What future for the new "Commonwealth"?
International Viewpoint #220 • January 20, 1992 ex-USSR cally to the industrial development of the European regions. By the same logic, the inhabitants of the oil-rich area of Tyumen, in Siberia, within the Russian republic, could say that they had helped all the other regions and demand their independence. But it is not likely that Yeltsin, who has done so much to dismantle the Soviet Union in the goal of bolstering his own power, would be ready to recognize such a demand —
THE SHAPE that relations between the republics of the former
USSR will ultimately take is still far from clear. But the recognition of Ukrainian independence by some Western states, following the referendum there on December 1, and the
Brest agreement of December 8 among the presidents of
Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia to create a "Commonwealth
, referred to also as the "Slavic of Independent States",
Commonwealth", raise many complex questions about the nature of the national and independence movements in the former USSR. The purpose of this article — written on
December 19, 1990 — is very modest: briefly to raise some key issues that must be clarified before one can adopt a socialist position in relation to the unfolding events.
DAVID SEPPO
NE MUST surely begin by asking whether the Soviet
Union was an empire, and if so, what was the specific nature of the imperialist relations within that country? It is quite common to identify the centralized bureaucratic domina-
Moscow tion emanating from with
Russian domination and Russian economic exploitation of the other republics.
In practice, the privileges enjoyed by
Russians twofold: preference, shared with other Slav peoples, in recruitment to the higher levels of the central administrations (in the republics themselves, preference was generally given to the indigenous people — Russia had no real republican administration), and the use of Russian as lingua franca in the
USSR.
All this varied greatly both geographically and historically and would require a detailed analysis for each republic and ethnic group (for one thing, under Brezhnev, in many regions, Russian and other minorities were themselves the objects of discrimination). But it is generally true that, apart from these two admittedly very important areas, the Russian people suffered from the same degree of political oppression and economic exploitation at the hands of the bureaucracy as the great majority of non-Russian peoples. And in the last years, Russians' hatred of the
"centre", so skillfully exploited by Yeltsin and the liberals, has been at least as great as that of the other peoples.
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Non-Russian nationalists have made political capital from the claim that "Moscow" exploited their peoples. But although "Moscow" is geographically in Russia, it should not be identified with Russia. Russians in virtually every region of the Russian republic itself make the same claim, and with justice: "Moscow exploited us". If one were to calculate inter-republican exchanges in world prices, it might well turn out that Russia was a net subsidizer of the economies of the other republics, since it produces the bulk of raw materials and other exportable goods capable of earning foreign currency (oil and gas, precious and nonprecious metals, wood and paper, diamonds, and so on. These were exchanged within the Union (and inside Comecon) at prices much lower than those of the international market.
It is true that the shops of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and other capitals and big cities were better stocked than those in the rest of the country. But this practice, like that of the bureaucratic prices and privileges themselves, related to a political decision which had little — indeed nothing - to do with national or ethnic considerations.
The Russian nationalists, like those of the other more industrialized European republics, claim that they have aided the least developed republics, which are largely Muslim. This is undoubtedly true if one calculates prices on the basis of the world market. But do these prices represent a criterion of justice? All the peoples of the USSR have contributed economiwhen it comes to the territory of Russia, he is no longer a partisan of self-determination.
Socialists support the right to self-determination as a fundamental democratic right. For the same reason, under perestroika, most Soviet workers began to support the sovereignty of the various republics: they had the impression that the governments of these latter, elected by universal suffrage, were closer to them and would thus be subject to democratic control. But many workers - including, initially, the majority of people in the Baltic republics — while opposed to bureaucratic hyper-centralization, did not want to see the "centre" dismantled. They wanted it to become more democratic and to be reformed so that it exercised only those powers which were voluntarily delegated to it by the republics.
Paradoxical referendum results
This was the meaning of the apparently paradoxical results of the referendum of March 1991, where an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, for example, voted both for Ukrainian sovereignty and for a renewed union.
The people wanted a union formed from below and not from above, but which would however be a genuine union, with real powers, including the power to redistribute wealth. Gorbachev, who resisted the popular pressure to democratize the central state, bears the principal responsibility for the disintegration of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the popular sentiment of opposition to the "centre" has been exploited and manipulated by the leaders of the republics who wished to build and/or preserve their own power. This power, in practice, is itself far from being democratic and, with time, it becomes more and more authoritarian -this is in the logic of things, to the extent that these republican regimes are incapable of checking the economic decline, and inasmuch as their reform programmes have a fundamentally anti-popular nature.
The surprising transformation of the President of the Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, is a case in point. Until the August putsch, towards which he adopted a very equivocal position, this former Communist bureaucrat, a belated supporter even of Ukrainian sovereignty, opposed outright independence and secession from the union. After the putsch, he suddenly
January 20, 1992 • #220 International Viewpoint became a fierce independentist, refusing to sign the proposed union economic treaty and rejecting any form of central state, which he equated with "totalitarianism". Kravchuk also interpreted the December 1 referendum as a rejection of any central state and said he had to obey the popular will. Yet, the referendum did not in fact pose the question of a new union treaty. Moreover, Kravchuk's professed concern for democracy did not prevent him from negotiating and signing the Brest agreement in total secrecy and without any popular mandate.
