. It is clear that such satisfies those officials of the economy for whom production puts the human being in the shadow.
February 26, 1986). How can that be changed? Through simple ritualistic exhortations? It is a mystery! Once again there is not an intimation of a concrete proposal.
And yet the heart of the problem. Socialist democracy is neither a normative requirement nor an idea" to be realized in stages. It constitutes an immediate practical necessity for functioning of economy and Soviet society. Without such democracy, it is impossible
It is true that in Gorbacheu's native region, Stavropol, the former CPSU first secretary, Razumousky, who has been promised a place as department head on the Central Committee, had made a few feeble attempts to allow elections by the personnel of the middle-level leadership in the factories. International Viewpoint 16 June 1986
for of count the heightened in
Yevgeny
Yuri
These aim at tying performance.
much less of factors workers' collecof the bureaucrats.
The attractions of a market economy that broadening of appears to be in motion.
the academician problem privileges,
Gorbachev.
prior to the admissible to munists.
justice by the as a market sphere, special shops.
institutionalizaand particularly drivers?
More of
- the but she is now officially guaranteed class.
One could over the this discontent.
the regular honest comif honest com- of the repair of a profound in-
The working men a Workers' discontent goes public content more openly. - particularly typically of a "fight the textile and then even of will gain. workers are AS 6. The Feber 1 N 1986, 'Pravda' published a letter from Nikolaieu of Kazan, calling for the abolition of the special shops, clinics and restaurants reserved for the bureaucracy. A similar letter appeared in 'Sovietskaia Rossia' on the same day. 7. The ex-assistant secretary general of the United Nations, Arkady N Sheuchenko, denounces the exhorbitant privileges that the high officials of the Soviet diplomatic corps including Gromyko enjoy, in his book, Breaking with Moscow" (Knopf, New York, 1985) This fellow is among the
La go-getter without political convictions, but his descriptions ring true. 8. This press conference is reported at length in the French daily, Liberation, February 28, 1986. 15
same as it was half a century ago: nearly 40 per cent. And this manual work is performed with the aid of pneumatic drills similar to those of 1935, but of an even more inferior
The same speaker added: In 1981 we were provided with a complicated machine for drilling and excavation, but this machine is seriously defective. It is unusable for 40 per cent of working time. A lot of the jobs it does have had to be done over by teams
A worker in a flax mill, VN Pletnjova, disclosed in her speech (published in the February Pravda) that her industrial complex, which specializes in the manufacture of domestic linen made from flax, has fewer and fewer customers because of the inferior quality and tastelessness of its products. She added: "They talk constantly of the need to replace the factory equipment, but this rebuilding has been delayed now for several five-year periods. Fewer and fewer workers will accept jobs in the weaving workof the lamentable that fills these work-rooms. Because of mill and the weaving establishments is growing continually."
There are still more virulent complaints from 27 workers who succeedpublished in Pravda although they delegates to the CPSU Congress. In the March 18, 1986, they disclose that although they were highly qualited as electric welding inspectors, they had been employed in the Novomoskov factory - set up to make pipes for running water - in annexes where enamelled porcelain was manufactured.
intolerable health clothes, without protection from the pay for overtime. And this is in a plant that was officially reconstruc ted ten years ago but where the same techniques and equipment are being
"in the time of our grand-
But here is the most significant aspect of the business. The complaint was made public. The factory management made its self-criticism. It promised to satisfy all the demands of the workers. Time passed. Journalists returned to the plant. nothing had changed. Their report ended with a vague formula: "There are complicated technological probcomplicated" can it be to provide workelothes and elementary protec16
If we study carefully the economic disputes of the workers in the Soviet Union, we can glimpse a slow resurgence of class reaction, a phenomenon that is much more important than immediate demands and everycomplaints. The negative reaction of many workers faced with the work-brigade system, revealed in a sensation-causing article in the review EKO, was caused, according to the official investigation, by the cohesion and collective solidarity of the workers which the brigade system tried to smash and to which the workers are fiercely attached. (9) That is also one of the reasons why they are generally hostile to that part of Gorbachev's reforms that aims at Speed-ups and a new Stakhanovism
Gorbachev is trying to rehabilitate Stakhanovism and to restart scarcely disguised similar experiments. But the worker Pletnjova, the 27th CPSU Congress cited above, fact that "some organizers of compehigh levels. and make the fastest workers help by means of maneuvers. But the results are attributed rewarded] exclusively to those highpowered workers. This is where these astounding records come from." This is exactly the secret of Stakhanovism, which this worker justly considers to be contrary to the tradition, to the interests and to the sense of justice of the proletariat!
