Russia: Nationalism & Economy
Lewin, Moshe
Moshe Lewin is one of the leading scholars of Soviet history in the United States, currently professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Gorbachev Phenomenon,...
...Ideas are crucial and cannot be simply manufactured...
...As to culture—they destroyed it along with their own socialist Weltanschauung and, for that matter, all social science...
...There are about a hundred political formations of varying hues throughout Russia at this moment...
...The decline was well underway in the Brezhnev era, but when Gorbachev took over he didn't grasp how profound the state crisis was...
...You 174 • DISSENT can't simply have price reform, you must see the complexity of the task and handle it from A to Z simultaneously...
...What becomes evident, however, is that once armed force is no longer used by Moscow and once Moscow has accepted the principle of the independence of the other republics, then most of the republics are ready to come back and talk...
...Furthermore, you must let people participate and understand what is happening, especially during a period of transition in which the country must unavoidably pay for the past...
...Restructuring, but especially decentralizing, almost naturally had to bring forth the problem of nationalism and threaten a breakup of the Soviet Union...
...Nor can you promote economic reforms without a viable center...
...It was an economy with no sense of cost...
...All the more important to establish new patterns now...
...But what is crucial is that a social democratic government create a belief in the population that reform will lead to a just society...
...The moment he opened up the floodgates with glasnost, he discovered that the over-centralized party/state system embedded in Moscow— the system that gave him his power—was in fact the problem...
...One must distinguish between effective central government and over-centralization...
...They must recognize that both market and nonmarket elements must come into play, and must be developed almost simultaneously...
...I would tell social democrats that they must both fashion an effective central state and quickly strengthen local governments, giving them strong, autonomous powers...
...The emergence of the new sovereign states recently is important to alleviate this situation...
...Indeed there are the big corporations, which are hardly "private" in the nineteenth-century sense...
...So what...
...So what was needed was not decentralization but a different sort of central government, one which was coherent but which sought to develop what was missing—a system of local autonomy...
...Cohen: In short, you think that economic interests will ultimately domesticate nationalism...
...Anyone with a brain can see the possibilities for growth and that left to themselves many of the small republics are doomed...
...Of course, one cannot anticipate what will happen twenty years from now when Russia has new muscle...
...Foreign capital investment may be needed, but don't sell off the entire country...
...So, in my view, a social democratic or socialist party, in addition to firm convictions and programs, would have to be frank and open in expressing its ideas...
...Once coercion by Moscow is gone and sovereignty respected, all these freshly minted states and leaders will see that to solve their problems, they need each other...
...It is here that they have a role to play...
...we see a dramatic rise in unemployment, inflation, and a drop in industrial output...
...But the modus operandi of the role of the state must be changed so that everything doesn't depend on bureaucratic plans and orders but rather on the market...
...Cohen: But if the economic crisis expands dramatically, an aggressive Russian nationalism might become politically useful in a nefarious way...
...To transform the Russian economy, you must understand what an economy is...
...Yes, private sectors must emerge, but some key sectors must remain, at least temporarily, under state supervision...
...Lewin: It's a very important point...
...What is a workable alternative...
...There are public organizations, consumer groups, the public sector, unions, and so on...
...His glacier was melting away under him...
...Some form of a left must emerge...
...They pounded on him and his government in the name of radicalism...
...How a new system is fashioned depends on the purview of the political force overseeing it and how much weight is given to social as opposed to private concerns in making political and economic determinations...
...They exist, but the question is how many...
...Nationalism will then be seen as counterproductive...
...To dismantle it entirely, to let it decay, and to leave the government in Moscow without any levers was dangerous, and this was almost the case...
...We don't know the political complexion of the country because the population itself doesn't yet know where it stands...
...The Western economies took centuries to develop and they changed greatly, especially in the last century...
...Just consider the Communist party: its rank and file had no political rights...
...Lewin: You are right, but decentralizing is not the correct word because a country like the USSR could not really be decentralized without coming apart...
...Or it will have a strong downtown area encircled by a Calcutta of impoverished people...
...Frenzied propaganda has promoted them from both inside and outside the country...
...It stopped producing goods, it stopped producing values...
...Within the intelligentsia, especially in Moscow among ex-party members, one is confronted by clichés, by people who have read one book on the West and think they understand it and "markets," a word they repeat by rote almost as much as "privatize...
