apparatchnik par excellence. His rise to power was the rise of the supreme bureaucrat. As an individual he has little interest except as the embodiment of bureaucratic system which he oversaw. - patient, cautious and craving stability. Contrary to the claims of the Soviet and acolytes, Brezhnev anything but a world-historic figure. He was the least independent and dominating leader which the Soviet bureaucracy thrown up.
Since the overthrow of Khrushchev in 1964 the Soviet through arguably most period since it came into existence -which is exactly why many commentators, both friendly and hostile to the Soviet Union, will judge Brezhnev's period of office to be a period of progress' for the Soviet Union.
But in reality Brezhnev oversaw the gradual unfolding of the crisis of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union, the contradictions of which cumulating gradual nonetheless severe way. The sum total of these contradictions celerated crisis of bureaucratic rule.
The first and most fundamental aspect of this crisis is the emerging risis of the Soviet economy. Without doubt, judged overall, the 1964-1980 saw a substantial increase in the economic strength of the Soviet Union, and this marks off the Soviet Union from the advanced capitalist countries, for whom the period fron 1967 was a long period of economi cecine.
For most of this period the Soviet Unior managed relatively insulated from the crisis of world capitalism, thanks to its relative seit-sutticiencv in raw materials and centralised national planning.
Over the last 15 years the gross social product has increased by about two and a half times. put has increased 2.7 fold. In many industrial fields the Soviet Union has become the world's leading producer - in terms of quantity. The Soviet priority has remained heavy industry.
But the structural problem of agriculture has not been solved -there has only been one good harvest in the last five years — and although the quantity and variety of consumer goods has increased, many goods reshort supply. The Union is far behind the capitalist countries in its technology and hence the quality of its goods.
The targets of the last three five-year were not reached. over the last ten years the rate of economic growth Tne economy declined markedly. Over a very extended period of time, despite the state monopoly of foreign trade the Soviet Union and the economic bloc in general are not able to isolate themselves from the crisis of world capitalism.
The need to import technology, despite the Soviet advantage as a producer of raw materials and of course gold, inevitably means that price increases are reflected inside the Soviet Union; and a genera decline in world trade inevitably affects the Soviet Union.
But above all the Soviet Union, like the other economies of Eastern Europe, is still plagued by waste, irrational use of materials, poor quality, pilfering on a massive scale and above all a low productivity of labour. In a period when economic growth is slowing down, these factors become CYCO more dehabilitating. essentially the product bureaucratic mismanagement of the The lack of political democracy, he ack of democratic centralist plar....
sumer needs.
Socialist Challenge 20 November 1982 has Union has been stable are but acperiod remain Industrial outSoviet leading And Soviet Western economic planning, centralised planning They are ibility, of planning the There the years ahead.
Without workers participation in the lumbering authorities impose the national plan without flex without local initiative and with unerring inefficiency. Nor have the successive attempts to decentralise hands of the local been successful.
doubt that the the working class Sovlek bureaucrats many problems in Brezhney, Soviet - By Phil Hearse While the Soviet working class remained relatively quiescent Brezhnev's period in office, the same cannot of course be said of the working class of the rest of Eastern Europe.
Brezhnev oversaw the destruction of the Prague Spring, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The full implications of the thuggery involved in Soviet rule of Eastern Europe were exposed for all to see in this episode. Dubceit and the Czech political com Eat recromation with Kosygin and the whole politbureau, which Brezhner told during Czechoslovakia would never escape from Soviet domination means the third Even if Brezhnev never actually presided over the sending of Soviet tanks into Poland, it was the hand of the Soviet Union together with the Polish bureaucracy 13 December 1981 when martial law was introduced. The repression of the peoples of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union remains the achilles heel of their whole system of rule For in Eastern Europe what is involved is just paraphenalia of Stalinist dictatorship, VIeW Vietnam • attempting to tionalist for nationalist ment.
this process.
The themselves.
ties to the limit.
The wing — the Duceck that 'even if it war'.
Due Cad deepened. which struck to the workers be no the usual system which they defend. national rights of 100 million people Thus the national question will inevitably come to the fore in the developing political revolution. The Soviet Union has not made its rule of Eastern Europe stronger Brezhnev's rule, but the workers have made it immeasurably affairs, the Brezhnev period will be remembered as the epoch of the flourishing eventual failure - OI 'detente' Detente was merely a systematisation of the persistent policy of the Sovie! leadership of 'peaceful co-existence' with the capitalist powers. It contain. ed many elements which were perfect. ly principled from a socialist point of - in particular a partial and halting attempt to limit and tionalise the arms race.
