The Paradoxes of working class of Russia and USSR

Ugg i think it can be intresting for you
Link i wood like to know your opinion

Here is the discussion about Asiatic mode of production, " retro-gradualism" or bureaucratic collectivism or state-capitalism

There was a group of German Marxist immigrants during WWII who created the theory of "retro- gradualism". According to it "stalinism and fascism" is a sort of throwback to the absolutist-feudal society.

Some other Marxists, such as Karl Wittfogel, believed that Stalin's USSR is a form of the Asiatic mode of production. Similar ideas were expressed by non-Marxist libertarian (he became authoritarian later) German philosopher Rudolf Baro. That also means sort of a regress in comparison with capitalism...

Moshe Machover, a Marxist Israel dissident, said: "In this context there was a very serious sub-theme regarding the major under-developed countries -countries like China, Japan, Russia, Turkey and Persia, which had been great powers and were never colonies, but in which capitalism had not developed properly, and which therefore found themselves left behind. In all these countries the “objective” historical task was to get modernisation and industrialisation going. And in all of them the ruling classes (traditional or newly arrived to power) imposed some form of forced modernisation and industrialisation...The new ruling class led by Stalin attempted another road to modernisation and industrialisation: command planning, while market forces were largely suspended. A valid historical assessment of bureaucratic collectivism cannot be performed by comparing it, even negatively, to socialism. This would not only be unfair to the very idea of socialism, but also irrelevant to the place of bureaucratic collectivism itself in history"... :

https://libcom.org/forums/theory/asiatic-mode-production-retro-gradualis...

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AnythingForProximity Meerov, I agree with others that you should contact the Libcom admins and request a blog – it would be a better format for your well-researched essays than a forum post.

Thanks so much. I've tried that before. I wrote to the administrator but have not received any response.

2.

Me:
"In 1919-1921 workers many times went on strike against the Bolsheviks putting forward political slogans. In the spring of 1919 the Left SRs (they already had an anarcho-syndicalist program (*1)) initiated strikes at the big factories of Petrograd."

AnythingForProximity If the strikers had an explicitly anarchosyndicalist program as early as 1919, that's an important counterpoint to the view expressed by the likes of Victor Serge, who argued in Year One of the Russian Revolution that the Petrograd factory workers striking against the Bolsheviks were the most backward elements of the proletariat, simply because the most conscious and dedicated workers had left the factories for the frontlines of the civil war.

I don't know why Victor Serge became popular in the West. I find this man was largely (though not entirely) a Pro-Bolshevik.

In any case, a lot of new documents and studies have been published today, so such views are simply outdated.

Victor Serge is lying. Already in 1918, workers of the largest factories of Petrograd protested against the Bolsheviks. These workers had a variety of political ideas, from the Menshevist version of social-democracy and parlamentarism to anarcho-syndicalism and the left SR. But All the striking workers demanded free elections to the Soviets!

Also they sometimes demended the elimination of the Cheka, free development of workers ' cooperatives, direct product exchange between the city and the village etc. Some workers were on strike also in 1921 under the slogans of free elections to the Soviets and in defense of Kronstadt.

Moreover: Workers of Petrograd (Leningrad) went on strike and issued the same slogans in February 1927!

If you can read in my (Russian) language, you can read the documents, where it is said about it, in the book. There are alot of documents: Pavlov,D.B. “The workers' opposition movement in Bolshevik Russia. 1918 " http://communism21.org/books/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B5%...

The fact is that a couple of months after October, the mood of the workers began to turn against the Bolsheviks. And it was happening fast because the economic catastrophe was becoming more and more pronounced.

There was no big civil war at that time. Continuing economic problems of 1917 + mismanagement by the Bolshevik government destroyed the industry.

Also One of the reasons for the paralysis of the economy was the struggle of the government of Lenin with the Association of workers and specialists of Railways (VIKZHEL). This Association demanded the transfer of Railways in the self-management of workers and under the protection of the workers ' militia. The Bolsheviks responded with a split of VIKZHEL and repressions. But this has led to a sharp deterioration of the Railways and to new economic problems.

