Can the USSR be democratic without collapsing?

[Rufus]

Something like this might be possible if the second ‚S‘ in USSR stands for socialdemocratic, if not in word then at least in practice.

In the end, there is no true difference between political and economic freedoms. Who cares about ‚Free Press‘ if private individuals or organisations aren‘t allowed to own printing houses or newspapers?

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

Why not?

What killed the USSR and the chance for a new Union Treaty was the failed August Coup by Soviet hardliners, Gorbachev had already given up on the one party state beforehand by allowing free elections to be held for the Russian Presidency

Had the coup not happened, or if Gorbachev had being popularly elected as President of the USSR concurring with Yeltsin being elected Russian President, or if Yeltsin got elected as USSR president, the USSR probably would have continued as a Confederation. The dissolution of the USSR was basically Yeltsin taking advantage of the aftermath of the August Coup and launched his own coup against Gorbachev. It was highly circumstantial, the Union had popular support and concrete economic benefits for participating states: it didn't need a one party state to stay together.

Even if Yeltsin himself had failed, another Yeltsin figure would take over very quickly. He was merely one figure among an entire movement of counter-revolutionaries who would dissolve the Soviet Union as soon as they took power. You can't have Gorbachev figures keep winning indefinitely, that's not how multi-party elections work.

The fact is that the party-state is the only way to maintain socialism. As soon as you start fucking around with multi-party elections, capitalism is going to eventually be restored.

 

[RousseauX]

Even if Yeltsin himself had failed, another Yeltsin figure would take over very quickly.

This is historical determinism, in 1783 or so you could have said the same thing about the newly founded United States

He was merely one figure among an entire movement of counter-revolutionaries who would dissolve the Soviet Union as soon as they took power. You can't have Gorbachev figures keep winning indefinitely, that's not how multi-party elections work.

No he wasn't, he was an opportunistic politician taking advantage of a once in a century political opportunity to grab supreme power for himself.

the idea that there was a massive movement eager to overthrow the Union is a myth outside of Georgia and the Baltic states, there was a big difference between unpopular aspects of the Communist government and the Soviet Union as a country on the map. Without a coup, and once the Soviet Union settles down as a confederation: there is no real reason to think even with multi-party elections someone running on dissolution is going to be elected, or have the political will to dissolve the union even if they get elected.

 

[RousseauX]

In the end, there is no true difference between political and economic freedoms. Who cares about ‚Free Press‘ if private individuals or organisations aren‘t allowed to own printing houses or newspapers?

This is debatable, at best, you can easily argue Citizens United and unlimited contributions to political PACs in the states is "economic freedom", I don't know how much that contributes to political freedom for the average citizen.

Also, ultimately irrelevant, this isn't 1991 anymore, authoritarian states have survived and flourished well past the end of history.

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

This is historical determinism, in 1783 or so you could have said the same thing about the newly founded United States
No he wasn't, he was an opportunistic politician taking advantage of a once in a century political opportunity to grab supreme power for himself.

the idea that there was a massive movement eager to overthrow the Union is a myth outside of Georgia and the Baltic states, there was a big difference between unpopular aspects of the Communist government and the Soviet Union as a country on the map.

Not a popular movement, but a movement of opportunistic elites that Yeltsin was a part of. Pretending that Yeltsin alone overthrew the Soviet Union is nonsense Great Man History. He had many supporters who could have easily taken his place.

 

[RousseauX]

Not a popular movement, but a movement of opportunistic elites that Yeltsin was a part of. Pretending that Yeltsin alone overthrew the Soviet Union is nonsense Great Man History. He had many supporters who could have easily taken his place.

Without the August coup, the political opportunity for dissolving the Union would have never came along.

The other thing is we've gone a bit too far in the other direction of "Great Man History", to the point where we are doing some kind of Marxist super historical determinism where no matter what political leadership does the end result is always the same. Which is absurd.

See Gorbachev himself, there was no one forcing him to to do political reforms in 1985, yet he did and his reforms destabilized the Soviet Union and set the stage for Yeltsin in the first place.

