That’s a question with quite a large scope. There’s entire books, from all political persuasions, that have been written on the Soviet collapse.
However, the nature of the Soviet counter-revolution means the question is not necessarily the same as the famously facetious “why did the Roman Empire collapse?”
Most of the responses in this thread so far surprise me in the sense that they don’t appear to engage with any literature on the world historical event of the 1989-1992 counter-revolutions.
Capitalist restoration was primarily self-inflicted. External factors like Western and American pressure played no small role. The economic position was also not ideal. However, there is a wide gap between all of that and anything that necessitated the collapse of the Soviet state.
For a principled Marxist Leninist analysis, I’d recommend reading through Carlos Martinez’s “Why Doesn’t the Soviet Union Exist Any More”: https://invent-the-future.org/2018/06/why-doesnt-the-soviet-union-exist-any-more/
Cockshott’s inability to stop talking about LGBT+ issues he knows nothing about is deeply, deeply frustrating, but I think his presentation on this is useful:
“Socialism in Power” argues that the failure to control the illegal second economy gave a class basis for counterrevolution, including corruption and weakening party standards.
If the bolsheviks (and the other socialist radicals) had been better at working together instead of ending up infighting (or not had to die defending the revolution and their people from the Nazis) they might have been able to build a stronger and more capable party which could have maintained higher standards. (See “History and Critique of a black legend” by Losurdo)
Lastly if the “market socialism” reformers had actually been competent, had concrete and testable plans for economic reform and for what they wanted “market socialism” to be, maintained and strenghtened party power and party standards, embraced marxism-leninism instead of washing it out and leaving it behind, and handled the question of nationalities better then they might have been able to follow a “dengist” path.
Its hard to say exactly, since I think the collapse of the USSR is probably one of the best examples where Marxist Longue durée analysis should be used.
However, if I can try at least
1.Preventing Krushev’s secret speech/takeover in general
This is probably the lynchpyn of the whole thing. You had many young comrades coming into the party [most notably Yeltsin and Gorbachev] and Krushchev’s first act would essentially shatter faith in the system high and low, much as how the Thermidorian reaction shattered the revolutionary spirit of france and gave way to Bonapartist cynicism.
Not only that, but the so called “anti-party group” generally had the better economic policies, and more experience.
2.An earlier Detente if possible
Obviously this is as much the west’s ball game as it was the USSR’s. But putting so many resources into the military was one of the leading reasons of the decline. The Cuban missile crisis, ironically enough, was probably a missed opportunity for more comprehensive agreements on the matter.
3.The party remaining connected to the people
This one is a bit obvious, which is why its here instead of at the top. But the problem that occured with Perestroika is that the USSR was like a pressure cooker. There needed to be some way to release the steam and there never was. Breshnev was probably a really good example here of what not to do. His period in office didnt solve problems, leading to this pressure build up.
This also goes for eastern Europe in general tbh. Although I do agree with soviet intervention in the most high profile incidents, so im not sure about that tbh.
Overall what probably killed it most was the sino-soviet split, which, while Krushev was important, was brewing from the days of the internationale. [The third int is its own topic I’ll probably talk about one day though]
Very well formulated! I completely agree with the first point. I’m not so sure however that Detente with the West was ever really possible. Even China’s Opening Up was only possible because it was seen as the lesser threat to global imperialism, and its split with the USSR could be used to undermine the bigger threat. The last point is of course broadly correct, especially about how Brezhnev failed to course correct, but i think we would need to analyze more in depth what could have been done to provide that “pressure valve”. The Sino-Soviet split was devastating but it was also itself a symptom of the deeper problems with the course of the USSR post Stalin (though this by no means implies that China did not make its own very serious errors, especially in foreign policy).