In the spring-summer of 1918 the workers of the biggest factories began to withdraw deputies-the-Bolsheviks across all the country. In response, the Bolsheviks:

a) prohibited the re-election of some Soviets
b) falsified the elections to the Soviets (like in Petrograd in the spring or summer)
c) dispersed non-Bolshevik Soviets, if the workers still elect them (Samara, Tambov, Izhevsk)
d) dispersed election meetings, strikes and demonstrations of workers (Yaroslavl),
e) has closed the opposition press,
f) made an armed attacks against the opposition groups (anarchists, social revolutionaries-maximalists in Moscow and Samara and Izhevsk)
g) ...or have completely banned the activities of opposition parties (June 14, 1918 Mensheviks and SR were banned).

In General, you probably have a bad idea how much new has become known today due to the publication of new documents... For ex:

The use of chemical weapons in Russia in 1918. Lenin was the Assad of its era.
https://libcom.org/forums/general/use-chemical-weapons-russia-lenin-was-...

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AnythingForProximity find it surprising that an anarchosyndicalist program should be formed by the Left SRs. Would you happen to have a link to that program (assuming that it was actually written down and printed in some pamphlet or newspaper), or at least to a brief summary of it? On a related note, what was the relationship / programmatic agreement between the left SRs and Russian anarchists before and after October 1917?

The ideas of the left SR until July 6 were a strange mixture of authoritarian and anti-authoritarian socialism. They criticized the Bolsheviks, but at the same time cooperated with them in some areas. For example, they helped Bolshevik operations against anarchists in April 1918 in Moscow.

But then left SR adopted at its fourth Congress (September-October 1918) a radically new program which I would describe as a combination of ideas close to the German-Dutch left Communists and anarcho-syndicalism.

After the defeat in the fight against the Bolsheviks on 6 July left S. R. ceased to be a centralized party, has become (de facto) Federation of Autonomous regional groups and ideological and political factions. The power of the Central Committee of Left SR sharply decreased. In addition, Pro-Bolshevik elements left the party. So to some extent it stops to be a party ))

Finally, the left SR Trutovsky recalled that the workers who remained in the party were opposed to nationalization. In the autumn of 1918 many workers began to see that Bolshevik nationalization led the country to disaster. Workers inside the left CP was supported by the program of "Syndical-Cooperative Federation"

...In Spain Friends of Durruti (revolutionary faction of CNT) advocated the economy is controlled by revolutionary syndicates, local life ruled by Councils of deputies of the Commune and militia were under the control of the Soviets of deputies elected from the fighters ("Huntas").

In Russia there was a revolutionary and to some extent libertarian movement - Party of left socialists - revolutionaries (PLSR), which supported similar ideas in 1918-1923.

a) In the field of politics, the left SR became strong supporters of free Councils. They sharply condemned the opinion of the Bolsheviks about the Soviets. In her letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee, in November 1918, Maria Spiridonova, the leader of the left SR, wrote that the Soviets should be a "living laboratory of the masses", and not an instrument in the hands of the parties. She pointed out that the power should be in the hands of the Soviets and workers ' assambliers of any plant or village have the right to withdraw delegates at any time, she also said that "there is something wrong in the power of any party". So "the party should generate new ideas, and the workers themselves should rule with the help of Councils".

b) As for the economy, the lef SR believed that it should be transferred to the hands of the "Syndical-Cooperative Federation".
They believed the associations of factory committees should create syndicates and take control of the factory. Also consumers should unite in "consumer cooperatives" (At that time about a third of Russian peasants and a part of city inhabitants took part in work of self-governing consumer, trade-and-purchasing, credit and production cooperatives). Then, syndicates and cooperative-unions-of-consumers had to choose special Economic Councils, in order to plan production according to the needs of the working population.