But it also included the more seamy side of 'peaceful co-existence change. During the late '60s and early '70s the Soviet Union sat on its hand. while the United. States pulverised — doling out aid to the Viet namese with an eye-dropper In the Middle East the Sovie Union saw its influence destroyed ir the early '70s, thanks to its policy of win friends and in fluence people' via political suppor for bourgeois and petty-bourgeois na.
regimes In country afte country the Soviet Union turned blind eye to the brutal repression o the local communist parties, in returr "influence' Egypt vividly demonstrated the bankruptcy of such a policy when Sadat quickly turned away from the USSR towards th But peaceful co-existence does no mean immobility. In Africa the Sovie Union rapidly saw the possibility new allies, and in co-operation witl the Cubans, intervened to support th in Angola Mozambique and Ethiopia. Withou doubt these were among the boldes moves of Brezhnev.
The destruction of detente was th work of the United States. Howeve ill-judged the Soviet intervention i Afghanistan, the prime reason for th breakup of detente was the war-driv launched under Carter and deepener by Reagan. Thus the Brezhnev leader ship came up against the fundamenta character of the imperialist powers.
In the world communist move Brezhnev's period of offic marked the lowest point of prestige o the Soviet Union in the world com munist movement since 1917. marks the crucial point of divide ir intervention in Czecho slovakia, together with the role of th French Communist Party in the May June events in France, began a whol process of re-evaluation on the left including in the Communist Partie The rise of Eurocom munism strained the link between the Italian and Spanish Communist Par Soviet leadership wa: powerless to respond to this process precisely because the criticisms of the Eurocommunists however righ • touched at the very heart o the Stalinist system of rule. Officia Soviet ideology had less and less attractiveness for a new generation or the left, increasingly concerned with questions of socialism and democracy. The events in Poland anc the repression of the dissident move ment inside the Soviet Union itself en sured that Brezhnevism would be in capable of winning back lost ground Brezhnevism was a failure because it could not tackle the fundamenta contradictions of the Stalinist system - inevitably because it was committed to the continued rule of the which Since 1964 those contradictions have Brezhnev himself personified the caution and inflexibility of the Soviet bureaucrats which will to the workers demands There wil There wil 'self-reform' Soviet bureaucracy. Only the Soviet workers will be able to deal with them - by removing all the Brezhnevs and the of brutal bureaucratic rule
• Report from Just before the anniversary nosc's recognition on 10 November SEVRAC visited Poland on behalf of Rouge, a French revolutionary newspaper and publication of Socialist Challenge.
We reprint an sive interview where he describes the mood and organisation of workers in the the demonstrations of that day.
You were in Poland when the shipyards struck. Can you say what it was like the day after Solidarnosc was banned?
I would say people didn't recognise the validity of the new law. I was struck by the workers' determination. The decision to boycott unions was a gut reaction. Everyone I met expressed the same feeling big or small firms, teachers, intellectuals or workers.
It was hard to find anyone whe backed the new unions: in where a mine employing 8000 needed to assemble 31 people in order to set up the new union, only 18 came to the first meeting. In another factory the director called the founding meeting himself and threatened anyone who didn't come the meeting was huge, but the workers JUST used the discussion to obstruct the bureaucrats and nothing done.
In other factories they didn't dare call meetings for fear of the result.
Nevertheless, many workers who saw the boycott as an important political test of opposition regime doubted if they could keep it up for a very long time. lacucs would nave to be reaiscussca after four or six months passed.
The new unions promise to resolve a series of social problems lodging, holidays, help to people all secondary in the present crisis, and which no-one else deals with.
What difficulties do workers face in their daily lives? changed from your last visit a year ago?
Things aren't exactly rosy, above all for low-paid workers. was struck by the endless queues for e cheatar things like milk, anguish nothing for the day if one was too far back in the queue. The shops were empty from seven in the morning.
Things are different now, It looks pretty clear that last winter's shortages were provoked aurnonnes. Many goods are now on sale with 1978 or 1979 date stamps. Today there are queues, everywhere in the tast. shelves are far from empty.
But this isn't the problem. The problem is that one has to be a financial acrobat to buy the food. The ofmonthly 9,000-10,000 zlotys. I've found more than one worker HeaV skilled - who get 6,000-8,000. minimum wage is even lower.
costs 20-25 zlotys depending on whether the free or official market, and a kilo of boneless meat costs 3-400. It's as if you had to pay fl for an egg and £15 for a kilo of meat.
There are many goods one cannot obtain - for example vital medicines, which in some towns bought for dollars. And you often get goods that aren't available, and no ration tickets for what is available.
