The USSR: The Thwarted Transition

Translated for CubaNews by Ana Portela from Cuba Literaria and published on
Walterlippmann.com
The intended transition to socialism in the USSR has fostered many debates for decades, in
which the ideological antagonism gains more importance than the subject requires after the
Soviet collapse. Yet, the final decision was to disdain a precious opportunity to uproot the bases
of bourgeois domination; an opportunity to rethink, understand and assume (assume above all)
the characteristics of the Soviet process as a whole that offers important elements for anticapitalist alternatives demanded by the 21st century.
Towards this end we develop our study, beginning with the understanding of the history of the
USSR, given its essential importance, both outside and within its borders analyzing the following
problems: Who held power in the Soviet Union?, What was their ideology? At what point can we
speak of the rupture of the Bolshevik project? In the following pages, we attempt to make some
notes on these questions.
The unforeseen class [1]
Stalin was the visible face and representative of the bureaucracy that gradually broke ties with
the Bolshevik essence and that broke the weak mechanisms of political participation of the
masses.
It would be moot now to ask: what were the sources of Soviet bureaucracy? Second-rate figures
rose to occupy the main administrative posts within the revolution since many of the old
combatants of the vanguard died during the civil war or broke with the masses occupying less
important posts, accommodating themselves to the new conditions of power. At the same time,
Soviet power was forced to use people of the previous governmental apparatus, incorporating
technical and specialized personnel as well as the peasant masses that were proletarianized. In
this manner, Lenins party was declassed, in which the requirements for entry of new militants
was the result of a long and rigorous process of checking, except for the workers who had
worked in industry for more than ten years. [2]
The Soviet bureaucracy went through a complex process in its formation, separated from all
historically known means. It later took over power, dominated knowledge and its transmission,
controlled the means of production of ideas, whose reproduction was guaranteed for decades.
The process of bureaucratization had its origins from the very beginning of the Revolution, but
its consecration as a dominant sector in society occurred during the 30s.
Lenin explained the rise of bureaucracy as a parasitic and capitalist excrescence in the institution
of the workers State, rising up through the isolation of the Revolution in a country of peasants,
backward and illiterate [3]. He had his opinion of this new group of leaders that had their own
ideas, their own feelings and their own interests. Trotsky noted that these men would not have
been capable of making the Revolution but have been the best adapted to exploit it [4].

The raw material for the ideological activities of those in power in the USSR were the great
masses of illiterates who, certainly, rose from darkness and were easily managed in the name of
something better, falling into a secondary ignorance that it was precisely this to rise up as a
society. Except for the most politically advanced sectors, the minority, of course, the ideas of
socialism had not been taken up by the population that had to be educated and prepared for the
revolutionary debate.
This unforeseen class that was privileged with state power was, in theory, representatives of the
interests of the masses, while in practice, it administered public property benefiting from it. It is
true that members of the bureaucracy did not have private capital; but without any control over
the rest of the social sectors, it directed the economy extending or restricting any branch of
production set prices, organized their allotments, controlled surplus. In this manner, they took
over the party, army, policy and the propaganda that sustained them.
With the passing of time, primarily towards the latter part of the seventies, they coined the phrase
in the socialist camp as they and us that reflected the differences that were being revealed and
that was deep-rooted, warned of during an earlier stage by many revolutionaries who pointed to
the stratification of society or, more precisely, to its preservation.
The analysis on the subject of bureaucracy has one of its most controversial sides in its ties or
autonomy regarding other classes. For some authors, this could not become a central point in a
stable system, since it was only able to express the interests of another class. According to this
criterion, the Soviet case fluctuated between the interests of the proletariat and the owners.
On the other hand, some authors affirmed that the bureaucracy did not express foreign interests,
nor did it move between two extremes but was manifest as a social group aware of its own
interest.
The events reveal that the bureaucratic class completely took over power and property. It
vanquished in the power struggle after having crushed all its opponents. However, it revealed its
diffused interests in an underhanded discourse claiming to be representatives of the proletariat.
For decades, the dominant class did not dare to reinstate private property over the means of
production until, in 1991, deviously; it began to knit ties with the Russian bourgeoisie.
According to the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, more than 75% of
this political elite and more than 61% of the business elite have their origin in the
Nomenklatura of the Soviet period. Consequently, the social, economic and political positions
of society were in the same hands. Bureaucracy, itself, was responsible for the transformation of
the economic and political forms of its domination, maintaining control over the system, but
again on behalf of a class.
The hidden mentality
By which codes of political culture was the Soviet bureaucracy able to dominate? Let us begin
with the masses that carried out the Revolution of 1917; a mass that had a mentality of servitude,
with no experience in democracy and the development of a proletarian conscience, the class