The social discontent of the Soviet working class appears particularly serious as seen through the speeches made at the 27th Congress, including the speeches of the principal officials. They confirm that the provision of supplies of good quality is irregular and insufficient, creating a serious inflationary pressure. They confirm that housing conditions are far from satisfactory. They reveal serious gaps in health matters. (10)
Especially stressed is the indifference of the plant managers and the local political leaders to the needs and demands of the masses of workers. A miner, ZhM Chatalov, in the March 1, 1986, Pravda, revealed the fact that in his mining basin 150 million roubles (1 rouble - 0.71 US dollars) had been invested in production and "not a single one in cultural or sports facilities for the miners." (11) The worker GS Kostenko recalled in the March 3 Pravda that during the twelfth five-year plan, 10,000 housing units should have been built for the workers of Glavbamstroi, which is constructing a new railroad line to serve northern Siberia. But only 1,000 io. According 'EKO, No. 8, 1985 to public opinion poll conducted by the Institute of Sociological Investigation of the Academy of Sciences in 1985, and reported in the journal, *Moscow News,' (but not in the Russian language Soviet press), 45% of the persons polled considered that medical services functioned less well than ten years ago, 52% said that shops were less well-supplied and 54% replied that public transportation was worse. (BBC World Service, January 17, 1986)
11. The only party veteran to take the platform at the 27th Congress, exminer (today the topmost inspector of the Stakhanov-Shakhtostroy Trust) KG Petrov, complained in the March 2, 1986, 'Pravda' that one pneumatic drill with reduced vibration, invented by the Siberian Institute of the Academy •OT Sciences, had not been mass-produced and not been put into service. Why mas there so uttle com. cern for the health of the miners? he asked.
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986
The result is an enormous turnover in the work force. A third of the workers change their job each year because they are unhappy about their living conditions.
Many speakers at the CPSU Congress disclosed that it is the current practice to consider social expenditures as nonpriority or "residual" items, that is expenditures to be made by the industrial units and complexes only to the extent that there are resources left over after the so-called economic expenses have been taken
The Congress confirmed especially the existence of an enormous mass of poor and forgotten people in Soviet society. This phenomenon in itself would amply justify the revolutionary Marxist thesis that the Soviet Union is a very long way from
Gorbachev reveals that in the Soviet Union there are more than 50 million must add the millions of disabled, severely injured and widowed persons. Premier Ryzhkov has set a goal for the next five-year plan of a minimum income of 50 roubles a month for each inhabitant. At present, it appears that some 40 million Soviet citizens do not have even that miserable although the minimum for subsistence has been fixed at that level since 1967 and confirmed by law since 1976. (12) A decent standard of living requires
Troubles a month for each
The new director of ideology in the CPSU Political Bureau, JK Ligatchov, has announced that climate of sincerity and of honesty, of party principles and truth" must be created. (13) The very people enormous material vantages over the "nouveaux pauvres, the workers, the laborers and the collective farms have the nerve to reproach a large part of Soviet society for "closing themselves off in the narrow world of self-interest and ego. istical gratification."
used by that arch-conservative Markov, bureaucrat-in-chief of the writers, to condemn the Soviet neorealist novelists and filmmakers, who attempt at least to portray Soviet
Have we not reached the pinnacle of hypocrisy and incoherence here? On the one hand the powers that be are constantly calling for sharing," while insisting ponderously that each must be paid according to the work performed and seeking to production by promising to raise wages conditional upon that increase in production. On the other these same bureaucrats are castigating those who "count every
, all the while jealously guard-
International Viewpoint 16 June 1986 ing the enormous heaps of roubles that so generously the bureaucracy accords itself. Is not that the primal source of the climate of insincerity, hypocrisy, mendacity and cynicism that generally prevails in the Soviet Union?
