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The Collapse of Stalinism debate

The truth about the coup

Minority document

After five years of "perestroika" (or "katastroika" as the Soviet workers have re-named it), the mass of the workers have drawn a balance sheet and come up with a colossal zero. Empty shops, queues and shortages, spiralling inflation, chaos and the threat of hunger have caused a collapse of support for Gorbachev and a growing rejection of the whole pack of "reformist" politicians. The existence of a quite widespread mood of support or at least acceptance of the coup is not seriously in doubt.

In the same centre pages of 18/10/91, we read: "While I was travelling on the bus two elderly people loudly discussed the timeliness of the state of emergency and the necessity if introducing it and of removing Gorbachev. The author tried to argue with them, but then added 'They agreed with each other that Gorbachev and Yeltsin and all the others should have been tried a long time ago. You couldn't argue with that!"

The report from Moscow published on 30/8/91 had stated that, "Some workers, particularly in Moscow, had felt at the very beginning that it was about time that something was done to stop the slide into chaos, and even call a halt to Boris Yeltsin's apparently unstoppable progress towards becoming a new dictator. A group of older workers argued with students protesting against tanks in Menage Square, saying they had enough of democracy. Others accused Gorbachev of being a CIA agent."

This mood was also widely commented on by Western journalists. Thus, when the president of the Ukrainian parliament, Leonid Kravchuk took an ambiguous stand in relation to the coup, the Reuter's correspondent noted that "Mr Kravchuk was reflecting opinion on the streets of Kiev, where Ukrainian journalists reported that many people expressed support for the coup". (The Guardian 20/8/91)

John Rettie reported from Moscow that "Most people were too apathetic, cynical or just plain frightened of the consequences to obey Mr Yeltsin's strike call" (Ibid 22/8/91). The size of the demonstrations were not as great as they were made out to be by the majority. "Moscow," wrote Neal Ascherson "is a city of ten million people, and the mass around Boris Yeltsin's 'White House' could not have numbered more than 300,000 at its largest. A few streets away, people went indifferently about their business, scarcely aware that history was being made. The city as a whole did not strike or wear badges or fly defiant flags, but looked the other way." (Independent 25/8/91)

The impression assiduously created by the supporters of the 'majority' faction is that the crowds that moved the barricades were overwhelmingly proletarian in composition. This simply asserted, without bothering to produce the necessary evidence. We are supposed to believe it, that is all. And if anyone objects, there is the authority of "eyewitnesses" to slap them down.

But what is the evidence? At one point some tanks crashed into the barricades, and three people were killed. The Sunday Times (25/8/91) gives us the details. "It was indicative of the make-up of the Yeltsin camp that they were, respectively, an economist, an architect and a young veteran of the war in Afghanistan. These were the people who had first experienced the benefits of perestroika, who looked beyond the price of cheaper bread and higher wages and were not about to go back and be treated as sheep."

The tanks did not, of course, select their targets. Anyone could have been killed, but is it just coincidence that the victims were precisely professional people, or "middle class" intellectuals, in Western terminology. The Sunday Times correspondent confidently affirms that it was not, as these people were absolutely typical of the "make-up of Yeltsin's coup". And this bourgeois journalist does not confine himself to empty platitudes about "democracy" but correctly states that this social stratum had experienced the benefits of perestroika. And what benefits are we talking about? Nothing airy fairy, but material gains for a social group, numbering millions of qualified people, students, engineers, speculators and black marketers. They sense the movement towards the "market economy" and the possibility of gaining power, wealth and positions.

Their implacable hostility towards the Stalinist bureaucracy has nothing to do with "democracy", far less a defence of the workers' interests. It derives from the fact that the bureaucracy currently occupies the position in society which they themselves are thinking to take over. This is the opposite of the standpoint of the workers for whom the struggle against the bureaucracy, for democratic rights is linked with the question of "bread" and a living wage. The great majority of Soviet workers distrust the intellectual "reformers" - and are regarded by the latter as "sheep".

From their own class point of view, the strategists of capital draw similar conclusions to the Marxists. The Us stockbroker company (not intended for general distribution) carried an article from its own "eyewitness" who claimed that, "Moscow is a power vacuum. It isn't that the centre doesn't hold. It just isn't there. That's one side of it. The other is that there is no popular revolution. A rotten power clique encountered encountered very little democratic resistance, and yet the coup, its edifice and the apparatus of power collapsed" (17/9/91) And further on, "Indeed, popular resistance to the coup was minimal for most of the first few days... I was struck in Moscow by the lack of popular revolt".

