Upstream - [TEASER] Socialism Betrayed w/ Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

You can listen to the full episode with Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to, but you’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you. If you grew up in the West, you were most likely provided with a simple, bite-sized, propagandistically persuasive explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union: that communism simply doesn't work.  This explanation works particularly well for the hegemon who provided it, the United States, the leading enemy of global communism throughout the 20th century. But, does this explanation actually reflect reality? Did the Soviet Union really collapse because Marx and Lenin were wrong? The short answer is no. And the longer answer is what we're going to be exploring in today's Patreon episode. To debunk the myths about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to provide us with a much more accurate explanation, we’ve brought on two guests. Roger Keeran is a historian and professor who taught at Cornell, Princeton, Rutgers and the New York State University. Joe Jamison is an economic researcher, labor movement worker, and Roger’s co-author, under the pen name Thomas Kenny, of Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union.  In this episode we explore some of the key figures and periods in USSR history before focusing in on the slow and very much avoidable unraveling of the political and economic systems of the USSR and the dissolution of the union of republics that it was comprised of. We explore the rise of the so-called second economy which led to the strengthening of a bourgeoisie class that exploited the primary socialist economy. We Look at how the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s strengthened this class and undermined the socialist economy, how the policies of perestroika and glasnost—which were economic reforms and the encouragement of political openness, respectively—backfired, how right wing opportunism, revisionism, and the betrayal of Marx and Lenin’s ideas ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR, and, crucially, what we on the left can learn from this regrettable and successful counterrevolution against the most important instantiation of communism in the 20th century.

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely could not do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this, and it also allows us to provide most of our content for free so that we can continue to provide political education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you, comrades. Hope you enjoy this conversation. The collapse of the Soviet Union was not inevitable. In 1985 and thereafter, the Soviet Union had problems, as any society has problems.

But it was essentially a vital society with yearly economic growth and progress that faced no economic or political crisis. People were contented the Soviet Union, living standards were rising, they risen pretty dramatically in the previous 10 years, 75 to 85, the collapse did not come from an economic crisis like runaway inflation, unemployment or depression. The dot come from a political crisis, a mass demonstration strikes discontent with the government. It really came about from the policies of the Calvary Globalp. And that these policies would attempt to deal with some of the problems that the Soviet Union had by injecting certain ideas of capitalism

and liberalism into a socialist economy. You are listening to upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you've thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Rehm. If you grew up in the West, you were most likely provided with a simple, bite-sized, propaganda-filled, persuasive explanation for the collapse of the Soviet

Union that communism simply does not work. This explanation works particularly well for the hegemon who provided it, the United States, the leading enemy of global communism throughout the 20th century. But does this explanation actually reflect reality? Did the Soviet Union really collapse because Marx and Lenin were wrong? The short answer is no, and the longer answer is what we're going to be exploring in today's Patreon episode. To debunk the myths about the collapse of the Soviet Union and to provide us with a much more accurate explanation, we've brought on two guests.

Roger Kiran is a historian and professor who taught at Cornell, Princeton, Rutgers, and the New York State University. Joe Jamison is an economic researcher, labor movement worker, and Rogers co-author, under the pen name Thomas Kenney, of Socialism Betrayed Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. In this episode, we explore some of the key figures and periods in USSR history before focusing in on the slow and very much avoidable unraveling of the political and economic systems of the USSR and the dissolution of the Union of Republics that it was comprised of. We explore the rise of the so-called second economy which led to the strengthening of a

bourgeoisie class that exploited the primary socialist economy. We look at how the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s strengthened this class and undermined the socialist economy, how the policies of perestroika and glassnosed, which were economic reforms and the encouragement of political openness, respectively, backfired, how right-wing opportunism, revisionism, and the betrayal of Marx and Lenin's ideas ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR. And crucially, what we on the left can learn from this regrettable and successful counter-revolution against the most important instantiation of communism in the 20th century. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Roger Kiran and Joe Jamison.

Roger, Joe, it's great to have you both on the show. I'm wondering if you could both introduce yourselves for our listeners and maybe tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write Socialism Betrayed. Well, I'm Roger Kiran. I'm a retired history professor from Empire State College, SUNY. Joe? Okay. My name's Joe Jamison.

I co-author the book with Roger under a pen name, Thomas Kenny. My education background is economics. In 1972, a long time ago, as an economics graduate student, I traveled to the Soviet Union to study its planned economy. And I worked for several companies and consulting firms

as an economic researcher. Subsequently, I worked for 25 years in the labor movement in various union staff positions, especially among the transportation unions. And these days I devote a lot of time to the website Marxism-Leninism Today, mltoday.com, where Roger and I are editors. Very cool. And what sort of inspired you to do this debunking of a lot of the myths and sort of uncovering the real reasons behind the collapse of the Soviet Union? We'll get into the details, of course, as we move on. But just briefly,

what sort of sparked that interest to write the book? Joe and I were longtime friends and left-wing political activists. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we were both, I think it's fair to say, thrown into a long-term depression, political depression over the collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences, etc. But I think what was Joe that said, we should write a book on this. We should really try to figure this out, why this happened. And I thought it was a great idea. And I think that that was the start of it.

Is that what you recall, Joe? Yeah, it is. I think I remember that we were surprised at how little analysis appeared after December 1991. We were just motivated by the enormity of the collapse's implications. One of the greatest of modern historians, Eric Habsbaum, defined the 20th century as the short 20th century, 1917, 1991. In other words, the Soviet era. In his view everything important in the 20th century from decolonization to the rise of fascism,

world wars happened in relation to the Soviet Union. So you were grappling with this question that we never expected to grapple with. How could the leaders of a socialist society dismantle socialism? Why would they do so? So that's where we started. It kind of reminds me as well that in 1922, Lenin spoke to the common term, whose last speech to the common term, kind of his last message to the speech to the commenter. Kind of his last message to to socialists and revolutionaries and he said that after five years after the revolution, the revolution was facing all kinds of challenges, the revolutionary movement in Europe had suffered recent setbacks and his advice was pretty simple and straightforward. He said the most important thing for all of us, both Russian and foreign comrades, is that after five years

of the Russian Revolution, we must study and understand what the organization, the construction, the methods, and the content of revolutionary work. I think Lenin's advice at that moment remained consciously or unconsciously in our mind when we worked on this book that the most important thing was to study what happened, how did this collapse occur, learn the lessons. We spent four years doing it and we were grappling with questions like, what was the state of the Soviet Union when Perestroika began? What problems was Gorbachev's Perestroika supposed to address? Were there alternatives to the reform course that he chose? What forces supported his changes and what forces opposed them. Why did the other leaders of the CPSU not replace him once his policies had started to produce disaster?

Why was Soviet socialism seemingly so fragile? Why did the working class apparently do so little to defend socialism? Why did the leaders so underestimate nationalist separatism? And I guess the final question was, was the Soviet downfall inevitable or not? That was the pivotal question. Whether socialism has a future depends on whether the Soviet downfall was inevitable or avoidable. So we were grappling with all of those. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with Roger Kiran and Joe Jamison on their book Socialism Betrayed, Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. You can listen to the full

episode by becoming an upstream podcast Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to, but you'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast or at upstream podcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.