This book offers us a glimpse into the Russian intelligentsia at the very end of the Soviet Union. The book is written by Alexander S. Tsipko.
“Personally, I’m less concerned today about the reasons for the USSR’s collapse (the answer is rather obvious). Far more important is the question of why the political elite of today's Russia doesn't want to see the truth about what we call ‘the USSR's great power status,’ to see that in many respects Soviet Russia was just as backward a country as tsarist Russia. The inability to renounce the myth of Russian great power status (i.e. that we are presumably one of the centers of modern civilization) prevents us from aligning our foreign policy with our capabilities, with the long-term interests of a Russian people still suffering from perpetual poverty.”
As we read in The Invention of Russia, history did not exist in the Russian mind during the Soviet period. After 1989, Russia’s own historical presence re-emerged in the minds of Russians, and they began to consider the Soviet period for the first time from outside its conceptual horizons. Tsipko writes about this phenomenon in his introduction (p. ix):
“For the first time in dozens of years, history has reentered our minds, giving us back the lost sense of time and continuity, giving us the necessary moral support for sober-minded judgment about the present and the future. It has turned out that perestroika cannot do without repentance and that, essentially, we depend on it for weeding out what still remains of Stalinism in our hearts and our life, for returning to the people the capacity for independent judgment that the great inquisitor took away from them, for cleansing our hearts of the vestiges of slavery.
The outcome of the present moral revolution has largely been decided by our protest, spontaneous as it has been in many ways, against the past attempts to push history into oblivion. It is a protest against the most ingrained feature of our moral slavery, against the unwillingness to know the past, reflect on it, and learn from it. Now we know that the simplistic logic “Let bygones be bygones” is from the devil, from those who want to control our thoughts and deprive people of the right to learn from their history. People learn primarily from their national history, for it is the only thing they can identify with as a personality; it is their own history
and the life experience of their parents and ancestors. We began to cure our disease by getting millions of people to think of what has happened to us over the past seventy years, what Russia has lived through, what it has achieved, and what it has lost. One can arrive at the truth only through spoken word, through independent judgment of oneself, the time, and the world.”
This book gives a Russian perspective on the meaning of perestroika. Stalin became a figure to be despised, but the resentment of Stalin obscured introspection on the revolution itself, and the peoples’ role in it (p. 7):
“Clearly, the version of the Thermidor at once dramatically allays the researcher’s and public’s concern for all other possible causes (or, to be more exact, prerequisites) of Stalinism—primarily, the doctrinal ones. The more indignant we are with the vices of this “traitor to the cause of the revolution,” the less we think about the revolution itself and its inherent objective contradictions, about the internal inconsistency of leftist radicalism, about the dialectic of revolutionary violence, etc. By no coincidence, most authors writing about Stalinism (with the exception of, probably, V. Selyunin, A. Nuikin, and L. Saraskina) prefer to ignore all these difficult and completely forgotten problems of our revolution. The talk begun by Yuri Trifonov in his Old Man, unfortunately, had no continuation.* The dialectic of revolution, the translation of social knowledge into a historical process, the change from theory to practice, the dialectic of centralization, the socialization of the means of production—that is, the deep contradictions of the process initiated by us in 1917—have not yet been thoroughly and dependably analyzed. This fact in itself hinders the development of a realistic philosophy, the philosophy of perestroika.”
It is interesting to see a Russian suggest that Russia is a slave civilization. Given Russia’s serf history, it makes sense to consider how deeply this orientation may be coded genetically into the people (p. 10):
“One can hardly call it a serious and responsible approach to the subject. We are, of course, justified in our grief and indignation with the Russian Apocalypse—the tragedy of the thirties. We should not forget that only one hundred years ago Russia was a country of slaves, that slavery has for centuries dominated our national psychology, and, frankly speaking, we have still failed to eliminate it completely. In this context L. Ionin and I. Klyamkin have given us a timely reminder about the historical roots of our society. Even today many Soviet people are appalled at free speech and independent judgment. But as we are really challenging the heights of civilization, as we are willing to improve our society and to understand what has happened to it, we should set out to analyze these events from the very beginning, from the “word,” from our theoretical foundations. This is because socialism is the only society in human history that is built deliberately, relying on a theoretical plan.”
