Boris Yeltsin has clearly tapped a rich vein of popular discontent in the Soviet Union. With the failure of Gorbachev's Gulf Peace Plan, 60% price rises causing deepening poverty and an escalating movement for national independence in the republics, the Soviet Premier is in trouble. And Yeltsin is not going to give him time to try to gef out of it.
Gorbachev has been trying for some time to address a range of deep- rooted probiems mar ticarco nor only his position, but also the future of the USSR itself. Popular rejection of his policies has been expressed in an escalating movement of strikes and demonstrations across the Soviet The crisis of the Soviet economy has been one of the major objects of Gorbachev's reforms ever since his rise to power. Yet it has become increasingly clear, as in many other countries in Easter Burope, that marketisation is no magic solution to the problems caused by decades of bureaucratic mismanageThus far at least, it has led to neither increased living standards nor significant Western investment. The impending price rises have sparked off a wave of popular discontent. Protests at low living standards have been led by Soviet miners, by Patrick Baker vantage of Gorbachev's disarray to champion the cause of national independence. and to advance "radical' altemative economic policies.
He is clearly a popular figure, particularly in Russia, where he has played Russian nationalism. But should socialists support him against Gorbachev?
For all his support for national independence, Boris Yeltsin's politics are dictated more by opportunism than principle. And his answer to the USSR's economic problems are hardly preferable to those of Gorbachev. He has long The Gulf War is over but the Gulf crisis is not. Irag has been been a champion of what has been described as the •Pinochet approach to liberal economics', marketisation in 500 days. His motives in the current situation are dictated more by a desire to promote himself than the interests of the Soviet working class.
Socialists should instead look to the bundreds of thousands of striking miners to provide a way forward in the current situation. Frequently at the forefront of independent working class action, they are also one of the sectors amongst whom the small trade union movement is strongest. If that movement. and the small organisations of the independent left, can take a role in this struggle, that would be a positive outcome from a generally bleak situation.