called on to lead the Revolution, that was in the hands of a small group of persons. The rural
masses, a majority at the time, were the most conservative, sustained by the high level of existing
illiteracy.
For its part, the usurper bureaucracy, holding power, was another historical example of how the
vanquishers incorporated the mentality of the vanquished. In this case, they inherited the codes
of domination by absolute control, a political elitism, the idea that the throng did not know
how or was unable to lead, needing a figure that would synthesize the destiny of the country. It
should be noted that one of the features most appreciated by the average citizen in Russia
regarding its leaders is the image of a strong man, capable of confronting with determination the
crucial difficulties of the country.
Linked to the above-mentioned characteristic, the norm of the dominators broke with the
responsibility of the high figure regarding the problems, creating a mystical environment around
him. Together with this in the social imagination, an opinion was formed that the responsibilities
of the state of existing situations was the responsibility of the intermediate levels of the
dominators.
The result was that, with the rise of Stalinism, the principles fostered by the Bolshevik uprising
regarding policy and participation of the masses as the driving force in the subversive explosion,
where they would make and carry out political decisions, was rooted out. Also pushed aside was
the manner in which the Soviets that had transformed into spontaneous institutions of the
struggle of the masses and acquired functions of State, giving the masses the possibility of
participating in policy decisions as well as the mechanisms of mobilization, real and
independent. In this process, the political organizations and masses suffered a considerable
atrophy.
This same mentality was observed in the great Russian pride of which Lenin gave warning.
The bureaucracy made its imperial policies during this Soviet period, coining the phrase big
brother by which East Europe became known and by the doctrine of limited sovereignty placed
in black and white by Brezhnev.
On the other hand, these components of Russian mentality are the basis to understand why the
standard of living of the ruling Soviet class was similar to those of the bourgeoisie. As early as
1936, Trotsky gave an example of this stratification. A marshal, a director of a company, the son
of a minister, had an apartment, vacation villas, cars, schools for their children, special clinics
and many other benefits that were not accessible to the maid of the first, the farmhand of the
second and the vagabond. For the first group this difference was no problem. For the second it
was of utmost importance.
An individual in the Soviet society who yearned for features, goods and standard of living that
were part of the capitalist culture was the most evident test that he, at least, had not flourished in
the new socialist mentality, the new man and a new acuity. The socialist Soviet, post Lenin,
symbol of real socialism, was never a valid, articulate or viable alternative to the previous
system. The cultural substitution did not arrive, considering that socialism was, above all, a
project that was sustained by a new culture. Therefore, the outcome was not a socialist society

(nor a capitalist one, of course) but a new form state directed, bureaucratized of domination
and exploitation, opposed the nature of the fair and liberating emancipation of socialism [5].
The rupture
The political practice of the Soviet bureaucratic class was a break with Leninist ideas in the most
diverse spaces of Soviet society. Following are some notes to corroborate this hypothesis.
The leader of the October revolution stressed, It is necessary to maintain awareness that the
struggle demanded the communist to think. It is possible that they know perfectly well about the
revolutionary struggle and the state of revolutionary movement in the world. However, to
overcome the terrible scarcity and poverty, what we need is culture, honesty and the capacity to
reason [6].
The bureaucracy barred revolutionary controversy, prevented effective political participation of
the masses. The Soviet leaders ignored that socialism cannot triumph over freedom of thoughts,
against man but, on the contrary, through freedom of thought, improving the living conditions of
this man.
The dogmatism that Marxism suffered, the persecution and discredit of those who attempted to
defend it, the erroneous Marxism-USSR synthesis (including its disastrous international
consequences), and the impossibility of developing other lines of thought, promoted the
formation of generation of Soviet people lacking the necessary conceptual theoretical experience
to confront contemporary historical challenges.
The cultural transition of the Bolshevik project is restrained, above all, by the authoritarian
nature of the Soviet bureaucracy. The absence of real participation, of civic space for answers
and control of power, affected all levels of social life, from an economic performance to ethnic
conflicts.
Regarding the above mentioned and analyzing the project of approval of the Soviet Constitution,
Trotsky pointed out that it is true that the project was submitted in June for the approval of the
peoples of the USSR . But it would be in vain to search in all of the sixth part of the surface of the
globe, for the communist who would dare criticize the work of the central committee or, anyone,
not a party member, who would have the courage to reject the proposition of the leading party
[7]
In a sample of this catastrophic blunder was the attempt to dilute individuality to an everincreasing abstract collectivity, with a marked lack of respect for what is different, schematizing
a model of the strong, inflexible citizen as if the man dreamt of could be formed by decree. What
was at the basis was a simplistic concept of man, completely ignoring the psychology and
modifications in diverse environments. The Soviet leadership did not only reveal its incapacity to
maintain the revolutionary spirit alive in a process of confrontations to historic circumstances of
their interaction, but they crushed any vestiges of diverse, critical thought challenging authority.

