In Defense of the Soviet Union (1st Draft)

With the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn it seems appropriate to re-evaluate the history of 20th century Russia and the Soviet Union. Its now nearly 20 years since the demise of the USSR, the collapse of which Vladimir Putin has called “ the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century” and a tragedy for the Russian people. Putin was speaking from a Russian nationalist perspective. I would concur with his assessment, but from an internationalist perspective, for I evaluate the experience of the USSR as a net positive for the people of the former Soviet Union and the world’s people as a whole. Unlike Solzhenitsyn who was an unrepentant czarist and orthodox Christian, I’m an unrepentant Marxist and secular humanist. While he saw the Soviet Union as an abomination, I see it still as the future of humanity in embryonic form. How can I say such a thing, the chorus of naysayers and doomsayers of the left and right wail? Everyone of “good conscience” has declared the Soviet Union an abysmal failure, an evil empire and has wished it good riddance. But let’s look at its record from a less jaundiced perspective.

The USSR lasted a mere 70 years. Let’s look back on our own history decades after the Declaration of Independence. As Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg Address in 1863, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.” Well the USSR lasted three score and ten. In the 87 years between the founding of the US and the Civil War our nascent nation countenanced the enslavement of millions of people, the extermination of millions more and the annexation of vast territories by predatory war. All in the name of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. Only last week has our Congress deemed it appropriate to apologize for the centuries of slavery and Jim Crow segregation that led to the debasement and suffering of millions upon millions of people. As yet we have not issued one iota of recompense to our native people for the genocide we inflicted upon them, for their forced removal from traditional homelands and confinement to concentration camps in the most arid wastelands we had available for their imprisonment and cultural annihilation. It took generations of struggle by indentured servants, workers, women and minorities to gain basic democratic rights and the struggle continues to this day. We’ve raped the environment and nearly brought the entire globe to ruin, we’ve incinerated countless people in every corner of the world in vain attempts to impose our way of thinking on others and on and on. But we have “high ideals” and have always been motivated by truth, justice and the American way.

What about the Soviet Union during its brief tenure? Throughout the 1920s there was a vibrant cultural renaissance in the Soviet Union, with innovations in music, film and drama. There was implementation of the NEP and experiments in different forms of social ownership. There were also concerted attempts by the western powers to sabotage the revolution and restore capitalism. No one can argue that. These attempts necessitated a response and repression resulted. Mistakes were made, people died, whole populations suffered. All very sad and regrettable But, does it discredit the Soviet experience? Does slavery and genocide negate the American experience? The Gulag as described by Solzhenitsyn was an abomination. The penal system that we have in our country today is an abomination. In the Soviet Union dissidents were placed in asylums. In the United States mental patients are placed in prison. In the Soviet Union, some nationalities were forcibly removed and relocated. In the United States whole nations were forcibly removed and relocated and are still separated from their traditional homelands. In the Soviet Union, people were falsely accused and millions were forced to engage in slave labor. In the United States people were imported from abroad and forced to engage in slave labor. Throughout our history dissidents have been surveilled and repressed. The abuse and suffering inflicted on innocents by the US and the USSR are as far as I’m concerned qualitatively and quantitatively of equal measure. Towards the end of the Soviet Union these abuses were being admitted to and were beginning to be redressed. There was vast potential for democratic reform and a renaissance of socialism if only …they had not been exhausted by unrelenting pressure from the US which led to ever increasing economic deformation of the socialist character of the State, resulting in an overbearing defense budget and massive commitments to sustain revolutionary movements and governments abroad.

And what of the positive accomplishments of the Soviet Union? What about the heroic feats of its workers in building the industrial base of their nation in the 1920s and 30s? What about the heroic feats of the Soviet people in defeating the Nazis during the 1940s and turning the tide towards allied victory in WWII? What about the achievements of Soviet science and technology in the 1950s and 60s? Cynics can ridicule these accomplishments, but given the material conditions and challenges that they faced the Soviet people worked miracles, primarily because of the superiority of the socialist system. I know, 99.9% of readers will scoff at that notion, but it is true.

The downside of the Soviet experience was due to the intractable opposition and sabotage of the West, in particular the US. The USSR never had a respite from the need to defend itself against every manner of subterfuge. Old ways of doing things based on the authoritarian tradition and totalitarian roots of Russian culture surfaced and flourished. 20th century methods of repression rationalized by slavish and dogmatic appeals to ideological purity reinforced those reactionary tendencies. In retrospect the socialist system would have been better served by less reliance on repressive measures and a greater willingness to engage in unfettered democratic reforms. Unfortunately repressive measures initiated to defend the gains of the revolution bred a corrupt and reactionary superstructure that could not respond to the needs of the socialist base and the whole edifice came tumbling down not with a roar but a whimper. It says something about the character of the Soviet Union that it willingly committed suicide without a cataclysmic implosion or nuclear confrontation with its adversaries. Most will point to this fact as evidence that the USSR was bankrupt and incapable of reform or redemption. I see it as a tragic failure of vision and the result of decades of unremitting pressure from the capitalist world that encircled, and eventually suffocated the first attempt to create a society that had the potential to become truly humane.