Look, I know talking about this is very controversial, and I admit I don’t know much about the subject, but I think the main political mistake was to have the USSR take the form that Lenin permanently defined as: “The important thing is not to provide material for the ‘pro-independence’ people, not to destroy their independence, but to create another new layer, a federation of equal republics.” It may have been the right tactic at the time, following a bloody civil war caused by imperialist invasions from the West, but the problem with this, in my opinion, is that it would create too many terrible vulnerabilities throughout the country in the long run, as we’ve already seen. You might say to me, “So you’re saying the USSR should never have existed.” Not at all; I think this form of political organization is necessary and inevitable in its early stages due to the weakness of forces in a given republic. But as the USSR developed, as the imperialist powers increasingly sought to impose sanctions, sabotage, spread disinformation, and use every possible means to make the revolutionaries betray their proletarian cause, I believe they should have consolidated the republics into a single one, following the model of Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and China.
This is something I’ve never fully understood: wouldn’t it have been more strategic to educate the masses about the need to unite all the federal republics into a single one, so that it would be stronger, more enduring, and better prepared to face both internal and external enemies? Because, logically speaking, if you forever rely on the argument that the independent republics that formed the USSR united voluntarily, then sooner or later nationalist forces will grow strong enough to say: “Well, we can separate voluntarily, because we are independent republics.” Any of them could have replied, “We’d rather build socialism the Yugoslav way; no, we have no need to belong to the Union,” and no one could say anything, because they have the right and the consent to do so. I think this is a mistake.
Once again, I repeat: I don’t know much about how to organize a socialist state politically and administratively, but for example, when I read this in the 1922 Constitution of the USSR:
ARTICLE 3. The sovereignty of the member Republics is limited only in the matters indicated in the present Constitution, as coming within the competence of the Union. Outside of those limits, each member Republic exerts its public powers independently; the U.S.S.R. protects the rights of the member Republics.
ARTICLE 4. Each one of the member Republics retains the right to freely withdraw from the Union.
ARTICLE 5. The member Republics will make changes in their Constitutions to conform with the present Constitution.
ARTICLE 6. The territory of the member Republics cannot be modified without their consent; also, any limitation or modification or suppression of Article 4 must have the approval of all the member Republics of the Union.
or in the 1936 version:
ARTICLE 13: The Union of Soviet Socialist-Republics is a federated state, formed on the basis of the voluntary association of Soviet Socialist Republics possessing equal rights, namely:
ARTICLE 16: Each Union Republic has its own Constitution, which takes into account the specific features of the Republic and is drawn up in full conformity with the Constitution of the U.S.S.R.
ARTICLE 17: To every Union Republic is reserved the right freely to secede from the U.S.S.R.
ARTICLE 18: The territory of the Union Republics may not be altered without their consent.
or the one from 1977:
Article 70. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is an integral, federal, multinational state formed on the principle of socialist federalism as a result of the free self-determination of nations and the voluntary association of equal Soviet Socialist Republics.
Article 72. Each Union Republic shall retain the right freely to secede from the USSR.
Article 76. A Union Republic is a sovereign Soviet socialist state that has united with other Soviet Republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
I wonder: wouldn’t this be exploited by reactionary forces sooner or later in a future where internal counterrevolutions in the various republics gain momentum? Wouldn’t it have been better to centralize them all, not for moral reasons, but because circumstances dictated it? And you might say to me, “Well, what you’re trying to find is precisely what’s called the USSR, the supreme state.” But if that were the case, then why are independent federal republics needed in the first place? Why do we need the concept and reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat if we can voluntarily abandon it? I see a huge contradiction here that the imperialist states exploited to the fullest. In other words, according to the constitution itself, one could infer that the USSR was a treaty, something like the Warsaw Pact. And instead of consolidating this dictatorship of the proletariat, it moved away from it, not merely due to issues of betrayal per se (which is what actually happened), but because the constitution itself influenced this outcome.
For what it’s worth, i think you are correct, though this is far from the full explanation.
Maybe it is a controversial opinion here on lemmygrad, but I don’t think the impact of the Great Purge was entirely positive and was, in many ways, a worse version of the Cultural Revolution. The Stalin Model was not sustainable. Legitimate critics of it like Bukharin were killed off, so post-Stalin, you didn’t have Deng-like figures who wanted reform while also genuinely believing in maintaining the socialist project. You either had people who wanted to conserve the Stalin Model dogmatically, or opportunists who were just in office to enrich themselves. As it became more and more clear that the model was unsustainable, the proportion of the latter increased over the former.
