Communists and the NDP

by David Lethbridge

I want to start with a quotation from Louis Althusser:

“The union or fusion of the workers’ movement and Marxist theory is the greatest event in the history of class societies. Beside it, the celebrated great scientific-technical ‘mutation’ constantly resounding in our ears is, despite its great importance, no more than a scientific and technical fact: these events are not of the same order of magnitude. ... This union is not an established fact but an endless struggle with its victories and defeats. A struggle in the union itself. With the 1914 war: the crisis of the Second International. At present: the crisis in the international Communist movement.” (Marx’s Relation to Hegel, 1970.)

The crisis we find ourselves in today is at the same time both similar and different from the crisis to which Althusser alluded. In 1970, the crisis had to do with the struggle within the Communist movement over reformism, which was hiding under the cover of “theoretical humanism,” and which had repercussions throughout the international Communist movement.

The crisis for us, in Canada today, is a crisis that involves the historical trajectory of social democracy; the politics of the NDP; the relation of the working class to both social democracy and the NDP; the relation of the Communist Party to social democracy, to the labour movement, and to the working class. This many-sided crisis has repercussions for the way the Communist Party works in many areas, including the Party’s work within the mass movements.

The place to begin is with the concrete material conditions of the working class. It is no longer the case that the working class has nothing to lose but its chains. Very clearly, over the last century, the material wealth of the working class in Canada (and the imperialist nations as a whole) increased substantially: at least until the mid-1970s. This increase in material wealth is certainly the result of mass action on the part of the working class in terms of wringing concessions from the exploiting class. The real threat of revolution, both at home and abroad, forced the bourgeoisie to deal with the workers’ demands.

While it may be true that the working class remains “dependent and excluded from political power” – as stated in the Thesis – it can be argued that, unfortunately, this has hardly been disturbing to many members the working class. Given the pervasive and all-embracing character of bourgeois ideology, the working class as a whole has been led since birth to believe that such dependence and exclusion from power is the natural course of things, and to believe that the existent relations between classes is natural and inevitable. And, at least in Canada and the US, working people have been taught that there are no classes, in any event. Furthermore, individualism, as a distinct aspect of bourgeois ideology, constantly attempts to teach working people that it is possible to work their way up in the capitalist system, and holds out the twin false promises of individual and collective prosperity.

Social democracy – whether left-wing or right-wing – expresses this same bourgeois ideology. It suggests that through step-by-step increases, the material conditions of the working people can constantly improve. For a relatively long period in Canadian history, social democracy has played the role of hand-maiden to imperialism. It has acted in the role of, on the one hand, “managing” the workers’ demands and “managing” the concessions wrung from the capitalists, while on the other hand preventing the fundamental social change and popular extension of democracy that socialism would bring about. In that sense, social democracy has always served the bourgeoisie very well.

Furthermore, in Canada, unlike in Italy or France for example, no alternative to the left of social democracy has seemed viable to the working class as a whole. Socialism has been painted by both capitalists and social democrats as inevitably authoritarian and murderous.

In the period between the end of World War II and at least the mid-1970s, the increasing material wealth gained by the working class, and the absence of widespread concrete privation, meant that the class struggle was fragmentary and largely dormant. (The significant exception here was the near-global explosion of counter-cultural and revolutionary activity of the late 1960s and early 1970s, predicated in North America largely on non-economic factors: it is worth noting in this context that both Gramsci and Althusser pointed to the relative autonomy of cultural and ideological factors in the class struggle.)

At the same time, imperialism’s consistent neo-colonialism allowed it to extract wealth from South America, Africa, and Asia. By materially, financially, and militarily supporting fascist regimes, in short through exporting fascism, the ruling class was able and willing to provide concessions to the working class at home. So that, despite some degree of real political repression, the Canadian working class has benefited materially and financially from imperialist policy, having the further effect of dampening working class militancy and class consciousness.

The situation has clearly begun to change, and has been changing for some years. The concessions that had been wrung from the ruling class have been reversed. Real material privation has begun to spread. It has become clear to increasing sectors of the working class that social democracy is no longer working. It has further become clear that the NDP has moved further and further away from a social-democratic direction, to the point where it is mirroring bourgeois policies. Working class alienation from the NDP, from social democracy, and from the political process as a whole, has left a political vacuum which continues to expand.

Under these conditions, if the Communist Party remains largely invisible or is perceived as little more than a slightly-left version of the NDP, or if it is seen as reformist or inconsequential or as a defeated tendency, working class anger, resentment, and militancy will go elsewhere. It will go to the right, as it has done in considerable numbers over the last decade. Some sectors of the working class have been seduced by the Reform party; others have been seduced by neo-fascism, as the global experience of the 1990s is proof. All of which benefits the ruling class mightily.

Only by offering a distinct and open and militant alternative to social democracy, and the NDP in particular, can we ever hope to draw the working class to us, or to infuse the class struggle with class consciousness and a desire and a pressing need for socialism. Such a position requires that we step up our criticism of the NDP and of social democracy as a whole, while simultaneously arguing within the organized labour movement for more militant positions and more militant action. Not for nothing has the Central Committee of our Party put out the call that our Party must be seen and it must be heard.

Unfortunately, the structure of bourgeois politics in Canada may appear to have us trapped. It is undeniable that the NDP provincial governments will ultimately always betray the working class and stand in the way of socialism. They have done so repeatedly and increasingly in the contemporary period. On the other hand, it is equally undeniable that an NDP government is preferable to a Liberal, Conservative, or Reform government. Open criticism of the NDP, then, would have the obvious effect of making center-right governments more likely. Therefore we are trapped. Or so it would appear.

What to do? Accept the consequences of the trap. Break the trap by moving our propaganda and agitation to the left. Accept that in the short-run we may lose some allies in the organized labour movement, and that in the short-run we may well have to endure center-right governments. But in the long run, our Party and the working class as a whole will benefit from being more open and more left. Nothing other than hard and open struggle will break the deadlock that we find ourselves in with social democracy and draw the working people to socialism. The only alternative is to accept the status quo, which is to adopt a centrist, and ultimately defeatist line in the class struggle.

Of course, this is a delicate thing. If the Party takes an open position too far to the left of the majority of the labour movement, we will not attract them. If we take a position that is too centrist, we will not attract them. The art is in finding the position that will draw more and more members of the labour movement towards class consciousness. But in the end, only by taking a consistent and militant left line can we demonstrate our Party’s true uniqueness and thus draw increasing sectors of the labour movement closer to our policies and to a socialist future.

