The collapse of the Soviet Union

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Trotsky on the contradictions of the Soviet state
By Leon Trotsky, 1937–38. Excepts from “Not a workers' and not a bourgeois state?”, in which Trotsky draws an analogy between Stalin's government and Green's AFL. [Because Trotsky sees the revolution, not as a process, but as an ideal goal, Stalin appears to him an opportunistic preserver of the status quo].
Economic democracy: socialism, warts and all
By Norman Goldberg, People's Weekly World, 8 June 1996. Economic democracy (Perestroika) has existed in some form since the NEP, but always in tension with circumstances, and social democrats, by attacking the shortcomings of communism tended to betray it.
The unfinished revolution
By Boris Kagarlitsky, Green Left Weekly, 5 November 1997. The Soviet system, 1917–1989/91 was actually the capitalist system's source of vitality, and the collapse of the former not only implies the collapse of the latter, but opens the way for a new revolutionary era in the 21st century.
80 years Later, Russians Want Socialism
By Renfrey Clarke, Green Left Weekly 19 November 1997. Polls show that while the majority of Russians have not been impressed by the left candidates, they clearly oppose capitalism on both economic and moral grounds. The social basis of the coming socialist revolution remains.
Rodong Sinmun on lessons left by intellectuals in collapse of socialism
Korean News, 20 November 1997. The authors of the Rodong Sinmum article said: In the former Soviet Union, intellectuals who were ideologically degenerated before anyone else by “reforms” and “restructuring”, took the lead in collapsing socialism and reviving capitalism.
Did You Know?
NorthStar Compass, November 1998. When Nikita Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the CPSU after the death of Stalin in 1953, he did the following as the first step in liquidating the CPSU of its dedicated communists and eventually to bring about capitalism and dismemberment of the USSR.
End of Yeltsin era
Mainichi Shimbun, Tuesday 3 January 2000. The Yeltsin era came to an abrupt end Friday when Russian President Boris Yeltsin stepped down before the end of his term and handed the reins of government to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. After coming to power, Yeltsin undertook market reforms and a privatization drive which gave rise to hyperinflation and unleashed social unrest.
Why Did the USSR Collapse?
By Y. Kojaman, NorthStar Compass, December 2004. The real collapse of the Soviet Union occurred after March 5, 1953, the day that Stalin died. Starting from this date, from the dictatorship of the proletariat it started to become the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Perestroika—Military Ultimatum or Capitulation of the USSR
By Vanya Kalishnikov, NorthStar Compass, April 2005. Gorbachev, in an effort to overall military confrontation and because of his hate for Socialism, as he himself confessed, he gave up and abandoned the Soviet Union to US and world imperialism.
Vanished hopes of perestroika: USSR: a future that never arrived
By Jean-Marie Chauvier, Le Monde diplomatique, June 2005. Twenty years ago Mikhail Gorbachev promised glasnost and perestroika, disarmament, reconciliation, no more military blocs, a world where democracy, independence and ecology flourish, and socialism is reborn’. Then the USSR broke up and the eastern bloc was dissolved.
USSR breakup planned and paid for—Belarus president
Russian Information Agency (Novosti), 23 November 2005. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said Wednesday that the breakup of the Soviet Union had been orchestrated and paid for. The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine met in 1991 and signed an agreement that effectively abolished the Soviet Union. Stanislav Shushkevich, the former speaker of the Belarussian parliament, who signed the agreement for Belarus, did not have the right to do so, Lukashenko said.