Under the pretext of being the guide of society, the CPSU became the machine that halted,
undermined and assaulted the natural processes of the society. The difference between Lenin and
Stalin, among the many, is the fact that the latter, taking advantage of some of the conditions
created, in life, by that great revolutionary leader, deflected the essence of partisan direction
towards totalitarianism [8]. Lenin had prepared the Bolshevik Party to direct the workers, not to
tame them or subjugate them [9].
With the economic hyper-centralization that followed this process, the Soviet bureaucracy
managed the minutest detail, the control of production through a mediocre framework of
intermediate levels, as a means of separating it from the control by the masses. This intermediate
level was made up of technicians, administrative managers and specialist, becoming a true
plague that could not be torn down during the existence of the USSR . The historian, Eric
Hobsbanw recalls that shortly before the (Second World) War there were more than one
administrator for every two manual laborers [10].
From that moment, the Soviet model presented to basic problems that are proof, from a Marxist
theoretical point of view, that there was a breach between socialism as a higher state of
development of the productive forces and production relations and Soviet reality. On the one
part, the remaining socio-economic forms that could converge in building the bases of a new
society were arbitrarily eliminated. On the other hand, economic islands were created
(industrial, mining and agricultural complexes) violating the social division of labor while
ignoring the necessary cooperation between sectors and branches of the economy.
This practice halted specialization and the introduction of new techniques that prevented a
rational use of resources. Due to the vertical and willfully that imposed on the productive process
the development of a sector in detriment of another, without the proper integration between
them. In this situation, the productive units, far from being autonomous, were prisoners of an
uncontrolled primacy of political criteria over economic necessities.
The workers continued separated from the means of generating wealth. They did not become real
owners as a result, of the bureaucratic-administrative factors that kept them from an effective
ownership. The adulteration was in identifying state ownership of property with socialization,
limiting these to the complexity and depth that Marx had understood as improvement of the
capitalist means of production [11].
Also in the question of gender there was a rupture of the ideals of the October Revolution. The
new Workers State granted ample legal and political rights such as the right to divorce, abortion,
elimination of marital authority, equality of legal marriage with common law unions, etc.
Alexandra Kollontai was the first woman elected by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party in 1917 and the first woman to occupy a post in the government of the new state: Peoples
Commissar for Health and later the first woman ambassador in history.
As of 1926, under Stalin, the civil marriage was again instituted as the only legal union. Later the
right to abortion was abolished, together with the suppression of the womens section of the
Central Committee and its equivalent branches in the different party organization levels. In 1934
homosexuality was forbidden and prostitution became a crime. Not respecting the institution of

