In what follows, we argue that the Soviet collapse occurred in the main because of the policies that Mikhail Gorbachev pursued after 1986. These policies did not drop from the sky, nor were they the only possible ones to address existing problems. They derived from a debate within the Communist movement, nearly as old as Marxism itself, over how to build a socialist society. In order to explain the lineage of Gorbachev’s policies before and after 1985, in Chapter 2, we discuss the two main tendencies or trends in the Soviet debate over building socialism. The ongoing debate centered around this question: under the particular circumstances pertaining at any given time, how should Communists build socialism? The left position favored pushing forward class struggle, the interests of the working class and the power of the Communist Party, and the right position favored retreats or compromises and the incorporation of various capitalist ideas into socialism. In this sense, “left” and “right” were not synonyms for good and bad. Rather the correctness or appropriateness of a policy had to do with whether it best represented the immediate and long-term interests of socialism under existing conditions. The history of Soviet politics was thus a complex matter. On the one hand, Vladimir Lenin, who fearlessly pushed forward the class struggle for socialism, at times favored compromise, as in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the New Economic Policy. On the other hand, Nikita Khrushchev, who often favored incorporating certain Western ideas, at the same time favored a leftist policy of greater wage equality. In this chapter, we do not intend to provide a full history and evaluation of Soviet politics but rather a useful, if simplified, backdrop for the later argument that Gorbachev’s early policies resembled the leftwing Communist tradition represented in the main by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Yuri Andropov, while his later policies resembled the rightwing Communist tradition represented in the main by Nicolai Bukharin and Nikita Khrushchev. After 1985, Gorbachev’s policies moved to the right, in the sense that they involved what might be called a social democratic vision of socialism that weakened the Communist Party, compromised with capitalism, and incorporated into Soviet socialism certain aspects of capitalist private property, markets, and political forms.
In Chapter 3, we discuss the underlying reasons for Gorbachev’s shift in policies and their material basis. We argue that the reason for Gorbachev’s shift was the development of a phenomenon overlooked by most Marxists and non-Marxists, namely the development within socialism of a “second economy” of private enterprise and with it a new and growing petty bourgeois stratum and a new level of Party corruption. The growth of the second economy reflected the problems of the “first economy,” the socialized sector, in meeting the rising expectations of the people. It also reflected the laxness of the authorities in enforcing the law against illegal economic activity, and the failure of the Party to recognize the corrosive effects of private economic activity.
In Chapter 4, we explain the economic, political and international problems that troubled Soviet society in the mid-1980s, problems that gave rise to a search for reforms. We also recount the promising beginning of some of Gorbachev’s reforms, and the problematic aspects of others. In Chapter 5, we explain the transformation of Gorbachev’s policies in 1987 and 1988 and their deleterious consequences. In Chapter 6, we describe the unraveling of the Soviet system. In Chapter 7, we conclude with a discussion of the significance of the Soviet collapse. In an Epilogue, we critique other explanations.
2. Two Trends in Soviet Politics
Bukharin is a most highly valued and important party theoretician… but it is very doubtful if his theoretical outlook can be considered as fully Marxist. V. I. Lenin14
Khrushchev in essence was a Bukharinite.
V. M. Molotov15
Andropov obviously was not on the side of Khrushchev nor on the side of Brezhnev for that matter. V. M. Molotov16
The crisis that came upon Soviet society [in the 1980s] was due in large measure to the crisis in the Party. Two—opposing tendencies existed in the CPSU—proletarian and petty bourgeois, democratic and bureaucratic. Program of the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (1997)17
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not occur because of an internal economic crisis or popular uprising. It occurred because of the reforms initiated at the top by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and its General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It goes without saying that problems must have existed in the Soviet Union, otherwise no need for reforms would have arisen. Gorbachev’s reforms were a response to the underlying problems. In Chapter 4, we will examine the chronic problems facing Soviet society in three areas: economics, politics, and foreign relations—all of which had become more acute because of developments in the early 1980s. Since, however, the treatment of the illness rather than the illness itself caused the death of the patient, the origin and character of the treatment, that is the origin and character of Gorbachev’s reforms, require our first attention.
We proceed from the simple assumption that the diagnosis of social problems, even more than medical problems, are rarely matters of certainty. The definition and diagnosis of social problems, as well as the policy responses to problems, involve politics, that is, conflicting values and interests, and this was no less the case in the Soviet Union than in the United States. Outsiders commonly assumed that because the Soviet Union had only one party, political thought was monolithic and political debate non-existent. This was far from true. Starting before the revolution, the Soviet Communist Party contained more than one tendency or trend. Gorbachev did not invent his policies out of whole cloth, but rather his policies reflected trends in the Party that had earlier been represented in part by Nikolai Bukharin, Nikita Khrushchev and others.
Just as Gorbachev’s ideas did not arise in a political vacuum, neither did they arise in a socio-economic vacuum. That is, Gorbachev’s political ideas reflected social and economic interests. Gorbachev’s reforms after 1986 reflected the interests of those in Soviet society with a stake in private enterprise and the “free market.” This sector consisted of entrepreneurs and corrupt Party officials whose numbers had increased during the previous thirty years.
Before proceeding, a word of clarification is necessary. Though a continuity existed in the approach of Bukharin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev, the problems they confronted, the social basis of their support, and the policies they advocated differed. For example, in the 1920s, the largest social group with an interest in private enterprise was the peasantry, which constituted a distinct class representing about 80 percent of the population. By the 1970s only 20 percent of the population worked in agriculture, and most of these were agricultural workers on state farms or collective farms. By then the social group with a stake in private enterprise had become the petty entrepreneurs in the second economy. Such elements had thrived under the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the early 1920s, shrank drastically with the collectivization of property under Joseph Stalin, re-emerged under Khrushchev’s so-called liberalization, increased greatly in size under Brezhnev’s laxness, and ballooned under Gorbachev’s reforms. In another difference, the agricultural question, which was so prominent in Bukharin’s championing of the kulaks, and in various Khrushchev policies, did not figure prominently in Gorbachev’s program. Moreover, Gorbachev’s foreign policy retreats, cultural liberalization, weakening of the Party, and market initiatives went to lengths never contemplated by his precursors.