The opportunity to make such a change in our own tactical direction may be right now, given the NDP’s quick march to the right, and the moral and political bankruptcy of social democracy throughout the world. In the 1930s, as Comrade Palme Dutt demonstrated conclusively and in much detail, social democracy played an active and conscious role in helping fascism to achieve state power. As imperialism lurches towards ever more fascistic policies, social democracy may yet play that role again.

I believe that it is time that we took the same road that Lenin once took when he realized that social democracy had collapsed irretrievably under the weight of bourgeois ideology. He struck out at them forcefully, and forged a new road ahead towards socialism.

In short, either we are a revolutionary party, or we are nothing.

Spark! #13-14, pp. 11-14

Why do Social Democrats

do what they do?

by Danny Goldstick

What makes them do it? Most of us know individual NDPers who work very hard for progressive goals in the labour movement and other people’s movements. As individuals they certainly aren’t “sell-out artists” by nature, in most cases. And those NDPers who get elected to office mostly are not so very different, as individuals, from other active NDPers. Why then have elected social-democratic governments been so disappointing?

In the first place, the record is variable, after all. The CCF government of Saskatchewan in the 1940s was very progressive indeed. So was the Salvador Allende coalition in Chile, which embraced a diverse range of political forces, from just-left-of-centre to the Communists. Allende himself gave his life defending democracy and the cause of the people in 1973. So the first lesson is that different conditions produce different kinds of governments, including social-democratic governments. Under favourable conditions even Liberal and Conservative governments can be pushed into pretty progressive policies by the labour and other people’s movements. Under favourable conditions social-democratic governments can be pushed by them and led on by them even more effectively. It is the first job of progressives to make those conditions as favourable as possible by mobilizing the people in defence of their needs and interests – at election times, at any time. The big business agenda thrusts in the opposite direction, and there is no guarantee of any progressive outcome, even with a social-democratic government in office.

Why is it, though, that NDP governments elected on progressive platforms are so very vulnerable to those pressures from big business which can make them turn right around and govern at the people’s expense? To answer this we must look at just who, in the main, the NDP are, and what that social-democratic ideology which those people find so attractive actually is.

For Marxists, “socialism” means the social ownership of the main economic levers of production in a country. Inside the NDP, though, “socialist” is what those who lean to the left generally call themselves, whether they go so far as to advocate overall social ownership or not. And “social democrat” is what those who lean to the right in the NDP like to call themselves. In Marxist parlance, on the other hand, a “social democrat” can even be a very left-wing advocate of socialism. What differentiates social democrats from revolutionary socialists is the fact that Marxists and other revolutionaries stress that the present-day capitalist rulers of our society are much more powerful and ferocious than the social democrats think, and the struggle required for a major people’s advance has to be much fiercer than the social democrats admit.

Why will they not admit it? Isn’t the history of the world in the twentieth century pretty good evidence for it? They won’t admit it because it is an unpleasant thought. They want an easy route to progressive advance, not a revolutionary but an “evolutionary” style of socialism – if, that is, they recognize the necessity for socialism at all. Instead of a massive confrontation between opposing historical forces, they are afraid of any showdown, and think they can achieve their goals gradually, just by means of small victories here and there. They think electoral democracy is sufficient, and underestimate the need for people’s mobilization outside of parliament.

Marxist revolutionaries do not deny the importance of parliament and the electoral process in focusing public debate. They do not even say that social revolution must occur illegally, by means of civil war. That will have to depend. At a moment of mass popular arousal the people may be strong enough to enforce their revolutionary will more or less peacefully by cowing the capitalist minority into going along with the people’s verdict – but there can be absolutely no guarantee of that, except the strength of their mass mobilization.

The evidence for a conclusion like this does seem overwhelming. And so what kind of political people would fail to see it, despite being generally progressive-minded and opposed to big business politics? The answer is, people committed to a relatively easy path of social advancement.

Just who does belong to the NDP? For the most part, three kinds of people: labour people, white-collar hobbyists, and professional politicians. At times when the trade union membership are aroused and militant, most labour leaders will be apt to reflect that in their actions. At other times, a lot of them act more like brokers: go-betweens who have to reconcile the conflicting interests and demands of their membership, on the one hand, and their management negotiating partners, on the other. Is it any wonder they have a strong inclination to avoid heavy confrontation between the classes, if they can? It may be unfair to speak of white-collar “hobbyists” as if it were not the case that quite a few are very dedicated indeed to the different progressive causes which they support. But most moderately active NDP members are not overly serious in their commitment to people’s politics. They may be indignant at a particular political sell-out by their leaders, but their reaction may just be to drop out instead of fiercely fighting back. The leaders know from experience that the whole thing can blow over in time with no serious challenge to their position. Of course, this may be a miscalculation. The professional politicians who lead the NDP have to reckon on what they can get away with in the Party, among the voting public, and in their dealings with the business class. Like labour leaders and white-collar hobbyists, they too may much prefer an easy political path which avoids any heavy confrontation – but then again that may not be in the cards for them.

When working people get pushed and pushed too far, they become dissatisfied. They start acting for themselves, and demanding more from their leaders and their governments than they have been getting. Determined revolutionaries have a crucial role to play in every phase of that process.

Spark! #13-14, pp. 10-11

Same old Liberal Drivel

Pierre S. Pettigrew, The New Politics of Confidence, Stoddart, 1999, $29.95.

Review by Howard Cukoff

Pierre Pettigrew was the beneficiary of a fortuitous cabinet shuffle: he left poor Jane Stewart holding the bag in the billion dollar boondoggle (or was it three billion?) at the Human Resources Department (HRDC). Pettigrew transferred to the International Trade portfolio – he was our representative at the WTO conference in Seattle – a step up the ladder. Any Prime Ministerial ambitions he may have are presumably still intact. It doesn’t do to show too much talent in the Liberal party, after all. Prime Minister Chrétien is a bit touchy about that... how else can you explain the career of Sheila Copps? If only we had voted for Kim Campbell!

Pettigrew has published a book which amounts to an attempt to present the federalist case on the ‘national unity’ question, the substance of which is in the last chapter. The reader has this reviewer’s permission to skip the rest without feeling guilty about it. The text is a reworked collection of speeches and papers stemming from the period before Pettigrew joined the government. The author was a management consultant, and has written the book in the tedious and barely readable style of that profession. The style fits the bill, however, in a book about national unity, a problem which the federal government hopes to ‘manage’ out of existence since it has no intention of solving it. The strategy of evasion, inertia, and occasional bully tactics has kept the country together so far, it is true.

