WHAT did the contending forces in the Moscow military clashes representand what do they mean for the future? Socialist Outlook talked to PETER GOWAN, lecturer in European studies at University of North London and a member of the New Left Review editorial board. What is the political alliance behind Yeltsin? And who backed Rutskoi and Khasbulatov? THE POLITICAL forces around Yeltsin are a very powerful bloc of proto-capitalist mafias, accumulating capital through financial and commercial operations, linked to the control of political power.
This group is very heavily concentrated in the central cities like Moscow and Petersburg; it has only tenuous connections with the key industrial economic elites like that in the energy sector.
The decisive thing Yeltsin's bloc has got is control of political power and support from Western economic and political forces.
Since the Spring Yeltsin's group has been trying hard to establish support in the industrial elites, especially in the oil, gas and coal sector; it has also been trying to court the army. But this is at a very early stage.
So in the light of the weakness of its social base, the decision of the Yeltsin group to disband the parliament was a very high risk strategy.
On the other side, the Khasbulatov-Rutskoi platform was an alliance united only by hostility to Yeltsin.
But you can see an element of unity on this side, which could be described as people wanting a transition to capitalism but in a very different way to Yeltsin; instead of a free market "big bang' favoured by Gaidar, the Rutskoi-Khasbulatov position is for a 'state capitalist' transition.
In this scheme major industries would remain nationalised for a period of years in order to make them competitive on the world market, instead of being instantly privatised, which would be disastrous.
In the Rutskoi camp there were people who wanted a democratic transition to capitalism; by democracy they meant maintaining a link to industrial workers and protecting to a minimal extent the workers in the state industrial sector.
There were also people in the parliamentary alliance who wanted to maintain a socialised economy; for such people there is an obvious basis for an alliance with those favouring a 'state capitalist' transition. Rutskoi: bureaucrat behind bullet-proof briefcase Both want to maintain a substantial industrial sector and national control over Russia's industrial resources against Western penetration.
Then there were disparate groups of intellectuals who wanted to fight Yeltsin's dictatorial tendencies, and to defend a state 'based on law'. These people were repelled by Yeltsin's dictatorial tendencies.
I would make a distinction between all these groups and the other element in this alliance which is the Russian nationalists, what you might call the 'Russian revanchist' currents, which were strongly in favour of rebuilding Russian control over the space of the former of the ex-USSR.
This is obviously a very heterogeneous coalition. Isn't the anti-Yeltsin alliance socially more powerful and a more strongly rooted force than the Yeltsin-Gaidar team? Why weren't they able to mobilise a larger force behind them? ABSOLUTELY, the antiYeltsin forces are more rooted in society; but the great mass of the Russian people are politically demorYeltsin: backed by proto-capitalist mafia forces alised and demobilised.
Moreover the Yeltsin line that 'things may be bad, but civil war is worse' was very effective with the armed forces.
The proto-capitalist forces in Russia require above all a stable political and social order; and the side which seemed to embody this was Yeltsin's. So those elements tended to wait and see.
But there's no question that the tactics of the KhasbulatovRutskoi team were stupid and played into the hands of the Yeltsin camp.
The only logic of their armed offensive was to split the military and that did not occur. Instead there was a pathetic, half-cock putsch.
What the Rutskoi leadership didn't seem to grasp was that they could have mounted a formidable challenge to Yeltsin in the parliamentary elections scheduled for December; they had a broad alliance and the elements of an alternative economic strategy.
But it was touch and go for Yeltsin with the army. All he had was two crack divisions from East Germany, and other very small units; fortunately they stayed loyal and he was able to use them to storm the White House. Though Yeltsin has won a political victory, overall isn't Yeltsin's project of a rapid transition to capitalism a utopian one? Can Russian industry be rapidly privatised? IN THE NEXT year Yeltsin faces a big problem. He has to legitimise his rule against the background of a worsening economic situation for most people, with no prospect of any respite.
He will try to simply exclude the forces behind the RutskoiKhasbultov coalition. But this is a very difficult thing to achieve. In presidential elections, if they occur, he may face a challenge from younger neo-liberal politicians around a man called Yavlisky.
These people are completely in agreement with the GaidarYeltsin economic project, but will present themselves as a 'new team'.
But beyond immediate political problems is the bigger question of the possibility of transforming the social relations of production. I would be very cautious about making rash judgements about whether a rapid transition to capitalism is, or is not, possible.
If you were to impose all the laws of free market capitalism on Russian industry immediately, you would have disaster -massive unemployment and deindustrialisation.
But there is a substantial accumulation of capital, in the form of money and commercial capital, and what Yeltsin has probably achieved is to group those proto-capitalist forces decisively around his leadership.
The transition to capitalism in Russia could alternatively be stretched out over a long period. Because of the strength of the energy sector, oil and gas, the external economic balances of Russia could be stabilised, given a deal with the West.
Then we could see a 5 or 10year erosion of collectivised property taking place, as opposed to the free market "big bang' which Yeltsin and Gaidar want. The question here is whether the West would give that approach a chance.
There are two dimensions involved in this process of restoring capitalism, not one. The first is the transition towards capitalism in Russia. The second is the integration of Russia into the world economy.
Insofar as you prioritise the stable transition to capitalism in Russia, the long and gradual
Under whose banner? Old-guard stalinists and nationalists joined forces in an uneasy alliance which was united only by hostility to Yelstin 'state capitalist' transition is the most viable.
