The emergence of a full-fledged bourgeois opposition in the USSR is the most important development since the 19th Party Conference of June 1988. Indeed, it is the product of that conference. It is the ultimate result of the so-called socialist democratization process which the Gorbachev administration initiated.Gorbachev himself can now only view the 19th Party Conference with barely veiled disappointment, for this new, organized and legally validated parliamentary opposition threatens to menace the very foundations of the Soviet Union.
Important as is the emergence of a bourgeois opposition in the USSR, it has to be viewed in relation to other developments, one of which will historically far transcend it. That is the strike of the Soviet coal miners, which has shaken the foundations of the political structure and heralds the reemergence of the Soviet proletariat after such a long period of dormancy.
The two developments may be far apart. Little is said about their relationship to one another. But from the point of view of Marxism, one is not merely the counterpoint to the other, it is the polar opposite. The strike shows that the proletariat is emerging against the new bourgeoisie. Not to see this is to close one's eyes to the truly historic basis for the existence and future of the Soviet Union and a good part of socialist humanity.
Yeltsin, Sakharov lead parliamentary opposition
Now that this bourgeois opposition has organized itself as a parliamentary grouping, it has naturally elected a steering committee, a so-called bureau whose co-chairmen are Boris Yeltsin, Yu. Afanasyev, Andrei Sakharov, V. Palm and G. Popov.
Yeltsin on his recent trip to the United States virtually embraced the capitalist system. He tore down not only the perspective of communism, which he called a "dream," but socialist construction in the USSR, not to speak of the leaders with whom he has been collaborating for years.
The Gorbachev grouping, counter-attacking against Yeltsin and the bourgeois opposition, at first seized on an article in the bourgeois Italian paper La Repubblica which characterized Yeltsin's trip as a drunken binge. The article was reprinted in full in Pravda.
But this is wholly in the spirit of bourgeois politics and has no resemblance to Leninist inner-party politics. First of all, a struggle against the bourgeois opposition has to be formulated in political terms. Its leadership should be attacked from the point of view of program and tactics. Attacking the personal conduct of the opposition members is subordinate and in a serious political struggle does little to enlighten the proletariat.
Then Pravda had to humble itself by apologizing for reprinting the Italian article. This can only weaken the progressive and working class forces in the struggle against the bourgeois opposition.
Strength greater than its numbers
The new parliamentary "Inter-Regional Group" claims to have about 260 members in the Congress of People's Deputies. Even if this delegation were twice as big, it might not be significant in a body with 2,250 deputies. Why then is it such a menace?
Precisely because the CPSU and its leadership make no clear differentiation between themselves and this bourgeois opposition. They continue to refer to it as an informal group, as though its form were more significant than its social and political content.
From the point of view of the social composition of this grouping, and who it represents, a class designation is more important than anything. Calling it inter-regional obscures this.
On Aug. 4 at the conclusion of the first session of the USSR Supreme Soviet, General Secretary Gorbachev spoke on the creation of this Inter-Regional Group (speech published Aug. 5 in Pravda and Izvestia). "In essence," he said, "this is an attempt to give some sort of organizational forms to natural differences in views and approaches to problems of social development." No, these are profound class differences. Putting it that way confuses and obscures the issue. "I find it difficult to answer the question of what gain this will bring to the cause." What cause? Their cause is bourgeois restoration. Is that the cause of the CPSU?
Of course, not all the deputies in the group are extreme right-wingers, enemies of the Soviet system like Sakharov and now Yeltsin, but these are the leaders who set the tone and guide the rest. It matters little that this group vociferously proclaims its independence and calls itself loyal to the Congress of Soviet Deputies. It has boldly and insolently called in its program for the decentralization and "demonopolization" of Soviet socialist industry.
The magazine Socialist Industry, which is a mouthpiece for the managerial group in the USSR, said on Aug. 1 that the parliamentary group's chief demand "is to accelerate economic reform [and combine] owner and worker in a single person." This would be laughable were it not such an outrageous formulation. Who would that single person be? It's not hard to guess.
While the group calls itself inter-regional, its main strength is in the two key political centers, Moscow and Leningrad. These are as politically strategic as Paris is to France, New York to the U.S., or Tokyo to Japan.
The bourgeois opposition has managed to corral the petty bourgeoisie of both political centers, where they are numerous. This is important at a time when a proletarian, communist opposition has yet to emerge politically.
Left, right and center
There are left, right and center in the Supreme Soviet. The rightists are the bourgeois elements. The fact that the more extreme elements call themselves left radicals does not change that. It shows that the bourgeois elements are divided into more extreme and more moderate, but they are all in one form or another for bourgeois restoration.
By originating the bourgeois reforms and the restructuring of social relations, Gorbachev put himself in the role of a centrist, in between the communist left elements and the bourgeois opposition in the Party and in the Congress.
If the left communists were asserting themselves as an opposition group, it might be proper to call Politburo member Yegor Ligachev its leader. But this is hazardous, since Ligachev himself has moved back and forth. He has accepted responsibility for the Gorbachev administration in the key sector of agriculture, taking over when plans for destabilizing the collective farm system had already been prepared. Taking the job obviously meant promising to push these plans.
Gorbachev told the Aug. 4 session: "Frankly speaking, in the debate that has gotten underway in the Inter-Regional Group, if you disregard the provocational appeals made by some of its members, especially during rallies, no opinions have been heard that could not have been uttered here from the rostrum of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Isn't this the best evidence that we must consolidate, not divide?"
