The folks on this site are very well read, but I have heard a couple of times the Russian system being called "communist"- meaning the actual economic model.

I have a Russian wife and have been to Russia and have talked with and even have in my family high Russian officials, and have some interesting insights into the economic model currently and in the past, and I would love to hear others views on this. And BTW- this thread will be cut and pasted and sent as e-mail to my Russian Cousin, for his studies as to western views of his country and economic models ( he is studying economics with emphasis on actual business practises and western thoughts on how to help the Russian economy)

Depends on what definition of communism. True communism is a utopian goal that will never exist. In standard use when people refer to Communist China, Cuba, the old USSR, etc., they are referring to countries where much of the means of production is controlled by the state and where the ideas of Marx are incorporated into governance. Technically there is no communist or purely capitalist state. All nations have a mixed economy.

russia was not actually communist, but it was RUN by communists. russia was a SOCIALIST state(union of soviet socialist republics) up til stalin died, at which point they started to form into more of a state capitalist type economy and leadership. so no they were never "communist"

You guys pretty much know the economic definition of communism, so no need to beat that one to death- but suprise! there was no change in law from the Czars to STalin- just the faces of who was doing the oppressing! First off, you have to have some idea of how brutal Russian history is to know that Stalin was all that out of line with a few Czars ( the russian joke is "we had a revolution, and the ugly poeple won, no other changes, and of cource, during "communism", you didn't want to look to "royal") treatment of thier poeple, from Peter the great to Catherine the great to Ivan the terrible, they all slaughtered large portions of thier population. They also grabbed all the economic riegns of the country, with one slogan or the other. IT is a Russian saying "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

The Russian people revolted against a tyrant under the promise of the poor ruling the government. What they got was a tyrant with a fresh face.

ACtually, you are quite wrong LOL

The accepted version of the reason for the revolution was the weakness of Czar Nicholas, in Russia strenght and order are much more important that freedom or safety from goverment.

Ivan the terrible abdicated due to critisisms of his riegn, and they begged him to come back!

No, the poor sensed weakness, and the bad guys smelled it too, and exploited it. Just that simple!

I sent my cousin the debate on capitalism in the economics section- he told me to tell you guys thanks, it was EXTREMELY education for him, to get (mostly) American perspective on what the definition of capitalism is to westerners. However, he asked me to restart this debate due to the fact that some poeple kept refering to the old Soviet Union as communist/socialist, when, to most economists in Russia, it was niether.

His quotes of most interest were from John Locke:

"hence the droughts in the USSR during the 70s helped Reagan bring the communists to thier knees and end thier reign of terror on earth"

and Hugo mentioned several times comparing the USSR economy to the US, which to him was interesting because to my cousin, it was more of comparing a succesful fuedal system to an unsuccesful one, a notion I somewhat agree with. A wage slave is a wage slave, just the conditions for one are better than the other, but in all, the outcome is the same, you do what your boss tells you, or you starve.

BTW- during the old Soviet days, unemployment was 0%- it was the death penalty for not working if you were physically and mentally able.

Russia was never Communist.





Russia was parody of Communism. There were some Communist policies, but they were far from a true Communist country except in rhetoric. They didn't really do anything that Marx said. The Bolsheviks were fools and murders, but they were not Communists. No internationalism, no worker ownership, no democracy. Just economic fascism.

A note - Russia also called themselves a democratic republic. For those of you so willing to take their word on the Communist thing, are you also willing to call them democratic?

I know this is meant to be on the more pure intellectual side of debate,

but if Russia was not Communist than the Kennedy's were not liberal.
The Soviet Union coopted the idea of communism and made it into Communism.
It dominated the political far left of the world for more than half a century.

There may be a more pure communism out there, but there has never been a larger practical model.

So yes, the Soviet Union was communist and it became our definition of Communism. I think it left us socialism to debate the semantics of cooperative or communal socio-economic systems.

No, the USSR wasn't communist, no country has been, or will be, it will not happen and as Hugo said is a utopia.

CP

So did it become the new definition of Czarism (basically the Russian fuedal system, the common man did not own land, rather the lords)? Remember what I said about no legal changes in the Russian federal law involving ownership or trade, with the exception of the federalization of the ruble? If there were no legal changes, wasn't Communism just really a propaganda tool for the new powers that be?

CR, you say the laws didn't change. How about the interpretation and enforcement of the laws? Weren't the successful peasant farmers driven out and communes formed? Seems I read somewhere that there was an upper-peasant class of farmers who did own land. And those who dared to speak against the new uglier leaders, were they not sent off to Siberia?
Were those things done according to existing law? Or outside the law?

Ownership of the farms still rested with the Bolyars, or Lords, and there were succesfull farmers, and there were some rewards of personal land in the time of the Czars, but it was a very rare occurance, and not done except under special circumstance. But this was also the case with the soviet times, with Dachas being rewarded to certain politburo poeple or even sports heros, one of which my wifes family now owns, purchased after "Glasnost."

Actually, even under the old soviet goverment you could own your flat, or apartment. This is actually a major portion of the Russian culture and economy, the inheratence of the "flat" and the subsequent ability to buy a bigger flat with that money and the money you saved.

