General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev could not but have known that once he embarked upon his restructuring program, which has introduced into the Soviet economy deep and profound reforms of a thoroughly bourgeois character, this would eventually stimulate old, almost forgotten, as well as new nationalist sentiments. The very nature of the economic reforms fosters private interests, not only of individuals but of groupings, which then spill over into national animosities.
Perhaps only time was necessary to prove this. But it is now over two years since the December 1986 rebellion in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, which followed the replacement of the Party leader there by an ethnic Russian. The brutal manner of the dismissal of Dinmukhamed A. Kunayev must have shocked the entire community of nationalities in the Soviet Union. Did the central leadership learn anything from this?
Gorbachev, the great innovator and experimenter, with his new thinking, seemed to move merrily on, disregarding the profound significance of the Alma-Ata rebellion and the great sentiment it undoubtedly aroused throughout all the non-Russian areas of the USSR.
The Politburo, instead of directing its attention to the national question as the political area which would be most affected by economic decentralization, with its stimulation of group rivalry and renewed struggle for privilege and emoluments, tarried and buried its head.
There is documentary proof in the Party debates and resolutions of the early 1920s that the New Economic Policy, especially after the death of Lenin, adversely affected relations among the nationalities. The outbreak of speculation and profiteering on the basis of the new market developments favored the more advanced, that is, the more bourgeois economic interests, as against the mass of the proletarians and the poor peasants. This was a matter of considerable worry to the Bolsheviks. (See Gorbachev's response to the crisis over Nagorno-Karabakh in Perestroika [Aug. 11, 1988].)
None of this, however, seems to have been considered today by the Gorbachev leadership. Instead, there have been paeans of praise for the New Economic Policy and gross exaggerations of its enduring significance, despite the fact that it was undertaken on a temporary basis and only because of the desperate needs of the 1920s, as Lenin outlined. As he said again and again, the question at that time was, who will conquer whom? Would the bourgeoisie or the proletarian dictatorship win? But none of this is remembered, even after the Kazakhstan rebellion.
Then came the Azerbaijani-Armenian struggle. It struck like thunder. And what was the attitude of Gorbachev and his colleagues? It was treated as a minor incident between two small nationalities, arising out of ancient animosities — the kind of explanation one would expect of a bourgeois, a czarist or an imperialist government. Instead of taking the matter quickly in hand and applying himself in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, Gorbachev in particular took it upon himself to act as a mediator. At the same time he fanned the flames of national rivalry by scolding the leadership in each group, blaming everything on the local leaders.
This is totally superficial. The antagonisms have blown up at this time because of the introduction of reforms which stimulate private economic gain. Whatever the problems of the previous regimes, they did not occasion the kinds of uprisings we are seeing now.
Take the question of Nagorno-Karabakh, the small enclave inhabited by a majority of Armenians which for close to seven decades remained an uncontested part of Azerbaijan.
Who in Armenia but the neo-bourgeois elements would have the greatest interest in Nagorno-Karabakh becoming a part of the Armenian Socialist Republic? Isn't this attempt to grab a geographic and economic enclave an expression of bourgeois acquisitiveness, totally contrary to what was agreed upon in the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
The Armenian-Azerbaijani struggle was the clear forerunner of the present situation in Soviet Georgia, where massive demonstrations have been answered with stupid repression and the use of the military and tanks.
Now Soviet Foreign Minister Edouard Shevardnadze, the only Georgian in the top Party leadership, has been sent there as a trouble-shooter. How humiliating it must be for the foreign minister of such a great multinational state to have to cancel his visit to the German Democratic Republic (a socialist country where the bourgeois reforms are regarded with open skepticism) in order to attend to a local matter from which he has been far removed. There's no question that his being pulled into the Georgian struggle at this time is a desperate measure.
What could and should have been done?
Immediately after the Kazakhstan rebellion, in the light of the new program of bourgeois reforms which was already fairly advanced, the question should have been raised of how these were impacting upon the nationality question in the USSR. A principal issue for the Party leadership should have been how to deal with it in view of the fact that economic decentralization clearly comes into conflict with the needs of a unified socialist state.
Socialist construction on a multinational scale, let alone a world federation of socialist states, clearly requires democratic, socialist centralism. However, bourgeois private property-seeking economic reforms, especially decentralization and the setting up of private cooperatives, clearly have a centrifugal character which can do havoc to the whole national economy.