By the time it became obvious that reform was necessary or they could not go on, the only people in power to actually reform were people who did not believe in the system anyways. I mean, Gorbachev was a self-described social democrat, yet was put in charge of the most powerful communist party on earth. There is clearly something wrong there that was much more deep than one man himself. Many of his “reforms” were intended to try and make the USSR more similar to a liberal social democracy, such as bringing back the separation of powers, which directly paved the way for Yeltsin to overthrow the whole system.
I view the Stalin Model as something that was born out of necessity given the circumstances at the time rather than something that was intended to be the most optimal in the long run. The fascist invasion was telegraphed well in advance, and at the time there was no guarantee that the entire industrialized world wouldn’t gang up on the USSR to crush communism. The USSR under Stalin had no choice but to start building as much heavy machinery and weapons factories as they could ASAP, and the Stalin Model was optimized for that. Same goes for the purges, doing it wasn’t ideal but they had to root out turncoats before the Axis invasion began, Joseph Goebbels himself lamented that the USSR had done the purges in his dairy and believed it ruined their plans.
China under Deng by contrast had loads more breathing room. The US had just been defeated in Vietnam a few years prior reliving China of the possibility of US troops on it’s immediate border, and the West as a whole was still occupied with the USSR as it’s main enemy. When the US otherwise would of started messing with China under the George Bush Jr. administration the US’s attention got diverted again by the War on Terror, giving China even more time.
I think the problem with the purge was not necessarily those who were purged, but that there was no next generation to replace them.
Yes in China Deng survived, but honestly from what ive seen of Bukharin im not sure if the two are entirely comparable. But the crucial thing is that there was a generation of CPC members that could survive the turbulence of reform and opening up, the June 4th incident, etc.
This wasn’t just the purge of course, given ww2 took more CPSU members, but if you look at China, the DPRK, and Vietnam compared to the USSR and eastern Europe, id say its the people’s ability to have faith and interact with the system that led to their survival compared to eastern Europe’s downfall.
I’m not so sure that the “Stalin model” was inherently unsustainable. I think this kneejerk dismissal of the planned economy simply because China succeeded with a different model is premature.
It’s almost not a useful question to ask. The USSR was trending poorly for 10-20 years prior to its collapse, ultimately succumbing to the economic war that America was waging against it. There is no one cause nor one solution. It’s entirely conceivable that it could still exist had it not been dissolved, and it’s entirely possible that this hypothetical version of itself would be a sick and hollow iteration of what it once was. Nobody could know.
If you look at it’s opposite, at America, I think we might find a clearer answer. As a reaction to the economic crises of the 70s, the United States’ ruling class elected to go all-in on the imperialist pillaging of the world. I would say that the imperialist destruction of the global south and their successful economic quarantine of the USSR was what really drove international socialism into the ground, in this way the 80s were the birthing ground of the global counterrevolutionary era.
But what could the USSR have done about this? Go to war with the West? This would have killed hundreds of millions, and destroyed everything they had built anyway. The political ascendancy of Reagan guaranteed this. The cultural zeitgeist thought it would happen. By the early 80s, the USSR was economically on its knees and the Reagan administration was feverish to deliver the killing blow.
There is no one action the USSR could have taken, if any. The world system is interconnected and this was beyond their control, being only one piece of an increasingly interwoven humanity. You must look at the whole picture, which also includes the rising brutality of the United States, the neocolonization of Africa, the vassalization of Latin America, and the containment of China. There is an ebb and a flow to all of these things.
Where the early 20th century was an era of change and revolution, the late 20th century was an era of reaction and counterrevolution. The counterrevolution has appeared to have won, but in its victory has grown decadent and plodding. If the previous three decades have been an era of victorious stagnation, what follows is a weakening of the dominant order and a turning into something new.
The world is getting old. Now is when we get to build the movements anew (at least in the western view). This century will see immense change, as did the last. Most of us just grew up in the quiet decadent stagnation of the previous 30-50 years and haven’t seen much. Talk to some old people and they’ll tell you about change.
All due respect to the poetic rhythm of that kind of outlook, I don’t believe this sort of teleological narrative is supported by a historical materialist analysis.