Had Andropov lived longer, or if Gromyko and Andropov (Gorbachev's otl patrons) groomed conservative as General Secretary before 1985, those reforms wouldn't have happened. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were both "event-making" political figures, a different set of leadership would have yielded far different results.

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

Without the August coup, the political opportunity for dissolving the Union would have never came along.

The other thing is we've gone a bit too far in the other direction of "Great Man History", to the point where we are doing some kind of Marxist super historical determinism where no matter what political leadership does the end result is always the same. Which is absurd.

See Gorbachev himself, there was no one forcing him to to do political reforms in 1985, yet he did and his reforms destabilized the Soviet Union and set the stage for Yeltsin in the first place. Had Andropov lived longer, or if Gromyko and Andropov groomed conservative as General Secretary before 1985, those reforms wouldn't have happened. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were both "event-making" political figures, a different set of leadership would have yielded far different results.

The August Coup was a last-ditch attempt to save the Union from the Gorbachevs and Yeltsins that led to its overthrow. The process that led to the overthrow were set in motion long before the coup attempt.

Gorbachev himself was a product of a massive reform movement that you saw in most communist parties! There were Gorbachev-esque figures who took power in many and even most communist countries before Gorbachev himself did. These men looked at the Cold War, the increasing economic and technological gap between them and the West, and were like "you know what guys, we're losing" and sought to enact reforms they believed would either strengthen their countries' economies by integrating them with the West.

I would argue that the rise of reform figures like Gorbachev was 100% inevitable by the mid-60s when the Sino-Soviet split was complete. There was simply no way that the Soviet bloc could keep up with both the West and China, and something was bound to break.

 

[RousseauX]

The August Coup was a last-ditch attempt to save the Union from the Gorbachevs and Yeltsins that led to its overthrow. The process that led to the overthrow were set in motion long before the coup attempt.

No, it was a last-ditch attempt to save the -old- Soviet Union, the one where all power was centralized in the Kremlin. And even then, if the USSR had gotten bigger economic aid package from the west from voluntarily dissolving the Warsaw Pact and allowing German reunification, the hardliners probably would have being appeased enough to not try anything. (Source: https://books.google.ca/books?id=uoJFyqxx9KUC)

Gorbachev himself was a product of a massive reform movement that you saw in most communist parties! There were Gorbachev-esque figures who took power in many and even most communist countries before Gorbachev himself did. These men looked at the Cold War, the increasing economic and technological gap between them and the West, and were like "you know what guys, we're losing" and sought to enact reforms they believed would either strengthen their countries' economies by integrating them with the West.

I would argue that the rise of reform figures like Gorbachev was 100% inevitable by the mid-60s when the Sino-Soviet split was complete. There was simply no way that the Soviet bloc could keep up with both the West and China, and something was bound to break.

This is 100% historical determinism, with very little evidence backing it. And doesn't even fit historical evidence: it's true there were reformers who came to power in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and China by 1985 (2/3 of which were failures but let's ignore that). But reformers did not come to power in the Communist GDR, nor Poland (they got a hardliner instead), nor Bulgaria, nor Albania, certainly not Romania nor North Korea.

So the "100% inevitable" looks a lot more like maybe 20% "inevitable" than 100%" What forced liberalization in half those countries in the end was Gorbachev's Sinatra doctrine and him actively pushing for reforms in the Warsaw pact, not some organic growth of their own domestic political system.

But hey let's roll with it, let's assume a reformer comes to power but not Gorbachev then you could have gotten:

1) There could have being a more moderate reformer, someone like Yegor Legachev who basically supported Gorbachev's reforms up until 1987 but resisted the really destabilizing reforms later on.

2) There could have being a reformer less scared of a hardliner coup ala Khrushchev, and don't destabilize the system as much by hobbling the party in the 90-91 period.

3) There could have being someone who at least tried Chinese style "Economic Reform without Political Reform", maybe they succeed, maybe not but either way the USSR looks very different than otl

4) Lastly, there could have being someone who simply pre-empts either the August Coup or the Yeltsin coup with better intelligence while doing 95% of what Gorbachev did otl.

