Ex-USSR after Yeltsin... A Chilean solution?
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
LAST WEEK, the so-called 'trial' of the Soviet Communist party opened in Moscow. But Russian President Boris Yeltsin cannot hope to achieve much in the way of political capital from it. Bashing the Communists will have less and less significance in a society falling to bits, and where public opinion is turning against the hero of the August 1991 coup.
Yeltsin's own coup was completed last December in the wake of the banning of the Communist Party, as Gorbachev was evicted from the Kremlin, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.
Since then the living standards of ordinary people have fallen dramatically. The income of an average worker is 2000 roubles a month and a doctor 1000 a month, whereas a living wage is estimated to be 4000 roubles a month.
Other economic indicators are catastrophic. Since 1990 output has fallen by around 25 per cent. Investment has fallen by 55 per cent. Since 1989 consumer prices have gone up more 1200 per cent, whereas wages have gone up only by 370 per cent. Both exports and imports have fallen by over 50 per cent.
Nothing could be more symbolic than Yeltsin's proposal to give Russian economic resources to the West in return for reduction or cancellation of the Russian debt. Western leaders are dangling the carrot of a £24 billion injection of capital, but in return they demand rapid privatisation and liberalisation of the economy.
Bankruptcy law
The key to this proposal is a new bankruptcy law, and the cutting off of state credit from 'unprofitable' enterprises. In effect this would mean the destruction of hundreds of Russian factories and the creation of mass unemployment.
So far unemployment in Russia is estimated to be about 130,000. This has been achieved by keeping the factories open, even if they do not produce and workers are sent on 'holidays'. But the state enterprises are floating on a tidal wave of debt, and would collapse without the state subsidies.
Yeltsin fears the social and political consequences of this course, and it is being resisted not only in the working class, but among thousands of managers of state enterprises who see their power and privileges being destroyed.
The process of decomposition of the ex-USSR continues. The Commonwealth of Independent States is just a temporary phenomenon in the inevitable process of decay into separate states. But neither are the various republics themselves stabilised, with ethnic conflicts and wars of secession breaking out in many areas.
Who is in power in the republics? In fact the governments of most of them consist of recycled bureaucrats; they are new nomenklatura governments.
There is the growth of a new middle class, often based on small-scale trade and various kinds of corruption. Sections of the bureaucratic elite have been busily enriching themselves through the theft of state property. But the big bastions of Soviet industry remain in state hands.
Yeltsin is having enormous difficulty in carrying out the December 1991 decree on privatisation. There have been privatisations of small enterprises, but small firms remain on the margins of the economy. In the absence of substantial foreign investment to buy the big firms, different schemes, including issuing vouchers to the population, as has happened in Czechoslovakia, are being discussed.
Between January and April there was a strong strike wave among public sector workers, especially teachers and health workers. 300,000 working days were lost and there were 170,000 strikers. But the unions remain very weak, and the 'Spring Offensive' of the official trade unions in 1991 petered out.
However, it can be predicted with certainty that if the bankruptcy law goes through and is applied, there will be an enormous wave of struggle against the ensuing redundancies. The question is what kind of political solutions could emerge in the middle of such a struggle.
Chilean turn
Many Yeltsin advisors are talking darkly of the necessity of a 'Chilean turn' – an analogy with General Pinochet's brutal 1973 coup. 'Chilean' in this context has a dual meaning: first a rapid liberalisation of the economy, and second an authoritarian political solution. The banning of strikes as a first stage is being widely canvassed in government circles.
'Democratic Russia', the broad political movement around Yeltsin, has broken up into a thousand warring factions. Inside the government Yeltsin's deputy Rutskoi is in persistent political conflict with his boss, making himself the champion of Russian nationalism.
Where is the left in this situation?
The main force coming out of the Communist party is a broad coalition called Trudovia Rossia (Russian Labour). Within this coalition the main force is the Communist Workers' Party of Russia, which claims 150,000 members; it probably has something like 75,000 and many fewer activists.
Stalinism
But the Communist Workers' Party combines unreconstructed Stalinism with strong nationalist, authoritarian and even anti-Semitic strands. While its members stand daily vigil beside Lenin's tomb, it has also participated in demonstrations with the fascist Pamyat organisation.
The other major significant force is the Socialist Workers Party of Russia, which claims 50,000 members, probably a vast exaggeration. This body, which has no connection with the British SWP, has as its best-known figure the old Communist dissident Roy Medvedev. It bases itself on Gorbachev's reform programme and has strong social-democratic leanings.
The non-Stalinist left is very weak, and probably weaker than it was a year ago. The grouping which aims to form a Party of Labour, led by Boris Kagarlistsky, has only around 100 members of different political persuasions.
In addition there is a significant anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist movement, as well as various Marxist workers' clubs, especially in the Urals.
Unemployment
The overall pattern of development in the CIS can be summed up in three phrases – economic collapse, disintegration and conflict in the republics, and the growing danger of authoritarian political solutions.
So far the working class has had to endure great hardships through the ending of state subsidies, price rises and the disintegration of national planning.
However, because of the continued state subsidies to the big firms and factories, really mass unemployment has not arrived.
If Yeltsin and the IMF have their way it soon will; the withdrawal of credit to state firms would create in one swoop perhaps 20 per cent unemployment.
This would be the greatest assault on the social gains of the Russian working class, and a crucial test of its short-term ability to forge an alternative to capitalist restoration.