Origins of the Crisis in the U.S.S.R.

Essays on the Political Economy of a Disintegrating System

Hillel Ticktin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315488035
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Hillel Ticktin has been one of the most controversial figures in Soviet studies for 25 years. His assertions that the Soviet economy was hopelessly inefficient, that the ruble was a sham, and that the elite was desperate once sounded outrageous. Ticktin consistently argued that perestroika would fail. In his view the USSR was and remained inherently Stalinist. It might lurch back and forth between reformist and reactionary leadership factions but, the system could not evolve, nor could it be restructured. Ultimately, it could only disintegrate, and when it did, the workers would hold the balance. This collection of essays offers a thorough sample of his views.

1
Introduction: The Aims and Achievements of Gorbachev

We can summarize Gorbachev's perestroika years as a period in which the Soviet elite factionalized; a political alliance was established with the intelligentsia; the economy was given a jolt; the regime, for the first time, admitted the need for democracy; and then an intention to institute a form of market economy was announced. During this same period, the country seemed headed pell-mell toward disintegration. One might say that for a while the process of disintegration was covered over with demands for change. But in reality the disintegration continued, as manifested in the more or less open warfare between elite factions, the exacerbation of social tensions, the escalation of republican demands for autonomy or independence, and an accelerating economic decline.

During the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (1985–9), both wages and investment rose faster than the planners had intended. Although the economy seemed to pick up in 1988, the plan results showed wages outstripping productivity by a wide margin (for the first time in decades). Until that time, investment in department one (producer goods) exceeded investment in department two (consumer goods), as was the usual pattern. In 1988, consumer goods production grew faster than that of the producer goods sector. The plan results for 1989 continued the reversal in the relative growth rates of consumer goods and producer goods production, but this in part reflected a very low (1.4 percent) growth of industrial production in general, which thereafter dipped to negative growth. The trend for wages to outstrip productivity continued in 1989, and there was a massive increase in money supply; inflation reached increasingly higher levels. The result was shortages. Rationing became general. It was a watershed year.

The constant harping on the extraordinary economic situation in the summer of 1989 raised suspicions that it had been engineered by either pro- or antireform interests. Much was made of the budget deficit, although the USSR has not functioned on the basis of money or the budget since at least 1929. Nonvalue economic plans had been the centerpiece of the economy. That the state used direct emissions of rubles to balance its budget was quite clear, but hardly significant, given the trivial role of the ruble in the economy. The stress on the urgency of economic crisis, coming as it did from sections of the ruling elite, could only be a reflection of their need to effect a rapid change in economic policy.

Meanwhile, the demands of workers for a higher standard of living and control over their own lives were in no way being met. The more concessions were made to the intelligentsia in terms of material benefits and freedom of speech, the more blatant was the declining position of workers. In this light, the most important event of the period was the miners' strike of July 1989. The miners' economic demands were not difficult to concede, at least in verbal terms. Consumer goods could be imported, but that was only a one-time solution. Genuine workers' committees were another matter. So too was the miners' demand, echoed by the trade unions, that private enterprise be limited. The underlying egalitarian ethos of the workers opposed the whole of Gorbachev's economic platform in all its many guises. These demands struck at the heart of the system and could not be conceded.

While the handling of the miners' strike showed that the regime remained master of the situation, nonetheless the workers had given warning that elements of the reform program were unacceptable. Higher prices, cooperatives (often a euphemism for the private provisioning of the well-off), unemployment, and attacks on labor were barred unless the regime wanted a strike wave on its hands.

Could the market be introduced against popular resistance? Promarket economist Gavriil Popov quite bluntly acknowledged that dictatorial action would be required to institute a market economy in the USSR (New York Review of Books, 16 August 1990). Gorbachev could only move toward the market at the price of enormous internal instability, and most certainly a radicalization of the working class. By the end of 1990 even Soviet enterprise directors—who had long demanded more control over their enterprises and who, it might seem, had the most to gain from a transition to the market—had seen the light and were calling for a return to old-style "planning" (Financial Times, 7 December 1990). Who, indeed, could picture the Soviet Union following Poland's path?

The logic of reform dictated that the transition to the market and the march toward genuine democracy and freedom of speech and organization should both proceed—ultimately sweeping away the elite itself. This was Gorbachev's dilemma. He either had to permit events to dictate his course or he had to draw in the reins at some point. Either way he would lose: in the first case, the elite and so Gorbachev would lose power; in the second, he is left with no policy other than the one he so deplored—stagnation—and the fate of a defeated and ultimately discarded leader.

The controllers of the USSR realized, at the very abyss, that it would be better to pause and consolidate than to advance—and to lose all power.

What, in fact, were Gorbachev's aims? He spoke frequently of the need to reinvigorate the economy, ultimately, perhaps only implicitly, through the full introduction of the market. He never ceased to speak of the need for order and discipline, meaning by this the introduction of a nonarbitrary legal system under which the worker worked hard and the manager had the right to manage. In short, his aim was the achievement of a stable oligarchy buttressed by the rule of law and the market. Along the tortuous road toward that goal, reforms had to be introduced that might stabilize a regime under severe threat.