family became a bourgeois conduct or leftist in the eyes of the bureaucracy. Illegitimate
children returned to that category that had been abolished in 1917 and divorce became a costly
and difficult process [12].
Police institutions also became a function of the new interests. At the beginning, the objective of
the Committee for State Security (KGB) [13] was to combat counterrevolution, sabotage and
speculation, objectives of legitimate defense against the reactionary opposition of the
Revolution. But, these logical aims were progressively modified with the ascension of
bureaucracy to power until it became the institution that preserved the interests of the
bureaucratic State, whose objective was to eliminate the opposition of the revolutionary forces
[14].
In addition, KGB officials received high salaries as well a good destinations abroad, comfortable
housing and enjoyed privileges within the USSR that also affected the moral importance.
Undoubtedly, it was a privileged sector within society that was understandable considering its
real function as guardian of the interests of bureaucracy.
The Red Army was created from the bases in January of 1918. The workers state needed its own
armed institution to defend its interests, primarily due to the aggressions that soon followed by
more than 14 countries, at the same time. As a new concept, the policy of the Bolshevik
leadership was open to constant debate where the armed forces played an important role and,
naturally, the army had the same ideas of party and State.
The Red Army did not escape the reactionary attacks of the bureaucracy that immediately began
to change it into the defender of its interests, progressively eliminating its popular basis. The
measure that clearly reflects this process was the decree that re-established the body of officials,
dealing a crushing blow to the revolutionary principles that gave rise to this armed institutions
and whose important pillars was, precisely, the elimination of the officials body, giving
importance to the command that is won with capacity, talent, character, experience, etc.
This measure acquired a political objective by giving the officials a social importance. In this
manner, they closely joined them with the leadership group weakening their union with the
troops that led to the rupture of the communication between the troops and the political
leadership. The officers body carefully watched over the purity and loyalty of the officers to
the Party and the Socialist State . Also weakened was the spirit of freedom and debate that
had existed among the ranks of the Army in strong correlation with the opinion that no army
can be more democratic than the regime that nourishes it [15].
One of the most sensitive factors was the rupture of the basic principles of the Bolshevik
program that determined that the salaries of the high officials could not surpass the mean of a
workers salary. By 1940, when a worker earned 250 rubles a month, a deputy received 1000
rubles, a president of a republic received 12,500 rubles and the president of the Union received
25,000 rubles for the same period [16]. During the years of the Perestroika, there was a wellknown special supply that increased the purchasing power of the high officials far above what
a worker or engineer received.

The Bolshevik leadership, based on events that it had to confront in the last months of political
life, foresaw the danger of the inherited great Russian of the years of Czarist domination and
exploitation remaining in the politics of the new State. Under these conditions Lenin pointed
out it is natural that the freedom to separate from the union (...) be it by a simple piece of
paper incapable of defending the non Russians from the attack of that real Russian (...) that
oppressor that is the typical Russian oppressor. Undoubtedly the Soviet and Sovietized workers,
an extremely low percentage, would drown in the ocean of the great chauvinist Russian beast
like a fly in the milk [17].
The real facts, in spite of the letter of the Law of laws and other regulations, indicated the
impossibility of affirming that the republics that formed the Soviet State coordinated their
activities with the Center but, instead, were directly subordinated to Moscow . Stalin simply
named from above the political representatives. The elite of the republics, although occupying
posts of certain importance at the level of the republics, found it hard to occupy important ones at
the Union level, were Russian predominance had a fundamental weight [18].
The head of the Russian revolution paid special interest to the concepts of political practice in
terms of the Union . One thing is the need to unite against the Western imperialists, defenders
of the capital world. There is no doubt whatsoever (...) Another thing is for us to fall, even in
questions of detail, in imperialist attitudes towards the oppressed nationalities undermining,
consequently, the principles of all our defense of principles in the fight against imperialism
[19].
Final Notes
Soviet socialism after Lenin was not a valid, articulate and viable alternative to capitalism
because the usurping bureaucracy was not, and could not be, the bearer of a superior ideology, of
a cultural project, understood as a surgical instrument to make a new society or create conditions
to achieve it.
The men who took power were neither the thinking communists nor the educated ones that Lenin
foresaw as the raw material necessary to confront and conquer the great historical challenge that
Russia assumed in 1917. In truth, his political practice was a break with that principle. These
men, gradually ascending from society and becoming the dominant sector were a by-product of
the Revolution and revealed their incapacity to guide history towards the ultimate objective: the
creation of socialism.
The current Russian politicians with a bourgeois outlook hidden for decades under the cloak of
Soviet bureaucracy. The Yeltsin regime changed the party men, the government and security
members into businesspersons and property owners.
Despite the postponement of the transition to socialism that events of the USSR presuppose for
Russia, the revolutionary triumph of the October revolution continues to be of utmost
importance. In 1922, Lenin wrote, our state machine may be defective but they say that the first
steam engine was also defective. Also, it is not known if it ever worked but that is not important.
It does not matter that the first steam engine was useless, the fact is that today we have a

locomotive. Although our state apparatus is poor what is still important is that it was created;
that it was the greatest invention in history; a State of the proletariat was created [20].
This is the necessary reference point to prepare and carry out the anti-capitalist alternatives of the
XXI century.

