Letter to a Friend: On the contradictions in the evolution of the Former USSR

My take on the contradictions in the structure of the USSR : the industrial proletariat and the rest of the working-class in attempting to build a socialist society are required by Marxism to manage their government on their own steam. They had this task right after the Civil War's decimation of the nation,an Olympian task to build a participatory Society, to include more and more of the masses of the population into the task of governance. Given the shape of events in the genesis and unfolding of the first 20 years of Soviet government, the Soviet state carried on with war-communism (1), - in consequence, step by step, an centralizing tendency overshadowed the democratic forms present in the relation of the Factory Committees and the Soviets to the Centre.

The almost impossible hindrances that presented themselves in socialist construction in a newly-liberated serf state (and an industrially and politically under-developed scarcity-state) aided the development of the centralizing movement and a partial displacement of the power of the proletariat by the bureaucracy. Combined with these objective deleterious material and spiritual conditions in the USSR, went authoritarian policies of the over-worked leadership around Stalin – which also is a mirror-image of Russia's backwardness and isolation surrounded by a hostile entente.

I conclude by stating that under the above conditions the Communist Party's growing bureaucracy and the CCCP government displaced some of the participatory decision-making that was to be invested in the proletariat. I am not a Trotskyist, but I see that there was a partial effacement of the political power of the workers by the bureaucracy, people motivated by a determined, struggle to build up and defend the Revolution. The USSR remained a Socialist State, but one shaped by the extremely adverse events in its inception and development.
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1.Under "War-Communism" of the Civil War an extreme centralisation was put into place by Lenin. The economy of the areas controlled by the C.P. was put into the hands of a small number of organisations. (the Supreme Economic Council being most powerful). This Council had the right to confiscate and requisition supplies, -- the speciality of the Council was the management of industry. The Commissariat of Transport ran the railways. The Commissariat of Agriculture controlled what the peasants work-activity.
Posted by Andrew W. Taylor