A Russian professor writing for the same journal spoke of a conversation on a Moscow bus on the 19/8: "One middle aged man only said loudly that he was glad of the restoration of order, no one either supported or objected. Gloom and fear, and maybe equanimity and resignation hung over the people."

Such examples may be multiplied at will, yet the supporters of the IS majority faction persist in maintaining that the coup had 'no social base' and was therefore doomed to failure.

Having at first argued that a coup was impossible in the USSR, the IS majority naturally felt obliged to explain away their mistake by claiming that the coup was "bound to fail anyway". As an additional insurance policy, in their document they added that "even if the coup had succeeded it would have collapsed within a few weeks and months", there would have been "another Romania", and so on and so forth.

Frankly, these comrades are the only people in the world who believe this (assuming they really believe it themselves). Bush did not think that the coup stood no chance of success, nor did Major, Kohl and Mitterand, who hastened to offer to do business with the new men in the Kremlin. Yeltsin certainly did not think so, nor did the majority of the people in the Soviet Union, including those who demonstrated before the Russian parliament.

Let us refer once more to our stockbroker's report (9/9/91) which wrote that it "seems that most of the public would have silently accepted the rule of the junta if the coup had been successful... Demagogic as it was, its promise of a quick economic amelioration, given that desperation and cynicism over the state of the economy are so widespread, shows that any rulers who look capable of achieving any progress towards capitalism could not expect to finds popular support. I am not all sure that the broad masses of the population understand and accept the idea that there is no alternative to marketisation and shock therapy." (17/9/91)

It is simply not true that the coup had "no social base" which would have permitted it to succeed. It had a base in those layers of the population who are sick of the chaos of "katastroika" and yearn to go back to the "good old days".

More importantly, it had a base in a far wider layer who, without supporting the coup, were repelled by the pro-capitalist counter-revolutionary policies of Yeltsin and therefore remained passive. The passivity of the great majority of the workers class would have been sufficient to ensure the success of the coup, if it had been carried out with sufficient decision.

This was admitted in an article by Francis Fukuyame in the Independent (25/8/91): "Despite divided loyalties in the army and police, the coup plotters could have succeeded in the short term had they been more competent and determined, as was the Deng regime in Tiananmen Square. They had sufficient numbers of loyal KGB and interior ministry troops to arrest or kill Yeltsin, shut down the press and enforce a curfew. But the plotters were afflicted with a lack of belief in themselves and their cause."

The author of these lines, incidentally is not an ordinary bourgeois journalist, but one of the strategists of capital, a consultant of the Rand Corporation in Washington and formerly a member of the U.S. State Department. This is the sober voice of a serious representative of the bourgeoisie, who has arrived, from the standpoint of his class, at the same conclusions as a Marxist. Far better to heed the voice of a serious bourgeois analyst than to listen to the superficial chatter in the popular press, designed to fool the workers and gloss over and confuse the real process, with empty calls about "peoples power" and the links. Unfortunately much of the material in our own paper was on a similar level to this.

Those who argue that the coup failed because it had no "social base" entirely miss the point. The Bolsheviks had a colossal social base in October 1917. Yet if Zinoviev and Stalin had led the party at that time instead of Lenin and Trotsky, the revolution would have been defeated and instead of a victorious workers state, there would have been fascism in Russia. The law of revolution and counter-revolution are basically the same. You can have the most favourable objective conditions, the widest social base, but if you do not act with absolute determination and audacity, you will go down to defeat. The coup in Moscow was not defeated by the "lack of a social base", but by the subjective factor, the pathetic failure of the coup leaders to deal with the opposition in a ruthless and implacable manner. That was what led to their undoing, and not the lack of a "social base", still less the opposition of an alleged mass movement of revolutionary workers, which only exists in the imagination of the IS majority faction.

The evidence that the coup was bungled from the beginning to end is ample and does not need to be repeated here. Suffice it to contrast their conduct with Jarolzelski in 1981, who arrested all the leaders of the opposition in the middle of the night before launching his coup. Former dissident, Roy Medvedev makes this very comparison: "Jarolzelski was far more efficient than they were when he cracked down on Poland. He cut off communications and arrested 200 people. Actually, he didn't even arrest them, he just put them in isolation. Here, though, they didn't even arrest Yeltsin.

In particular the failure to arrest Yeltsin left a focal point for the opposition and exposed the plot in the eyes of key sections of the army, police and KGB chiefs as a botched operation. From an initial position of waiting in the sidelines, these sections finally decided to distance themselves from the coup leaders who found themselves suspended in mid air. The coup collapsed because it was a botched and premature attempt, which did not succeed in attracting the support of decisive sections within the state apparatus itself. It was not overthrown in struggle. It simply collapsed from its own internal contradictions and weakness.

