Finally, we would like to thank our wives, Carol and Mary, who discussed this project from beginning to end. They also patiently endured lost weekends, obsessive ravings about the importance of an unfashionable topic, book-strewn kitchen tables, seas of paper, and endless distracted hours at word processors.
Mark Twain said, “It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.” He might have added it also makes politics. Among political people, the downfall of the Soviet Union generates strong and diverse views. It seemed to us that everyone who had visited a socialist country, talked to a Soviet citizen, or read a book on socialism had theories to explain and anecdotes to prove what went wrong. Many who read this manuscript had firm ideas of their own and did not share ours. Hence, we must declare with more than usual vigor that all the views, as well as the mistakes, are the responsibility of the authors and the authors alone.
1. Introduction
The story of the last Soviet power struggle is not, I believe, one that is best understood in terms of an irresistible unfolding of large historical forces and trends. On the contrary, it is in many respects the most curious story in modern history. Anthony D’Agostino, historian1
In awe, amazement and disbelief, the world witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, which swept away the Soviet system of government, the erstwhile superpower, the communist belief system and the ruling party. Alexander Dallin, historian2
The Soviet Union’s existence was as sure as the sun rising in the morning. For, it was such a solid, powerful, strong country that had survived extremely difficult tests. Fidel Castro3
This book is about the collapse of the Soviet Union and its meaning for the 21st century. The size of the debacle gave rise to extravagant claims by the political right. For them, the collapse meant the Cold War was over and capitalism had won. It signified “the end of history.” Henceforth, capitalism would represent the highest form, the culmination, of economic and political evolution. Most people sympathetic with the Soviet project did not share this rightwing triumphalism. For them, the Soviet collapse had momentous implications but did not alter the usefulness of Marxism for understanding a world that more than ever was shaped by class conflict and the struggles of oppressed people against corporate power, nor did it shake the values and commitment of those on the side of workers, unions, minorities, national liberation, peace, women, the environment, and human rights. Still, what had happened to socialism represented both a theoretical challenge to Marxism and a practical challenge to the future prospects of anti-capitalist struggles and socialism.
For those who believe that a better world—beyond capitalist exploitation, inequality, greed, poverty, ignorance, and injustice—is possible, the demise of the Soviet Union represented a staggering loss. Soviet socialism had many problems (that we discuss later) and did not constitute the only conceivable socialist order. Nevertheless, it embodied the essence of socialism as defined by Marx—a society that had overthrown bourgeois property, the “free market,” and the capitalist state and replaced them with collective property, central planning, and a workers’ state. Moreover, it achieved an unprecedented level of equality, security, health care, housing, education, employment, and culture for all of its citizens, in particular working people of factory and farm.
A brief review of the Soviet Union’s accomplishments underscores what was lost. The Soviet Union not only eliminated the exploiting classes of the old order, but also ended inflation, unemployment, racial and national discrimination, grinding poverty, and glaring inequalities of wealth, income, education, and opportunity. In fifty years, the country went from an industrial production that was only 12 percent of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80 percent and an agricultural output 85 percent of the U.S. Though Soviet per capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly in such a short period of time for all its people. Employment was guaranteed. Free education was available for all, from kindergarten through secondary schools (general, technical and vocational), universities, and after-work schools. Besides free tuition, post-secondary students received living stipends. Free health care existed for all, with about twice as many doctors per person as in the United States. Workers who were injured or ill had job guarantees and sick pay. In the mid-1970s, workers averaged 21.2 working days of vacation (a month’s vacation), and sanitariums, resorts, and children’s camps were either free or subsidized. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers. The state regulated all prices and subsidized the cost of basic food and housing. Rents constituted only 2-3 percent of the family budget; water and utilities only 4-5 percent. No segregated housing by income existed. Though some neighborhoods were reserved for high officials, elsewhere plant managers, nurses, professors and janitors lived side by side.4
The government included cultural and intellectual growth as part of the effort to enhance living standards. State subsidies kept the price of books, periodicals and cultural events at a minimum. As a result, workers often owned their own libraries, and the average family subscribed to four periodicals. UNESCO reported that Soviet citizens read more books and saw more films than any other people in the world. Every year the number of people visiting museums equaled nearly half entire population, and attendance at theaters, concerts, and other performances surpassed the total population. The government made a concerted effort to raise the literacy and living standards of the most backward areas and to encourage the cultural expression of the more than a hundred nationality groups that constituted the Soviet Union. In Kirghizia, for example, only one out of every five hundred people could read and write in 1917, but fifty years later nearly everyone could.5
In 1983, American sociologist Albert Szymanski reviewed a variety of Western studies of Soviet income distribution and living standards. He found that the highest paid people in the Soviet Union were prominent artists, writers, professors, administrators, and scientists, who earned as high as 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month. Leading government officials earned about 600 rubles a month; enterprise directors from 190 to 400 rubles a month; and workers about 150 rubles a month. Consequently, the highest incomes amounted to only 10 times the average worker’s wages, while in the United States the highest paid corporate heads made 115 times the wages of workers. Privileges that came with high office, such as special stores and official automobiles, remained small and limited and did not offset a continuous, forty-year trend toward greater egalitarianism. (The opposite trend occurred in the United States, where by the late 1990s, corporate heads were making 480 times the wages of the average worker.) Though the tendency to level wages and incomes created problems (discussed later), the overall equalization of living conditions in the Soviet Union represented an unprecedented feat in human history. The equalization was furthered by a pricing policy that fixed the cost of luxuries above their value and of necessities below their value. It was also furthered by a steadily increasing “social wage,” that is, the provision of an increasing number of free or subsidized social benefits. Beside those already mentioned, the benefits included, paid maternity leave, inexpensive child care and generous pensions. Szymanski concluded, “While the Soviet social structure may not match the Communist or socialist ideal, it is both qualitatively different from, and more equalitarian than, that of Western capitalist countries. Socialism has made a radical difference in favor of the working class.”6