Russian law enforcement has ALWAYS been selective, depending on whose being bribed and who is doing the bribing.

Stalin used the style of the Tsar in regards to secret police and an attempt to control the people, but he used a dictatorship and modern tools (radio, film etc.) to completely control the people. It was sold as an attempt to create a communist world. People were organized into cooperative work without their say. Farms were collectivized and modernized. The state was transformed from feudalism to an industrial model.

I stick with my earlier answer.

Uh- outside of a new tractor there was no real change on the farms- the same serfs working them, the same work being done. STalin modernized the whole country. If you have no real change in law, and no change in property ownership, how do you have a different system?

Tell the aristocracy, the Romanovs and Anastasia that there was no change to the system.

Feudal to industrialized is a major change. Stalin simply allowed his comrades less freedom and replaced it with more terror.

The Tsar was head of state and church and ruled by divine right.

Lenin-Marxism was a completely different animal. The changes are there and they are dramatic. Russia's feudal economy was so inept and backwards that the country could not feed itself anymore and the serfs owed 5 to 6 days labor a week to the nobility before they could work there meager strip plots. Since the nobility was tied to this system the Russians hadn't even completed the agricultural revolution. So a tractor and large farming plots was an agrarian revolution in Russia. The problem was that Stalin took all of the food and sold it to create capital. The land did indeed become vastly more productive.

My cousin will have a small laugh at the first comment- thier last name is "Romanov" (They hid it for years and changed cities from St.Petersburg to Kazan as a family)- so yes, for the Romanovs, it was a dramatic change, from being alive to being dead.

However, a change in effiency of a farming technique or improvement in method you grow food does not mean a economic overhaul of the economy philosophy-wise, just means you are doing the same job better. If I work for a company, and do a job badly, fire me, and hire someone else to do the same job, and they do it better, the job and mission is the same, and the company and policies did not change, just the person doing the job changed. Czar Nicholas was a very weak Czar. Had he ruled with the iron fist that Stalin did, regardless of how many starved, there would have been no revolution. That goes to the soul of the Russian culture.

Because ownership DID change.

Industry was no longer owned by hereditary Czars (or Tsars), but by the "collective" government, the Communist Party.

Thus, in name, the workers controlled the means of production, since the workers were (in name) the Communist Party.

The USSR was certainly not Marx's utopia. However, it was an example of the practical implementation of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". The key is who determines need.

As Eeyore stated, the USSR became the model of "Communism" even though they differed from Marx's view. They called themselves Communist and they attempted to expand Communism, even if their principles differed distinctly from what Marx (and indeed, Lenin) envisioned.

Stalin turned Lenin's revolution into an excuse to form a fascist dictatorship. The inevitable end to all such experiments.

Industry was headed by a New Czar, and his name was stalin- and he passed out favors- such as ownership of the factories, to his "bolyars" in the same manner as the Czars before him. And it is in fact argued and part of the difficulty of reform over there right now that the ownership of those factories led to the men that controled those industries to become Billionares and in fact were the cause of "Glasnost"- Bolyars becoming Oligarchs, just like in Czarist times.

Once again, they used the terms of the Marxist, they modernized the country (by the way, this was a tradition of Czars upon being crowned as well, including Peter the great, the first Czar to leave Russia) but there was no real change in the system itself.

Now, the system was corrupt under the Czars, the communists and is still very corrupt today, I should know, I have had to pay the bribes myself LOL and I think this is the real reason for the confusion of the economic terms, is because of the corruption of any system in Russia. When my wife first came to America and worked for an American company (Sears)- she basically had to learn about ethic in business, which doesn't exist in Russia, and never has. There is only alliances and family, though both of those are extremely strong bonds, almost never broken, except for certain taboo reasons. For instance, a friend of the family in Russia that helps us with Russian import/export laws was gifted by me a Borzoi dog- a breed only the Czars were allowed to have and a breed that was almost wiped out by the Bolshelvicks- and this was a symbol of great respect and trust, and shown he was a trusted friend and near family member for life. Very old school, very old world, and very hard for an American to understand down in our core philosophies.

I'd say it would be accurate however to describe the Soviet Union as being Communist. Sure it didn't practice Communism in its purest form, but all economies are mixed ones. The United States doesn't practice Capitalism in its purest form. It would be accurate though to call the Soviet Union Communist, and the United States Capitalist.

As I statd before, they also called themselves democratic republics in addition to calling themselves Communist. Does that mean they're also democratic? Of course not. It just means they had some propaganda. Russia was Communist in name only, their economic and governmental systems were not. Flying red flags doesn't make you a red.

The government DID control the means of production. That is equivalent to communism. Now if you want to argue that the Czars were communists, be my guest.

North Korea is technically the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. It doesn't mean that any of it is true.

Communism is worker ownership of the means of production, not necessarily government ownership. Basic tenants of Marxism here ...

During the Civil War Lenin ordered that all the documents relating to property ownership were destroyed. As a lawyer by training, Comrade Lenin understand how devastating the destruction of the records of private ownership would be on a civilised society. The vast majority of the population the peasants reverted to collective ownership and thus private ownership was liquidated.