Canada is a big player in the world, it is a member of many international organizations, including the U.N. Security Council several times, it has far-ranging trade pacts and the prospect of further advances, and it has the respect of the international community (does Yugoslavia still respect us?). So runs Pettigrew’s argument, and he is undoubtedly right that an independent Quebec would face a decline of prestige and presence in our (forgive me) global economy. Quebec would lose its geographical bridge to the once and future burgeoning Pacific Rim. Pettigrew is also correct to point out an often-overlooked matter. Quebec carries on an extensive interprovincial trade which would almost certainly be disrupted in the wake of secession. In economic terms, the sovereigntist project would hardly be a cake walk, despite the assurances to the contrary of Lucien Bouchard, whose pitch in the last referendum campaign was that sovereignty would be so easy to achieve that no one would notice it had been.

Pettigrew holds that the federal system is flexible and adaptive, qualities which effectively position the country to compete in contemporary market conditions. Flexibility is enhanced by the constant squabbling between federal and provincial jurisdictions, since the levels of government compete to provide better services and a better economic climate. These advantages would be lost in the centralized model of government an independent Quebec would follow. As examples, Pettigrew mentions the bureaucratic bungling in Quebec’s manpower training department, which the province wrested from federal control a few years ago, and the short shrift municipalities get in Quebec. Pettigrew maintains that the Quebec government is inept at regional development and has been unable to arrest the decades-long decline of the city of Montreal.

As Pettigrew sees it, the sovereigntist movement is parochial and out-of-step with economic reality. Nationalism is about much more than economics, needless to say. The French fact in Canada has entered a demographic crisis. The proportion of francophones in the country is declining, and political power (in a democracy, at least) follows the demographic trend. The insecurity of francophones both in Quebec and in the Rest of Canada (where the cultural assimilation of francophone communities is a critical danger) – of which the sovereigntist movement is one expression – is real, the future of the French language and culture is not assured. As long as Canada’s constitutional arrangement is not adjusted to meet the problem – it does not even presently recognize that there is a problem – Pettigrew’s brand of economic federalism will ring hollow.

Economic flexibility means flexibility in the labour market. Apart from the insecurity francophones experience as a national minority in Canada and as a nation in Quebec, the working class section of the nationality shares the growing economic insecurity of Canadian workers – and not only workers. Nationalism in Quebec won’t go away, the sovereigntist movement in Quebec is far from extinct, as a recent headline in the National Post stupidly claimed. Wasn’t it pronounced dead a few months before the last referendum campaign? The social tension which comes with the new economic reality combined with the apparent improbability of constitutional reform – not much flexibility there – will continue to feed separatist tendencies. Is the ‘everyone in his own back yard’ philosophy of the Reform party (rather, the former Reform party) really so different from that of the Péquistes? Reform leader Preston Manning¹ briefly contemplated a political alliance with the sovereigntists to further his goal of dismantling the power of the federal government. Pettigrew’s New Politics of Confidence are a hope or a prayer that Liberals will somehow muddle through, as they always have. One hopes that the consultant gave his corporate clients better advice.

_______________________

1 – Editor's Note: Preston Manning has now been replaced as leader of the Canadian Alliance [a.k.a. the Reform Party] by Stockwell Day, the former treasurer under the Alberta Tory regime of Ralph Klein. Interestingly, Day and the new Alliance leadership have also been courting Quebec sovereigntists of late.

Spark! #13-14, pp. 69-70

Portraits of a Revolutionary

Bukharin, Nikolai, How it All Began [or, The Prison Novel]; Columbia University Press; New York: 1998.

Larina, Anna, This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow; W.W. Norton & Company; New York and London: 1993

Review by Janet Bolton

“If I was more than once mistaken regarding the methods of building socialism, may my descendants judge me no more severely than did Vladimir Ilyich. We were the first to pursue the same goal by an as yet untrodden path. The time, the mores were different. Pravda would print a page for discussion, then everyone debated, sought the right path, argued, and made up and proceeded onward together.

[From Bukharin’s letter “To a Future Generation of Party Leaders,” written in 1937 as he awaited his arrest on charges of conspiracy against the Soviet Union.]

Nikolai Bukharin spent just over one year in Lubyanka Prison before his show trial and execution in March 1938. In a frantic burst of creativity, while enduring imprisonment, interrogation and the mental anguish of preparing to confess to hideous crimes, he wrote four significant works. Locked in Stalin’s personal archives for decades were: Socialism and Its Culture (the second volume of an anti-fascist work he had begun before imprisonment); Philosophical Arabesques; a collection of poetry; and the last, his prison novel.

How it all began is a classic coming of age tale about a young boy in late 19th century Russia. Writing more autobiography than fiction, Bukharin barely disguises himself in the protagonist, Kolya Petrov. The story recounts his parents’ fall into poverty, his childhood (and enduring) passions for nature and art, his classical education in a “gymnasium,” his emotional and intellectual struggle to understand death and mortality, and the beginnings of his political awakening.

The memoir ends – in mid-sentence – when Kolya was only 15 and Bukharin – thirty-three years later – was about to be executed. How much more interesting Kolya’s life was to become as he joined the Bolsheviks in 1907, was exiled in 1911, returned to revolutionary Russia in 1917 and became a chief theorist and leading member of the Soviet government.

The memoir’s origins in Lubyanka are defied by its leisurely pace and dense descriptions, but that pace perfectly suits the rich, internal life of a precocious child Bukharin evokes. The author evokes a time long past, where even the earliest memories of childhood are distinct and compelling.

One almost familiar scene is a description of a social/political gathering of young radicals in a student’s apartment. The still friendly rivals are debating their political positions. The Social Democrats have Lenin’s What is to be Done? close at hand as they argue with the Socialist Revolutionaries about Russian particularism, the role of terrorism, and the relationship between the peasantry and the working class.

Both the memoir’s editor, Stephen Cohen, and its translator, George Shriver, point out occasions where Bukharin would seem to be commenting as much on the Soviet Union as on Tsarist Russia, or may even be carrying out a veiled polemic against Stalin’s rule. This is a doubtful interpretation, and does not do the work justice. The novel/memoir’s strengths lie elsewhere, in the perceptive descriptions of the people Bukharin knew, the relationships among them, and his surroundings.

This mature self-portrait of a child and adolescent provides considerable insight into the man Bukharin became. Still, the memoir ends too soon. For readers more interested in politics than psychology, the final result may be disappointing.

Much more is to be learned from Anna Larina’s memoirs, This I Cannot Forget. Only twenty-two years old at the time of Bukharin’s arrest, Anna Larina memorized Bukharin’s letter “To a Future Generation of Party Leaders,” and carried it with her through Stalin’s jails, prison camps, and internal exile, reciting it daily. She wrote it down on more than one occasion, only to destroy the written version out of fear, until 1956.

