Mikhail Gorbachev's government at the head of the Soviet Union took place between 1985 and 1991, representing the end of attempt to build Soviet state capitalism, called in some political circles socialism Soviet.
The main characteristics of the internal policy of Gorbachev's government were related to two Russian words that indicated attempts to change the Soviet system: perestroika and glasnost.
In Russian, perestroika has the meaning of restructuring. The use of the word was intended to indicate the paths to be traced to carry out structural changes in the Soviet economy and society. In the 1970s and 1980s, the economy of the USSR did not reach the high rates of economic growth seen in earlier times. The situation was the result of the exhaustion of forms of Soviet social organization, in which political centralization and economic in the State and the Communist Party prevented the development of mechanisms that would guarantee the increase of the productivity.
already the word glasnost
it means transparency and was used to represent the process of political opening that Gorbachev and the group of Soviet bureaucrats who supported him intended. It was an attempt to give some transparency to the political decision-making mechanisms of the USSR, rigidly controlled by the nomenklatura, the class of bureaucrats that controlled Soviet society.Perestroika and glasnost were thus an attempt by Mikhail Gorbatchev to put an end to the social crisis that Soviet society was going through. And this crisis was related to the development of the USSR itself.
Under capitalism, the increase in productivity is mainly guaranteed with the increase in the consumption of the working class. This happens because, by consuming the goods necessary for their physical reproduction, the working class drives material production in all its levels, from agriculture, through industry, to services that offer the conditions for the realization of this consumption of workers.
However, the working class cannot achieve this “hand kiss” increase in consumption. It usually occurs after struggles for salary increases and improvements in working conditions. Generally these struggles take place through strikes or other mobilizations that pressure capitalists to meet workers' demands.
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
When the wage increase is met, it reduces the profit margin of capitalists, who, in turn, are forced to find ways to increase their profit, to reproduce the accumulation of capital, a situation achieved with the increase in the productivity of the working class. Increased productivity is mainly made possible through technological innovations, thus requiring investments in science and education.
However, for this system to work in a way that guarantees the reproduction of the capitalists' profit, it is necessary that workers can express minimally their dissatisfaction, replacing the open repression of police and state forces by negotiation, mainly through unions.
This situation was verified in countries within the sphere of influence of US capitalism. What existed in the USSR was open repression against the workers. Gorbachev's measures, glasnost and perestroika, intended to change this scenario, guaranteeing greater freedom to workers, but also to the oppositions existing within the Communist Party's own bureaucracy, seeking a decentralization of the decisions that were in the hands of nomenklatura.
What happened in the USSR was not socialism or communism. What happened was the existence of a capitalism not based on private property. Soviet capitalism was based on state ownership. The two types of capitalism are similar in that they maintain the economic and social exploitation of the working class as the basis of their operation.
In private property capitalism, the exploiting class is generally associated with the bourgeoisie. In state-owned capitalism, the exploiting class is the state bureaucracy. In both types of capitalism, workers are removed from control of the means of production and the work process.
Gorbatchev intended with perestroika and glasnost to solve the crisis that was going through the USSR, but he was unable to contain the disintegration of the Soviet system. In 1991, the USSR ended. And the type of capitalism developed in the US sphere of influence appeared to the world as the victor in a dispute that marked the 20th century.
* Image Credit: Peter Scholz and Shutterstock.com
By Tales Pinto
Master in History
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PINTO, Tales of the Saints. "Perestroika and glasnost in the USSR"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/perestroika-glasnost-na-urss.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