To explain the disappointing insipidness of the CPSU 27th Congress, the sycophants of the gang in the Kremlin pull out two contradictory arguments: Gorbachev has not yet overcome all resistance within the especially in the middle and lower levels, and therefore, real reform measures can only be introduced after new political battles. And then — instructed by the negaexample of the overly hasty Khrushchev, Gorbachev, skilled administrator that he is, would prefer to perform less spectacularly, more effectively. Real reforms, then, will be introduced gradually. The necessity for "revolutionary changes"
Leaving aside the large dose
(including self-deception) that such interpretations of the 27th Congress comprise, the contradiction is unmistakable between the modesty of the decisions made and the crying need for renovation, for radical reform and radical change, which was declared throughout the congress. The government head Ryzhkov even spoke of the necessity of "fundamental changes" and of "revolutionary changes."
How can we not emphasize the rather disillusioned remarks of the new Moscow party chief, Yeltsin, who protested: "Why do we bring up all the same problems at every congress? Why has that obviously foreign word, 'stagnation,' come into the party vocabulary? Why, after all these years, have we not succeeded in eliminating the roots of bureaucratism, of social injustice and of abuses of power?" Then comes the disappointing answer: "Because some party officials don't have the courage to assess in time and correctly the situation and their own role." (14)
Do we really think that a great country of 260 million inhabitants could be mired in stagnation, massive corruption and social injustice simply
"some party officials" lack fairy tale? the stops to obtain at least the modest reforms that Brezhnev could not or did not wish to accomplish? Is all of his talk simply a populist attempt to shake up the apparatus and nothing more? Will it remain just talk in the muscle of the apparatus?
The Soviet citizens are less afraid of criticizing. criticisms are countless. But we are no longer dealing with just individual
In his speech Gromyko admitted that critical letters to the press are sometimes signed by hundreds of workers. So this is no longer a matter of letters, but of collective petitions that constitute a form of para-political or political debate.
Gorbachev's outcries, then, are only an echo of broader outcries that are rising up from the depths of Soviet society. After the long Stalinist winter,
Khrushchev's brief thaw, this upsurge will of necessity be slow and contradictory. But it is this rise that will resolve the fundamental contradiction in the situation mentioned at the beginning of this article. And from it we must await salvation, a genuine new advance in the construction of
An event that took place on the fringes of the congress, and which is ways symbolic of Soviet as a whole, sums up potential. Near the beginning of the congress one of the "official" speakers had championed the unrealistic project of diverting some of the great Siberian rivers — a project that was of Stalinist origin but which Gorbachev taken up as one of the pillars of "his" solution to the agrarian crisis. At the end of the congress, and on the fringes of it, without any vote taken or collective opinion expressed, the project was withdrawn. Was there an unheard outcry or a faint echo of subterranean protests? The answer is clear.
The tragic catastrophe at Chernobyl awareness in the Soviet Union one of the driving force in the repoliticization of the masses of people. concerns each and every one of us, said many Siberians about the diversion
"That concerns each and every one of us," the citizens of will say about Chernobyl. "Let us look to these things that conThat is the next step, and there will be more and more of them in the Soviet Union.
Meruyn, Matthews, 'Prauda,' February 28, 1986. Yeltsin added that he had not had enough
OTTE recalls that Ivan Khudenko, who had been authorized to experiment with new forms
He was dragged before a tribunal died in prison in 1974. This example article by Stephen F Cohen in 'The Nation,
NICARAGUA merchants were assassinated by contra mercenaries in two ambushes near
Chontales in
Attacks against trained personnel and