Dear comrades,
As we all know there are two soviet eras pre and post death of Stalin. We all know Khrushchev basically did a coupe detat, by killing all Stalinists and also by starting the anti Stalin propaganda. We know he was the cause of the Soviet Sino split.
But what exactly caused the split? What policies did he push that were reformist or capitalist in nature ? How exactly did he fuck up? I know the results, but I lack in knowledge of the causes.
You sort of answered this one yourself. Among numerous factors it is precisely the things you mentioned - the de-Stalinisation nonsense, the purge against pro-Stalin elements (if you can even call them that - they were just anti-revisionist Marxists-Leninists), blatant revisionism of Marxism-Leninism and its core principles (continuous class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, the party of the proletariat), blind optimism when it comes to national question
They weren’t all strictly capitalist in nature, to be honest. It would be more accurate to say that his blunderous policies created conditions for capitalist restoration inside Soviet Socialism.
The policies typically referred are such: he dismantled the state-owned MTSs (machine and tractor stations), putting the responsibility of maintaining and repairing the machinery on collective farms. He dismantled central planning, replacing existing institutions with decentralized regional planning committees, which greatly exacerbated the existing difficulties with planning. He encouraged the peasantry to keep more privately-owned produce and livestock, essentially strengthening NEP-style measures without second thought. He adopted wage-leveling - a mistake of monstrous proportions, which decimated incentive for production growth (more of a left-deviation, honestly - the USSR was not ready for such a thing), and also created severe discontent among the intellectuals, prompting them to look for other means of enrichment, siphoning this strata of society into the “second” economy who would then constitute would-be capitalists in its embryonic form.
He also started the Virgin Lands cultivation bullshit, instead of trying to make a qualitative shift in agriculture. The idea was also to emulate US agricultural practice with heavy use of mineral fertilizer. The results were disastrous, partly due to the fact that initial yield seemed to have increased (but that was only true for land already cultivated), which gave overall sense of false promise, and also due to abandonment of Stalin’s afforestation program, which worsened issues with droughts.
There were also big mistakes of political nature on top of those related to the economy, including the damage done to CPSU - recruiting too many people of questionable ideological strength, massively increasing the % of intelligentsia compared to industrial proletariat, needless bureaucratization, etc. He also drove a split into industrial and agricultural factions inside the CPSU.
Simply said, his overall strategy represented a Bukharinist right-deviation within the political spectrum of the CPSU. Something Stalin warned might happen in a peasant-dominated country.
The list is hella incomplete, please feel free to add more stuff.
Do you have any book recommendation on that topic?
It’s not directly about the topic, but there is a lot of context that indirectly shows how Khrushchev and Trotsky both essentially operated as wreckers when it came to anything involving Stalin. I have no respect for Trots anymore after reading the things both Trotsky and Khrushchev said and wrote, not due to having a pro-Stalin bias (I was neutral on him at that time I read these), but because they essentially served neoliberal interests and did everything in their power to dismantle or cripple the Soviet project along the way. In particular, they tried to reverse all of the progress that was attributed to Stalin.
“Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend” Domenico Losurdo. It uses references mostly from Stalin’s detractors to paint a portrait of him, whether he was good or bad. There are two sources that I think are from two English translations that you can get for free, but I don’t really know the differences:
The one from Iskra Books is most likely better. The one on Prolewiki is the English translation of a Portuguese translation of the original Italian, whereas the one on Iskra Books is a direct English translation from the original Italian.
“Socialism Betrayed - Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union” by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny. An absolutely indispensable book to give you a starting point and moderately deep insights.
There are more books, like “The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System - An Insider’s History” by Vladimir Kontorovich, I suggest you put those off for later, as they are more detailed but dry, filled with technical language.
Thanks! I’m adding them to my reading list.
Thanks comrade
This is an excellent answer comrade! This topic is very important imo as it helps us to understand why things in the SU went so wrong later on. The capitalist restorationists around Gorbachev did not suddenly appear out of nowhere in the 80s, the groundwork for the economic mistakes and the degeneration of the CPSU had been laid decades prior. This whole subject really should have its own section on Prolewiki that newcomers who have these same questions can be referred to.
To all of this I’ll add that many of the reforms implemented under Khrushchev (or at least the general idea behind them) weren’t necessarily out of place - things like some amount of social liberalization or increasing availability of consumption goods (the light industry), given what the USSR and its people have been through. As is always the case, the appeal for these things didn’t appear out of nowhere - there were material reasons. And, of course, if implemented prudently, they could have produced positive results for the USSR. It’s just that the way they were conducted was overall a failure. Khrushchev’s shallow understanding of Marxist theory, his tendency of favoring short-term easy solutions aimed at quick returns (opportunism, essentially), as well as monumental loss of experienced ML cadres certainly played a part too.
How Stalin even had an afforestation program? based
Excellent write up thus far that summarizes the many mistakes seen under Khrushchev’s term.