The latest decree on the reforms by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, unless it was falsely represented in the capitalist press (New York Times, April 10), goes far beyond what had hitherto been practiced. It allows long-term land leases of 50 years or more, sub-leasing and passing the land on by inheritance, the leasing of farm animals and even factories, and the private building of homes and offices. This is the most drastic expression to date of the bourgeois character of the Gorbachev reforms.
The state structure of the Soviet Union has had one unique feature which no capitalist country can even remotely boast of. Instead of having an upper and a lower house, as is characteristic of the developed bourgeois states, the Soviet state has contained both a Soviet of the Union and a Soviet of Nationalities. This bicameral structure was stipulated in Articles 109 and 110 of the Soviet Constitution, which said that the two chambers "shall have equal rights" and equal numbers of deputies. In the Soviet of Nationalities, deputies are elected on the basis of fixed representation for all the Union Republics, Autonomous Republics, Autonomous Regions and Autonomous Areas in the USSR. While the constitution has undergone many changes, this feature was still intact at the time of the 19th Party Conference in June 1988.
When it became clear that the Armenia-Azerbaijan struggle had national significance and was not just a local affair, it was incumbent upon the Gorbachev administration to call into session the Soviet of Nationalities. That was the place for the Central Committee to bring the national question up for discussion, in the light of the contradiction between the decentralizing, divisive character of bourgeois reforms and the centralist needs of socialist construction on a nationwide basis.
Surely this thought must have occurred to many of the local and national leaders of the USSR. Instead of that, the Gorbachev administration resorted to the time-honored practice of referring the question to commissions of one sort or another. Nothing of importance came out of all these small meetings except long harangues by Gorbachev in which he either admonished or scolded the local leaderships, never taking any responsibility for his own administration and never raising the question from the point of view of principle.
How in the world can you pursue bourgeois economic reforms without stimulating national rivalry and egoism? It poses the great danger of splitting the USSR, at this late date, into the Asiatic and the European parts. (We leave out for the moment the question of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.)
While it was correct for Gorbachev to uphold the constitutional provisions that prevented the Armenian expansionist elements from annexing Nagorno-Karabakh, that alone was no solution. A broad discussion of these principled questions could only bear fruit if it was brought up in a genuinely representative and broad forum, like the Soviet of Nationalities, which was created for just such purposes.
At an emergency meeting of the Soviet of Nationalities, the whole question of anti-Leninist violations of the nationality question in the past could have been reviewed and, on the basis of broad discussion, a wholesale rectification campaign could have been embarked on to correct violations of the Leninist policy. Corrective legislation could follow.
Instead of this, the disorders in Armenia and Azerbaijan were continually shuffled from one commission to another. The hope that this would be brought up at the 19th Party Conference was in vain. The Gorbachev rooters were too busy basking in the sunlight of flattery from the bourgeois press, which was praising the novelty and forward motion of the reforms. The delegations from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Baltic states were all given short shrift.
Gorbachev and his colleagues didn't convene the Soviet of Nationalities because they feared an uproarious session. But wouldn't that have been better than what has since happened? Once a program was developed, it would have had the immense authority of both the Party and the Soviet Union. But now, under the new constitution adopted in 1988, the Soviet of Nationalities has been cast into oblivion.
The bourgeoisie claims that the uprisings are brought about because of the democratization. But that is a falsehood. The democratization process, if carried out in conjunction with a correct Leninist policy on the national question, could only strengthen the foundations of the USSR as a multinational state. It is the divisiveness of the ever-growing and widening number of regressive bourgeois reforms which is the principal cause of the disorders and uprisings, and not the further development of socialist democracy.
Democracy is only a political form. The imperialists are for the democratization process in the USSR because they see that the social content going with it is of a very nearly bourgeois character. By contrast, they were against the democratization process that thrived in the early Leninist period, before the civil war and intervention, because it had a working class and socialist content.
Where is it all leading? Gorbachev and his grouping can scarcely avoid noticing what is going on in Yugoslavia. There, nationalist rivalries and the breakup of the centralized economy are virtually liquidating the socialist foundations. This is absolutely undeniable and the analogy for the USSR is plain for everybody to see.
Yugoslavia offers the most cogent lesson on where the introduction of bourgeois reforms — the decentralization of industry, joint ventures with the capitalist world, and the acquisition of burdensome loans in order to promote the restructuring — is leading. The net result is galloping inflation, a cut in the living standards of the working class, unemployment and the renewal of the most venomous and ancient national antagonisms, all products of the abandonment of socialist construction in favor of bourgeois reforms.
To paraphrase Marx, the more degenerated socialist country shows to the less degenerated the image of its own future.
Last updated: 23 March 2018