[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

III. The Process of Capitalist Restoration

The Third and Final Stage: The Gorbachov Regime, 1985-91

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

"New Thinking"

The key element in Gorbachov's "new thinking" in international relations was "de-ideologization", which actually meant doing away completely with the proletarian class stand and proletarian internationalism and capitulating to imperialism under the guise of cooperation. Gorbachov asserted that imperialism's violent nature had changed to peaceful and that humanity has integral interests and a supraclass concern about weapons of mass destruction, ecology and other issues. Gorbachov's "de-ideologization" actually meant the total rejection of the proletarian class stand and the adoption of the bourgeois class stand.

All Marxists recognize the common interests of mankind and the march of human civilization; and at the same time the fact that the world and particular societies are dominated by imperialist and local reactionary classes and that the historic class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is still going on. What Gorbachov did was to use abstract, universalistic and supraclass terms in order to obscure that historic class struggle and find common cause with imperialism.

He considered "legitimate national interests" of states as the most important building material in international relations. After the 70th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, he scaled down the international activities of the Soviet Union related to cooperating with third world countries and anti-imperialist organizations and movements. Prominent advisers of his also proposed that the international people's organizations financed by Soviet organizations could unite with their counterparts financed by the forces of capitalism to form bigger "nonideological" organizations. What they meant of course was outright capitulation to imperialist ideology.

Gorbachov touted the principle of peaceful coexistence among states, irrespective of ideology and social system. He repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine and stressed that other countries as well as communist parties could decide for themselves. But he was being hypocritical because Gorbachovite agents busied themselves in reorganizing and then scuttling the ruling parties and regimes in Eastern Europe.

He called for an end to the Cold War, for accelerated nuclear disarmament and reduction of conventional forces and for the dissolution of the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Arms reduction treaties were forged faster than at any previous period in the Cold War. The Gorbachov regime undertook all these in the vain hope of attracting foreign investments and new technology to shore up the Soviet economy. But the Group of Seven took the firm position that they would not throw good money after bad and shore up an increasingly decrepit and corrupt bureaucratic economy.

Under the Gorbachov leadership, the Soviet Union collaborated with the United States and other countries in the settlement of so-called regional armed conflicts such as those centered in Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua. The Soviet Union committed itself to unilateral withdrawal of military forces in Eastern Europe and to German reunification in exchange for economic assistance from the West in the form of direct investments, loans, technology transfer and trade accommodations. Among the capitalist powers, Germany gave the most assistance in the form of loans, consumer supplies and housing aid for Soviet troops returning from Eastern Europe. But even the funds advanced for housing these troops became the object of Soviet mismanagement and theft.

As early as 1987, the revisionist ruling parties and regimes in Eastern Europe were already being pushed to reorganize themselves and to put Gorbachovites on top of the Brezhnevites. The word also went around within and outside the ruling parties and regimes that the Soviet Union was decided on withdrawing its forces from Eastern Europe and not interfere in what would happen in the region. Thus, the anticommunist forces had advance notice of what they could do under the new circumstances. They could play on the real grievances of the people and bring down the already much-discredited ruling parties and regimes.

The socioeconomic and political crisis of the various revisionist regimes and the wide open knowledge that the Soviet Union was no longer interested in the preservation of the Warsaw Pact and the rouble-controlled CMEA were sufficient ground for the anticommunist forces to activate themselves and grow. The increasingly clear message from 1987 to 1989 that the Soviet Union would not intervene in any popular action against the local regimes gave the anticommunist forces the confidence to aim for their toppling. Most important of all, the overwhelming majority of the revisionist bureaucrats in the ruling party and the state (with the exception of a few like Ceaucescu who was relatively independent of the CPSU and Honecker and Zhikhov who were longtime Brezhnevites) were just too willing to drop off their communist masks, retain their privileges, exploit the new opportunities and avoid the wrath of an already aggrieved people.

In the critical references of this discussion to the responsibilities of the Gorbachov regime and the East European satellite regimes in the collapse of the latter, there should be no misunderstanding that we wish a certain policy or a certain flow of events to have gone another way. We are merely describing at this point the final stage of the unmasking and self-destruction of the revisionist parties and regimes.

Next only to the destruction of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, the biggest service done by the Gorbachov regime to the capitalist powers was the rapid delivery of Eastern Europe to them and the destruction of the Warsaw Pact and the CMEA.

Within the final year of its existence, the Soviet Union under Gorbachov supported the United States in carrying out a war of aggression in the Gulf region and in asserting itself as the unrivaled policeman of the world.

Gorbachov fully revealed himself in 1991. The destructive consequences to the Soviet Union of his kind of leadership became very clear. It is untenable for any revolutionary to make an apologia for him and to try to make him out as a hero. Those who had been deceived into believing that Gorbachov was engaged in socialist renewal should take a long hard look at the incontrovertible fact that he completed the process of capitalist restoration started by Khrushchov and presided over the destruction of the Soviet Union.

The officials, ideologues and propagandists of imperialism and reaction continue to hail Gorbachov as one of the greatest men of the 20th century for bringing about "democracy" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Indeed they have cause to rejoice. He has brought about the flagrant restoration of capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship. The peoples of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are now thrown open to further capitalist exploitation and oppression, suffer the pangs of hunger and greater loss of freedom and face increased political turmoil, widening civil war and military fascism.