From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net> Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: On the irrelevance of the Soviet Union Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 03:46:07 +0000 I learned that Vladimir has replied to Hugh's quote in Malecki's post about my post. This discussion has been going on in Marxism-International list, but since Vladimir was interested, here is the whole post. What the Soviet Union was is no longer a dividing line, it was in the past. A recent anectode might illustrate what I mean. The setting is a discussion about political economy, a class taught by a comrade. The students come from various political backgrounds, some none, some years of political struggle. We were discussing how the discussion about the socio-economic character and the social formation of Turkey was stiffled. It started in the 60s, was very lively for a short time. Then it died down. So, here we were, almost 30 years after 1968, and 16 years after the coup, and everyone was having a difficult time talking about Turkey. Why exactly was there not an intellectual revolution on the scale that Germany witnessed in the 19th and Russia in early 20th century not witnessed in Turkey, or in the survivor of the Ottoman empire? Many other conditions were similar. What exactly were the mechanisms of Turkey becoming a nation-state out of the multi-cultural Ottoman Empires that commanded over areas with many different modes of production. The "cultural revolution" in the 1920s and 30s also has meant that we no longer can read the Ottoman Arabic script, and most of the vocabulary is also different. As of 1960s, just as people on the left were discussing what Turkey and her past was all about, the discussion died. Reason one, there was fighting going on. It wasn't the time to think. Reason two, it was now determined by whether you thought the Soviet or the China path (or Albanian) path correct, not whether you thought Turkey was underdeveloped, or semi-feudal or capitalist, or whether the working class had characteristic A or B. The whole discussion stopped and realigned around Stalin's or Mao's formulas. Some tried to surround the city from the countryside in a country with almost no history of peasant uprising, and kept quoting Mao. Others looked for the non-existent national bourgeoisie to make alliance with for the cause of peace, as the official Soviet ideology stated. So, a discussion continued and it was obvious that there was a serious lack of fact-based analysis. Most of what we had was what had been developed before 1970. A little while later, we were discussing the the "New World Order". My friend was writing some crucial dates on the board, and at 1989 he said, the year the Soviet Union started dissolving. It was the end of, "real socialism, workers' state, state capitalism...", he just listed all the adjective he could think of and asked the class whether anyone else had anything else to call the Soviet Union. Anyway, he said "anyway, whatever it was, ended and..", continued to explain the major dynamics of the post-89 world. Nobody bothered to get into a fight over what the hell it actually was. China and the Soviet Union and Albania had pretty much suffered similar problems. The people there were more interested in what to do now. >In the first place, historical pressures will "keep them alive", not >voluntarist special pleading. Right now, I have to admit that there is no pressure on us to "keep the issue alive". None. There is so much more to discuss, and the lack of an "official" guide is making the discussions and the actions much better. >In the second place, unsolved problems of the transition to socialism are >not irrelevant. Well, that is certainly true. Yet, these won't really be solved by projecting the lessons of the Soviet Union's failure (or successes) into the future. Each country, each region has many aspects that are specific and historically determined, and any future revolution will happen at least 80 years after the October Revolution. I think the Soviet Union has many lessons for the future. Yet, for example the regime change in Iran also has many lessons for Turkey. Both historically and geographically it is much closer, and it is a truly urban based, proletarian supported/led revolution. What's happened in Nicaragua? Cuba? Those are very important for us. Hell, what's happenning in Turkey? The Soviet experience has many limits in terms of explanatory power. >Or does Zeynep think the fall of the Soviet Union actually solved any of >these problems? If so, which, and why? If you ask me, the fall of the Soviet Union, freed the minds of people who also knew what responsibility and progress was. Before, often, people who rejected the Soviet Union seemed to wish for some ideal working class from another planet come and have a nice and clean revolution. Most of the "could-have-been / should-have-been" analysis of the Soviet Union was never attractive to revolutionaries in the thirld world, who faced the prospect of a revolution in a backward country. Yet the defensiveness of the Soviet Union also stiffled original analysis and creativity. For better or worse, there is now that possibility. Zeynep --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005