If the population accepted as genuine Gorbachev's declared intentions, to raise the standard of living of all and improve their position, he would have achieved a propaganda victory. This, however, could only be accomplished through real concessions. If these could be kept minimal, in the sense that the position of the elite was only marginally affected, but the population accepted them as real concessions, he would have bought more time for the regime. But Gorbachev's immediate problem was one of reestablishing order in the elite itself. He had to find a workable political and economic program that was acceptable to the different factions in the elite, so that it could be implemented. Thus, Gorbachev was walking a tightrope.

The solution that the regime adopted at the end of 1990 had the characteristics of classical Stalinism as much as Brezhnevism. Gorbachev ordered the KGB and other police agencies into action to ensure that goods were delivered and central power was locally in evidence. Thus, he had taken the regime full circle, from anti-Stalinism to anti-Leninism and moves toward marketization, democratization, and decentralization, back to an attempt to reimpose control by the center. The new period was one of continued and even accelerating disintegration, punctuated by attempts at reintegration, such as the planned Union Treaty. And then the tightrope broke.

The coup that occurred in August 1991 had long been predicted. Both the coup and the counter-coup displayed in concentrated form the conflicts and tensions in the country. The coup failed because of divisions within the elite which were reflected in the army and, crucially, in the KGB, and which will be described in this book. But what was not sufficiently noted during this period was the "benign neutrality" of the workers. The coup plotters appealed to the workers by promising to bring down prices, while the liberal forces offer the hope of freeing their labor from bureaucratic controls. Yet the workers remain the chief obstacle to a transition to the market entailing rising prices, high levels of unemployment, increased work demands, and expanded wage differentials.

The disintegration of the Soviet political economy promises a long and continuing period of instability both in the society and internationally.

At this point it is not possible to exclude any possibility.

2
Theory and Concepts

The purpose of this book is to provide an outline of a political economy of the USSR. It is my intention to grapple with that system's real—as opposed to imagined, imposed, or believed—contradictions. The advent of glasnost' has shifted the study of the USSR away from a process of detection. There are more facts and statistics available, and truer histories as well. What remains urgently needed is a theoretical analysis that is neither apologetic nor ideologically opposed. The regime is still producing its own apologetics, even if they are of a more sophisticated kind, while much of the Western literature can only analyze the USSR in terms of orthodox economics, ideologically committed, as it is, to the market.

The task of this book is, therefore, to take part in the discovery of the nature of the laws governing the USSR. In this endeavor it tries to describe the changing social relations in the country. At this point the reader may object that there are numerous such books available, both inside and outside the USSR. While the objection is valid, the fact is that Soviet writings have hitherto been of the purest apologetics, based neither on fact nor on theory. On the other hand, much of the work of the same kind in the West has been vitiated by a parallel attempt to impose a preexisting idea or concept on reality.¹ While there are interesting insights to be found in much of this work, it is less than useful for purposes of understanding.

Western Sovietology

The field of Soviet studies in the West has swung from the totalitarian to the interest-group model.² Both models have had their uses. The totalitarian view argued that no independent organizational form could exist in the USSR, and hence the population was atomized. The essential dichotomy was one of elite and masses, and the Communist party played the crucial role in the society insofar as it was coterminous with the elite. All instructions came from above and no dissent was tolerated. This attitude was correct in pointing out the atomization of the population and the concentration of decision making in the elite The problem with the totalitarian model, however, was that it looked at society in purely political terms, where politics was defined as the act of making decisions.

The totalitarians failed to understand the USSR because their concepts were incorrectly grounded. The term "Communist party," for example, might suggest that this entity is the same in the USSR as it is in the United States or the United Kingdom. That is dubious. If the CPSU were abolished as a party, it would have to be reinvented as an integrating agency, which might simply be called the Civil Service Inspectorate. To say that the Communist party is in power in the USSR means as much as saying that the elite rules. The totalitarians knew that the CPSU was not Marxist; but if it is not Marxist, and if today it is pragmatic and little else, then it is not very enlightening to discuss the USSR primarily in terms of one-party rule rather than no-party rule.

This school of thought was succeeded by a more empirical view among scholars who see the USSR evolving under the influence of different interest groups. These scholars were found equally wanting, although for different reasons. At least the totalitarians pointed to a real relationship, however superficially. The empiricists could only repeat the Soviet literature in Westernized form. While pointing to the existence of interest groups in the USSR, they left unexplored the crucial question: How does the elite rule?

The term "totalitarian" is now enjoying a renaissance in Eastern Europe, used to express the opposition of the new regimes and the ruling intelligentsia to the old forms of rule. Their use of the word is not very different, in that they counterpose multiparty formal democracy to the complete absence of real politics. The problem, however, is that Eastern Europe is different from the USSR. Nobody in Eastern Europe saw the Communist party as a real ruling party. Its chief instrument was the secret police, an agency that was immediately attacked throughout Eastern Europe. The Communist party itself very quickly dissolved with a mass desertion of members, most of whom had belonged only out of economic or political necessity, and with a rapid change of structure and title. These regimes only existed through the domination of the USSR, expressed through occupying troops and the control of the secret police.