All those cases were likely to result in a surviving USSR, the idea that the USSR was rotten from the foundation and bound to collapse is essentially the acceptance of a triumphalist narrative by the victors of the Cold War. Once you accept that, Gorbachev's decisions to reform the Union certainly start to make him look like one of the few truly event-making characters in human history. The Great Man thing actually has a point here.

 

[WhiteDragon25]

If you accept the premise of revolutionary socialism, that there is a single, revolutionary interest of the entire working class, then division just leads to factionalism and weakness. The entirety of the proletariat must be united behind a single vanguard party that can secure its interests and rule.

Multi-party elections only makes sense under a capitalist system, where accommodations need to be made for the competing factions of the ruling society. Neither the USSR nor any other revolutionary socialist country has ever or will ever have multi-party elections because that rejects the basic premise of the ideology --- that the entirety of the working class has one single set of interests.

But the whole point of Marxism-Leninism is that socialist theory is dictated and elaborated by the state. That's why the party line exists. You'd have to completely distance the USSR from Marxism-Leninism, which is impossible after 1945, for it to allow "various flavours of socialism".

The entity of the USSR could've survived, but the communist system could not. Communism is predicated on the idea that an entire class of people (the bourgeoisie) are evil and should be persecuted. Clearly, if you believe that, you don't believe in dissenting opinions, and there is no democracy without dissent.

A multi-party socialist democracy is theoretically possible - you're just looking at it from the wrong angle: factionalism did exist early on in the Soviet Union, and Lenin himself tolerated it as a natural part of the revolutionary process; internal debate on how to progress the socialist system before unanimously deciding on one particular path, hence the concept of Democratic Centralism: "Diversity in debate, Unity in action". Of course, the circumstances of the Russian Civil War forced Lenin to ban factionalism so they could focus on the war, but he promised they'd eventually return to the multi-party system - a promise that he never got around to fulfilling.

Anyways, all that is necessary for a multi-party socialist democracy to function is simply for the entire system to accept the following two premises: 1) that the entirety of the working class is united in its set of interests (ending capitalist exploitation and establishing socialism), and 2) that the bourgeoisie cannot and should not have any representation within the system, as their very presence corrupts it by definition.

With those two premises, a socialist democracy with multiple socialist parties is perfectly possible: all of them are dedicated to the goal of achieving communism and advancing the cause of the proletariat, and all of them agree that bourgeois interests should be persecuted. Any dissent present within the system is not related to either of these two premises: they agree on what they want as an end-goal, the only disagreement is on how to get to that end-goal. And all the different factions are merely variations in socialist theory: Anarchism, Syndicalism, Councilism, Democratic Socialism, and of course Marxism-Leninism, etc.

Marxism-Leninism's central component of Vanguardism doesn't even need to be discarded either: the Vanguard party could/would be the leading faction within the wider socialist coalition, with the other factions providing a much-needed diversity of opinion and alternative methods from which to draw upon. The Vanguard party may be the leader of the group, but it can still take good ideas and advice from fellow socialists of a different stripe if it would help advance the revolutionary cause.

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

No, it was a last-ditch attempt to save the -old- Soviet Union, the one where all power was centralized in the Kremlin. And even then, if the USSR had gotten bigger economic aid package from the west from voluntarily dissolving the Warsaw Pact and allowing German reunification, the hardliners probably would have being appeased enough to not try anything. (Source: https://books.google.ca/books?id=uoJFyqxx9KUC)

This is 100% historical determinism, with very little evidence backing it. And doesn't even fit historical evidence: it's true there were reformers who came to power in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and China by 1985 (2/3 of which were failures but let's ignore that). But reformers did not come to power in the Communist GDR, nor Poland (they got a hardliner instead), nor Bulgaria, nor Albania, certainly not Romania nor North Korea.

So the "100% inevitable" looks a lot more like maybe 20% "inevitable" than 100%" What forced liberalization in half those countries in the end was Gorbachev's Sinatra doctrine and him actively pushing for reforms in the Warsaw pact, not some organic growth of their own domestic political system.