References
[1] The title of this epigraph was suggested by the article by Alexei Goussev, The unforeseen
class: Soviet bureaucracy as seen by Leon Trotski, In: www.herramienta.com
[2] Robert Weil. Burocratization: The problem with out the class name. In this article, the
author makes a detailed analysis of this social group, its origins, its characteristics and the
manner in which it took power. The article would be of interest for those who want more
information on such an essential question to understand the Soviet process. In the journal
Socialism and Democracy. Spring/Sommer, 1988.
[3] Taken from Ted Grant and Alan Woods: Lenin and Trotsky, what did they really stood for.
In: www.engels.org
[4] Leon Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed. What is the Soviet Union and where is it going?
Pathfinder. New York . 1992
[5] Adolfo Snchez. Vale la pena el socialismo? In: Revista El viejo topo, November 2002,
number 172.
[6] Vladimir I. Lenin. Political Report to the eleventh congress of the Party. In: The last fight
of Lenin. Speeches and articles. 1922-1923. Pathfinder, New York, United States, 1997, p. 65
[7] Leon Trotsky. The Revolution Betrayed. What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?
Pathfinder. New York. 1992, p.211
[8] Regime in which the leaders forcefully impose one unique system for all society and even
penalize an alternative idea. Robin Blackburn. After the fall , p.177. In a broad expos,
domination of a party of the masses led by a charismatic leader, an official ideology, the
monopoly of the mass media, the monopoly of the armed forces, a terrorist police control, a
centralized control of the economy. Philippe Bourrinet. Vctor Serge: totalitarismo y
capitalismo de Estado (Deconstruccin socialista y humanismo colectivista)
[9] The Bolsheviks, against their better intentions, were forced to establish a monopoly of
political power. This situation, considered extraordinary and temporary created great dangers at
the time in which the vanguard of the proletariat was subjected to a growing pressure of other
classes. Ted Grant and Alan Woods, Lenin and Trotsky, what did they really stood for. In:
www.engels.org

[10] Eric Hobsbawn. Historia del siglo XX. 1914-1991. Serie Mayor, Espaa, Barcelona, 1998,
p.383
[11] Jorge Luis Acanda. Sociedad Civil y hegemona. Ob. Cit., p.264
[12] Adriana DAtri. An analysis of the role of socialist women in the fight against oppression
and of working women at the beginning of the Russian Revolution. October 20, 2003 . Inn
Diario electrnico alternativo Rebelin. www.Rebelin.org
[13] Until the death of Stalin, the secret services of the USSR functioned under different names:
Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, KGB, MGB. In 1935 the MGB (Ministry of State Security) fused
with MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and took over the command of the new Komitei
Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB).
[14] Although this institution never abandoning its function of the regimes political police, its
most aberrant period, in terms of crimes and contempt for human life, was headed by Stalin who
relied on one of the most despicable persons during the tragic period of Stalinism: Beria, who
headed the KGB for 15 years, accumulating a criminal file in a 50 page folio of charges for
which he was tried after the death of his boss and which took him to the firing squad. He was the
man who guaranteed the security of Stalin and, perhaps, his most efficient collaborator endowed
with a unique moral rottenness that supported him to stay for such a long time at the side of the
General Secretary of the CPSU. For more information see: Maximovich , Ala. Lavrenti Beria.
In: Revista Sputnik. No 12, Moscow, December 1988.
[15] Len Trotski. La revolucin traicionada... Ob. Cit, p.184
[16] Suzzane Labin. Stalin el Terrible. Ob. Ct. , p.136
[17] Vladimir I. Lenin. La ltima lucha de Lenin. Ob. Ct. , p.204
[18] Often, within the territorial demarcations that were not a part of the Russian Federation, the
Russian representatives were favored with the best posts in key sectors of the economy and
policy that, according to Barbara Sarabia, subtly inclined the balance in favor of the Center
because the bordering republics supplied important raw materials, whereby the industrial
development was concentrated in key regions and the Baltic, assuming a gradual economic and
technological backwardness that was the fate of the Asian Soviet. Brbara Sarabia. Reflexiones
en torno al desmonte de la URSS In: La Perestroika en tres dimensiones: expediente de un
fracaso. Investigaciones, Centro de Estudios Europeos, La Habana, 1992, p. 108
[19] Ibd., p. 210
[20] Vladimir I. Lenin. Ob.Ct., p.70