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The Collapse of Stalinism

Part two

Comrade chairman and comrades, I want to start with just one or two factual points. The first point I want to make is that EG described how the economic collapse started with the beginning of Perestroika. I just want to refer EG to the economist Egon Begon, where he pointed out that there had been unprecedented crisis and stagnation in the period 1979-82, where the production of 40% of industrial products fell. And in the decade 1975-85 coal production fell by 30 million tons every year, which implies that Perestroika was forced upon the bureaucracy by the economic crisis. And a second point I would like to make before the comrades colour their impressions of the demonstrations by factual errors, the Tsarist flag to which EG refers is actually not the Tsarist flag, it is the flag of the Russian Empire and there is a very important difference. The flag of the House of Romanov is a blue cross on a white flag.

EG: The flag of the Russian Empire, yes.

R: No, that was not used. There is only one group that use that flag, EG, it is the Russian People's Front who are actually split. Half of them support Austrian socialism and half of them support Swedish socialism. The flag that is used, the tricolour, the flag of the Russian Empire, was introduced in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution because it became impossible to use the Tsarist flag in Poland, in Lithuania, in Ukraine, and in whole other parts of the empire, because of the hatred of it. Many people now, of course, use that flag as a symbol of opposition to the bureaucracy. If you talk about the genuine Tsarist flag - there were one or two Tsarist flags, there were one or two people in Tsarist uniform - but there were a lot more Hare Krishnas around the White House.

But I want to come on, more significantly, to the developments around August in Moscow, and there were differences in the position between Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev and the Baltics, important differences, but the biggest mistake we could make is to look at any one moment of the events in August as a black and white photograph, with neither photos before or after. We have to look at the direction in which the movement was moving.

On the Monday morning when the Italian comrade was in town the tanks didn't arrive in the centre of town until 12 o'clock. Our comrades phoned us before they went to work. And I would not like the comrades from the Minority to think we did not send our comrades into work. On that Monday we had comrades working in a steel plant, a car factory, in a space factory in Moscow, and in a bus depot - that is without comrades in other cities. One of the comrades phoned and said: "What do we do?" - a young comrade who is a bus mechanic, "I'm going to go in. We'll organise a general strike." But he came come that night and he was a bit shaken: "People don't know what to do. They hate Yeltsin. They don't want to support him. They don't like the pictures of the coup on the television but maybe it will sort a few things out."

Why is Yeltsin so hated? First of all he used to be the Moscow Party chief, secondly in a factory where we have a comrade, his daughter is part of the management. Workers there know what Yeltsin is really like. And during the 70's, during the Cold War, the Stalinists used to call the main enemy the White House. And all their propaganda was against the counter-revolutionary activities of the White House.

So workers in Moscow used to call the administrative blocks in their factories "the White House", because they hated the bosses, the bureaucrats. So when Yeltsin called for people to defend the White House, the Russian Parliament, even that did not straight away meet with full support.

But that was one photograph of the position on Monday before we saw the pictures on the television of the mass movement in Leningrad, of the mass movement in Kishinov (capital of Moldova), or of Yeltsin calling for a general strike. And it was quite clear during the course of Monday night and Tuesday, that mood began to change very rapidly. The same bus mechanic comrade who told us that workers were at the very least confused by the coup, reports that by Tuesday night and Wednesday morning those same workers, never spoke about a general strike, they organised a squad. They sent a delegate to the White House to ask "What should we do?" They came back with a message from Yeltsin and his pro-bourgeois supporters: "Wait. Don't do anything. We don't need you just yet." So these young workers said "well, we've got to do something." They went and manned one of the roads leading into Moscow and for the evening spent the time - "Where can we get arms?"

And in many ways, in all ways, those workers had gone further than a general strike. Just as in the October Revolution there was no general strike. In fact most people stayed at home. Trotsky comments on it. The streets were quiet in St Petersburg on the night of the revolution.

It would also be wrong to talk about the working class as one homogenous mass. There were whole layers of the workers who were relatively passive. There were many other layers that were marked by intense activity. I'll pick two out. In Moscow, anyway. That first of all is transport workers who were, the comrade from Italy was telling us, in the Red Square, which by the way nothing happened in Red Square, in the square next to it to be technical, trolley bus drivers were allowing their trolley buses to be turned over and used as barricades. Other bus drivers were driving a regular ferry to and from the White House to transport supplies. And they weren't spivs, they were bus drivers. Well paid bus drivers, it's true.

A lot of doctors and nurses also, who are very low paid, played a very active role. A friend I have, not particularly political, a doctor, went into his hospital that night and was told by his chief to prepare to get the wounded in. And the doctors and nurses said: "No chance. We're off down to the barricades. We're needed there." And they are not spivs.

Now I happen to think that it's true that the pro-Yeltsin demonstrations that took place in Moscow in February and March were bigger. I commented in the reports for the paper, and so did many people in the Soviet Union, that on those demonstrations there were hardly any youth, there were hardly any pensioners either, as it happens, and I rarely met a worker on those demonstrations. But this demonstration on the Tuesday night outside the White House was qualitatively different. It is certainly disputable whether it was smaller or bigger - I'm not prepared to argue that point - but around the White House Popov, the next day, the mayor of Moscow, who is now using riot police, the hated Omon, against taxi drivers in Moscow, said that "this is the first time in the whole of Perestroika, that youth", and then he said "in particular workers, have been prepared to come on the streets." And the spivs and the speculators may have been there on the Monday, selling hamburgers, but they had nice little cosy places inside the White House, defended by armed police. In the pouring rain that night were literally tens, hundreds of thousands of pensioners, of youth, of workers, of students, prepared to stand solid all night, with no umbrellas.