But hey let's roll with it, let's assume a reformer comes to power but not Gorbachev then you could have gotten:

1) There could have being a more moderate reformer, someone like Yegor Legachev who basically supported Gorbachev's reforms up until 1987 but resisted the really destabilizing reforms later on.

2) There could have being a reformer less scared of a hardliner coup ala Khrushchev, and don't destabilize the system as much by hobbling the party in the 90-91 period.

3) There could have being someone who at least tried Chinese style "Economic Reform without Political Reform", maybe they succeed, maybe not but either way the USSR looks very different than otl

4) Lastly, there could have being someone who simply pre-empts either the August Coup or the Yeltsin coup with better intelligence while doing 95% of what Gorbachev did otl.

All those cases were likely to result in a surviving USSR, the idea that the USSR was rotten from the foundation and bound to collapse is essentially the acceptance of a triumphalist narrative by the victors of the Cold War.

I agree that the USSR could have survived! But only as a party-state. Let's say the August Coup succeeds, or all the reformers are purged at some point before Gorbachev took power. The USSR could have continued on, like North Korea or Cuba. Alternatively it could have gone the way of China, Vietnam, or Laos.

Socialism can survive forever, as long as the party-state remains intact. But multi-party socialism has had a 0% success rate. Zero. And I see no evidence that it could have succeeded, or even survived beyond one or two elections, in any alternate timeline. All it takes is one opportunist to win and the whole thing comes down.

 

[RousseauX]

I agree that the USSR could have survived! But only as a party-state. Let's say the August Coup succeeds, or all the reformers are purged at some point before Gorbachev took power. The USSR could have continued on, like North Korea or Cuba. Alternatively it could have gone the way of China, Vietnam, or Laos.

Socialism can survive forever, as long as the party-state remains intact. But multi-party socialism has had a 0% success rate. Zero. And I see no evidence that it could have succeeded, or even survived beyond one or two elections, in any alternate timeline. All it takes is one opportunist to win and the whole thing comes down.

You are conflating two things:

'Socialism"

"The Soviet Union"

You could have had a non-Socialist (defined as in otl Stalinist-Brezhnev era Soviet Communism w/e) Soviet Union, that exactly where the New Union Treaty was going

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

A multi-party socialist democracy is theoretically possible - you're just looking at it from the wrong angle: factionalism did exist early on in the Soviet Union, and Lenin himself tolerated it as a natural part of the revolutionary process; internal debate on how to progress the socialist system before unanimously deciding on one particular path, hence the concept of Democratic Centralism: "Diversity in debate, Unity in action". Of course, the circumstances of the Russian Civil War forced Lenin to ban factionalism so they could focus on the war, but he promised they'd eventually return to the multi-party system - a promise that he never got around to fulfilling.

Anyways, all that is necessary for a multi-party socialist democracy to function is simply for the entire system to accept the following two premises: 1) that the entirety of the working class is united in its set of interests (ending capitalist exploitation and establishing socialism), and 2) that the bourgeoisie cannot and should not have any representation within the system, as their very presence corrupts it by definition.

With those two premises, a socialist democracy with multiple socialist parties is perfectly possible: all of them are dedicated to the goal of achieving communism and advancing the cause of the proletariat, and all of them agree that bourgeois interests should be persecuted. Any dissent present within the system is not related to either of these two premises: they agree on what they want as an end-goal, the only disagreement is on how to get to that end-goal. And all the different factions are merely variations in socialist theory: Anarchism, Syndicalism, Councilism, Democratic Socialism, and of course Marxism-Leninism, etc.

Marxism-Leninism's central component of Vanguardism doesn't even need to be discarded either: the Vanguard party could/would be the leading faction within the wider socialist coalition, with the other factions providing a much-needed diversity of opinion and alternative methods from which to draw upon. The Vanguard party may be the leader of the group, but it can still take good ideas and advice from fellow socialists of a different stripe if it would help advance the revolutionary cause.