In fact, to make the same point in more detail, it was really Khrushchev who created the Stalinist party as an instrument of rule, with regular congresses, committee meetings, and an invulnerable party apparatus. Accordingly, there is an argument to be made that the CPSU has only existed for a short time.³ But it has never existed as a party in the usual sense of the term, for the simple reason that a single party cannot be a political party. A one-party system is a no-party system, a fact easily demonstrated by looking at the internal life of the CPSU. It does not exist, in any real sense. Local parties simply have accepted instructions and decisions from above. In other words, there has been no real discussion, election from below, criticism from below, or indeed any real function for the local party, other than the reception of documents, which no one reads or heeds. On the other hand, the party had no necessity to contest elections, campaign to change minds, or perform in the manner that communist parties did before 1917 or in the rest of the world. The party congresses and Central Committee meetings were a forum for the elite, where the great bodies of state—the army, the secret police, and the bureaucratic apparatus, in their factionalized form—could display themselves.

From this point of view, the introduction of an elected Congress of People's Deputies has created the potentiality of an actual party of the elite. That few would vote for the Communist party if given genuinely free elections became quite clear. This did shake up the party and compel internal discussion. Yet, factions within the party are still banned, even if they do exist, and open platforms cannot be presented. There are no real elections to the relevant party bodies, only forms of representation of different sections of the party. Even where there are elections, they are carefully controlled to ensure the acceptance of the candidates.

The Plenum of the Central Committee that met on 6– February 1990 marked a turning point, celebrated by the Western press. Article 6 of the Constitution enshrining the special role of the Communist party was slated for removal, the party was to become more democratic, and multiparty elections were to be permitted. What this really meant was that the Soviet elite would prefer to rule using formal elections, assuming that their own party would obtain sufficient consent to maintain the system.

For the interest-groupers, the different sectional divisions provide an understanding of the elections to the Central Committee and the in-fighting over policy. Their picture of the Soviet elite is also more realistic than that of the totalitarians. Nonetheless, the peculiarity of a regime that relies on a special form of atomization as a means of control needs to be understood and discussed. The totalitarians at least stressed this aspect of the society. It led them to conclude that the society was stable, and without pressures at the top of the kind discussed by the new Soviet scholars. On that point they may have been wrong, but they did at least attempt to explain the nature of control in these societies.

The advisory group around Ronald Reagan in his first term were the successors of the totalitarians (Richard Pipes, in particular, was a theorist of this type). But they went a step further and found that the USSR was dangerous as it was both expansionary and disintegrating. Logically, the correct policy was "the squeeze." The economic inefficiency of the regime conflicted with the harsh forms of control it maintained. The introduction of the element of economic inefficiency provided a dynamic for a view that until then had had none.

The problem with this view is that it sees the market as both eternal and necessary. It assumes that only the market can provide the efficiency and elements of democracy needed for a stable and modern society. Adherents of this view fail to see that the majority of society will actually lose through the introduction of the market. Marketeers usually point out that this is temporary, and that in the long run everyone will gain. Even were this true, a political question is posed that is, at the very least, formidable. Allowing prices to rise, requiring people to work harder, and mandating a greater differentiation of incomes immediately benefit sections of the elite and the intelligentsia. The ordinary worker would actually be worse off, bad as his present position is. It is this dynamic that the supporters of the market, of whatever ilk, neglect to face.

The modern-day totalitarian theorists see only that a group of the Soviet elite have to be vanquished so that the market may be introduced. This assumption is extremely dubious. There is in fact no real evidence that the Soviet elite would not have preferred a market from the beginning. The logical founder of Stalinism is Bukharin, the inventor of the Stalinist doctrine of the possibility of building socialism in one country, who supported the continuation of the market-type economy of the 1920s.

The obstacle to the introduction of the market, and hence a real change in the system, lies in the social structure. This is where the totalitarians failed, since they were unable to find a social structure at all. Had they done so, they could no longer have maintained that the USSR was strong, stable, or a world menace. Their explanation of atomization itself is political and hence insufficient. After all, how was it that the secret police were actually more powerful in the USSR than in Nazi Germany? Hitler destroyed mainly his political enemies and the Jews; under Stalin whole layers of the population were decimated. Trotsky, who still regarded the USSR as a workers' state, was nonetheless moved to remark in 1937 that the USSR under Stalin was politically worse than Germany under Hitler.⁴ In other words, the absence of a market and the strong internal controls reflect extreme instability, not stability. The elite would accept any solution that kept the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: The Aims and Achievements of Gorbachev
• 2. Theory and Concept
• 3. The Nature of Social Control in the USSR
• 4. The Nonpolitical Politics of the Soviet Elite
• 5. The Intelligentsia
• 6. The Working Class
• 7. The Nature of the Soviet Political Economy
• 8. The Present Economic Crisis in the USSR
• 9. Perestroika and the Disintegration of the USSR
• 10. Where Are We Going? The Nature of the Transitional Epoch
• Index
• About the Author