7. The Meaning of Perestroika¶
Core Argument¶
In the late 1970s, the Soviet bureaucracy had become an absolute fetter on economic and social development. Economic growth stagnated, with GDP rising by a mere 0.9% in 1979, 1.5% in 1980, and around 2.5% in 1981–82. By 1983, 20% of Soviet oil wells were out of action due to mismanagement, lack of repairs, and labour shortages caused by bureaucratic neglect of housing and amenities. Corruption was rampant, with a black market in steel, coal, and oil; managers who refused to participate in bribery faced bankruptcy within a week. Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost were attempts at controlled reform from above to revive the economy, not moves toward workers’ democracy. He attacked bureaucratic waste—admitting that up to 30% of agricultural produce was lost in harvesting, transport, and storage—and purged 46 of 156 regional Party secretaries in his first 11 months. However, his policies increased income differentials, revived Stakhanovite methods of exploitation, and distorted Marx’s principle of distribution. The reforms aimed to raise productivity by pressuring workers, not by ending bureaucratic privilege.
Gorbachev’s only theoretical justification in Perestroika was to defend wage differentials as compatible with socialism. Lenin and Trotsky had tolerated such inequalities only temporarily, due to poverty and backwardness, intending to reduce them as the economy advanced. By the 1980s, with a highly-educated workforce and a wealthy industrial nation, such differentials were anti-socialist, yet inequality was increasing. Gorbachev, like Stalin, created a privileged layer of labour aristocrats via productivity bonuses, setting worker against worker and provoking strikes. Moving towards socialism required lessening inequality, not reinforcing it. The material conditions for genuine socialism were now present; with democratic control, the planned economy could soar, potentially overtaking the USA in productivity within a decade. Gorbachev’s declared aim of democratising management was demagogy, as genuine workers’ control would strike at bureaucratic power. His talk of electivity for foremen and Party posts was blocked by the bureaucracy itself.
The bureaucracy was a parasitic caste of 19 million officials, increasingly divorced from workers, with special shops, clinics, schools, and foreign travel. Gorbachev’s reforms gave an initial economic fillip but could not solve the system’s impasse. Without workers’ democracy, the bureaucracy resisted change. The youth were disaffected; discontent manifested in hooliganism and drunkenness. The tsarist vodka monopoly, reinstated under Stalin as a revenue source, saw alcohol consumption quadruple after WWII; by 1985, 27 million workers had serious alcohol problems. Gorbachev’s 1986 crackdown cut consumption by 40% but caused a 30% tax drop, and illicit distilling arrests doubled to 440,000 by 1988. By 1990, only 14% of young people trusted the CPSU and 15–20% believed in socialism. Economic growth fell to practically zero; per capita income declined. Soviet debt to the West doubled to £18 billion. Out of 1,000 basic goods, only four were consistently available; 70 million people lived on the breadline. A vodka riot in Chelyabinsk in August 1990 saw crowds attack and force militia to withdraw. A secret warehouse of delicacies was found at Communist Party headquarters.
Yeltsin demagogically posed as an egalitarian to boost his popularity, but after taking power, he and his allies looted the Russian state. Under his rule, seven fabulously wealthy gangsters own half the country, while tens of millions live in poverty; inequality in present-day Russia exceeds that of developed capitalist countries. Many on the Left, including some self-styled Trotskyists, harboured illusions in Gorbachev. In reality, Gorbachev represented the ruling caste’s interests, differing only in style from old Stalinist leaders. He recognised the system’s impasse but sought to prevent revolution from below. Roy Medvedev and Isaac Deutscher both fell into the trap of believing the bureaucracy could reform itself legally and constitutionally. Trotsky was correct: no ruling class or caste surrenders without a fight. The bureaucracy would turn to capitalism rather than