The fall of the USSR

Описание: How was the USSR defeated?

In 1918-1921, during the war of intervention following the Great October Revolution, at a time when she was militarily and economically incomparably weaker than in 1991, the fledgling Soviet state could not be defeated by the interventionist armies of the fourteen chief capitalist countries, representing the combined strength of imperialism and its stooges .

During her participation in the second world war, in 1941-1945, the USSR and her Red Army broke the back of the powerful Hitlerite war machine, thus making the single most powerful contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

So how was it that the same USSR collapsed as a socialist state so ignominiously, without the 20 million members of the communist party apparently lifting a finger to stop it?

This presentation by Harpal Brar of the CPGB-ML summarises his book "Perestroika, the complete collapse of revisionism", which is a collection of Harpal's articles written in LALKAR at the time of the USSR's collapse, examining the economic and political destruction of the Soviet Union from within, by Khrushchev and his followers.

Harpal's book is available here:
Perestroika, the complete collapse of revisionism
https://www.proletarianonline.org/pro...

When the USSR collapsed as a socialist state in 1991, The capitalist ideologues and imperialist spokesmen were triumphalist in their assertion that this proves that "socialism doesn't work", and that capitalism is the 'end of history'.

But that simplistic 'analysis' fails to explain how, in that case, the USSR not only came into being out of the inter-imperialist slaughter ofWW1, but survived for seven decades; and for the majority of that time went from strength to strength, achieving military, economic, scientific and cultural advances unsurpassed in human history; and creating decent, secure, meaningful lives for the mass of the working people, elevating them to full human dignity and control of their society.


The fact is that Socialism works for the mass of humanity. While a cursory glance at any development index for our unequal and unsustainable global capitalist world, by contrast, shows that capitalism is threatening our very existence and cannot continue.

But what is to be done? Ecological protestors blockade the streets but seemingly have no idea that the government of the capitalists is not going to help them solve this or any other crisis, inherent in capitalist property relations. They are literally powerless to do so.

The pervasive anti-communist propaganda has addled these protestors thinking to the point that they no longer “identify” as workers, or see the capitalists’ interests and anti-social motives as antagonistic to theirs. Rather they think “there are no enemies” and the government just needs ‘persuading’ of the urgency of their cause. It is a ‘thinking’ that runs through the whole of the protest movement in Britain and much of the imperialist ‘west’. (Vote labour and maybe everything will be ok)

Clearly there are serious questions to be answered if the working class are to take the path of their own liberation once more. Why did the USSR collapse, remains one of the biggest.

Anyone who would seek to build socialism today, or participate in the struggle to improve society's organisation, climate, health service, housing, or social provision, must know and understand how the once mighty workers republic really came to be defeated.

Perestroika, the complete collapse of revisionism
https://www.proletarianonline.org/pro...

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