...What is evident is that political pluralism is on the agenda, that Russia has left one bank of the river and is moving toward another...
...I certainly wouldn't rush to the Hoover Institute specialists, who, after all, haven't given much good advice to the United States...
...If we look at shock therapy in Czechoslovakia and Poland...
...You could have a Brazilian-style dictatorship...
...Consequently, over-centralization, which was supposed to secure efficient control, became the source of loss of control—over the economy, over culture, over the popular mind, over politics...
...It isn't clear that Yeltsin has found the necessary remedies...
...The moment the center went, fragmentation ensued and people latched on to what they could...
...It may become obvious that such Russian nationalism undermines real Russian interests and power...
...Then the pain that must come with reform becomes easier...
...Lewin: The first thing is to understand what a modern economy is, that it is composed of private sectors, of corporate sectors, of nationalized sectors, of cooperative sectors...
...Lewin: There has been a flood of what I call simpleminded programs — "privatization," "shock therapy," and so on...
...Of course, the pressure of nationalist feeling must be eased—yes, they all want an army, a flag, all this nonsense for which people kill each other...
...But you must keep in mind that throughout Russian and Soviet history, widespread reciprocal interests were created among these lands...
...You can't just go for A alone...
...Also, the situation is quite fluid...
...I don't accept the notion that Stalinism is a phenomenon of the left...
...Yeltsin outmaneuvered Gorbachev, in part, because he saw that the Ukraine had to be approached first...
...The tragedy of Gorbachev is that he launched change, opened up the vents, even the gates, and realized too late that the forces he commanded, which gave him the power to pursue his reform efforts, were doomed...
...A multisector economy needs to be fashioned in which there will be coexistence of and contributions by private, cooperative, public, and state forms...
...So the task now is not just creating markets or privatizing but fashioning adequate and functional political and economic structures...
...This is the key to understanding what happened to him as well...
...The sources of Gorbachev's power were also the sources of the system's crisis...
...The economy was declining for a long time, but what was missing, most important of all, was a combination of the political will to reform with corresponding, effective political structures...
...SPRING • 1992 • 175...
...So the task was to reform the central government...
...Unless stagnation perseveres, I think we'll see a rebirth of interest in union, perhaps parallel to the European Community in some way...
...We were promised pogroms, and they did not happen...
...A unilateral approach—unilateral privatization, for example—will lead to pillage and massive social dislocation and suffering...
...It had no internal mechanism for change and reform as problems accumulated...
...The task is to think globally...
...Instead, many intellectuals shifted their denunciation from Stalin to Gorbachev...
...The one point on which I would insist, however, is that there will be some sort of a union...
...But totalitarian potential exists in different forms...
...Look, when I was there, I saw fascists, real fascists, singing Nazi songs in Moscow —black leather, black boots, drunk, pushing people around...
...They have nowhere else to turn...
...By themselves the price increases are idiotic for the simple reason that there is no rise in production...
...In any event, it's too early to say what the general political configuration will be...
...it was necessary to find a different form of central government...
...It was not decentralization but the death of the system...
...Cohen: If a newly emerged Russian Social Democratic party asked you what should be done, what would you tell them...
...This was politically sterile, a form of McCarthyism...
...There are various groups emerging out of the former Communist party, some of them reactionary, some very modern and trying to meet halfway with other independent groups...
...And keep in mind that in all the recent elections in Russia, none of the rabid nationalist groups did well...
...Western economies are multisectoral...
...Cohen: Was there an inherent contradiction in perestroika...
...But this region is intellectually, politically, economically interconnected, and its potential is enormous...
...What is your judgment of these economic plans...
...Well, that's fine and has an important cathartic effect...
...The idea that the Soviet Union is buried is an overstatement...
...When I was in Moscow back in 1989 I found many officials despairing because the state simply wasn't functioning...
...The economy was run by a widespread, hierarchical bureaucracy...
...Many "shock therapists" have a conception of capitalism that might have corresponded to the mid-nineteenth century, but it certainly doesn't fit today...
...Lewin: Yes, but there is more at play than SPRING • 1992 • 173 economic interest...
...So when he told the party that change was imperative, that pluralism was necessary, that the command economy was not working, he met a stone wall...
...The central government was not decentralized, it collapsed...
...They are ideological products on one hand, and knee-jerk responses on the other: "Since the previous system was bad, we must now do the opposite...