There's a reason why Lenin discarded these ideas. They were wrong. Who the hell is going to make the entire system accept those two premises you listed? Without a Party to control the state, the possibility of capitalist restoration is always looming.

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

You are conflating two things:

'Socialism"

"The Soviet Union"

You could have had a non-Socialist Soviet Union, that exactly where the New Union Treaty was going

Then it's not a Soviet Union, it's just a federation of capitalist Russia and a few other capitalist nations. Not too different from OTL.

 

[RousseauX]

Then it's not a Soviet Union, it's just a federation of capitalist Russia and a few other capitalist nations. Not too different from OTL.

Gorbachev was basically going towards a Social Democratic Soviet Union

It's would be a pretty different world, there would be Soviet Army for one, and a common currency in the Soviet Union with a central bank and a set of economic institutions holding it together. On the long run it might actually recentralize somewhat into a fiscal union. A continual USSR on the map has huge implications going forward for both Soviet citizens and geopolitics.

 

[Proto-Indo-European]

Gorbachev was basically going towards a Social Democratic Soviet Union

It's would be a pretty different world, there would be Soviet Army for one, and a common currency in the Soviet Union with a central bank and a set of economic institutions holding it together. On the long run it might actually recentralize somewhat into a fiscal union. A continual USSR on the map has huge implications going forward for both Soviet citizens and geopolitics.

I mean, once capitalism is established, the Eurasian Union or whatever could go down a lot of different routes. I think an attempt at creating a social democracy in a country as poor as Russia would result in something more like Belarus than Denmark. But Belarus with oil is probably a better situation for Russians than OTL Russia is.

This Russia would be much more geopolitically influential than our own, and this has huge implications for the Balkans and the Middle East just to name a couple things.

 

[Dan1988]

A multi-party socialist democracy is theoretically possible - you're just looking at it from the wrong angle: factionalism did exist early on in the Soviet Union, and Lenin himself tolerated it as a natural part of the revolutionary process; internal debate on how to progress the socialist system before unanimously deciding on one particular path, hence the concept of Democratic Centralism: "Diversity in debate, Unity in action". Of course, the circumstances of the Russian Civil War forced Lenin to ban factionalism so they could focus on the war, but he promised they'd eventually return to the multi-party system - a promise that he never got around to fulfilling.

Anyways, all that is necessary for a multi-party socialist democracy to function is simply for the entire system to accept the following two premises: 1) that the entirety of the working class is united in its set of interests (ending capitalist exploitation and establishing socialism), and 2) that the bourgeoisie cannot and should not have any representation within the system, as their very presence corrupts it by definition.

With those two premises, a socialist democracy with multiple socialist parties is perfectly possible: all of them are dedicated to the goal of achieving communism and advancing the cause of the proletariat, and all of them agree that bourgeois interests should be persecuted. Any dissent present within the system is not related to either of these two premises: they agree on what they want as an end-goal, the only disagreement is on how to get to that end-goal. And all the different factions are merely variations in socialist theory: Anarchism, Syndicalism, Councilism, Democratic Socialism, and of course Marxism-Leninism, etc.

Marxism-Leninism's central component of Vanguardism doesn't even need to be discarded either: the Vanguard party could/would be the leading faction within the wider socialist coalition, with the other factions providing a much-needed diversity of opinion and alternative methods from which to draw upon. The Vanguard party may be the leader of the group, but it can still take good ideas and advice from fellow socialists of a different stripe if it would help advance the revolutionary cause.

All you basically have in that case is something resembling the bad old days of the PRI governing Mexico - minus the PANistas, of course. With the additional parties as satellite parties which although ideologically different on the surface in reality caters to specific interest groups who all combine together to back the single Communist candidate for President. It's therefore non-competitive - like the popular fronts in the Eastern Bloc, or China, or Vietnam.

 

[RightHoJeeves]

It's would be a pretty different world, there would be Soviet Army for one, and a common currency in the Soviet Union with a central bank and a set of economic institutions holding it together. On the long run it might actually recentralize somewhat into a fiscal union. A continual USSR on the map has huge implications going forward for both Soviet citizens and geopolitics.