c) One of the leading theorists of the left SR Isaac Steinberg called it a "System of separation of Soviet authorities".
He believed it's not enough to smash the Bolsheviks dictators. Steinberg said: "It is necessary to crush the common fist of the Power of Soviets".
One can argue that Councils is a system of direct democracy, which relies on the Assembly of workers. But there is a problem: the most active people usually come to the Councils as delegates and make operational decisions on their own, while the people's assemblies can not control them all the time.
Steinberg developed the "theory of crystallization". According to this theory, within even the most free society there are pockets of authoritarianism (parent-child relationship, teacher-student, doctor-patient). So there may be authoritarian centres of crystallization and then pyramids of autocracy will start to line up. Therefore, it is necessary to separate the different decision centers make them to control each other ("constant mixing of the liquid to prevent authoritarian crystallization").

P.S. You can read something here https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%B...

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link
I would also argue that the revolution of 1917 was a working class revolution where workers took power with the help of the Bolsheviks.

They did not. The working class cannot take power through the party. The party is a centralized bureaucratic system that serves its top management, not the working class. Moreover, the idea of party representation has its roots in exploitative society, with its parliamentary systems, centralized army, police and postal service. The working class, universally organized in the Association of Soviets, can take power. The party, like the centralized Union, is the mortal enemy of the Soviet system. The Bolshevik party, relying on an Alliance with the old tsarist bureaucracy, destroyed the Soviets in 1918 -1921.

link
Isolated in one country however it could never stay in power and the Bolsheviks weaknesses in understanding...

The problem with this scheme, which comes from the left Communists, is that it is completely wrong.

There is an interesting paradox for me. I agree in many ways with the supporters of German-Dutch communism of the Soviets in terms of the social revolutionary role of the Soviets in history,

I agree with their criticism of trade unions.

I agree with the criticism of anti-fascism.
https://libcom.org/forums/organise/fascism-anti-fascism-18102018

I certainly agree that the Bolsheviks did not build a socialist society.

But at the same time, the evaluation of Bolshevism on the part of the German-Dutch left communism and bordigism is incorrect. That's not the problem that the Bolsheviks were weak. On the contrary, to my great regret, these bastards were very strong!

In 1918-1921, the Bolsheviks, relying on the old tsarist bureaucracy, and red army, which was ran by the Alliance of new red burocrats ("commissari") and old tsarist officers built a powerful terrorist system of exploitation, which destroyed the workers ' movement.

At the same time, the anti-Bolshevik labor movement in 1918 was huge, furious and comparable in scale with the movement of 1905 and 1917.

Please read above what I wrote in my answer to AnythingForProximity in "N2" about the Bolsheviks ' destruction of Soviet power.

Ok, there are a lot of questions and important comments, thank you. I will try to answer some things today (but not all of them, because there are big questions).

1.

Wittfogel ... He’s no revolutionary marxist

So what?
I do not quite understand what it matters.

In 1939, Vitfogel was influenced by the news of the Stalinist repressions and the Soviet-German pact so he breaks with the Communists. Later he came to his theories of the Asian mode of production and the hydraulic state. Theories of Witfogel became to some extent the product of his life and disappointment in Bolshevism.

But even if Witfogel for a 100% a bad person, a supporter of all the worst on earth, what's the difference? I'm not saying that he was a good guy or that his political calls were good. I say just that his scientific theories were interesting. He is one of the most famous researchers of Asia, and his scientific doctrine is interesting.

(By the way, Marx relied on the ideas of the millionaire and stock-market player Ricardo, and on the ideas of the Prussian reactionary and nationalist Hegel )

2. "Commissarocracy"

Link :
I find a major contradiction in AfP and Meerovs views. Ok you are both arguing that the Bolsheviks were the bad guys because they took power away from the working class (and on this latter point I would agree with you) but I am assuming that means you accept that there was a working class revolution to start with.
So, after the revolution, the Bolsheviks took power away from the class. What did they do with it is the question then? There is for me a major differentiation to be made between the Bolsheviks prior to 1917 and the Stalinist regime.
Meerov seems to be arguing that they introduced an Asiatic Mode of Production ie Stalin’s regime was a new ruling class that managed to return history to a previous state of being. This was not the dark ages when everything fell apart but a new construct created by Stalinism. How is such a thing possible?