Anna Larina’s own story is fascinating, though her husband, Bukharin, is the subject of her memoirs. Bukharin was a friend of her family’s, and of her father, Yury Larin, in particular. Larin was a Bolshevik and economist, a man with a severe disability who was nonetheless a prolific author and leading revolutionary intellectual. Because of the two men’s friendship, Larina knew Bukharin throughout her childhood.

Larina’s writing is remarkable. Her story is not told in a linear fashion. Instead, she has put together segments of different “stories.” Written over many years, they nonetheless fit together into a seamless whole. These tales include her childhood memories, especially of her father and Bukharin, her later, romantic relationship with the much older Bukharin, the final separation from him and their son, her imprisonment with its isolation, deprivation and interrogations (including by an old acquaintance, Beria), and a glimpse of the decades in exile.

Larina’s purpose is never in doubt. These memoirs are a passionate plea by a widow for her late husband’s integrity and legacy. But they are also more than that. This I Cannot Forget is a detailed rebuttal of all Stalin’s accusations and a clear, careful defence.

Larina tells us how much she knew of Bukharin’s story first hand, and she reflects on the accuracy of her memory (for example, where “I do not remember the exact date of this confrontation [between Bukharin and Rykov], but I clearly recall that the weather was still warm. Rykov had run in wearing a gabardine coat and cap. Therefore it must have been no later than the beginning of autumn in 1928 that Stalin knew about the content of Bukharin’s conver-sation with Kamenev.” [p. 116]) She admits what she only knows as “hearsay,” and then refers to internal consist-encies or confirm-ing evidence. Her versions gain even more credence from her forthrightness when she disagrees with Bukharin (for example, where “I have to report the truth, galling as it is to recall it” [p. 285]).

In 1937, Bukharin was charged with “spying and wrecking; the attempted dismemberment of the USSR; the organization of kulak uprisings; conspiratorial ties with German fascists, as well as German and Japanese intelligence; terrorist hopes of murdering Stalin; the murder of Kirov; a terrorist act against Lenin in 1918 previously attributed solely to the Right Social Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, ...” [p. 66] At the infamous show trial, Bukharin confessed to being a counterrevolutionary while denying guilt for any particular crime. In Larina’s careful but eloquent style, she refutes the charges. More than that, in Larina’s interpretation there was neither a conspiracy nor an organized opposition to Stalin by the 1930s.

Her convincing version of events includes Bukharin’s story of his conversation with Kamenev in 1928, at the height of the dispute over the New Economic Policy. Bukharin told Larina that the conversation took place at a chance encounter when Bukharin, Sokol-nikov and Kamenev were all going home from a session of the July 1928 plenum of the Central Committee. In an act of indiscretion, Bukharin “talked about [Stalin] in a tone of extreme irritation and disappointment, condemning his moral qualities as well as his political line,” [p. 112] and went on from there.

The conversation was either taped by the NKVD or revealed by Kamenev; in any event, it was not kept secret. Larina evaluates the “so-called transcript” of the conversation, published in 1929 in Trotsky’s German bulletin, and admits that it “truly reflects both Bukharin’s political views and his attitude toward Stalin in 1928, as well as the climate in the Politburo at that time.” [p. 117] What was not true, in her view, was that this chance encounter ever amounted to a conspiracy among Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, and others. It was, instead, the small kernel of truth on which Stalin and the NKVD based their charges.

Another key piece in the conspiracy case built against Bukharin came from Bukharin’s trip to Paris in 1936, in the delegation sent by Stalin to purchase the Marx and Engels archives. The delegation had to negotiate with Russian emigré Mensheviks, Dan and Nicolaevsky. Anna Larina was with Bukharin towards the end of the Paris trip, in the last weeks of her pregnancy. She could not account for Bukharin’s meetings prior to her arrival, but reports on those she did attend.

Following the trip, the Menshevik Socialist Herald published “Letter of an Old Bolshevik,” with the clear implication that Bukharin was the author. In it, the “Old Bolshevik” excoriated Stalin and his allies and spoke proudly of the author’s role in an opposition movement. The letter was, as Larina notes, a tightening of the noose around both Bukharin and Rykov’s necks.

Years later, Nicolaevsky admitted that he wrote the letter, and later still he wrote an account of private conversations with Bukharin that he claimed formed the basis for the letter. Larina is scathing in her refutation of this evidence. Unforgivably, her editor, Stephen Cohen, himself a Bukharin biographer, condenses her arguments in this, one of the most important sections of the book.

Larina’s Bukharin was emotional and highly strung, the adult version of the now familiar adolescent in the prison novel. He was taken completely by surprise as events unfolded and his world fell apart. Towards the end, he was an anguished and despairing man, undertaking a senseless hunger strike and contemplating suicide. He was also astonishingly naïve. Even as he was being relentlessly pursued by the NKVD at the behest of the Central Committee, he pleaded with Stalin to intervene on his behalf. (“Seeking salvation from his own executioner,” [p. 284] is how Larina puts it.)

Certainly, by the time she wrote these memoirs and earlier, during her own imprisonment, Anna Larina did not share her husband’s guilelessness. (One poem she composed while in prison portrayed Stalin as a black crow feeding at the carcass of the glorious revolution.) When she recounts Bukharin’s faith in Stalin it is because “I have to tell the truth, galling as it is to recall it.” [p.285]

Larina’s evidence also suggests that Bukharin had no regrets about his role in defeating the left in the 1920s, because for him those battles were about ideas, not power. Nor did he draw any connection between how that defeated opposition was disposed of and how he was then dealt with a decade later.

Stephen Cohen is not convinced by Anna Larina’s portrait. Cohen’s Bukharin had more political savvy, less naïveté. He would have had the foresight to understand Stalin’s plans for him, and been capable of having organized and maintained some opposition to Stalin’s policies, if not leadership. But in the introduction to This I Cannot Forget, Cohen’s position relies more on rhetorical questions than on argument.

In the late 1920s, Bukharin fought Stalin bitterly on the turn away from the New Economic Policy and towards forced collectivization and industrialization. He argued openly, defending the NEP and publishing his views. His position was defeated, and Bukharin was removed from the Politburo.

