Why Did the USSR Collapse?

By Y. Kojaman, NorthStar Compass, December 2004

Most of those who write about this subject consider that the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred only in 1991, when it officially collapsed and became a group of capitalist states. They therefore search for ways that could bring back the Soviet Union to its previous and glorious state. They talk about the differences between one leader and another—they believe somehow that if Andropov had lived for a longer time, he would have achieved the desired purpose. They talk about the regime that was instituted by Gorbachev in the 1980's And so on, and so on. In my way of thinking that this way of considering the collapse of the Soviet Union is incorrect, and therefore is not Marxist. It is a sort of worshiping the name of “Soviet Union”.

The real collapse of the Soviet Union occurred after March 5, 1953, the day that Stalin died or was killed. I am not talking here about previous enemy conspiracies and opportunist blocs that Lenin and Stalin struggled against — but they did pave the way to such a drastic change. I am only talking about the change itself.

Starting from this date, from the dictatorship of the proletariat it started to become the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. From the state that managed the whole economy, the law of balanced development of the national economy, which acted to the basic economic laws of socialism — “the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole society” — it became — “the securing of maximum profit according to the laws of capitalism”, for the capitalist class. The name remained as the Soviet Union, but it was no more the same Soviet Union we all loved and cherished, as the first nation of the worlds proletariat.

The first change was to change the economy that the proletariat dictatorship managed for the benefit of all the people. The new thinking of those that governed, they treated all wealth practically as their own and behaved like that.

The capitalist law that was instituted, that the capitalist class should find in the market, people who own nothing, but to sell their labour power — but this was not the case. The capitalists after 1953 received a country in which the people in a socialist country owned everything. These new rulers had to work for a long time in order to create such a class of people. They had to deprive all of the people from all of their economic, cultural and social rights that the Soviet people took for granted under socialism. These new capitalist rulers had to accomplish this change over through secret means, talking always about improving socialism, getting back to Leninism, and a new and easier way to advance to Communism — this was done in order to conceal their true capitalist plans and nature.

There were many and numerous ways that these traitors achieved their goal. One of them was the printing of paper money without any limit, which meant getting services gratis with a great rise of prices and a tragic inflation, according the Marxist theory of money. This led eventually to a black market.

Theoretically they betrayed Marxism-Leninism by attacking Stalin. Stalin was the greatest Leninist after Lenin. He led the party of the Soviet Union in building a socialist society. He exposed and defeated all of the “right” and the “left” opportunist theories\u2026.the aims of which was to return back to capitalism. He also put forward the exact method of advancing towards Communism. Attacking Stalin was and still is, attacking Marxism-Leninism!

These new capitalist-orientated traitors sold off all of the agricultural Tractor Station machinery to the private agricultural cooperatives, thus changing these state-owned machinery as the property of the people, to commodities which brought huge profits to the bourgeois state and brought the drastic destruction of all the collective and state farms.

Another method was to sell the factories to “their workers” in order to create competition. This brought an end to the planned development of the economy. Then their was the opening of the borders to foreign ownership of the means of production and the selling off of the nations natural resources and thus buying labour power.

Politically these new leaders after 1953, starting with Khrushchev, converted the CPSU into a revisionist party. In the international field they corrupted the communist parties by bribes and changing the dedicated Marxist leaders. They destroyed the communist unity in the world. They also supported all of the reactionary rulers in the world and prevented any of its allied communist parties from leading any real revolutionary movements. They became one of the most important arms traders in the world.

They went on repeating Lenin's words that “the spark will lead to a flame” but they said that any revolution in any small country would lead to an atomic war.

They even persuaded some communist parties to dissolve themselves and join the bourgeois or petty bourgeois parties on the pretext that the proletariat is not yet mature or ready of leading any revolutionary movements. They even voiced the theory that there was no “proletariat” in what is called the third world countries. It was their theory that it was the petty bourgeois that should lead the revolutionary movements for a long time, before the proletariat will be mature enough to lead.

This took about 40 years in order to achieve the transformation from socialism to capitalism. During all that period they had to mask their real bourgeois faces with a mask of Marxism, until there was no need to pretend to be Marxist at all, and then they unveiled their true bourgeois faces. This is what happened in the counter-revolution in 1991.

In short — in many ways the Soviet Union became a real enemy from inside the ranks of communist movement. I agree with an article that was written in NSC by a real Bolshevik, that a return to Socialism can only be achieved through a new revolution. This was the situation since 1953 and not only from 1991.

To treat the Soviet Union of the Khrushchevites the same as we treated our real Socialist Soviet Union, would be a tragic mistake.