The NEP period allowed a restricted mixed economy and private enterprise boomed. The “Nepmen” benefited and during the thirties, people would look at the NEP period as a Golden Period of Russian history. Stalin made all private trade illegal and all factories were taken over by the State and all factory managers had to conform to the Plan.

In practise, the Plan fantastically failed to rationally control the economy and in practise a vast “shadow” economy developed an illegal but tolerated black-market. For example, a Moscow shoes factory manager is ordered to increase production under the plan twenty per cent. Under the plan, the necessary raw materials should be sent to his factory, but they don’t. Since the manager will be shot if he fails to deliver, in practise through his networks, he makes a deal with another factory manager to give him the necessary material in return for a favour. In other words, the manager becomes involved in the black-market.

Because of the failure of the centrally planned system, black-marketers became a dangerous albeit essential profession in Stalinist and post-Stalinist Russia, dealing with goods needed by different economic actors. In non-Russian regions, mafias developed in relationship with the local Communist party officialdom. Similarly managers throughout the USSR fiddled the figures, stole money and wasted it on their dachas rather than spend the allocated State money on what the Plan tells them to do.

By Breshevs era, the whole central planning structure had more or less collapsed and the “shadow” economy had become larger than the “official” economy. Without the Stalinist pressures of arrest or murder available a unofficial deal emerged by the Soviet leadership and the vast apparatus of the economy. The managers would fiddle the figures to show how successfully the economy was doing, meaning that the leadership could proudly show how well they were doing, while in practise the economy grinded down, with corruption epidemic.

Certain Communist party officials created vast private empires through the varied ministries of the planning system and thus the proto-oligarchs emerged even during the Soviet rule. By the eighties, with more aware people realising that the system was finished and was disintegrating (not just stagnating), these Communist Party "bolyars" carved out their respective private economic-industrial empires through their privileged position within the ruling Soviet elite as the system collapsed. Thus, this is how the oligarchs emerged.

Your pretty close on there Thomas, but you aren't factoring in the fact that alot of this was very deliberate mechinations from Stalin on down, and this system was essentially the same as the Czarist state, because technically, everything in the nation was the Czars, and could be confiscated at any time. The Czarist state WAS NOT constitutional monarchy and technically, everything in the empire belonged to him, thus the reason for lenin to destroy all the "private ownership" paperwork, because it essentially destroyed all connection between the lords and the Czars. Remember, very few serfs owned private property, 90% of the confiscation was of property from the ruling elite. There was no middle class then, just is there is not one to speak of now (it does exist, but on a very small scale) so large scale private property ownership by a very large percentage of the population like in the US was never a reality.

(Note: My wife and mother-in-law were both lawyers that graduated from the very Kazan university that Lenin was tossed out of BEFORE he got his law degree. I was there in December and saw all the "Lenin was here" plaques, like our "Washington was here" plaques in the east, kind a wierd similarity LOL)

Interesting note, there has still been no real large scale change in the law in Russia, though some important ones have changed. There has been some large scale foriegn ownership/investment allowed, but some of the laws have had to be changed as they go along. One HUGE battle is over the porcelin factory in (I forget if it is in St. Petersburg or Moscow) where the facotry "manager" from communist era (who sure appears to be in ownership for all intents and purposes) went all the way to the supreme court to keep the American from running it, and in fact saving it from being shuttered. Lot's of law was thrown around here, but my point is, most of the ownership law being quoted was actually Czarist federal law!

The later Czarist period did develop a modern private ownshership structure, and industrialsits were secure during the Imperial period in the protection of their property. Frankly Nicholas II was too weak to go around taking the ruling classes property, and I have never read anything like that during the later period of Imperial Russia.

Stalin and Lenin reverted Russia back to the medieval period of absolute autocracy, with the difference that it was the State rather than the Tsar that controlled the economy and the land.

With the post-Soviet economy, property ownership is a great issue:



http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/index.html?art=130

Since many Russians would like to see the change in the current property laws against the oligarchs, how do you see the issue of private ownership evolving? Will it become like in the West, or will it continue to be used for the political struggles?

Great link! I put it on my favorites, very insightfull stuff. I would agree that there was a reversion to older Czarist principles by STalin, instead of continuing the relatively weak final Czarist policies, but we are talking a 1300 year old culture here, and the final Czar didn't really have any impact on Russian culture EXCEPT his failure as a Czar, and was part of the reason for his downfall.

I see my age and younger generation (I'm 38) actually being the radical reformers of Russian culture, if it doesn't collapse entirely from the negative birth rate. Right now in Moscow you barely even see a ethnic or cultural Russian, most are Chechnyan or something (once again, all white poeple look alike to me, being a white American and all LOL) and do not represent Russian culture or attitudes, almost similar to border towns in Texas. I think if the Russian culture survives it will resemble some of the good parts of the American economy and some of the protections of the European cultures. They are horrified by the horrible treatment the US goverment and culture to US families. They are very afraid of the breakup of thier own families and the disrespect family member show each other, so some reforms are seen as part of the American culture, and they will be very slow on some economic ideas.

Private property will slowly come into being I think.