The Russian revolution began in February-March 1917. The first Soviets were created by workers of large factories in the same time as the Provisional Government.

At the same time, various forms of self-organization of workers and communitarian peasantry developed throughout the country (village councils, factory committees, house committees, soldier committees, cooperatives, workers' unions, engineers, teachers).

In October 1917, the Bolshevik party was able to win over most of the workers and soldiers who were dissatisfied with the economic difficulties and the continuation of the imperialist war. Relying on this part of the working class and the soldiers, the Bolsheviks were able to initiate a series of uprisings, shift the Provisional government and create their own government.

Although officially this movement in October-November 1917 took place under the slogan "All power to the Soviets", in practice, already in December, the influence of the Bolshevik central government began to grow (Council of People's Commissars - "Sovnarkom"). It dismisses the revolutionary armed detachments and creates centralized ministries and power structures, which are subordinate directly to the new government and to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks: the Cheka, then the Red Army and GLAVKi (ministries). In all these structures, former tsarist officials and officers are absolutely dominant (with the exception of the Cheka).The Bolsheviks ruled the new-old departments only with the help of small cells (party groups), which they were able to introduce into the tsarist ministries, and these party cells were subordinate to the Central Committee. An alliance appears between the old tsarist bureaucracy and the new red bureaucracy. In 1918-1921, this alliance destroyed the Soviets (leaving only a shell from them) creates a totalitarian bureaucraсy, destroys elections, bans any criticism and opposition to the party, nationalizes all industry and introduces a serf system (workers of Petrograd in 1921 organize strikes demanding "detach them with their wives and children from the factories " - to give tham wrights change the work of their own will - Read the collection of documents "St. Petersburg Workers and Dictatorship of the Proletariat" of St. Petersburg 2000. ).

The councils of workers' deputies were, as the leader of the left SR Maria Spiridonova wrote, a gigantic "laboratory", where the workers ’ assamblears could choose certain people, individuals, parties and groups, and change them at any time.

The alliance of the tsarist bureaucracy and the Bolshevik bureaucracy destroy this laboratory in 1918, after workers outraged by the economic crisis began to recall the Bolshevik deputies.

It was Lenin who created the total system of state exploitation and a serf system that oppressed the workers.

Of course it was the Asian system, because the workers in 1919 - 1921 became slaves or serfs attached to factories, having ceased to be hired workers. True, after riots and strikes, slavery was weakened in 1922. Stalin again introduced these measures against the workers in 1940.

This system exacerbated certain features of the royal autocracy (samoderjavie). The revolutionary workers called it at that time the "Commissarocracy" (komissaroderjavie).

I do not know why you are paying so much attention to Stalin here. The name of the main counter-revolutionary in Russia, who created a new\old system of exploitation - Vladimir Lenin.

Tomorrow I will try to answer questions about the Asian mode of production.

I responded to your use of Wittfogel because you called him a marxist. But he was a stalinist and whether he become critical of USSR or not, he is a bourgeois politician and therefore I do not trust him to make a clear class analysis of the situation. I think it is important to use genuine revolutionaries to help our analyses and not rely on leftist bourgeois ideas from stalinism or social democracy or trotskyist ideologues. This is why I took up this point although yes I would use them for more empirical facts. I look forward to your responses to my other arguments.

I do not think that Vitfogel remained Stalinist, officially he was against the USSR and Stalin. And I separate scientific knowledge and analysis from moral and political ideas. The scientist's assessments and analysis can be deep, while his political views are terrifying.