Did Bukharin carry on in opposition after this? Larina believes that he “considered it necessary to curtail any further struggle. Dominated by Stalin, the Party had started down a different path, disposing of Bukharin’s economic politics. Under such circumstances, he could find no more useful action than to close the ranks.” [p. 262] She also recounts in detail a Paris conversation between Bukharin and Nicolaevsky, the only discussion they held without other members of the Soviet delegation being present. Nicolaevsky asks how life is in the Soviet Union, and in particular collectivization. Bukharin’s response is worth quoting at length:

“Collectivization is a stage that is now complete; a difficult stage, but complete. In time, differences of opinion are outlived; it makes no sense to argue about what kind of legs should be made for a table when the table is already made. At home, they write that I was against collectivization, but this is a ploy of propagandists, a cheap shot. I had indeed proposed another path, more complex and not so pell-mell, that would have led in the final analysis to production co-operatives, a path that did not involve the same kind of sacrifices but would have ensured that collectivization was voluntary. But now, in the face of approaching fascism, I can say, ‘Stalin triumphed!’ [pp. 256-257]

Similarly, in his 1937 letter to the “Future Generation of Party Leaders,” Bukharin wrote that he was in his seventh year “without a shadow of disagreement with the Party.” [p.344]

At times, the debate about Bukharin has raged vociferously. Western liberals have speculated that a very different, more palatable Soviet Union might have emerged with Bukharin in the leadership. Communists have certainly wondered whether the New Economic Policy was not leading toward the restoration of capitalism; the Soviet leadership still had reasons in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s not to restore Bukharin’s reputation. Even today, in discussions about the transition to communism, about the New Economic Policy and Bukharin’s opposition to Stalin in 1928, the contested terrain is unmistakable: the fate of the Soviet Revolution.

In that historical moment of Bukharin’s opposition to Stalin’s policies can be glimpsed an alternative outcome, a different history of the Soviet Union. If a different course were followed then, could some tragedies have been averted and some crimes never committed? Could a different kind of communism have evolved? Or was what Soviet communism became the only thing it could have become? These questions are not the property of the right: they are important problems for us all.

Bukharin was, of course, not guilty of counter-revolutionary activity. The charges were patently absurd. Anna Larina spent the years after 1956 researching, writing and demanding that the Party restore Bukharin’s rightful place as a hero of the Revolution. He was finally rehabilitated by Gorbachev in 1988 – itself, perhaps, reason for more skepticism.

Yet, Larina’s Bukharin does not emerge as the potential, historical leader of an alternative direction in the Party and in the Soviet Union. He seemed truly to believe that “it makes no sense to argue about what kind of legs should be made for a table when the table is already made.” But perhaps this is because, as Stephen Cohen speculates, his wife had not seen him in the heat of political battle. Perhaps all his words were guarded by the end, including in the famous letter entrusted to Anna Larina.

Until we know more, the most fitting epitaph was written by Bukharin himself: “Know comrades, that the banner you bear in a triumphant march towards communism contains a drop of my blood, too!” [p. 345]

Spark! #13-14, pp.63-68

On Ligachev's Memoirs: A Review and Comment

Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin – The Memories of Yegor Ligachev; Westview Press: Boulder, Co.;1996; 407 pp.

Review By Roger Perkins

The rejection of Marxism-Leninism by the top Soviet leadership and the subsequent disappearance of the USSR has had and will continue to have catastrophic repercussions for a whole historical period. Would imperialism and its now emboldened New World order have dared attack Yugoslavia if a strong, socialist USSR still existed? So revolutionaries must ask: “What went wrong?” Perhaps the memoirs of Politburo member Yegor Ligachev could shed some light in answering this important and continuing question? Ligachev was second only to Gorbachev in the Soviet leadership and later became known as a “left” opponent of the policies carried out by Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Shevrenadze and Yeltsin.

Unfortunately Ligachev’s murky, self-promoting book is more cover-up than searchlight and proves the old cliché about being part of the problem and not part of the solution. He devotes most of the book to defending himself (more or less convincingly) against charges made against him in the anti-communist, but still “Soviet” press – some of whose editors he himself appointed. It appears that the capitalist roaders used Ligachev as a lightning-rod patsy to divert attention from their own counter-revolutionary plans. He was said to have taken bribes, a not unbelievable accusation, during the terminal stage of Soviet revisionism. While Gorbachev was having tea with Margaret Thatcher, the now-in-charge Ligachev was accused of ordering Soviet troops to attack and kill demonstrators in Soviet Georgia, the so-called Tibilisi Affair. As an alleged closet Stalinist, Ligachev was accused of covering up the existence of a newly discovered mass gravesite on the banks of the Ob River, presumably having its origin during the Stalin period. And astoundingly, during a period of supposedly open, free exchange of opinions (glasnost), Ligachev was accused of allowing the publication of a discussion article on the polemics page of the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya by university lecturer Nina Andreyeva in which she criticized perestroika. Ligachev devotes long chapters to these and other alleged scandals in order to clear his “good name”; But in doing so he uses up most of the book describing how the cookie crumbled but not why.

However some truth does pour out through the cracks of Ligachev’s narrative. This review will focus not on the “scandal” but on important links of inquiry that flow from Ligachev’s story: the role of anti-Stalinism; the question of cadre selection and advancement; democracy in the abstract and concrete; modern revisionism and Gorbachevism; and Ligachev’s proposals for post-Soviet Russia. But first some background on Ligachev.

Although trained as an engineer, Ligachev spent his entire working life as a Party functionary. In 1949 he was First Secretary of the Novosibirsk Province Komsomol (YCL) – a position from which he was removed, being charged with “Trotskyite deviations.” After a period of political limbo a now more cautious and street-wise Ligachev was assigned to the Novosibirsk City Party Committee. But he “did not breathe freely ... until the 20th Party Congress ... exposed the personality cult.” (p.261) During the Khrushchev years Ligachev’s career blossomed and he rose rapidly in the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) administrative apparatus, making it all the way to the Party Centre in Moscow. When Khrushchev was sacked and replaced by Brezhnev, Ligachev found himself shunted back to Siberia. He spent 17 years in the Tomsk provincial Party organization, eventually rising to the highest position of First Secretary.

After the death of Brezhnev and the selection of Andropov as General Secretary of the CPSU Ligachev was again assigned to work at the Party Centre. The decision to transfer Ligachev seems to have been made suddenly. At a meeting of provincial First Secretaries in Moscow Ligachev asked for permission to speak on a non-agenda item of general importance. He proposed that a monument to the victims of Stalin be erected in his home province and encouraged the other provincial First Secretaries to do likewise. After the meeting while he was preparing to return to Siberia, the phone rang in his hotel room. It was Gorbachev informing him that his return flight had been cancelled, that he was not to return home and that he was now a resident of Moscow. Ligachev was to report to the Kremlin the next morning.