Here that author connects market economy and the pricing mechanism with democracy, which is interestingly something Atalli also did in A Brief History of the Future. The Russians simply did not know what they were getting into when it came to the “free market” (p. 12):
“For example, it has become general practice to criticize the deformed, barracklike, leveled-off socialism built in the thirties. But this criticism painstakingly passes over the structural reasons why socialism was barracklike. And it shies away from the key question of whether we can feasibly build nonbarrack, democratic socialism on a noncommodity, nonmarket foundation.
This is really the million-dollar question, both for those who think about the future and for those who try to understand the past. Why has the antimarket and fiscal-commodity relationship campaign in all cases, without any exception, in all countries—today’s Iran of the Ayatollahs included—always entailed autocracy, infringement on human rights and personal dignity, and the omnipotence of administration and the bureaucratic apparatus? Why is even terror helpless against trade? Why have all known historical attempts to eliminate free circulation and the producer’s economic autonomy, ours included, ended in failure that ultimately urged a retreat?”
On the Stalinist restructuring of the peasants, the author points out that “collectivization” may not have had scientific grounds, and that uprooting peasant farmers from their traditional way of life may be entirely unproductive (p. 13):
“Was the peasants’ labor organization, wedding the way of life, production, and the family into a single entity, really an anachronism? To what extent was the plan of nationwide farming organization scientifically grounded? Is land nationalization really a necessity in all cases?
Besides the problem of collectivization, dozens of other “difficult questions”—not directly related to Stalin's personality—crop up when we contemplate his epoch.
I shall list just a few of them to give the reader a better idea of the closed zones that up till now neither our scholars nor even publicists touch upon under any pretext.
Can there be reliable guarantees of democracy and an individual’s freedoms when all members of society are employed by the proletarian state and have no autonomous sources of existence? Was it possible to avoid coercive pressure on the peasantry in the context of the Marxist theory that socialized work and collective farming are an economic necessity? Has not the teaching on the revolutionary vanguard of society entailed new forms of social inequality? Are “pure,” direct forms of harmonizing an individual's interests with the interests of society always more efficient than the “impure,” indirect ones? Does the experience of humanity’s development in the twentieth century give us grounds to persist with our belief in the feasibility of complete elimination of ideological pluralism and religious consciousness and in the possibility of doing away with the multiplicity of social and economic forms? Is it generally worthwhile to seek the elimination of all traditional mechanisms of human life, organization, and encouragement, including those that we call patriarchal?”
The author spends much the first chapter dissecting the views of Stalin and asking whether or not Stalin was a Marxist. He does regard Stalin as a typical Marxist of his time, and was not an avatar of a boutique variation on Marxism that was at odds with the mainstream (p. 14):
“I believe that our movement toward this fundamental truth should start with ascertaining the already known and not at all frightful truth that Stalin's reasoning and his views of socialism as a whole were quite typical of Marxists at that time. At least we must screw up the courage we had thirty years ago after the 20th CPSU Congress and initiate serious research into the philosophical and social ideas and stereotypes of thinking that underlay political and economic practices at the turn of the thirties.
It has become somewhat difficult today even to say that Stalin as a personality took shape in Marxist surroundings, that he mastered to the best of his capacities and background the theoretical heritage of the classics and generally never went beyond the frame of Marxist truisms in his writings and speeches.
When, how, and why was it possible to deform Marxism and turn it into the formulas of the Stalinist epoch? What are the inherent prerequisites for such deformities in Marxism per se?
It is, naturally, easier to write about Stalin's petty bourgeois degradation and the patriarchal sources of his consciousness than to ask oneself difficult questions and to answer them. But now it is already impossible to avoid these difficult questions. They will crop up by themselves as soon as the grass-roots readership can get hold of the writings by the leaders of the October Revolution.”
The author points out that Stalin was a typical “peasant-hater,” as was common on the Soviet left wing (p. 16):
“As for the key question of all Russian revolutions—that of attitude to the peasantry—Stalin was a typical leftist, a typical peasant-hater. I think that the deep, hidden essence of Stalinism and Stalinschina, as a variety of Russian left extremism, was precisely the hostile attitude to peasants and the rural way of life as a whole.* The methods of politically discrediting the individual farmer-proprietor and, above all, politically discrediting the middle peasants were also borrowed by Stalin from the leaders of the left wing. Back in 1925 none other than Zinoviev openly came out against Lenin's idea of the popular alliance. He said that “now the middle peasants can and should be called petty bourgeois.” “Those who fail to see it,” denounced the leader of the Leningrad opposition, “impudently idealize the middle peasant.” None other than Zinoviev urged the 14th CPSU(B) Congress to show “much greater resoluteness in our attitude to the peasant than we had shown before.””
