THE DEFEAT of the attempted Stalinist coup is a tremendous victory for the workers throughout the Soviet Union. If the coup had been successful, the democratic gains won during the years of glasnost would have been savagely eliminated.
The coup finally crumbled because of divisions within the army and KGB leadership. These divisions were in part a product of the defiance by politicians like Yeltsin, but above all because of the mass mobilisations to defend democracy.
Perhaps the workers' mobilisations were not large enough to be absolutely decisive; but they showed what would have been necessary to make the coup stick mass slaughter, new rebellions, probably civil war. All that was too much to stomach for more far-sighted leaders of the army high command.
The defeat of the plotters creates a massive potential for deepening democracy and advancing working class interests. But there are formidable obstacles to realising that potential.
The main political victors at this stage are the leadership team around Yeltsin, and those fighting for independence in the republics. Yeltsin has the whip hand against Gorbachev, who is increasingly a spent force.
But the Yeltsin team is openly pro-capitalist, and seeks the restoration of capitalism as rapidly as possible. As this is pursued, in the Russian and other republics, it will involve harsh measures against working class interests. A key factor in combatting restorationism must be the fight to deepen democracy.
Constituent Assembly The demand that encapsulates this is the demand for a constituent assembly. A constituent assembly should be elected in each republic with full powers to decide the type of state, government and economy which best serves the interests of the masses.
Yeltsin and his supporters are, at best, supporters of Western-style. parliamentary democracy. Socialists should fight for the widest possible elections to public office, with no reserved places for the Communist Party. But they should also argue for going beyond this and putting direct power in the hands of the workers.
During the coup, elements of workers control emerged in some factories, as workers either went on strike or continued production of necessities under their own control. This shows the potential in the situation which must be built on; indeed it is only the basis of deepening mass mobilisations that a new working class leadership can be built.
In a situation of shortages and economic dislocation, the small minority of socialists in the Soviet Union must argue for workers control of food distribution, and the development of a workers' plan for rebuilding the economy with genuine, as opposed to bureaucratic and corrupt, planning. Even if such proposals find only a small echo at first, they will pay enormous dividends as the attempt to marketise the lusionment.
Oppose ban
Socialists should oppose the suspension of the Communist Party and the suppression of its newspapers. Of course, the measures taken against the CPSU reflect the hatred of large sections of the masses for this party, whose bosses are seen as criminals complicit in the coup.
CReD: Jez Couson/insiont Measures which deprive the party of its monopoly control of the state apparatus, media etc should be supported. But while the CPSU represents only the bureaucracy, it should have the right to organise politically, like any other party and publish its own material. The suppression of the CP by decree is a blow against democracy and a dangerous sign for the future.
Socialists can only be for the political defeat of the CP; but that defeat needs to be inflicted by the masses in open political struggle, if democratic rights are to be preserved.
The demand for independence by the republics is now unstoppable. The socialist programme, of course, stresses that democratic socialism can only be built on the basis of federation between socialist republics. Socialism canThere can be no road to federation in the territory of the former Soviet Union on the basis of the oppression of the republics by Great Russian chauvinism. Genuine federation could only be built at a future stage by equal and sovereign republics. Concretely, this means fighting for independence now.
Given the relative economic weight of the different republics, some form of economic cooperation between them is inevitable. But this, and other forms of co-operation, must be decided on the basis of sovereign decisions by the republics, and not on the basis of coercion Rejection of 1917 The existing leaderships in all the republics are intent on the rapid restoration of capitalism. Because of the decades of the Stalinist nightmare, socialism in the eyes of the masses is discredited; only a tiny minority supports any kind of socialism. With rejection of Stalinism, goes rejection of Lenin, Trotsky and the whole heritage of 1917. This situation, in the short term, has opened the door to all kinds of reactionary political currents.
ДОЛОЙ One simple slogan: down with the junta!
The working class in the territories of the former Soviet Union has yet to conquer political independence. The CPSU and the official trade unions did not represent the interests of working class. Their demise leaves a situation in which there is no mass working class party, and in which independent trade unions are at best embryonic.
The unorganised working class can assert its interests in spontaneous struggles which pressure employers and governments. However it cannot assert its historic interests without mass organisations that politically represent it. Only anarchists could believe that the working class could conquer direct political power without the anti-Stalinist consciousness of the masses being crystallised in independent mass organisation and leadership. This does not mean that the present leaderships fighting to restore capitalism will have a free hand. Marketisation will worsen the already appalling living standards of the working class. Resistance to this, and defence of the remaining social gains of the masses, creates the basis for huge struggles to come. The West does not have the surplus capital for a new. Marshall. Plan' to rapidly capitalise the Soviet Union. This means that a hybrid situation of a decaying nationalised. economy, with islands of privatisation, is likely to linger for a prolonged period.
This creates a massive danger. Desperation in the impoverished republics of the ex-Soviet Union can create the basis for attempts to impose marketisation through renewed forms of authoritarian rule. Unless a working class alternative is built, reactionary currents will gain mass support.
Contradictory
Internationally, the death agony of the Soviet Union will create contradictory effects. coup was part of the final death rattle of exasperated Stalinism, on which the coffin lid is now being finally nailed. Socialists can only welcome the fact that the working class in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has contributed so much to finishing it off.
Simultaneously, imperialism now has a much freer hand, which will in the short and mediumterm enable it to make substantial advances. The first spectacular demonstration of this was the Gulf war which was largely made possible because of the weakening of the Soviet Union.
The Cuban revolution is now in grave danger; the overthrow of the Castro regime and its replacement by a pro-capitalist regime would be a grave blow to the workers in Latin America and beyond. Third world liberation struggles will be bereft of the limited support which they were able to obtain from the Soviet Union.
A wider problem exists. The events since 1989 have discredited Stalinism, not the project of a socialist future for humanity. But that is not the way it is presented by bourgeois ideologues, nor the way it is seen by millions of workers interConfidence in a socialist future must be rebuilt on the basis of what the attempt to restore capitalism actually means, and on the basis of the huge struggles internationally which economic crisis in the West, the East and the third world will now inevitably bring.
No. 7 Sept. 14, 1991 Page 7
Yeitsin after the coup: now events will show how much of a genuine democrat he really is CREDIT: Jeremy Nicoll/Katz Pictures The truth is that the mobilisation of millions in political struggle against the