Many people are too dependent on passions and personal experience and some psychological transference when it comes to some personalities, and in this they can be less interesting and objective as in the science. I'm afraid Sigmund Freud and his like-minded people also influenced me here;)

Thank you, Ugg, English is not my native language and it is difficult for me to write on it. I will try to briefly answer only a few questions. Later I will try to answer the others.

Ugg,
Do you feel he has any other useful insights? It's both inspiring and disheartening to learn that the scale of the opposition to the Bolsheviks compared to that of the Revolution itself because it means that the masses were doing everything right but still were unable to stop what was happening.

Not certainly in that way. When in 1918 a gigantic wave of indignation of workers rose up against the Bolsheviks, when the workers began to form an alternative system of Soviets ("Assemblies of commissioner factories and plants"), many Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and others decided that this wave would soon wash away the Bolsheviks. However, they did not take into account several factors.

1) Unemployment and non-payment of wages drove workers out of the revolutionary industrial centers, Moscow and Petrograd. People moved to the village or wandered around the country in search of work. By the summer of 1918, the number of the working class in Petrograd had fallen by from 400 to 200 thousand. This led to the erosion of labor collectives where anti-Bolshevik ideological-political crystallization began.

2) The working masses were weakened by hunger in 1918. Many did not have enough food. People just lost physical strength and fell ill with various diseases.

3) Burnout syndrome. The workers were shocked by the failure of two love stories. In March 1917, they fell in love with the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, in September-October 1917, the workers fell in love with the Bolsheviks and brought them to power during the uprising. The disappointment was terrible. This led many workers to apathy.

4) Conflict within the working class. The movement against the Bolsheviks in 1918 was grouped around the working intelligentsia of the factory, which realized (to some extent) their group corporate interests. "Assemblies of commissioner factories and plants" depended on the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, but overwhelmingly said that the workers should no longer follow the parties, that the workers should not be the tools of the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks, but should defend their class interests. I think that the German-Dutch Communists of the Soviets would greatly appreciate this. But some workers did not like the working intelligentsia, which created the core of the protest movement.

5) In addition, it is possible that the confrontation with the white armies in 1919-1920 inspired some workers during this period that the Bolsheviks are the lesser evil. But this factor does not explain the defeat of the working class in 1918 and in 1921.

But the main reason for the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik labor movement of 1918-1921 was that the working class was weakened and scattered around the country due to a combination of unemployment and hunger.

Link and AnythingForProximity i I also comment here on your discussion on the confrontation of the working class and Bolshevism.

I do not remember ... And to whom should I send, to what address?

That's your claim (I only argued that they were not bourgeois), but yeah, there are problems with saying that they were. First, if we are aiming for a Marxist analysis, a class must be defined by its relationship to the means of production, and it's not immediately obvious that the Soviet bureaucracy satisfied that criterion. Overseers, managers and bureaucrats have been a constant feature of all class societies – slavery, feudalism, capitalism – but in none of them did they constitute a distinct class of their own, so it's unclear why the USSR should have been different in this respect. Again, saying that the Bolsheviks were not a class as such, just the representatives of one, gets around this issue but introduces others. Second, as pointed out by van der Linden, if the Soviet bureaucracy was a class, then it was a class that only constituted itself after it came to power – which flies in the face of not just Marxism but basic logic.

1. I do not think that there is a big difference between ownership and control. An American researcher, economist John Gilbraith showed that managers, at least the top management of large corporations, are part of the social stratum that owns property.
I add that the Top management makes decisions about investments, manages the labor process, decides on the issue of dismissals and hiring, and the salaries of top management are comparable to the income of large businesses and can be tens of millions of dollars. I do not think that it is correct to absolutize nominal (formal) ownership of property. For ex. formally, according to the USSR constitution, the property was owned by the people of the USSR, and in fact, it was owned by the Pirdamid of officials, above all, its elite, who possessed gigantic power over production and people.