This would involve restructuring state enterprises over a 10-year period to prepare them for privatisation. In the short-term this would preserve the collective strength of the working class in these enterprises.
The alternative is rapid privatisation, massive unemployment and a huge shock-crisis.
The state capitalist version is the most stable perspective for a transition to capitalism in Russia, but has the disadvantage for the West that Russia would enter the world market on a very much stronger basis.
There is a big debate going on between Russia and the West. The Russians want access to Western markets, so far denied. The West wants access to Russian raw materials and energy sources. There is no agreement on all this yet.
As things stand at the moment the West is not giving Russia any significant assistance in integration into the world economy.
This is one of the reasons why you have this very significant Russian nationalist backlash. If the Gaidar approach were adopted it would be a massive rip-off and impoverishment of Russia. The working class had a completely abstentionist attitude to the conflict in Moscow. What does this represent? IT'S TRUE that the mass of the working class did not want to risk their lives in this conflict and this represents deep-rooted cynicism towards political elites in Moscow. This is especially true in the regions, because under the old system the provinces were pillaged for the benefit of the centre.
Yeltsin's own popular base has collapsed and thus he achieved no big mobilisations on his own side. A few years ago Yeltsin had a big audience among industrial workers. But now they are deeply cynical towards him.
The provincial councils were very hostile to Yeltsin, and many of them had a strong local base and were often led by Communists. These are big forces in European and Urals Russia not on Yeltsin's side.
But the question for Rutskoi during the crisis was whether these forces could be mobilised in a general strike. But this was not possible, because the attitude of workers and local authorities was not one of positive support for an alternative, but of sticking together, not doing anything adventurist and trying to defend existing gains in a very difficult and dangerous situation.
Despite regional strains, I think that capitalist regionalism in Russia is excluded, because the various capitalist interests are trying to unite on a national scale. Will economic transition in the other CIS countries be de-synchronised from those in Russia? Can they be integrated into the world market separately from Russia and the CIS? OVERALL I would say no. The possibility of a separate integration into the world market existed for Azerbaijan, with its huge oil rebut this has been sabotaged by Russia backing Armenia in the war against Azerbaijan.
The same thing has happened with Georgia, whose attempts to be independent of the CIS have been broken by Russian military support to the Abkhaz rebels.
Khazakstan has enormous resources in energy and precious metals, but the domestic political situation where 50 per cent of the population are Russians, means that the Khazak government has no intention of breaking with Russia and the CIS.
The same is true of the other central Asian republics, especially the key country of Uzbekistan, which fears the operations of Muslim fundamentalists to its south.
Belorus is dependent on the Russian market, so it can't escape. Moldova could escape, but only by linking up with Romania to form a common state. That leaves Ukraine.
But Ukraine is based on agriculture, which the West hardly needs. It has tried to use its nuclear capacity as a bargaining chip, but this would only work Instead of a free the Rutskoi Khasbulatov position is for a 'state capitalist' transition. if there were forces in the West which needed a Ukrainian ally against Russia; today this is not the case. Ukraine is really dependent on Russia for energy; the Russians have got them by the throat.
I never thought the USSR was dominated by Russian 'economic imperialism'. But now there is a growing Russian economic imperialism in the post-USSR situation.
Russia is still the dominant economy which calls the shots in the whole space of the exUSSR. The striking thing is the weakness of the left-wing political forces in Russia. How do we explain this? IN ORDER to answer that question, you have to chart how the events in the USSR evolved, and put them in the context of the tremendous historical damage done to the consciousness of the working class by the decades of Stalinism.
The economies of the eastern bloc were never anything like as strong as the capitalist economies. The more advanced they became, the more their weakness, and their lack of integration into the world division of labour, became exposed.
The first way the Soviet leadership attempted to deal with Khasbulatov this was to clamp down on any independent political life, which further undermined support for socialism.
The second move of the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev was to try to achieve military parity with the West, and thusto force a 'reasonable' historic compromise.
The West replied with the Second Cold War during Reagan's presidency which wrecked the Soviet scheme.
The Gorbachev leadership then attempted a strategic retreat to try to revive the Soviet economy, which involved abandoning eastern Europe.
But a section of the bureaucracy moved towards accumulating capital, and that unleashed a SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.51, October 30 1993, Page 9 tremendous crisis of the Gorbachev project and a pro-capitalist drift.
The sections of the bureaucracy and Communist Party which resisted this overwhelmingly used bureaucratic-cummilitarist methods. All of this involved a tremendous disorientation and crisis of consciousness among both the working class and progressive intellectuals.
If the events in 1989 in eastern Europe and the USSR had been propelled simply by an uprising of the masses, then we could have expected the wind to be behind left wing and radical developments.
Collapse
But it was not like that. It involved first and foremost a collapse - a collapse from above - of the old system.
The mass mobilisations, for example in East Germany and Czechoslovakia were a response to that collapse. It took place in a world situation in which capitalism was on the offensive, not the defensive.
All this had a profoundly disorientating effect, because we the real working class, unlike the mythical one, seeks practical solutions to its problems in the here and now.
What we are dealing with is a profound crisis of perspective which affected the working class in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, which made it inevitable that the left would be in a difficult situation.
But of course there have been and still are critical communist currents, emerging from the old parties and the old unions, which we have every interest in having a dialogue.
But there should be no illusions. We are involved in a very long-term battle to rebuild a socialist consciousness and perspective.
Interview by PHIL HEARSE
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 51, October 30 1993, Page 10 Back in