We had predicted from the beginning that Gorbachev’s reforms could have a temporary effect for a few years, before running out of steam. It was clear to us that Gorbachev would either do a U-turn back to centralisation and repression, or he might even be removed, as happened with Khrushchev. The fundamental flaw in Gorbachev’s reforms was that economic advance was to be achieved, as in the West, mainly at the expense of the working class, through speed-ups, productivity deals, cuts in subsidies and even factory closures. The abysmal mess in which Soviet political economy found itself was shown by the irony that Gorbachev’s economic advisers tried to ape the Western witch doctors advocating the introduction of elements of market economy at the very moment when the system on a world scale was beginning to break down. Lacking any Marxist understanding, they were impressed by the temporary boom of 1982-90, which, by an accident of history, coincided with the crisis in the USSR.
At this time, there was a section of the bureaucracy which hankered after a return to the ‘good old days’, of capitalism. Disillusioned by the impasse of Stalinism, they were increasingly impressed by the economic boom in the West. At this point, bureaucratic chaos and sabotage had brought about a situation where, according to the official economists, 13 per cent of Soviet factories actually ran at a loss. The reply of elements like the economist Abel Aganbegyan, echoing the Thatcherite monetarists in the West, was to allow thousands of factories to go to the wall! The same people argued that subsidies on food and rent were too costly and should be removed, allowing prices to find their own level. A few years later this advice was carried into practice with devastating results for the Russian people. But, for the time being, Gorbachev was not prepared to go down that road, fearing the reaction of the masses.
Boris Yeltsin, an ambitious apparatchik from Sverdlovsk, tried to make a name for himself as the most outspoken advocate of perestroika. A natural demagogue, with a flair for theatrical gestures, Yeltsin made a point of travelling on public transport and visiting markets. He even took the metro to the Kremlin, dispensing with the services of his official chauffeur and limousine, and protested loudly against bureaucratic privileges. This undoubtedly, at that time, gave him a certain popularity in Moscow, where his demagogic attacks on corruption received a big echo.
Such was the damage done by the suffocating bureaucratic control that, without wholesale corruption and black marketeering (or blat as the Russians call it), the economy would have ground to a halt earlier. This was well-known to the workers, and openly admitted by Gorbachev who stated shortly after becoming leader: “Try to get your flat repaired – you will definitely have to find a moonlighter to do it for you, and he will have to steal the materials from a building site.” (Financial Times, 2/7/86.)
Even in Moscow, it was impossible to get such elementary services as plumbing done without recourse to blat. The same is true of other cities and regions, as was indicated by Yeltsin’s speech to the 1986 Party Congress.
He [Yeltsin] asked why the CC secretariat at the centre of power in the Soviet Union had done nothing about widespread corruption in Uzbekistan and Kirgizia. (Two Central Asian Republics where the entire Party leadership was removed.) “Why?” asked Mr Yeltsin, “were the same problems brought up over five years at Party congresses? Why after so many years have we not succeeded in tearing out of our life the roots of bureaucracy, social injustice and abuses?”… Mr Yeltsin said Moscow, a city of eight million people, had a stagnant economy and inadequate public transport, shopping centres and health care. He blamed this squarely on the city’s previous leaders. (Financial Times, 28/2/86.)
In another aside to the Congress, Yeltsin said:
For a number of years, the whole retail sector has lived through a period of corruption and we are eating the fruits of that today. If we cannot solve the problem of personnel, if we cannot get rid of the dishonest people, and clean up the whole sector we will have shortages, there will be regular artificial deficits. (The Guardian, 29/1/86.)
Yeltsin sacked no less than 40 per cent of the Moscow local Party workers, but that did not help to solve the chaotic situation he described at the Congress, nor did it prevent a large number of those sacked for bribe-taking from being surreptitiously readmitted with other jobs in no time at all. At the same time, Yeltsin’s campaign actually worsened the economic situation in Moscow because corruption and black marketeering were the oil which kept the bureaucratically-run economy working. Even the supply of raw materials to the factories often depended upon black market wheeling and dealing to get around the obstacles of the bureaucratic system.
This experience proved once again that the brick wall which the anti-corruption drive ran into could only be smashed by the complete dismantling of the bureaucratic state and the creation of a workers’ democracy. That meant a political revolution. And rather than contemplate such a thing, Yeltsin and his cronies preferred to move towards capitalism. However, Yeltsin’s ‘populist’ measures offended the conservative section of the bureaucracy who feared that glasnost was getting out of hand. The sacking of Yeltsin in November 1987 was a clear indication that the Gorbachev reforms were running into difficulties.
Yeltsin demagogically pretended to stand for equality as a means of boosting his popularity. But what happened afterwards? At the present time, this gentleman and his friends have looted the Russian state. Under the reign of this ‘egalitarian’, seven fabulously wealthy gangsters own and control half the country, while tens of millions of Russians live in poverty and wages are not paid for months on end. Some equality! In fact, the inequality in present-day Russia is greater, not only than before, but it is far greater than the developed capitalist countries. It is much more similar to the state of affairs that existed in the ‘crony capitalist’ regime of Marcos in the Philippines than in the genteel capitalist regimes of Western Europe, America or Japan. This fact is not lost on the working class, which is drawing its own conclusions. And let no one forget how the Marcos regime ended up.