On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 08:18 PM, Charlie wrote: > > ...to explain how the Soviet Union turned off the socialist road to > communism, the basic change in ideology in 1956 and the developments that > this allowed over time are key.
It's debatable that the USSR under Stalin was on “the socialist road to communism” but there is some truth to the notion that the Khrushchev regime initiated a process which ultimately contributed to the Soviet collapse some 35 years later. The regime’s reforms principally involved a limited restoration of democratic rights and the allocation of more state investment to the production of consumer goods. The process continued with minor interruptions under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko and reached a peak under Gorbachev. Though Charlie bemoans these (unnamed) “developments”, they were generally welcomed by the masses and raised expectations. However, despite Khrushchev’s boasts to Nixon that the USSR would soon surpass the USA, these hopes were never realized. Instead, the disillusioned Soviet and East European masses turned to the West as the embodiment of higher living standards and democratic rights, which the US and its allies assiduously cultivated through propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe as well as a gradual easing in both camps of travel restrictions and other contacts with the West. A notable milestone was the American National Exhibition which toured the Soviet Union in 1959. Some 3 million Soviet citizens were exposed to American art, fashion, cars, televisions, model homes and kitchen appliances, most of which they lacked but were advertised as being within reach of the US working class.. The “shift in ideology” by Khrushchev which Charlie regards as “key” rested ultimately on the deeper material reality of the Soviet Union’s historic inability to overtake the level of economic productivity and growth of the advanced capitalist economies. As we know, the Bolsheviks seized power in the belief tha capitalism was on the threshold of collapse - not an unrealistic perspective in the turbulent aftermath of WW I. The expectation was that Russian backwardness would be swiftly overcome by its inclusion in a thriving global socialist economy spearheaded by a Soviet Europe and North America. Instead, despite periodic crises. the capitalist world order not only staved off collapse but grew. If Lenin and the Bolsheviks could have foreseen that the USSR would remain isolated and besieged, resulting in the suppression of proletarian democracy, they might well have balked at taking power on their own. Even the retreat into “building socialism in one country” was seen as only a temporary expedient pending the collapse of capitalism. By the late 80’s, the privilged nomenklatura and struggling masses in the USSR and Eastern Europe had lost confidence in that project and sought instead to fully integrate into the more prosperous Western capitalist economies - in Gorbachev’s vision, ideally by emulating the Scandinavian social democratic model. Economic stagnation in the USSR following the sharp fall in oil prices in the mid-80’s accelerated his reforms, but the accompanying revival of ethnonationalist ideology which cloaked the pro-Western turn in Ukraine, the Baltics, and the other Soviet republics and throughout Eastern Europe, as well as his own missteps, also powefully contributed to the collapse of the Soviet system on his watch. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29339): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29339 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104795089/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