This was the opinion of all serious strategists of capital, while the popular press in the West (and our paper) raved about "peoples power". Look also at the analysis of Western intelligence. "Preliminary assessments made by intelligence analysts in Britain and America suggested the coup was hastily organised by a small group of people who fatally misjudged the mood of the organisations they controlled. There is no evidence of any pre-coup rehearsals by any security forces." (Sunday Times 25/8/91)

And further: "In the early part of last week there was no sign of any significant mobilisation. 'This was not a revolution that failed because of people power' said one Western intelligence source, 'There were fewer people on the streets than the plotters might have expected. It failed because they did not put enough troops on the ground or use them effectively.'" (Ibid)

The complete lack of any preparation was the main reason why Western intelligence, which had previously warned of the risk of a coup, was taken by surprise. Unfortunately for the plotters who represented only one wing of the bureaucracy, it was not only Western intelligence which was caught off guard, but also decisive sections of the top bureaucrats in the army and KGB, who were not informed of the coup till after it had started. This does explains why they at first adopted a wait and see attitude, and then when they realised that the attempt was premature and ill prepared, finally came out against it. It was this fact, and not any non-existent worker's revolutionary movement (real or 'potential') which caused the rapid collapse of the coup.

The fact that the coup attempt was the result of a panic reaction of top bureaucrats, provoked by the Union Treaty, explains the complete lack of serious and decisive action, which is the prior condition for the success of a coup d'etat, as much as an insurrection. Not only did they fail to arrest Yeltsin, they did not even take action against a group of Gorbachev supporters operating within the Kremlin itself! The leader of this group, one Valentin Karasev, later describes how they began to react, once they realised that the coup leaders were failing to act: "By the 20th it was clear to all that nothing had happened. There were no arrests nothing." (Wall Street Journal 29/8/91)

And after making the obligatory reference to the role of the "people" in the defeat of the coup, the Wall Street Journal makes the following observation: "But details now emerging indicate that the collapse of the putsch actually owes much to the putschists themselves, some of whom got cold feet early on. One, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, started backsliding within hours of the Monday morning announcement of the takeover. A second, Defence Minister Yazov, had early doubts which he later acted upon. Mr Yanayev himself admitted the seizure of power was illegal within hours of deposing Mr Gorbachev."

It should be noted that these hesitations and splits within the junta are reported from the very beginning, that is before Yeltsin's show of opposition outside the Russian parliament. The ditherings and vacillations of the coup leaders rapidly communicated themselves to the army and KGB generals, who quickly decided that the coup was an adventure and moved to distance themselves from it. General Moiseyev, for example, initially signed the order instructing the troops to occupy the centre of Moscow, but subsequently chaired the meetings of army generals which decided to withdraw support from the coup, thus ensuring its collapse. That is precisely what Karasev meant when he said "This coup destroyed itself". (WSJ 29/8/91)

Unable to point to any serious mass movement of the workers against the coup, the IS majority faction resorts to subterfuge. Admitting shamefacedly that there was no evidence of a real movement of the working class, they try to seek refuge in excuses in their document. "The coup collapsed so quickly there was no need for a general strike, but if it had succeeded, there would have been a general strike and an armed uprising, another Romania".

In this way the argument is stealthily shifted from the coup being defeated by a "mass movement of workers" ('the biggest since 1917' no less!) to the coup being defeated by the mere threat of a mass movement of the workers. The tanks and guns of the Red Army were defeated not by a real movement, but by a potential movement.

In 1981, Jarozelski was faced, not by a potential movement, but by a mighty force of ten million organised workers in Solidarity. After the coup, despite the arrest of all the leaders, the cutting of telecommunications and all the other measures, there were strikes, demonstrations, even armed clashed with people killed and wounded. That did not prevent the dictatorship from installing itself in power and lasting for seven years.

Try as they may, the majority comrades cannot find anything in the USSR remotely to resemble the scale and power of the movement in Poland. Yet they blithely assure us that, if the coup had succeeded, it would "inevitably" have been swept away.

But the whole of history speaks against them. If the coup had managed to consolidate its hold on power for a few days and this would have meant a ruthless policy of crushing the opposition, then it could undoubtedly have lasted for some time.

The example of Poland shows that isolated and unorganised outbreaks of strikes and disturbances would not have been able to prevent the coup from consolidating itself. To think anything else is to blind oneself to reality, something the comrades of the majority faction have shown themselves to be adept at, and not only in relation to the Soviet Union.

The comparison with Romania is entirely false. There it was a case of a movement of the working class, pursuing the classical method of the proletariat. It was a movement similar to Hungary in 1956. There was no question of going back to capitalism. The movements of the Romanian workers, up to and including the recent miners march on Bucharest were clearly directed against privatisation.