Different leadership (ie no Putin) certainly massively changes the world as we know it today but what would make the bureaucratic apparatus of this new Soviet Union any less corrupt than the previous one?

And would there have been market based reforms to the economy with some level of privatization? If not then you're still stuck with a pretty rotten and decrepit system that's functionally incapable of meeting the needs of the people.

 

[RousseauX]

Different leadership (ie no Putin) certainly massively changes the world as we know it today but what would make the bureaucratic apparatus of this new Soviet Union any less corrupt than the previous one?

And would there have been market based reforms to the economy with some level of privatization? If not then you're still stuck with a pretty rotten and decrepit system that's functionally incapable of meeting the needs of the people.

1) The USSR in the 1980s had a per capita income of ~$8500-9000 or so, which was what China had in the late 2000s. Growth of around 2%/year, there were shortages, but people's basic needs were being met. Living standards were poor compare to the US, but it wasn't as bad as westerners portray it nowdays. At the very least a New Union would have had that.

2) Gorbachev had already started privatization around 1990

3) Privatization != economic prosperity, Russia in the 1990s suffered way worse economic crisis than anything the Soviets suffered since 1945 with a privatized economy

4) Lack of economic growth or poor economic conditions does not easily translate to national collapse, the US for example did not collapse during the Great Depression, North Korea did not collapse during the famines of the 90s, and most tellingly, Russia did not collapse in the 90s when the Russian economy actually did collapse.

5) Oil price would have gone up eventually, as will infusions of productive improving technologies

The System was broken, but then again, most countries in the world today (market or not) has pretty broken economic systems. That alone does not translate to regime collapse.

 

[Jesse]

A multi-party socialist democracy is theoretically possible - you're just looking at it from the wrong angle: factionalism did exist early on in the Soviet Union, and Lenin himself tolerated it as a natural part of the revolutionary process; internal debate on how to progress the socialist system before unanimously deciding on one particular path, hence the concept of Democratic Centralism: "Diversity in debate, Unity in action". Of course, the circumstances of the Russian Civil War forced Lenin to ban factionalism so they could focus on the war, but he promised they'd eventually return to the multi-party system - a promise that he never got around to fulfilling.

According to this page from a libertarian communist site, the undermining of democracy actually happened before the Civil War:

Many Trotskyists will still try to tell you that the Bolsheviks encouraged workers to take up and debate the points of the day, both inside and outside the party. The reality is very different for the Bolsheviks rapidly clamped down on the revolutionary forces outside the party, and then on those inside that failed to toe the line.

In April 1918 the Bolshevik secret police (The Cheka) raided 26 Anarchist centres in Moscow. 40 Anarchists were killed or injured and over 500 imprisoned [3]. In May the leading Anarchist publications were closed down [4]. Both of these events occurred before the excuse of the outbreak of the Civil War could be used as a 'justification'. These raids occurred because the Bolsheviks were beginning to lose the arguments about the running of Russian industry.

In 1918 also a faction of the Bolshevik party critical of the party's introduction of 'Taylorism' (the use of piece work and time & motion studies to measure the output of each worker, essentially the science of sweat extraction) around the journal Kommunist were forced out of Leningrad when the majority of the Leningrad party conference supported Lenin's demand "that the adherents of Kommunist cease their separate organisational existence". [5]

The paper was last published in May, silenced "Not by discussion, persuasion or compromise, but by a high pressure campaign in the Party organisations, backed by a barrage of violent invective in the party press...". [6] So much for encouraging debate!!

(the footnotes in this quote are all to The Bolsheviks and Worker Control by Maurice Brinton)

I agree that a multi-party democracy with a planned economy is possible in principle, but probably less likely in practice to arise than something else like a democracy with market socialism. And for it to happen in Russia after 1918, you'd probably need a different leadership.

 

[WarlordGandhi]

Perhaps have a Menshevik led revolution during the Revolution of 1995 that could result in democratic socialism in Russia