It looks as if the military are having some trouble controllthe situation.
extenPolish days the new - in Silesia, sack. The to the They felt the , such as A vear ago 1 bread and of finding by the like but the Wart Not them controls the repressive forces. The you get it on. ready reorkers' side. N to think the Junta even SULT can only be meaningless.
that bureaucracy's Grabski, known about the internal battles going on in their ranks?
This isn't an easy question to answer because we onlv hear rumours. But don't think we should underestimate the bureaucracy's ability to impose its 'law'. You must never forget that it that It's true that workers have noted a 'neutral' attitude from troops. But this doesn't mean the soldiers are actively onto the . Many Polish observers called enough to lift the state of siege before Christmas — after, of course, making all the repressive laws needed to make this As for the internal disputes in the apparatus, and particularly between the military and the administration, one can only speculate. There is talk Kremlin and the late. hard wing, led by want to give Jaruzelski an honorific post such as president while putting two pro-Soviets at the head of the Communist Party and the parlia How is the 10 November strike being prepared?
I think it was uneven. It must be said workers were disoriented when the shipyard strike took place in Gdansk at the beginning of October. When they heard what happened, even though the (Solidarnosc clandestine leadership)
general strike for November, they simply waited for the leadership to tell them what to do. But no instructions came.
Support strikes and demonstrations were isolated and repression was When Zbigniew Bujak appealed for unlimited abstention strikes in Warsaw it was already too The news that the shipyards had gone back to work left a bitter taste after seeing workers returning, rage in their hearts, on Wednesday morning. The scene was relayed in great detail and recounted in a tone of obvious satisfaction by the TV commentator. This explained many people wondering whether the movement would really be able to coordinate its actions and prepare the 10 November action efficiently. very But I think the appeal which the clandestine movement launched later on 24 October, to spell out what TKK should be done on 10 November and on the 13-17 December for the anio niversary of the state of siege, may have mobilised sceptical.
Nevertheless I must stress that the movement's capacity ordination, both locally and nationally, was less advanced than I thought it would be. There is a disparity between The manneroose ruks bewweenegor. and the scale of mobilisations we have seen since the Spring.
How do you explain this?
SCUICI the regions minimum tended struggle, hesitation strike, tions members ber?
No characteristics leaders.
But La price demonstrations mass worker why I heard so you see few months.
movement workers who were pessimistic for co- demonstrations.
sions.
our tasks here. There's no doubt that the policy of systematic repression has paid off. Apart from the 600 who have not yet been freed despite all Jaruzelski's promises there are more than 3000 carrying out sentences of up to 10 years, and 2000 awaiting trial.
Many militants try to keep their heads down, particularly when the police infiltrate everywhere, poisoning the atmosphere and catching a number of key militants Bus is this enough to explain Black of co-ordination? Before 13 December, I had the impression - at least in some that there was a of preparation to deal with this kind of situation, and resist a heavy attack.
Undoubtedly, but this preparation was very uneven. Otherwise one cannot explain how the military were able to take the Solidarity leadership by surprise on 13 December.
But also TKK's lack of clarity on its overall objectives has caused a certain dispersion of forces. Some impatient currents, who could be right on many questions, but who in my opinion do not understand how important the movement's unity is, have to translate their disagreements into splitting actions.
This is the case with the Wroclaw 'combative Solidarity' which asserts the need to prepare for an inevitable confrontation with the state - one cannot disagree. But it draws wrong conclusions about methods of counterposing generalised street demonstrations to patient factory organisation.
The problem is that the TKK's preparing general which many of its members had been calling for since summer, strongly resented by many militants I spoke to, who were quite hostile to the leadership.
But do you think this reaction is any different to the reac of many Solidarity before 13 Decemyou're right. One of the of the union was always a very open criticism of elected Right now the leadership' vacillation on the goals and forms o. action of the resistance is affecting the determination of the mass movemen And you would expect this. Man workers find they are paying too high for ill-prepared street isolated strikes which let the bureaucracy carry out arrests or strike down the activists one by one after militarising the factories Moreover I found the most combative and conscious workers the most reserved when TKK's proposals action appeared cut off from reality. The mining and engineering workers I spoke to were the most critical about the idea of a national agreement. Those most determined to carry the struggle through to its conclusion were often the most prudent in their analysis of the rhythms and stages needed to prepare the working class for a centralised confrontation with the bureaucracy.
If I understand you correctly, the situation rather differently from the articles we have published in the last This is true. This view of the workers might rather : than one culled from a reading of the underground press and from the comrades who went on street But I want to get things clear by stressing that the working class is very combative. MV reservations about the degree of organisation of the workers' movement are ony personal impres And of course it changes nothing in the importance of solidarity with Solidarnosc, or the nature of Socialist Challenge 20 Novamber 19%2