Abstract
During the tumultuous months of 1989 the Western view that world communism was in a profound crisis seemed to have been dramatically confirmed. Hungary and Poland moved sharply towards a multi-party system in which the Communist Party is likely to be in a minority; and their economies rapidly acquired a substantial capitalist sector. In China the dominant group in the Communist Party suppressed the democratic movement by crude force.
Perhaps one, or several, of the present or future leaders of Soviet communism may develop the will, the courage, and the political ability eventually to break through the tangle of obstacles, to revitalize the forces of liberty without stimulating them to the point where they would exhaust themselves in an attempt at revolution, and to keep the reform in domestic and foreign policy in a dynamic equilibrium without a breakdown on either side. The ultimate goal of such a course would be the return not only to Lenin but to the old socialist tradition.
Carl Landauer, European Socialism (1959), p. 1672
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Notes
On Russian socialist views of the future, see R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (1989)
On Hertzka and similar thinkers, see A. Chilosi, ‘The Right to Employment Principle and Self-Managed Market Socialism’, EUP Working Paper 86/214 (European University Institute. Florence. 1980.
See Soviet Studies, vol. 39 (1987), pp. 205–28 (J. C. Moses) and D. Lane, Soviet Labour and the Ethic of Communism (1987), pp. 182–213.
See D. Lane (ed.) Labour and Employment in the USSR (1986) pp. 239–55
(E. Teague), and Soviet Studies, vol. 37 (1985), pp. 173–83 (D. Slider).
Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 6, 1982, pp. 38–48 (B. P. Kurashvili).
Kurashvili’s views are further discussed by R. Amann in Detente, No. 8 (Winter 1987), 8–10.
The provisions of the Law are discussed by S. I. Shkurko in Sotsialisticheskii trud, No. 4, 1989, pp. 45–7; Shkurko argues that this provision should be qualified so as to make it clear that the Council of the Labour Collective cannot take decisions outside its competence, for instance disposing of resources which are not available.
See for example Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 5, 1989, pp. 60–1 (A. G. Kulikov).
Sotsialisticheskii trud, No. 12, 1988, 78 (R. Khasbulatov).
See for example Ekonomicheskava gazeta, No. 21. 1989 (L. Kunel’skii).
The Hertzka self-management model of 1886–90 assumed free mobility of labour, so that any worker had the right to be taken on by any firm, but it is difficult to think of a practicable version of this (see Journal of Comparative Economics, vol. 10 (1986), pp. 237–54 — A. Chilosi).
A. Venednitskii, citing the long passage about egalitarianism in Stalin’s interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig (Sochineniya, vol. xiii (1949), 119), claims that this is an example of Stalin’s hypocrisy
Novyi mir, No. 5, 1988, pp. 162–89 (V. Selyunin).
Voprosy istorii, No. 3, 1988, p. 22 (V. P. Danilov).
Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 3, 1989, pp. 45–6 (V. Volkonskii, Central Mathematical Economics Institute TsEMI), p. 13 (L. Nikiforov and V. Rutgaizer).
Literaturnaya gazeta, 19 April 1989 (L. Shevtsova).
See speech by A. A. Sobchak at the central committee economists’ conference, Pravda, 30 October 1989.
V. Kostikov, ‘A Hero not in a Poster’, Ogonek, No. 17, 1989, pp. 26–30.
Ekonomicheskaya gazeta, No. 19, 1989. For evidence, based on a survey in Khar’kov, that the economic bureaucracy has tended to take over the STKs, regiment them artificially, or turn them into a ‘talking-shop’, see Voprosy ekonomiki, no. 5, 1989, p. 79 (V. Glushenko).
See Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 4, 1989, p. 121 (E. Leont’eva).
A careful account of the kuzbass strikes may be found in Znamya, No. 10, 1989 (Yu. Anenchenko).
Rival accounts of these attempts to influence the strikers appear in Literaturnaya gazeta, 15 November 1989 (A. Buturlin, a deputy procurator) and 29 November 1989 (V. Tikhonov, head of the cooperatives).
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© 1992 Nick Lampert and Gábor T. Rittersporn
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Davies, R.W. (1992). Gorbachev’s Socialism in Historical Perspective. In: Lampert, N., Rittersporn, G.T. (eds) Stalinism: Its Nature and Aftermath. Studies in Soviet History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12260-8_3
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