Soviet Union

THE SOVIET UNION (1922–1991), also called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was established with the 1917 October Revolution and with the ensuing civil war between the Bolsheviks (Russian communists) and the counterrevolutionary forces gathered in the White Army. The end of the civil war in 1922 witnessed the birth of the world's first communist state, a truly momentous achievement for the left.

Throughout the 1930s, the Soviet Union was considered a source of inspiration and leadership for communist and socialist parties throughout the world. Yet, the utopia of a classless society and the other lofty principles that the Soviet experiment set out to achieve were never really realized. In their place, Soviet leaders constructed a progressively bureaucratized and totalitarian regime, which could only be kept together through the use of violence and coercion, both physical and ideological. The long list of crimes, internal plots, struggles for power, and failed attempts to create a more open and democratic society that constellate Soviet history have led many to conclude on the incompatibility of communism and democracy. The collapse of the Soviet Union equally generated a sense of disorientation in leftist militants who saw the socialist alternative to market economy dissolve as a mere illusion.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was still an industrially underdeveloped country governed by the autocratic regime of the tzars. This totalitarian regime was administered without any constitutional control or parliamentary body by a bureaucratic caste and kept in line by a powerful army and an ever-present security police. Radical opposition to the tzarist system gathered in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, of anarchist tendencies, and in the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, inspired more directly by the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Social Democrats subsequently split into two parts: the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, who advocated immediate revolution, and the Mensheviks, who considered a revolution impossible in a largely peasant and preindustrial country. Though the constitutional norms passed after the massive demonstrations and strike of 1905 initially appeased popular discontent, World War I revived the hostility against the monarchy and the ruling dynasty, which seemed more intent on conserving its power than on effectively administering the country. Economic negligence plunged the country into food shortages with the effect of sharp price rises. The lack of a stable governing power led to the rapid disintegration of the country with local socialist-inspired soviets (councils) spreading throughout the nation and claiming to be the sole representatives of workers and soldiers.

In his essay “State and Revolution,” Lenin identified the soviets as the basis of the revolutionary government that was to replace the tzarist system. Lenin's essay did not conceal a certain scorn for mere parliamentarism. The soviets were society, so there was no need of parliamentary representatives. Yet, the relationship between the self-organized communities of the soviets and the Communist Party began to dissolve very quickly as the party imposed its own diktats over the organization of grassroot communities.

Since its very start in October 1917, the Russian revolution departed from Marx's and Engels's ideal blueprint of a communist community. According to the two political thinkers, revolution was to take place simultaneously in all civilized and industrially advanced countries. Instead, a communist regime was being established in a single country where the industrial sector was still underdeveloped and the working class was a minority compared to the vast peasant masses. This contradiction would be a recurrent feature of all communist revolutions and, in spite of the Communist International, efforts to spread communism in more industrially advanced societies never succeeded.

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