There's more than meets the eye here. Gorbachev is imploring the opposition not to go beyond legal parliamentary procedures. This statement has to be understood in light of the rumors about a political coup that have circulated in the Soviet media. Gorbachev himself, on returning from vacation, had to deny them, even though he later raised the specter of civil war.
Rumors of a coup
The rumors of a coup should be examined in the light of the economic situation and the struggle of the divergent political tendencies.
First of all, none of these rumors have, to our knowledge, differentiated between a military and a political coup. The Soviet Red Army, since its inception in the midst of the Civil War, has had no tradition whatever of posing the threat of a military coup d'etat. The executions of generals Tukhachevsky, Blucher, and several others in the late 1930s were passed off during the Stalin period as a response to an attempted coup, but this proved to be false. There is no evidence whatever that the military has engaged in factional struggles, of which there have been many in the USSR.
What the bourgeois reformers in the media are referring to are possible political coups against Gorbachev. They give the example of a political coup by the Brezhnev grouping against Khrushchev in 1964. But one has to stretch the term coup very far indeed in order to maintain that position.
All that happened in Khrushchev's ouster, even according to historian Roy Medvedev as well as Khrushchev's son-in-law, was the organization of a secret majority faction within the Central Committee in favor of deposing Khrushchev. It was not beyond the limits of Party legality to do this. The military and the police were not used. It was the organization of a Central Committee caucus to oust the Party General Secretary.
Khrushchev had his faction, and could have conceivably fought it out, but he declined to do so. He had lost his authority in the Central Committee. It certainly would have been more in the tradition of Leninist party politics to organize openly, but the anti-Leninist strictures against that made it impossible.
Another important development was Khrushchev's ouster of important Politburo leaders who were avowedly pro-Stalin: Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov, the so-called "anti-party" group. They were believed to be planning the ouster of Khrushchev. But Khrushchev got wind of it and began to organize against it. He won the Central Committee struggle partly because his then ally in the military, Defense Minister Zhukov, provided military planes to bring people to the hurriedly called Central Committee meeting. Admittedly this is a very limited form of military intervention.
It's impossible to say now what the results might have been had Zhukov not cooperated.
The possibility could arise that sections of the military might organize to thwart a reactionary coup. This was discussed recently in the Wall Street Journal.
From the point of view of Marxism, a coup cannot in and of itself solve the political and economic problems; it can only accelerate or retard the organic tendencies within. The proletariat should not throw its weight in favor of or bank on a defensive coup. It will win the loyalty of the rank-and-file soldiers on the basis of its class position, on the basis of a consistent struggle for socialism.
It's understandable that the military would be opposed to perestroika, because objectively they have been a pillar of the proletarian dictatorship and the defensive sword of the proletarian revolution.
Bourgeois elements impatient
The clamor to accelerate the reforms merely indicates the nervous impatience of the bourgeois elements. The most knowledgeable among them understand quite well that the wholesale decentralization of Soviet socialist industry, further inroads of the capitalist market, and especially further concessions to the big imperialist bourgeoisie, cannot be hurriedly put into effect by a wavering, reluctant, indecisive, centrist administration. However, their impatience may get the better of them.
Even the most rabid imperialists in the U.S. are fearful of plotting the overthrow of the first socialist republic, after 70 years of struggle by the proletariat in its alliance with the peasantry and progressive intelligentsia. So they are still willing to support Gorbachev and his pace of reform.
Seen in historic terms, the Soviet bureaucracy has outlived its early revolutionary role. Both culturally from the point of view of know-how and technology, and in the general political affairs of that period, the proletariat found the bureaucracy urgently necessary in their struggle for socialist construction. The low cultural level of the proletariat, not to speak of the peasantry, made this only too obvious. But it is now more than 70 years since the revolution, and the proletariat has raised generations of teachers, scholars, scientists, military leaders and experts in every field. Moreover, it is today the majority of the population.
Bureaucracy attacked from two directions
The bureaucracy is socially an intermediate social stratum in between the proletariat and the bourgeois elements. Both the proletariat and the neo-bourgeoisie recognize that the bureaucracy is superfluous and in reality a hindrance, but from two diametrically opposed points of view. The proletariat can now manage its own affairs; it doesn't need an intermediary. It can carry out the economic functions a lot better than the bureaucracy has been doing, especially if one takes into account the last four years.
The imperialist bourgeoisie and their sycophants in the USSR constantly point out the inability of the bureaucracy to adequately manage and advance the economic system. The bourgeoisie wants to blame socialism as the principal cause of the severe economic crisis in the Soviet Union. They claim that the ills grow out of the very nature of the social system. The bourgeois elements want to replace the bureaucracy by reinstituting capitalism. The proletariat is their mortal enemy.
Standing in the way of a clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the confused, skeptical, uncertain bureaucracy. A good part of them are loyal to the socialist system as they have seen it develop. Another part is rapidly deserting to the bourgeoisie, trying to carve out a niche for themselves wherever they can. Every move made by Gorbachev weakens the Party's standing at a time when they are being assaulted from all sides.
Ultimately, the destiny of the Soviet Union will be determined by these two social forces. They are the real contenders in the arena of struggle. They are the two world class social forces. The bureaucracy, on the other hand, is a narrowly limited and really accidental phenomenon, because it is the outgrowth of underdevelopment.