Restoration of Capitalism in Eastern Europe and In The Soviet Union. What are the Lessons for Socialists??

Brief History of The Restoration of Capitalism in Eastern Europe and In Soviet Union. What are the Lessons for Socialists??  https://wp.me/pKzXa-17M

Leon Trotsky’s Predictions 1936–55 Years Before The Restoration!!! Why did Trotsky’s Followers Fail To Act on Trotsky’s Brilliant Insight?

First: The Facts

Wikipedia: One of the founders of the USSR, later expelled by Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky devoted much of his time in exile to the question of the Soviet Union’s future. In time, he came to believe that a new revolution was necessary to depose the nomenklatura and reinstate working class rule as the first step to socialism (Otherwise, he said, capitalism would be restored-Paddy Healy). In 1936 he made the following (detailed) prediction:

From Revolution Betrayed-Where is The Soviet Union Going? by Leon Trotsky

“In order better to understand the character of the present Soviet Union(1936), let us make two different hypotheses about its future. Let us assume first that the Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism, enriched moreover by the world experience of the recent period. Such a party would begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade unions and the Soviets. It would be able to, and would have to, restore freedom of Soviet parties. Together with the masses, and at their head, it would carry out a ruthless purgation of the state apparatus. It would abolish ranks and decorations, all kinds of privileges, and would limit inequality in the payment of labor to the life necessities of the economy and the state apparatus. It would give the youth free opportunity to think independently, learn, criticize and grow. It would introduce profound changes in the distribution of the national income in correspondence with the interests and will of the worker and peasant masses. But so far as concerns property relations, the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution – that is, the deposing of the bureaucracy – the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.

If – to adopt a second hypothesis – a bourgeois party were to overthrow the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no small number of ready servants among the present bureaucrats, administrators, technicians, directors, party secretaries and privileged upper circles in general. A purgation of the state apparatus would, of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration would probably have to clean out fewer people than a revolutionary party. The chief task of the new power would be to restore private property in the means of production. First of all, it would be necessary to create conditions for the development of strong farmers from the weak collective farms, and for converting the strong collectives into producers’ cooperatives of the bourgeois type into agricultural stock companies. In the sphere of industry, denationalization would begin with the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be converted for the transitional period into a series of compromises between state power and individual “corporations” – potential proprietors, that is, among the Soviet captains of industry, the émigré former proprietors and foreign capitalists. Notwithstanding that the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward preparing a bourgeois restoration, the new regime would have to introduce in the matter of forms of property and methods of industry not a reform, but a social revolution.

Let us assume to take a third variant – that neither a revolutionary nor a counterrevolutionary party seizes power. The bureaucracy continues at the head of the state. Even under these conditions social relations will not jell. We cannot count upon the bureaucracy’s peacefully and voluntarily renouncing itself in behalf of socialist equality. If at the present time, notwithstanding the too obvious inconveniences of such an operation, it has considered it possible to introduce ranks and decorations, it must inevitably in future stages seek supports for itself in property relations. One may argue that the big bureaucrat cares little what are the prevailing forms of property, provided only they guarantee him the necessary income. This argument ignores not only the instability of the bureaucrat’s own rights, but also the question of his descendants. The new cult of the family has not fallen out of the clouds. Privileges have only half their worth, if they cannot be transmitted to one’s children. But the right of testament is inseparable from the right of property. It is not enough to be the director of a trust; it is necessary to be a stockholder. The victory of the bureaucracy in this decisive sphere would mean its conversion into a new possessing class. On the other hand, the victory of the proletariat over the bureaucracy would insure a revival of the socialist revolution. The third variant consequently brings us back to the two first, with which, in the interests of clarity and simplicity, we set out.”^[10]

 

Hungarian Uprising 1956

The revolt began as a student protest, which attracted thousands as they marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building, calling out on the streets using a van with loudspeakers. A student delegation, entering the radio building to try to broadcast the students’ demands, was detained. When the delegation’s release was demanded by the protesters outside, they were fired upon from within the building by the State Security Police, known as ÁVH(acronym for Állam Védelmi Hatóság, literally “State Protection Authority”). One student died and was wrapped in a flag and held above the crowd. This was the start of the revolution. As the news spread, disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital.