The author compares Stalin to other Russian and European Marxists of the 1920s. Pages 16-21 are key. He also references Hegel on page 19 and subsequently points out that Stalin was basically a theory-cel in line with Hegel:
“We may agree with Szaff that the gnosiological sources of Stalin's disdain for what people actually thought and felt lie even deeper and are rooted most deeply in Hegelian gnosiology. Hegel pioneered the idea that “class in itself” differed from "class for itself." Our present habit of opposing the true, fundamental interests of the class to the so-called false, empiric interests of some of its representatives derives precisely from Hegel's belief that one should not give credence to what people think about themselves since they are presently unable to realize their true, essential interests.”
In Chapter 2 the author links continued loyalty to Marxism with Russia servility. He spends much time discussing the need to be willing to question the conclusions of Marxism. The author poses the most important question (p. 29):
“And, finally, the most important question to ask: Can we overcome Stalinism if we agree with its doctrine that peasants posed the greatest threat to socialism? If we agree with this thesis and want to be consistent, we should recognize that Stalin was correct in his attempts to annihilate a class that allegedly stood in the way of building a new society in Russia.”
The author recognizes the “Stalin within oneself” that Russians may be afraid to confront if they take this dictum about peasants to be true. (p. 31):
“In my view, establishing the rule of law is impossible if we persevere in the old conviction that certain classes and people cannot themselves, on their own, realize their true interests and should therefore be drawn to happiness by force. It is impossible to revive our service sector, to live a normal comfortable life it we persist with our former hostile attitude toward the artisan, if we go on threatening society with the specter of the petty bourgeoisie and continue to believe in the possibility of a “pure” proletarian culture.”
The author also points out that arguing about the rates and methods of Stalinism is misguided if the the fundamentals are wrong (p. 35):
“If the notions about the objectives of socialist transformations were erroneous, unrealistic, and incompatible with the laws of the preservation of society, there is no point in arguing about the rates and methods of the movement toward those objectives.”
The author cites some warnings about socialism that sound like warnings about America. Obviously, at NeoReactor we believe that the center of world communism moved to America in 1933 at the latest, so these parallels make sense.
“Bakunin, warned that a democratic socialist republic, particularly in Russia, could result in a new type of “military-bureaucratic centralization.” “In no other situation can government despotism be more terrible and powerful as when it relies on the alleged representation of the alleged people’s will. . . . Particularly terrible is the despotism of the enlightened and therefore privileged minority which alleges to understand the interests of the people better than the people themselves,” he wrote.”
The author quotes Bakunin more directly:
“To be a slave of the pedants—what a destiny for humanity! Give them a free hand, and they will experiment on human society just as now they experiment on rabbits, cats and dogs for the benefit of science. . . . Woe betide humanity, if thought ever became the source and the only guiding principle in life; if the sciences and the scientists stood at the helm of public administration. the source of life would dry up, and human society would turn into a dumb and slavish herd. The administration of life by science would achieve no more than to make all humanity the sillier.”
In America, instead of “military-bureaucratic centralization” we might describe “managerial-bureaucratic centralization” instead. Additionally, Bakunin’s predictions about the rule of scientists from as early as the 19th century exactly predict the outcome of rule by scientists as Americans experience in the 21st century.
The author examines how the unlimited power of the Party and its leaders and their need to hold power absolutely in order to ensure that no competitors took power instead and stopped the revolution led them to become “morally disarmed” and follow a brutal, uncompassionate logic in the name of the revolution. It’s all pretty standard stuff. It does remind one, though, of the justifications for the draconian health care tyranny in the name of some grand plan that demanded a 100% vagseenation rate.
I think at this point we can already answer the book’s central question: is Stalinism really dead? No, it is alive and well in 21st century America. It might seem hyperbolic to say so, but my view of the “pandemic” is that, as a member of the non-revolutionary “peasant” class, the State sought my extermination by making it impossible to employ myself and effectively starve me to death unless I submitted to their “health care” regime. It’s Stalinism but less obviously brutal to those who are complicit in it.