Attributing the Soviet collapse to the will of teleology and the omnipotence of the United States is also a unhelpful framework that only serves to bind leftists to psychological paralysis. This would be counter-intuitive as, to quote Carlos Martinez:
“The more our movement can learn about the Soviet collapse, the better prepared we will be to prevent historic reverses and defeats in future, and the better equipped we will be to develop a compelling, convincing vision of socialism that is relevant to the here and now.”
The reality is that while the United States and the West played a major role in abetting the counter-revolution, they were not some almighty force such that a power like the Soviet Union can be characterized as some “antediluvian victim” to the age of American unipolarity.
The majority of the blame can be attributed to the last generation of Soviet leadership. This is supported by analyses from across the political spectrum: liberal (Zubok’s “Collapse”), social democrat (Kotz and Weir’s “Revolution from Above”) and Marxist Leninist (Keeran and Kenny’s “Socialism Betrayed”).
That’s an excellent criticism. This was not to say that there are not immense lessons to be learned from the collapse of the USSR. There were a host of mistakes they made and we must absolutely internalize and not repeat them. And my comment above certainly disregards the agency in which leaders and nations operated in their respective times. It can be too easy to lapse into a hollow use of laws of opposites and short circuit real analysis. Appreciate your insight and reading suggestions!
Very good analysis.
Really hard to pinpoint anything specific, they were forging new ground and their mistakes are a natural and intrinsic part of that process.
Something akin to the cultural revolution that China underwent would be my first guess but again it’s really speculative to a level that might not be useful to organizing today
This is a very big question spanning decades, starting at least with the election of Khrushchev, but I’m sure longer. Ask a dozen people and you’ll get a dozen different answers. In terms of ultimate cause, I doubt any singular event/decision can be blamed. See also overdetermination.
https://www.voachinese.com/a/heqinglian-blog-defeat/1755452.html
中共总书记习近平曾于2012年12月“南巡”，引发了观察人士认为“习宗邓”的猜想。但最近人们才知道，中国官方公布习的“南巡”讲话时是不完全引证，近日据说是全文的版本在网上流传，媒体称让期盼政改的人读后深感失望。其中最有名的一段话是他谈到当年苏联崩溃时所说：“最后戈尔巴乔夫轻轻一句话，宣布苏联共产党解散，偌大一个党就没了。按照党员比例，苏共超过我们，但竟无一人是男儿，没什么人出来抗争。”
其中“竟无一人是男儿”，典出五代后蜀国主孟昶妃子花蕊夫人《口占答宋太祖述亡国诗》。全文是：“君王城上竖降旗，妾在深宫哪得知；十四万人齐解甲，更无一个是男儿。”谈苏共亡党“亡国”之教训，竟引用失国君王之妃的名句，说明习总心头的压力很大很沉重。
In December 2012, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, undertook his Southern Tour, prompting speculation among observers that Xi was following in Deng Xiaoping’s footsteps. However, it has only recently come to light that the Chinese authorities did not publish Xi’s Southern Tour remarks in their entirety. A version purported to be the full text has recently circulated online, and media reports say that those who had hoped for political reform were deeply disappointed after reading it.
One of the most widely noted passages concerns the collapse of the Soviet Union:
“In the end, with just a few quiet words, Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and such an enormous party simply disappeared. In proportion to party membership, the CPSU was larger than ours, yet not one among them was a real man; hardly anyone came forward to resist.”
The expression “not one among them was a real man” (竟无一人是男儿) alludes to a poem attributed to Lady Huarui, consort of Meng Chang, the last ruler of the Later Shu kingdom during the Five Dynasties period. The poem, traditionally titled A Spontaneous Poem in Reply to Emperor Taizu of Song on the Fall of the Kingdom, reads:
The king raised the surrender banner atop the city walls;
How could I, secluded deep within the palace, have known?
One hundred and forty thousand men laid down their arms;
Not one among them was a real man.To discuss the lessons of the Soviet Communist Party’s demise—the fall of the party and the state—by quoting a famous line from the consort of a monarch who lost his kingdom illustrates just how immense and heavy the pressure weighing on General Secretary Xi’s mind truly is.