The revolt spread quickly across Hungary, and the government collapsed. Thousands organised into militias, battling the ÁVH and Soviet troops. Pro-Soviet communists and ÁVH members were often executed or imprisoned, and former political prisoners were released and armed. Radical impromptu workers’ councils wrested municipal control from the ruling Hungarian Working People’s Party and demanded political changes. A new government formally disbanded the ÁVH, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October, fighting had almost stopped, and a sense of normality began to return.

After announcing a willingness to negotiate a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution. On 4 November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country.

 

“Prague Spring”  1968

The Prague Spring (Czech: Pražské jaro, Slovak: Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968 when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country to halt the reforms.

The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. After national discussion of dividing the country into a federation of three republics, Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia and Slovakia, Dubček oversaw the decision to split into two, the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.^[1] This was the only formal change that survived the end of Prague Spring, though the relative success of the nonviolent resistance undoubtedly prefigured and facilitated the peaceful transition to liberal democracy with the collapse of Soviet hegemony in 1989.^{[citation needed]}

The reforms, especially the decentralization of administrative authority, were not received well by the Soviets, who, after failed negotiations, sent half a million Warsaw Pact troops and tanks to occupy the country.

Czechoslovakia remained Soviet-controlled until 1989, when the Velvet Revolution ended pro-Soviet rule peacefully, undoubtedly drawing upon the successes of the non-violent resistance twenty years earlier.

 

Poland, Walesa and Solidarnosc(1970-1989)

 

He was a charismatic leader,^[17] who helped organize the illegal 1970 protests at the Gdańsk Shipyard when workers protested the government’s decree raising food prices and he was considered for the position of chairman of the strike committee.

 

While ostensibly only chairman of Solidarity, Wałęsa played a key role in practical politics. In August 1989, he persuaded leaders of parties formerly allied with the Communist Party to form a non-communist coalition government—the first non-Communist government in the Soviet Bloc. The parliament elected Tadeusz Mazowieckias the first non-communist Prime Minister of Poland in over forty years.^[19]

 

 

“Fall of Soviet Union”

The dissolution of the Soviet Union^[a] occurred on December 26, 1991, officially granting self-governing independence to the Republics of the Soviet Union. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.^[1] The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do so at all.

On the previous day, 25 December 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers – including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes – to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32 p.m., the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian Flag

 

Lessons

For Communist Parties

It is vital to understand that the Russian ruling elite which had its origin in Stalinism was not overthrown. It was not overthrown by workers or foreign capitalists. The majority faction of the Russian leadership  RESTORED CAPITALISM VOLUNTARILY AND BECAME CAPITALIST ITSELF. In the 1930’s Trotsky had predicted that this would happen unless the bureaucratic elite were overthrown in a supplementary workers political revolution.

The Communist Parties linked to the Russian leadership had implemented the international strategy of the Russian bureaucratic elite since the 1920s. This included the French, Italian, British Communist parties and the Irish communist formations.

The Russian Communist Party did not become “Capitalist Restorationist” overnight! Were the Communist Parties on the wrong road for decades? Why was there no major resistance by Russian workers to the restoration of exploitative capitalism? Are we talking about a historic failure?More on this will follow further down.

Lessons for Trotskyists

Trotsky founded the Fourth Trotskyist International in 1938. A key objective was to instigate a workers political revolution in the Soviet Union and by extension in the European Countries which emerged from the second world war which had  economic and political regimes similar to those which had existed in the Soviet Union since the 1920s. The Fourth international had sections(branches) in many countries including USA, Britain, France, Ceylon, Vietnam but none (secret or open) in the Soviet Union or the East European bureaucratic states.

Major national workers revolts took place in  Eastern Europe from the Hungarian Rising in 1956 to the 20 year struggle of the Polish workers which begun in 1970. Why were Trotskyists not able to lead these revolts towards genuine direct workers power? Many western Trotskyist groups (including Irish League for A Workers Republic) tried to assist the workers revolt and to direct it towards a left wing political revolution in the framework of the existing property relations. But our efforts were pathetically inadequate and ultimately unsuccessful. Why?