Not only was that agreement reached by a fundamentally undemocratic procedure, but it had strong racist overtones, as President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan implied, since only the Slavic republics participated. They then invited the other republics to adhere to this fait accompli, refusing them the right to negotiate its terms as equals of the Slavs. After protests by the non-Slav republics, the three cosigners appear to UKRAINE have backtracked, but the message is clear: in any new "Commonwealth" there will be no commitment, as was the case, at least formally, in the USSR, to political equality among the republics or to social justice through redistribution of wealth.
The Minsk agreement appears as just one more gesture by Yeltsin and his entourage calculated to undermine trust among the peoples of the former USSR with a view to ensuring that there will be no renewed, democratic union. The talk by Yeltsin's spokesman after the putsch of a revision of borders with the Ukraine if the latter opted for independence was also probably no slip but a calculated move to encourage Ukrainian public opinion to oppose a renewed union. The new/old Russian elites have the most to gain, followed (a long way behind) by those of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, from a "commonwealth of independent republics" in which relations will be regulated solely by relative political and economic power and market prices.
Does any of this correspond to popular interests? These are after all the ultimate criteria for socialists. In my opinion, the situation regarding the nationality question resembles, and is closely related to, that of the economy. Socialists, of course, welcome the demise of bureaucratic domination in all its forms. But this does not mean that they automatically embrace what comes in its place as progress.
This is obvious when the bureaucratically administered nationalized economy is replaced by a capitalist economy based upon private property, because such a transition involves not only the transition one system of another, but also the loss of real and formal rights of workers (to a job and to economic security in general, including an expanding social wage in the form of free medical care, education and subsidized basic goods and services). Even the loss of rights that were entirely formal is a real loss, since these rights lose their legitimacy, and it becomes much more difficult to fight for them politically.
Formal commitment to
The same is true for national relations, where, despite the bureaucratic domination, there was nonetheless a formal, and even to some extent real if limited, commitment to equality and social justice. The basic thrust of Yeltsin's policy and of the other members of the "Slavic commonwealth" is to put an end to even that limited progressive practice declare the formal policy itself illegitimate and undesirable.
All this, in both the economic sphere and that of nationality relations, is being done under the democratic banner of eliminating the vestiges of "totalitarian rule". Socialists should not be fooled. The most conscious strata of the working class of the republics are not. I will conclude with some excerpts from interviews with workers conducted in October.
Aleksandr Utkin of the Independent series of conferences with union representatives, and the basic situation that emerges is that the only thing that can save our country (I close my eyes and I cannot picture the map of Russia, only that of the USSR) is a common economic space. But those in charge of recreating that space are politicians primarily interested in solving their own political problems through economic blackmail. This is, for ex-USSR example, what lies behind the Ukraine's refusal to sign the economic treaty. Our
Aleksandr Sergeev of the IMU: "The miners in the Donbass, who are mainly Russian and Russian-speaking, struck in the spring for Ukrainian sovereignty. They were applauded by the nationalist parties. But when the Donbass miners said they wanted to stay in a single organization with the Russian, Byelorussian and Kazakhstan turned against them. The problems will be serious there. In the Eastern Ukraine, we have a couple of organizations, but it is harder to work there, since the nationalists say that the IMU in Moscow is dominated by 'Moskali' [pejorative term for 'Rusmenko, a Ukrainian railway worker, delegate to the Congress of the Union of WorkCollective Committees in October: "I am worried by the fact that full
RUSSI sovereignty was supported by that group of Communist deputies that before had opposed sovereignty. The decision of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet on sovereignty puts us in a difficult situation. We now have to support it, because if the workers come out now in support of the interests of the Union [that is, Gorbachev and the central bureaucracy], then later generations will not understand us. So we have to support the Supreme Soviet in the referendum.
"But their goal is really to usurp power on the territory of the Ukraine, to move away from the centre, to save their positions. After the referendum and the presidential elections, we must demand new general elections. If we succeed in organizing ourselves, we should be able to influence the elections and allow into power only people that in practice demonstrate a commitment to the workers' interests.
"My boss didn't want to let me go to the congress in Moscow. He said: 'You should be going to Kiev, not to Moscow'. To which I replied: "The path to Kiev lies through Moscow'. On the huge territory of the collapsing USSR, all the workers have the same tasks and the same goals. If they do not co-ordinate their movements, if they do not press together against the state and force it to carry out their will, nothing good will occur. Each enterprise will be privatized by the affairistes of the 'shadow economy' and by the former 25 nomenklatura in their own interests". *