...After all there cannot be a structure as large as the USSR was without a strong central government...
...A healthy patriotism led by a democratic left is needed...
...In Poland the stores are full and the country is poorer than ever...
...But don't destroy everything...
...Lewin: It cannot disintegrate more than it has...
...The overwhelming concentration of power in Moscow —the monopoly of the economy, politics, culture, and so on—was the illness...
...But everything is in flux...
...What happened under Gorbachev...
...Characteristic of contemporary market economies is a powerful presence of nonmarket elements...
...It could be a social-democratic left or it could be a neoStalinist left...
...This was not done, and the system stopped running...
...Cohen: What type of left...
...But if cooperation brings general improvement, then the interest in working together will be pronounced, perhaps even opening the road for themtogether —to be an important power again...
...Cohen: How feasible is the new commonwealth...
...Everything was public, now it should be all private...
...So there was no basis for real political support...
...However, it was also an alibi for former party members and allowed them to concentrate on the easy thing—denouncing Stalinism, something terrible...
...What died, at least for the time being, was the Russian empire, which was born of czarism and strengthened under communist rule...
...You cannot reorganize agriculture or institute local reforms without strong local governments...
...Lewin: It is not impossible...
...It is extremely primitive thinking and displays little understanding of how capitalism itself functions...
...You wouldn't call it Stalinist...
...And can you privatize "science...
...It's the only way reform can succeed...
...Overcentralization was a key both to Soviet achievement and to the death of the USSR...
...instead change the modus operandi —create a new one...
...The Western political and economic systems could not survive otherwise...
...That wasn't reported much...
...One should not exaggerate the "irrationality" of the Russians...
...And national and local leadership is critical— there is a dearth of both today...
...A social democratic or socialist government would also have to make painful decisions, but in addition to adopting measures to handle unemployment and relief for the poor, it would fashion a Weltanschauung...
...but, at the same time, they are talking...
...He lacks efficient governmental levers...
...Opposition among Georgian intellectuals to [Georgian ex-president] Zviad Gamsakhurdia was due not only to his authoritarian ways but because he didn't want to work with Russia...
...Cohen: It seems that in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's long and unsuccessful experience with a command economy Yeltsin wants to command capitalism through shock therapy...
...Only an ideological selfimage, a sense of going somewhere, can do this...
...A new union must be shaped differently because there was and is absolutely no need for the old super-Moscow system...
...Simply weakening the central government could not have worked...
...His books include The Gorbachev Phenomenon, Lenin's Last Struggle, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, and The Making of the Soviet System...
...Today some people define themselves as nationalist, and then tomorrow may be socialist...
...Its logic was that of the bureaucracy and its interests, and not that of an economy that has to produce for consumers...
...The problem was to shift away from Soviet over-centralization...
...In short, what I anticipate is some new type of union...
...If the Kremlin doesn't and continues on its current track, it will get a Brazil...
...The system was so over-centralized that the country was depoliticized...
...A combined package aiming at strengthening the state and economic reform is needed...
...In my view Stalinism is a right-wing phenomenon...
...What might enable its success or usher along its disintegration...
...Something like during NEP [New Economic Policy] when state enterprises were told: "Go to the market...
...Dissent co-editor Mitchell Cohen interviewed him recently...
...That indicates a serious question about their political acumen...
...It is easy to denounce Stalin, but the difficult thing is to formulate new programs...
...The current government gives no sense of where it is going...
...The result was an 172 • DISSENT economy without economics...
...It will take some time, and will not be on the past imperial basis...
...All sorts of incredible potentials have been attributed to them, but these things haven't happened...
...The left is in a process of reconstruction, too—it barely exists today...
...In recent years, these same people used glasnost to denounce Stalinism repeatedly and vociferously...
...The public sector is powerful and efficient in all European countries and in Japan...
...This area is the natural arena for their future even more than it has been for their past...
...There are specific cultural and political factors binding these nationalities...
...It would foster values in order to see people through the difficulties and to encourage them, especially the youth, to become engaged with the economy, science, and, in particular, to attract them to politics...
...Revive local Soviets...
...A social democratic government would not allow the rightists and nationalists to present themselves as the sole repository of the national interest, least of all at a time when Russian weakness and dependence encourages xenophobia...
...Sectors that don't exist should be created...
Vol. 39 • April 1992 • No. 2
