What the upheaval in the Soviet Union means
1991 1991-09Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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Labor needs its own political party Sept. 19, 1981: The first Solidarity Day. In the ensuing decade workers' standard of living has deteriorated and unions are under attack.
The last days of August 1991 were days that shook the world. The scale of the current popular uprising in the Soviet Union has had few precedents since the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, led by V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
Hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Soviet cities. Many stood ready on the barricades, prepared to battle EDITORIAL troops and tanks in the cause of democracy and a better life.
Why is the Soviet Communist Party— and with it most Stalinist parties everywhere-undergoing its death throes as the main political instrument of bureaucratic dictatorship?
What is the cause of the current economic and political crisis in the Soviet Union that led to the attempted coup d'etat? Why did it fail so ingloriously and so swiftly? Understanding these momentous events is vital for those who are concerned with the future of working people and the human race as a whole.
In the first instance, it must be stated that this episode does not confirm the view advanced by virtually all representatives of the capitalist world-and even some in the workers' movement-that there was a fundamental division for and againsi capitalist restoration in the Soviet ruling bureaucracy.
Divisions in the bureaucracy?
To the extent there are divisions among those in governmental and state power from Gorbachev, to the organizers of the coup, to Boris Yeltsin, to Eduard Shevardnadze—it is not between those supporting a market-based capitalist democracy, on one (continued on page 12)