But the demonstration around the White House was also qualitatively different because in February there were no barricades, nobody collected Molotov Cocktails. And most significantly, in February, when the marchers came down the hill, the police, the Spetznaz, and the army, were there to prevent them getting into Red Square. This time the police were marching with everyone else. And there is even one case of a barricade, I don't know who built it but it was across one of the main roads leading to the White House, it was actually guarded by armed police, armed militia.

Now it's true to a large degree that there was no independent movement of the working class in that sense, under independent banners, in Moscow. The comrades from the Minority anyway, I don't know about the comrades from Spain and Italy, but I know EG and AW have made a big point of denying any movement in the Ukraine. I've just been down to the Ukraine. I too didn't think there were any strikes there. In actual fact there, on the day of the coup, the Ukrainian government, Kravchuk and so on, said: "Don't worry. Keep calm. This is Russia. It is a Russian coup. It doesn't effect the Ukraine. We don't need any demonstrations." And most of all: "Keep working. Don't strike. We don't want to disrupt the economy."

Of course there were demonstrations in Kiev. But most significantly, without any leadership, and despite being told to stay at work, for the arsenal, the traditional factory of the Bolsheviks in Kiev, a section, not the majority, a section of the workers struck, on the Monday, and I've spoken to people who were there - it wasn't just a rumour, and a section, I've been told about half, of the Donbass miners struck - which none of the capitalist press had said.

EG: Yes, and in Vorkuta.

R: No, they've said in the Kuzbass and Vorkuta they struck - they denied that they struck in the Donbass. Now if that isn't independent action of the workers when all the "democratic" leaders tell them not to strike, to stay calm, what is?

Alright, it's not on our programme. They've got a lot of illusions, but that's our role - to arm them with a programme. Now, there's a lot of talk where we should have been during the course of these events. I am prepared to accept from what the Spanish comrades say that they are not saying they would have been neutral. I think slightly their ground has changed, by the way on this one. They key question is this: should we have supported Yeltsin or not? And the answer to that is of course: no we shouldn't have done and no we did not support Yeltsin. All our agitation has been against privatization and against the market. But if we should have intervened in the movement, which the comrades accept, how should we have intervened? On the barricades and in the factories. And we sent our worker comrades into the factories to argue our point of view. On the night of the coup itself we had a meeting of comrades and contacts, no more than 200 yards from the Kremlin, to discuss exactly what we were doing and to make sure we were intervening. Because we are not just a propaganda group - we have to intervene in order to build. And as a result of out independent position we recruited, as a direct result of the coup, a nurse, who on the first day of the coup supported the coup, and then on the second day phoned to say she thought she was mistaken, what did we think she should do? She hates Yeltsin. And as a result of the coup, in the Ukraine we recruited a group, who we knew before the coup, but who agreed to join us after the coup because they said we were the only group that put an independent workers' viewpoint.

Now, I am very quickly I believe, running out of time. I too think that the coup leaders were incompetent. I said this before the Financial Times or the Observer said it, because I was able to walk up to tanks and talk to drivers. It wasn't a very serious attempt, in my mind. But it is not Marxism to call it incompetent. Why on earth, how can that state which ten years ago, five years ago even, was the second greatest power in the world, how suddenly did it find itself in a position where half its cabinet, key generals and the head of the KGB, suddenly were not able to control things? I don't have time to read the quote but Trotsky explained it very well in The History of the Russian Revolution, where he said that when a social class has a progressive role to play, it has all experts at its disposal, confidence that it can do things; it's efficient. But when it has ceased to play that role it loses confidence, doesn't have anybody that is prepared to support it to the end. And that is what happened in August.

I've been told to stop so I will do in just a second. Because, before the coup the junior officers had gone over to the side of the market. We did interviews with comrades in the Red Army in January to say that. They wanted a professional army, which Yeltsin promised. Most of the generals went over during the course of the Gulf War. The Industrial Complex had started to privatise, and had done so before the coup. And the KGB, according to an opinion poll - they do opinion polls of the KGB now - six months before the coup, they did an opinion poll of the KGB officers, which said that the majority of KGB officers would not obey orders such as those that were issued in August. And it is ludicrous, in my opinion, just to say that the coup was incompetent. They had no social base. They did not have a shred of support.

Now EG describes how the Kapp Putsch was defeated through a general strike which left Kapp without a telegraphist or a telephonist. These coup leaders did not have a tank driver, a pilot, a KGB officer, an army general, a workers, a student, an intellectual, or even a spiv, that was prepared to defend them. And then they got drunk. And they were drunk before as well, it is true. But then so is everybody else there.

So, I do have to stop. I have stretched it a bit. I did want to read a bit out of the paper to explain to the comrades how we do put at the top of our demands the need for independent working class action, no confidence in Yeltsin, no confidence in the bureaucracy. Our slogan is this, and we used it on our demonstration in Red Square, where we had 5,000 people, "No to the bureaucracy! No to the bourgeoisie!" Our alternative is "Workers Democracy and International Socialism". That is our slogan. Now id that doesn't put an independent position then I don't know what we are supposed to say.