Ligachev was given the task of carrying out a purge of high-level Party functionaries (“Gorbachev assigned me the complex job of replacing the leading cadres in 1983.” – p.49)

Not only were the incompetent and corrupt to be axed but also those whose backgrounds might not be “suitable” for the new path of “Party renewal.” Ligachev claimed that it was difficult for him to fire decent, loyal Communists who no longer fitted in. The norms at that time mandated that those dismissed also lost their pensions. Many were in tears. Nevertheless Ligachev carried out the “renewal” as instructed and was promoted once again. When Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU he chose Ligachev to be his First Deputy, the second most powerful position in the USSR. In Ligachev’s own words:

“Gorbachev moved that I be elected a member of the Politburo. It is not often that a Secretary of the Central Committee was elected directly to the Politburo, passing over the Candidate status. ... Gorbachev invited me to come forward from the hall up to the Presidium, where only Politburo members were seated. I went up to the platform where the Presidium table was and wanted to take a seat near the end. But Gorbachev called out ‘Yegor Kuzmich, come here and sit next to me.’ A free place had been left next to Gorbachev... When I took it, Gorbachev leaned over and ... said in a fairly loud voice, so that those in the hall could hear him: ‘Yegor Kuzmich, give me the floor, I am going up to the Podium.’ With that phrase, the General Secretary essentially designated the no. 2 man in the Politburo.” (pp.81-82)

This reviewer asks the following questions: What qualities did Gorbachev value in Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev? Was it Ligachev’s proof that he was capable of “spilling blood” by loyally carrying out a purge of honest communists who belonged to the Old Guard? Was it Ligachev’s anti-Stalinism? Did Ligachev’s purge of Party personnel show a bias in terminating the careers of real or imagined “Stalinists,” thus giving the green light to the promotion of “anti-Stalinists”? Was an incorrect evaluation of the question of Stalin by the Soviet leadership one important factor leading to the downfall of the Soviet Union?

This unfortunately appears to be the case. Before 1953 Stalin was credited with God-like qualities; he was all-wise and could do no wrong. After Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 Stalin suddenly became an evil tyrant on whom everything negative in Soviet history was blamed. Khrushchev’s bombshell speech was not pre-approved or discussed by the CPSU nor were sister parties consulted. It was an individual, semi-anarchist, non-collective irresponsible act out of the blue and had severe repercussions in the international Communist movement.

It did not take long for various anti-communist elements to discover that they now had new living space – a political “Lebensraum.” By hiding behind the fig leaf of “anti-Stalinism” they again became viable seeds and were further nurtured when Khrushchev announced that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been replaced by the “state of the whole people.” An entire generation of opportunists infiltrated the Party and state and became practised in the art of saying one thing while believing another. Their “pro-Soviet” but anti-Stalinist posture was in reality a Trojan Horse housing reactionary views on the inside. Anti-Stalinism became a code word which meant in practice the destruction of Marxism-Leninism.

The accusation of the right-wing, anti-Soviet press that Ligachev was a Stalinist and desired a return to Stalinist times is, of course, nonsense. But Ligachev reacted to this McCarthy-like charge by capitulating to anti-Stalinism: as if to say, “I am not now nor have I ever been a Stalinist!” He proudly flaunted his impeccable anti-Stalinist credentials, including his YCL dismissal: “... In the difficult Stalinist years ... our family suffered harsh persecution and I myself was on the very brink of disaster.” (p.184) Ligachev’s father was expelled from the Party when Ligachev was still a child; his wife’s father, an Army general, was executed for treason in 1937. It is of some significance to realize that Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Shevardnadze and many other top leaders of the USSR demolition team came from families that contained members once classified as counter-revolutionary. Ligachev sums up well:

“I never stopped reminding people about the great significance of the 20th Party Congress which exposed Stalin’s personality cult, and about the fact that our main task [emphasis added-RP] was to protect the Soviet people from a repetition of such persecution.” (p.299)

At a time when the Soviet Union, the CPSU, and socialism itself was about to disappear Ligachev thought that the “main task” of the CPSU was to prevent a return to “Stalinism”!!!

Ligachev’s description of how the CPSU operated is very revealing. The vibrant party of Lenin had been ossified into a hierarchy of conformity and corruption. The style of work had been infused with commandism. Some in positions of power lorded it over – even enjoyed the humiliation of – subordinates while at the same time grovelling before and boot-licking those above. An example given by Ligachev was the Party bureaucrat Bogolyubov, who was abusive towards his staff, but when the special Kremlin phone rang (it had a different cuckcoo sound) Bogolyubov would leap to his feet, answer the phone himself, and stand at military attention while listening and agreeing with every word spoken on the other end.

Each higher level of the Party had its own perks. When Ligachev was promoted from the provinces to the Centre he was not permitted to bring his familiar and trustworthy Volga automobile with him. In his new position he must accept the larger, very ostentatious Chaika. He was told that riding in a Volga would not only lower his own prestige but all others of similar rank. Faced with career-ending implications, Ligachev quickly conformed.

According to Ligachev, nepotism was common. The leader of the Uzbek Party is said to have placed 14 of his relatives on the payroll of the Uzbekistan Central Committee apparatus.

But it is Ligachev’s description of Party democracy (or lack thereof) that is most shocking. The CPSU was no longer a party of proletarian democracy. “Democracy” became a lip service ritual – something to ornament and decorate speeches. The dialectical relationship between leadership and rank and file – its unity, interaction and interpenetration – had been transformed into a top-down mechanical, commandism. The bottom-up dynamic which should characterize a developed socialist society, was in practice little better than the boss’s suggestion box found in Western capitalist countries.

A strange perversion of democratic centralism took place inside the Party. Instead of unity being achieved through discussion, argument, ideological struggle and ultimately via practice, “unity” was achieved by administrative methods and pretence. For example, if – in spite of careful personnel selection – a Politburo member were to state: “I totally disagree with perestroika and glasnost; it will lead to the restoration of capitalism!” Gorbachev would have had this person removed. The replacement would be a true believer or someone who pretended to be. The concept of a minority position or opposition to a particular policy was not permitted. If after discussion one found oneself in a minority position, perhaps being near the top of the speakers’ list and misjudging the direction of the ideological wind, one was expected to backtrack with ritual apologies: “When I first read the document I was interrupted by several phone calls and lost my train of thought. Upon second reading I now find myself in total agreement.” Or “I must have flipped three pages at once and missed the core argument. I now see that the position adopted is correct.” At first one could express a difference by putting it in the form of a question: “And on what scientific basis and precedent does your recommendation rest?” But near the end Gorbachev would not even answer questions. He would just shuffle his papers and say, “Let us move on to the next part of the agenda.” Ligachev sums up: “ ... political struggle inside the Party was a thing of the past ...” (p.366)

Thus all members of the Gorbachev team had to be team players of the same mind-set. One might differ on details or speed of implementation but not on direction. If one had doubts about direction and wanted to remain part of the leadership, then one had to keep quiet and fake agreement – an ideal environment for opportunists and careerists. This weeding-out process resulted in the absence of genuine Marxist-Leninists at the highest levels of the Party.

