Artyom S. / Red Phoenix correspondent, Maryland.

“What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”

 – J. V. Stalin, “Speech at the Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International,” December 1926.

As many people of the world wind down from the celebrations of Christmas yesterday, increasingly battered and dragged further into the dangerous whirlwind of capitalism, it is easy for most not living with its former republics to forget that on Dec. 25, 1991, the red banner of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was lowered for the last time when Gorbachev resigned as President of the USSR and ceded all power to Yeltsin. The following day, exactly 32 years ago, the Soviet of Republics, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, effectively voted the USSR out of existence. 

It was then on that December night where a once glorious flag was somberly lowered and the first established and largest socialist state the world had seen was completely dismantled. The life’s work of great revolutionaries, the work of entire generations, had all been undone with the stroke of a pen and utter disregard for the will of the people.

The USSR was not spontaneously and peacefully dissolved as a result of some miraculous happenstance or utter triumph of capitalism over socialism. What occurred that night was the culmination of a protracted process beginning decades prior. Revisionism had dug its talons deep into the USSR in 1956 following the XX Congress of the CPSU and Khrushchev’s complete denunciation of Stalin and Marxism-Leninism. Khrushchev had begun to roll back socialist achievements and to weaken the CPSU from the inside, opening vulnerabilities to the forces of capitalism and counterrevolution. When Brezhnev ousted Khrushchev and came to power in 1964, it was merely one revisionist toppling another. Brezhnev promised a return to “Stalinism” and a sense of “glory,” but the weakened state of the CPSU gave way to the institution of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the restoration of capitalism within the USSR, beginning in 1965 with the Kosygin economic reform policies, which introduced profitability and sales as metrics for enterprise success. This process came to a head in 1985 with Gorbachev’s policies of Perestroika (Restructuring) and Glasnost (Openness). By 1991, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was well dominated by revisionists, opportunists, and the Russian bourgeoisie. 

The final process of unraveling began in 1988 with the “declaration of state sovereignty” by Estonia (followed soon after by Latvia and then Lithuania) and the descent of the Caucasus into civil war and rebellion. In 1989, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus founded “popular fronts” of their own and declared sovereignty from the USSR, all while the Caucasus was facing vast turmoil and inter-ethnic conflict. In 1990, two of the 15 Soviet Republics – Lithuania and Nakhichevan, a region in Azerbaijan – declared total independence. These republics would soon be followed by the others in the following months. 

1991 saw a continuation of much of the strife seen in 1990 until August of that year, when Gorbachev’s vice president, Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, Chief of the KGB Vladimir Kryuchkov and other senior officials acted to prevent the signing of treaties that would further weaken the USSR by forming the “General Committee on the State Emergency,” which put Gorbachev (who was holidaying in Crimea) under house arrest and cut off his communications. The coup leaders issued an emergency decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers, although they were met with opposition from Boris Yeltsin and counterrevolutionaries loyal to him, and the coup soon collapsed. Gorbachev was reinstated to power soon after but much of his authority had been depleted. 

In much of the USSR that remained, public opinion toward both Gorbachev and Yeltsin was largely unfavorable. In a referendum held on March 17, 1991, which drew a voter turnout of 80%, 78% of the voters expressed their will for the continued existence of the USSR, but were blatantly ignored by the perpetrators of this swift and violent counterrevolution.

The pace of the unraveling of the USSR increased dramatically in the last months of 1991. Between August and December, 11 republics seceded, and by the end of September, Gorbachev no longer had the ability to influence events outside of Moscow. Gorbachev was increasingly challenged even there by Boris Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin and the White House. 

In early November, Yeltsin had taken over much of the remaining Soviet government and had banned the Communist Party from the RSFSR altogether. This was soon followed by the complete dissolution of the USSR by December, marking the beginning of a dark chapter in the histories of the former Union Republics. 

The policies and system of the now destroyed RSFSR were succeeded by illusory promises by the new capitalist government of the “Russian Federation” for more “democracy,” for more “social freedoms,” and for a free-market economy which would “improve the lives of the people.” What was induced upon Russia was Yeltsin’s “shock therapy.” The so-called “shock therapy” included several policies of economic liberalization during the 1990s and had severe and far-reaching negative consequences affecting people’s lives: rapid increase of social inequalities, destruction of the socialist welfare state, extreme rise of poverty rates for the working class, rapid decrease of life expectancy, resurgence of nationalist claims between former Soviet republics, and the emergence of economic oligarchs as the rulers of the new Russian state to fill in the turbulent vacuum left by the Communist Party.

Three decades after the complete victory of the counterrevolution in the USSR, the majority of the Russian people and large minorities within the former Union Republics (especially the older generations) hold steadfast that life under the USSR was better, even during the period of revisionism. In fact, this same kind of nostalgia for the USSR is on the rise in the other former Union Republics of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and so on. The complete restoration of capitalism brought an unprecedented barbarity in almost every sector of public life. This barbarity brought by capitalism benefited the few and greatly worsened the situation of the majority. 

The peoples of the former USSR, and particularly of Russia, still desire the lives they had under the USSR in contrast to today’s hellish conditions of capitalism and the Russian Federation. In 2013, a survey by the “Public Opinion Foundation” (Фонд «Общественное мнение», FOM) of the All-Russian Public Opinion Center had indicated that 60% of Russians think that the life in the Soviet Union had many more positive than negative aspects. According to a Levada Center survey and an All-Russia Public Opinion Center survey, published in 2018 and 2016 respectively, 66% (2018) of Russians expressed regret or sadness over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that 64% (2016) of Russians would have voted to maintain the USSR should a new referendum be held. The figure for the All-Russia Public Opinion survey varies greatly by age groups: 47% of individuals aged 18-24 stating that they would vote to maintain the USSR, compared to 76% of individuals aged 60 and over. 

The disaster of the dissolution of the USSR and the decline of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the other former Union Republics shows us not that capitalism has “triumphed” over communism, nor that the “End of History” is upon us, but rather that in the face of crisis, poverty, unemployment, war, and famine brought upon the people by capitalism, Socialism is more relevant and necessary now than ever before. And, further within the struggle for Socialism, so too must the constant struggle against revisionism and counterrevolution be emphasized the world-over to ensure the victory of Socialism against the forces of capitalism and reaction! 

The once great USSR is no longer with us, and the workers of the world have been dealt a serious blow, but this is anything but the “end of communism.” The people will rise in unity and resistance to capitalism and soon the glorious red banner of socialism will rise again!

Categories: History, World History

Tags: USSR