In intermediate and transitional phases in history the main task for major political groups is concentration and consolidation of power in order to create conditions for further assault on the society. Meanwhile the economic situation is being artificially aggravated and ideological basis for the major shift prepared. This period of preparations necessitates, among other things, the unsettlement of old beliefs and giving the public an outlet for their discontent - so appropriate leaders are specifically found, like M.Gorbachev, skilled in ‘oral politics’. Objectively, their task for the politicians standing behind them is to camouflage group interests as ostensibly public interests and distract attention from the process of power and property redistribution - by unrealistic projects, slogans and appeals, by erratic zigzagging in public policy. Having eventually compromized these ideas and steps, the new authority would receive ideological confusion and mass apathy, and gain power more easily.
Through all Gorbachev’s inadequacies and follies it is possible to discern the logic of newly-forming social predators: public functionaries, criminal structures, western big capital and morally flexible intelligentsia aspiring to become bourgeoisie.
Gorbachev’s Perestroika fulfilled the task of representing the interests of future bourgeoisie as public interests: following that tune, socialist ’subjectness’ (meaning mutual responsibility, trust and interdependence of subjects) was eradicated, sacrificed to individualism, making profit mindless of others. (Post factum we have realized that ’subjective’ approach was the guarantee of the Soviet people against pauperism, depopulation, predation - it guaranteed sheltered life. Now for 60-70 per cent life is close to survival, while a small percent has an opportunity to get easy profits, live abroad, ape it on TV.)
The pro-capitalist orientation of perestroika rhetoric in 1987-1988 blocked the truly democratic transformation of the Soviet society, in the interests of the community at large, turning critique current into the bed advantageous for the nascent criminal-bureaucratic paracapitalism (later oligarchic capitalism). It was important to begin to undermine the order, so that later the consequences of Perestroika could become irreversible.
The burgeoning capitalism wanted to make profit to its fullest potential, which demanded integration into the world capitalist system. That could be achieved by turning the country into capitalist states’ raw materials satellite. There were two tasks to perform on that way: 1) destruction of the USSR and the socialist system as the world capitalism geopolitical, ideological and economic competitor (space, defense, heavy industry) and divesting the world policy of the principle of balance, giving the illusion that only capitalist philosophy is truly progressive; 2) alienation of the major part of the population from the ‘public pie’ (including the benefits which were guaranteed and provided by the Soviet civilization in the 1950s-1980s). The latter part also suggested the destruction of the social strata of workers, peasants and intelligentsia (the ‘Soviet middle class’) and pushing them into poverty.
This double stroke was much facilitated by the ‘democratic’ irresponsible babble of Perestroika times, it popped to the surface the social scum and transformed it into the ruling class. Perestroika forged its executives - young wolves and jackals of privatization, managerial ‘geniuses’ and social engineers - whose real faculty was, and remains to be, not to create anything new (they are too selfish and mercenary), but grab, divide and obtusely guzzle away the heritage of the USSR - the country so much defiled by them.
DOING JUSTICE TO FALLEN CIVILIZATION
For most part the logic of critique of socialism is simple: those who support it are Stalinist, those who reject it are democratic. This dilemma is false: it is wrong to identify historical communism (socialism) entirely with Stalinism, i.e. its earlier stage. There were also historically higher stages of communism - transitional and mature phases, represented, respectively, by Khrushchov’s and Brezhnev’s periods.
As to the genetic and early stages of social orders, it should be remembered that all early societies are characterized by extremely cruel and bloody regimes - all of them were based on organized violence. The orders of slavery, feudalism, capitalism all began violently. Stalinism is in the line with them, corrected to the mass society epoch, when all processes take a mass character.
One of specific methods of menticide used in Perestroika and liberal mass media was that the mature Soviet society was permanently accused of the extremities of early communism. It is similar to the situation when the present Great Britain would be forever stigmatized as the ‘empire of evil’ for the blood and tears of Indians, Africans, or Tasmanian aborigines. Nobody thinks of doing it, yet. But the USSR was subjected to such defamation as a part of the psychohistoric war, which is continued up to date, with the accent shifted to Russia and the Russian nation.
It would be wrong to call for a choice within the primitive opposition ‘progressive capitalism - Stalinist communism’. The principle of systematic and historic analysis should be applied to social phenomena, when social systems are judged by the same criteria and compared by the same stages.
Socialism is estimated by many people as the heyday of Russian history. Historian, sociologist and philosopher Alexander Zinovyev maintains, that the economy of the USSR exceeded modern western economies in its organization and efficiency. Socialist economy based itself on centralized scientific planning and propagated this approach. More than 80 percent of the population were efficient (i.e. productive, useful for the society), less than 20 percent were not. (Now these figures are reversed: less than 20 percent are socially efficient, the rest are parasitic - for example, the number of young men working as security guards for private companies nearly exceeds the number of Russian army servicemen).
Though himself a victim of Stalin’s reprisals, Zinovyev says that he would never renounce his life in the Soviet Union as accursed past. ‘People felt really free and liberated, under socialism they became conscious of themselves as citizens, real Men - public boon was proclaimed the main criterion of progress’. The levels of education, culture and science were raised to their greatest heights. Russia displayed wonders of human mind and spiritual power. (Spirit is used here not in the religious sense, but in the sense of titanism, akin to the epoch of the Renaissance, and also in the sense of conscience and the capacity to feel the inner, sacred meaning of events, actions, relations). It was, perhaps, a single time in the Russian history when the powers of personality, collective and the state resonated and multiplied each other.
Scores of research institutions fruitfully worked for the good of the people; in 1954 the world’s first atomic power station was put into operation, followed by the first jetliner, the first nuclear ice-breaker; in 1957 the first artificial satellite was launched into space, in 1961 Yury Gagarin became the first man to fly into space. Russia was ahead of the world in putting into practice great discoveries of humanity - all those were the workings of that spirit.
Generation after generation grew proud of their country, enthusiastically studied and worked for it, making the most of their talents. The mature and technologically developed socialism was the present of the 1980s. It could have lived to these days…
Today’s reality is the order, where luxury and prosperity themselves seem inhumane - they are built on human degradation. Seeing the scenes of scavenging or begging pensioners, social orphans gradually becoming drug addicts and other ‘human scum’ of capitalist competition, most people slink into apathy, or adapt to ignoring them.
Revival of Russia has turned out to be problem of ‘higher sociology’. One important task to solve on this way is to develop new unifying ideology, overcome frustration and inspire confidence in one’s powers and the future. It is much more difficult than preparation of space flights. But there is a hope - space exploration was also once just a dream.
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