Ligachev, a true believer in perestroika and glasnost, did argue for a slower pace and this was permissible until the Yakovlev-Gorbachev line of full-speed-ahead-to-a-capitalist-market-economy-with-white-flags-flapping was decreed without ever being discussed in the Politburo. At that time the question of pace itself became no longer debatable. But Ligachev, not a closet Stalinist but a closet maverick, persisted in his view that, although going down the capitalist road was correct, the journey should be made under the Red Flag, and that excessive speed was going to cause a crash. At the late date of 1990 Ligachev wrote several official letters to the General Secretary and Politburo. “This was an automatic right as a Party member,” he notes. Ligachev warned that “our socialist Motherland is in danger,” and “I believe it is necessary to convene an extended Central Committee plenum, including Party activists of the country ...”. Nothing happened. Ligachev comments:

“Something so unbelievable and astounding happened that I still cannot grasp it. For all the increasingly raucous proclamations about pluralism, glasnost, and democratization of the Party, the situation in its top echelons seemed in actual fact to be reverting to the dark years of the past: In violation of the Party Charter ... my letters were shelved. Politburo members did not see them.” (p.179)

Ligachev further states:

“Under Stalin, you would have lost your head for a letter like that. Under Khrushchev you would have been fired. Under Brezhnev you would have been made an ambassador to Africa. And under Gorbachev you were simply ignored.”

But an aging Ligachev shortly thereafter was forcibly retired. This reviewer asks: If a Politburo member was not permitted to officially communicate with fellow Politburo members, how much workers’ democracy was left?

While concrete democracy inside the Party had been snuffed out, abstract, formal democracy outside the Party had run amok – including free speech for fascists. But this explosion of “democracy” was a shaped charge, blasting in one direction only – to the right – while actually curtailing the left. Most of the Soviet media had been taken over by capitalist roaders who glorified everything Western and hated Russia’s “Stalinist” (read: communist) past. When a letter to the editor by University lecturer Nina Andreyeva appeared on the polemics and discussion page of the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, all hell broke loose. Andreyeva’s contribution, “I Cannot Forsake My Principles,” was an attack on perestroika. Gorbachev immediately called an unscheduled, emergency Politburo meeting to investigate how such a mistake could occur. (Compare Gorbachev’s quick action in this matter and his inaction in response to Ligachev’s call for a special meeting because “our socialist Motherland is in danger.”) Thousands of right-wing articles in the Soviet press, some even pro-fascist, were not considered a problem, but one left-wing letter to the editor necessitated the calling of a special Politburo meeting with only one item on the agenda – Andreyeva’s letter. Ligachev comments:

“This unusual Politburo session lasted not one day but two. In all the years of perestroika this was the only Politburo session at which an article published in the press was discussed.” (p.307)

Yakovlev and others launched an attack on Ligachev.

“They wanted to turn Andreyeva into the symbol of Stalinist excesses, and then tie Ligachev to her and announce him to be the chief advocate of a return to the times of the Personality Cult.” (p.306)

But some members were conciliatory – after all it was only an unofficial letter to the editor. The Western press tolerated such letters, but according to Ligachev, Gorbachev literally broke those who failed to condemn Nina Andreyeva’s letter sufficiently. They (most likely including Ligachev himself)

“were forced to change their point of view during the course of the discussion under the pretext that they had initially read Andreyeva’s letter without sufficient care. Upon subsequent reading they discovered there was something in it that was in opposition to perestroika.” (p.307)

The Politburo ordered the press to launch an anti-Andreyeva campaign. Sovetskaya Rossiya was categorically forbidden to publish letters in support of Andreyeva and ordered to print only condemnatory letters. (The actual letters received were running in favour of Andreyeva at a 5-to-1 ratio). This was the operation of the so-called “free press” under glasnost.

In summing up Ligachev’s subjective opposition to – but objective support for – the destruction of the USSR, it must be pointed out that Ligachev was a loyal Gorbachevite almost until the very end. In his introduction to Ligachev’s Memoirs the American bourgeois liberal Kremlinologist Stephen F. Cohen points out that Ligachev and Gorbachev were conjoint twins – each essential to the other. Ligachev was handpicked by Gorbachev for advancement, but according to Cohen, Gorbachev would not have come to power without Ligachev’s support – the Old Guard would have continued and the USSR would still exist today. Ligachev and Gorbachev started perestroika together and marched together until Gorbachev chose Yakovlev’s quick march to capitalism over Ligachev’s go-slow approach.

Ligachev was necessary to Gorbachev during Stage One of a hidden agenda – the destruction of the CPSU as vanguard and the eradication of any residual vestiges of Marxism-Leninism. During Stage Two, the beginning of the process of transition to capitalism, Ligachev, whose career had been consumed with domestic party work, was no longer essential, and Gorbachev turned to Yakovlev (former Ambassador to Canada) who had many CIA and capitalist connections in the West. In Stage Three, Gorbachev, whose popularity had plunged to single digits, was himself no longer essential and gave way to Yeltsin, who proceeded to set up a semi-dictatorial comprador-criminal puppet state for imperialist plunder. Stage Four – the dismemberment of the once mighty USSR into smaller and yet-again smaller political units is still in progress.

Ligachev either does not, or pretends not to, understand these events – “If only Gorbachev had followed my advice and proceeded slower with perestroika!” Ligachev seemed obsessed with Gorbachev like a spurned but still love-struck admirer. The original title of his book in Russian is The Gorbachev Enigma. Even today he still believes that “only Gorbachev was worthy of occupying the highest post of General Secretary ...” (p.56) Ligachev is oriented toward the personage of Gorbachev and not the Soviet working class:

“As someone who until July 1990 pinned his hopes on the inner top Party leadership ... I have turned the events of 1989 and 1990 over in my mind many times. Why did Gorbachev take such a strange position?” (pp.250-151)

A befuddled Ligachev concludes that Gorbachev must have fallen into some sort of “trap.”

Today genuine communists in the former USSR do not look to Ligachev for leadership because Ligachev is still a Gorbachevite without Gorbachev and is best viewed as “right centrist.” He supported Gorbachev too much and too long and was insufficiently militant with his late opposition. Ligachev did not participate in any last minute attempts under way in the Party to remove Gorbachev, nor did he support the failed pseudo-coup of August 1991. Nor did Ligachev oppose Gorbachev’s revisionist “convergence of the two systems” theory or his non-class “universal human rights” concept.

