been achieved by keeping the factories open, even if they do not produce and workers are sent on 'holidays'. But the state enterprises are floating on a tidal wave of debt, and would collapse without the state subsidies.
Yeltsin fears the social and political consequences of this coume, and it is being resisted not only tote not of class, but thousands managers of state enterprises who see their power and privileges being destroyed.
The process of decomposition of the ex-USSR continues. The Commonwealth of Independent phenomenon in the inevitable process of decay into separate states. But neither are the various republics themselves stabilised, with ethnic conflicts and wars of secession breaking out in many Who is in power in the republics? In fact the governments of most of them consist of recycled bureaucrats; they are new nomenklatura governThere is the growth of a new middle class, often based on small-scale trade and various kinds of corruption. Sections of the bureaucratic elite have been busily enriching themselves through the theft of state property. But the big bastions of Soviet industry remain in state hands.
Yeltsin is having enormous difficulty in carrying out the December 1991 decree on privatisation. There have been privatisations of small enterprises, but small firms remain on the margins Page 12 July/Aug, 1992 No. 26 Yeltsin - from hero to villain as economic crisis grows of the economy. In the absence of substantial foreign investment to buy the big firms, different schemes, including issuing vouchers to the population, as has happened in Czechoslovakia, are being discussed. Between January and April there was a strong strike wave among public sec especially teachers and health workers. 300,000 working days were lost and there were 170,000 strikers. But the unions remain very weak, and the 'Spring Offensive' of the official tradeunions in 1991 petered out. programme and has strong social-democratic leanings.
The non-Stalinist left is very weak, and probably weaker than it was a year i Party of Labour, led by Boris Kagar listsky, has only around 100 membersof different political persuasions.
In addition there is a significant anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist movement, as well as various Marxist workers' dubs, especially in the Urals.
The overall pattern of develop nent in the CIS can be summec up in three phrases - economic collapse, disintegration and conflict in the republics, and the growing danger of authoritarian political solutions. So far the working class has had to endure great hardships through the ending of state subsidies, price rises and the disinHowever, because of the continued state subsidies to the big firms and factories, really mass unemployment has not arrived. If Yeltsin and the IMF have their way it soon will; the withdrawal of credit to state firms would create in, one swoop perhaps 20 per cent unemployment.
This would be the greatest assault on the social gains of the Russian working class, and a crucial test of its short-term ability to forge an alternative to capitalist restoration.
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