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Victor Shapinov
THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED: FROM OPPORTUNISM TO TREASON
In March 1985, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU elected Mikhail Gorbachov as its Secretary General. Hardly any of the left today will say a kind word about the persona of the last Secretary General. And fans of Gorbachov's political line have become quite an exotic curiosity. Everyone understands that Gorbachov betrayed socialism – the cause he verbally supported.
It is important to remember, however, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a matter of one day, or even of several years. The mechanics of counterrevolution were operational for many years before giving irreversible results. No less important it is to realize that no separate individuals, nor even figures such as Mikhail Gorbachov, were to destroy the first socialist state.
It's not about the personal qualities of Gorbachov, and not about the act of his betrayal. Here the words of Friedrich Engels are worth recalling: "when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That who "betrayed" the people. Which reply may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything – not even show how it came to pass that the "people" allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted."[1]
Gorbachov's betrayal of socialism is clear to everybody today. This is such a commonplace that one doesn't want to repeat it again. It will be more interesting to show that those ideological and theoretical preconceptions, which Gorbachov’s leadership was guided by while completing the liquidation of socialism in the USSR, persist in the post-Soviet left movement, that largely "has forgot nothing and has learned nothing", like the Bourbons.
( Read more... )
Original article in Russian: http://liva.com.ua/twenty-years.html
THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED: FROM OPPORTUNISM TO TREASON
In March 1985, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU elected Mikhail Gorbachov as its Secretary General. Hardly any of the left today will say a kind word about the persona of the last Secretary General. And fans of Gorbachov's political line have become quite an exotic curiosity. Everyone understands that Gorbachov betrayed socialism – the cause he verbally supported.
It is important to remember, however, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a matter of one day, or even of several years. The mechanics of counterrevolution were operational for many years before giving irreversible results. No less important it is to realize that no separate individuals, nor even figures such as Mikhail Gorbachov, were to destroy the first socialist state.
It's not about the personal qualities of Gorbachov, and not about the act of his betrayal. Here the words of Friedrich Engels are worth recalling: "when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That who "betrayed" the people. Which reply may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything – not even show how it came to pass that the "people" allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted."[1]
Gorbachov's betrayal of socialism is clear to everybody today. This is such a commonplace that one doesn't want to repeat it again. It will be more interesting to show that those ideological and theoretical preconceptions, which Gorbachov’s leadership was guided by while completing the liquidation of socialism in the USSR, persist in the post-Soviet left movement, that largely "has forgot nothing and has learned nothing", like the Bourbons.
( Read more... )
Original article in Russian: http://liva.com.ua/twenty-years.html