Unfortunately the leadership of the Soviet miners, even before the coup, had fallen into the hands of pro-capitalist restorationists. Yeltsin and Sobchak were fighting against the coup in order to move even more rapidly in the direction of capitalism. This "little detail" makes all the difference when we analysis the content of the movement in the USSR.

The authors of the document "Revolution and Counter Revolution in the USSR" correctly state that "dictatorship inevitably throws back the consciousness of the working class" (para 6). Decades of Stalinist rule, which has led to a complete impasse, have had a much more negative effect on the consciousness of all layers of Soviet society than we originally thought possible. Both the document and the articles make this point, but the conclusions the IS majority draw from it are entirely confused and contradictory. Not a single idea is thought out to the end. Instead, they try to talk out an insurance policy by pointing in all directions simultaneously.

They argue that the defeat of the coup means that "the confidence of the working class will have to be enormously raised" (our paper 2/8/91) "Their mood is not of fear but confidence, euphoria even." (ibid) "Those who participated in the events or simply watched them on TV as they unfolded will have all been infected, not with radiation sickness but with revolution, etc feeling of confidence." (our paper 30/8/91(. "Already those who argue for the establishment of a genuine workers party are meeting with success." (ibid).

If the confidence of the Soviet workers has experienced such a dramatic raise, then the question arises, how does this express itself in practice?

The document ties itself in knots trying to resolve the evident contradiction between an allegedly revolutionary movement of the working class which has produced counter-revolutionary results. "While among big sections Yeltsin is regarded as a hero, he is also distrusted and feared by a big layer of the workers. For them relief at the defeat of the coup has given way to enormous foreboding about the consequences of the pro-market policies of Yeltsin and Gorbachev" (para 10).

The motto of the authors of this document is that of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland: "Words mean exactly what I want them to, nothing more, nothing less." What does this statement in the document mean?? What big sections "support Yeltsin"? How Many? What layers of society? And how does it come about that the "big layers" of the workers, who are supposed to be full of confidence in their own strength, are suffering from "enormous foreboding" about the man they just rescued from the coup, albeit by a "potential general strike"?

If the workers' confidence has been enormously strengthened, and if they are now filled with foreboding about Yeltsin, then why has there been no movement of the workers to resist the monstrous counter-revolutionary decrees of Yeltsin? How does this new confidence and strength manifest itself in practice? On this and many other issues, the IS majority faction and its "eyewitnesses" maintain an embarrassed silence. And this is not at all accidental.

Unconsciously, the authors of these articles reveal just how far the consciousness of the Soviet workers has been thrown back when they speak of the need for "the establishment of a genuine workers party". That single phrase indicates a steep historical decline in consciousness. It indicates that in many respect the movement has been pushed back to the level of 1883. It is true there have been big strike movements, which represents a promising start. But no more than that. The fact that the miners, who acted as the spearhead of the strike movement, have fallen under the domination of pro-restorationist Yeltsin supporters is an indication of this.

The decisive fact about the coup was precisely that the working class, in its overwhelming majority, did not react. The IS majority faction, in effect, have given up attempting to prove what cannot be proved, and take refuge behind a "potential general strike", which they maintain would have taken place if the coup had succeeded!

They entirely miss the central point which is the complete absence of any independent movement of the soviet workers. That applies not only to the big majority who did not take part in any action, either strikes or demonstrations. It applies still more to the small minority of workers who did participate in the movement directed against the coup.

In reality, the IS majority are condemned out of their own mouths. Thus, the representative of Kirov plant, which they have chosen as their prime example, explains that only one-third of the workforce (30,000 not 40,000 by the way) went to demonstrate outside the Winter Palace. Moreover, they went back to work after the demonstrations (hardly an indication of an unstoppable movement towards a general strike)

However, the most important point about this is the fact that they had previously discussed their plans with Sobchak, the pro-capitalist mayor. Likewise, the dockers, whom the paper wrongly claims to have "taken action on the first day", decided not to take action on the basis of discussion with Sobchak.

What does this indicate? That the minority of workers who participated on these demonstrations were not acting as an independent class force, but were entirely subordinated to the Yeltsins and Sobchaks. That is not to say that they were consciously supporting the programme of restoration (although some probably did), but it remains a fact that there was no independent movement of the class. And that is decisive if we wish to analyse the precise nature of this movement.

The majority faction tries to get around this by playing with words. They say that there were elements of the political revolution. But to say this is to say precisely nothing. Every counter-revolution contains elements of revolution, just as every revolution contains elements of counter0revolution. That is to dodge the issue. The question which must be answered is which element predominates?

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