Ligachev continues to hold many revisionist illusions about capitalism in the West. In his Preface to American Workers he notes that “The entire world is following the path of integration” which will result in “the coming economic harmony of the twenty-first century.” Not only does he believe that “in Western countries ... the army helps farmers with the potato harvest,” (p.64) he also opines that “the state system of social protection for working people created in the USSR” is “now used all over the world.” (p.316) On page 328 Ligachev claims that he is still “convinced that socialism also has equal rights as one of the roads of humanity towards progress.” One must ask the question: does Ligachev believe that present-day capitalism is also “one of the roads of humanity towards progress”? Is he so naive as to think that post-Soviet, new-world-order imperialism would voluntarily allow socialism to have “equal rights”?

A further concern of this reviewer is what Ligachev chooses not to tell us in his memoirs. Did he or did he not oppose the sellout of the German Democratic Republic and its sacrifice to imperialist Anschluss. How did he vote in the Politburo when the decision was taken to severely cut back on aid to socialist Cuba? On these and many other questions Ligachev is silent.

Ligachev’s book is an attempt not only to clear his “good name” from scandal but also to cover up the blame due him for the overthrow of the Soviet Union. His don’t-blame-me-blame-them attitude is more self-aggrandizement than self-criticism. The closest Ligachev comes to self-criticism is on page 235:

“When I was in the political leadership of the Party I restrained myself from talking about differences. Was I correct in doing so? I don’t know. It may have been a mistake.”

A mistake indeed, along with thousands of others, including recommending to Gorbachev that Yeltsin be promoted to the Politburo.

In an Afterword written four years later Ligachev systematizes his outlook and gives us a few of the whys. He is indeed correct when he states,

“What happened in our country is primarily the result of the debilitation and eventual elimination of the Communist Party’s leading role in society ... its ideological and organizational unravelling ...”

But, of course, Ligachev’s sins of commission and omission contributed to the process. He is also right when he observes that the “final victory in building socialism in the Soviet Union was declared prematurely, and that led to complacency.” (p.361) But Ligachev then launches into a tirade against “state socialism” which he claims puts “too much ... property in the hands of the state with respect to the means of production,” which held back “initiative” and “excluded competition.” He staunchly defends perestroika, one aim of which was “... the development of money-exchange relationships” which “create the necessary economic conditions for self-sufficiency and self-financing of enterprises...” Ligachev says that “state socialism” had “exhausted itself and was a brake on forward movement.”

From the viewpoint of the apparatchik-nomenklatura strata of terminal revisionism only two choices appeared to be possible: continuing some form of top-down state socialism or its replacement by capitalist market forces. From the viewpoint of a communist worker neither of these are “choices” but deviations from Marxism-Leninism. What was needed was a new, revitalized, planned, state-owned and collectively run economy with a very large bottom-up component. Such a choice – worker’s control and the creation of a genuine workers’ state – was unimaginable to Ligachev and his colleagues who ran the Soviet Union. Instead of worker’s power they choose market power.

But Ligachev does ask an important question: “... why didn’t the counterrevolution meet with resistance on the part of the workers?” (p.366) Ligachev doesn’t have a clue other than that they were “deceived.” True enough, but didn’t Ligachev himself play a major role in the deception? Could it be that Soviet workers saw little difference between Gorbachev/Ligachev and Yakovlev/Yeltsin and wanted neither? When faced with these two pseudo-alternatives, inaction was inevitable. The experience of the Soviet Union proves the necessity of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, both before and after the revolution. But the CPSU had been destroyed by modern revisionism while a new Communist Party existed in potential embryo form only. The non-anarchist Soviet working class, lacking its vanguard party, would not spontaneously rise up when the agenda had been set within the framework of the old and the agenda of the new was not yet formulated.

Ligachev is saddened by the destruction of the USSR and is opposed to Yeltsin’s Russia. But he does not call for the restoration of the old Soviet Union. He might be right; a river having flowed past the bridge is never the same again. But what sort of “new Soviet Union” does he propose? Ligachev, earlier in his career, said: “I am definitely opposed to ... opening even a crack of any kind, for the introduction of private property in our socialist society.” (quoted p.382) But Ligachev, whose extremely malleable ideological opportunism experienced the slippery side through perestroika to post-Soviet Russia, now advocates the building of a mixed economy where “various forms and methods of economic activity take place” (p.375) The “Communist” social democrat Ligachev proposes a limited “socialist” sector, the “commanding heights of the economy” as the old post-World-War-II British Labour Party called it, with most of everything else privatized – all the service sector and most of the manufacturing sector. An exception is land ownership. “As for land, there should be no private property.” (p.383); “land should be assigned to those who work it – for family farms, garden plots ... And they should have the right to pass it on as inheritance.” Ligachev’s agrarian policy is totally compatible with capitalism.

As for Russia’s new capitalist class, Ligachev says, leave them alone. His “logic” proceeds as follows: We now have a powerful private sector, but Yeltsin’s Russia has a collapsing economy and is a country that can no longer feed itself. Moreover millions of people are employed in the private sector. Therefore, to return to the workers that which had been stolen “would lead to mass starvation, even more unemployment and economic ruin.” (p.382) In other words: capitalism is good, but Yeltsin screwed things up; a return to socialism would make things even worse! He advocates that the left should confine itself to fighting the criminal bourgeoisie while giving support to the national bourgeoisie and “if we introduce sensible taxes, then we will acquire quite a few supporters among those property owners.” (p.382) Foreign investors also need not worry in Ligachev’s new Russia: “I take it upon myself to state that the national patriotic forces ... will guarantee the safety of investments.” (p.384)

But it is not “socialism” that drives Ligachev; socialism is just a popular demand to which lip-service must be paid. The inner tension that propels Ligachev is Russian great-nation chauvinism. In hindsight he believes “the fatal error of perestroika” was not the danger of capitalist restoration but “leniency toward nationalist movements.” (p.171) He now identifies with the “national patriotic forces,” the so-called red-brown coalition, whose goal is to restore Russia to the status of a great power. Accompanying this transformation is a gender change. What, during Soviet times, was called the “socialist Motherland,” (p.179) has, in Ligachev’s Afterword become the Russian Fatherland (p.368).

By using extensive quotes from Ligachev himself, this lengthy review has attempted to show the massive extent of Soviet revisionism. It further hopes to convince those still harbouring illusions about perestroika and Gorbachevism to rethink their positions. Clarity on this issue is necessary for the Communist movement to go forward.

As for Ligachev, it would be wrong to classify him as “no different” from the rest. But nevertheless, the best of a bad lot is still bad.

In conclusion, let it be noted that many of the negative features of late Soviet society had their origins in earlier periods of Soviet history, including some from the Stalin period. We must scientifically and with searing communist criticism analyze these phenomena so that they will never be copied or allowed to happen again.

Spark! #13-14, pp. 53-63