2. The bureaucracy of the USSR was originally a product of the merger of the Bolshevik leaders and their party factions with a huge layer of tsarist officials. Although officially this movement in October-November 1917 took place under the slogan "All power to the Soviets", in practice, already in December, the influence of the Bolshevik central government began to grow (Council of People's Commissars - "Sovnarkom"). It dismisses the revolutionary armed detachments and creates centralized ministries and power structures, which are subordinate directly to the new government and to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks: the Cheka, then the Red Army and GLAVKi (ministries). In all these structures, former tsarist officials and officers are absolutely dominant (with the exception of the Cheka).The Bolsheviks ruled the new-old departments only with the help of small cells (party groups), which they were able to introduce into the tsarist ministries, and these party cells were subordinate to the Central Committee. An alliance appears between the old tsarist bureaucracy and the new red bureaucracy. In 1918-1921, this alliance destroyed the Soviets (leaving only a shell from them) creates a totalitarian bureaucraсy, destroys elections, bans any criticism and opposition to the party, nationalizes all industry and introduces a serf system (workers of Petrograd in 1921 organize strikes demanding "detach them with their wives and children from the factories " - to give tham wrights change the work of their own will - Read the collection of documents "St. Petersburg Workers and Dictatorship of the Proletariat" of St. Petersburg 2000. ).

3. During Stalin's time, the royal bureaucracy and the part of the old lenin's bureaucracy was largely destroyed and replaced by new bureaucrats loyal to Stalin.

Link:
Things get even more complicated later on as capitalism takes over again when ‘the KGB and party bureaucrats privatised and looted the old system and because new old bosses’ (from Meerovs first post on this thread). Somehow then an Asiatic mode of production has been converted into capitalism by members of the Asiatic bureaucracy.
I would put it this way. If the state owns and manages the means of production and exploits the working class then the bureaucracy is either the whole or part of the ruling class. What is the problem with this?

The process of the collapse of the USSR was connected with the fact that the numerous middle layers of bureaucracy, primarily the leadership of individual economic departments and the leadership of the Republics that were part of the USSR, refused to obey the top management (the Central Committee of the Party and the Political Bureau). You must understand that the Central Committee was the true master of the country, to the extent that within the Central Committee there were departments that duplicated the work of all the ministries and economic departments! Local party and state-economic leaders left the subordination of top management (Central Committee and Political Bureau), were able to divide USSR into separate states and privatize part of the economies of these new countries. Then they became independent politicians and businessmen and enrich themselves uncontrollably.

Noah Fence
Meerov, what admin did you message? I know they’ve been a bit slow on the uptake lately as a friend had to put in a message to a few different ones before eventually getting a response.

This one https://libcom.org/user/1
Todey i have done it second time!

AnythingForProximity
There's a whole bunch of them. Your reasoning is circular, since by using categories like "exploitation" and "working class", you're presupposing what you're trying to prove. Moreover, even if you showed that the Soviet bureaucracy constituted a ruling class, that would not be enough to prove that the USSR was capitalist; ruling classes that appropriated the social surplus product for themselves also existed in pre-capitalist modes of production. If you are going to simultaneously maintain that (1) the USSR was capitalist and that (2) the bureaucracy was the ruling class there, you have to prove that the bureaucracy turned into a new bourgeoisie.

Very accurate! The bureaucracy in the USSR was the ruling class. I agree with that. But exploitation exists not only under capitalism. The bureaucracy appropriated the products of labor and acted as the force that controlled the process of labor and the distribution of products. However, we can find these characteristics in pre-capitalist exploitative systems, primarily in countries with the Asian mode of production. It was there, in contrast to the ancient or feudal society, that the state led the labor process, speaking in the role of manager and engineer. At the same time, the state appropriated the results of labor and actively controlled the distribution.

First, even if we assume that capitalism in 1917 was a world system, this does not mean that all regions of the world lived under capitalism. 90% of the population of Russia, communal peasants lived in an archaic community that had an ancient pre-capitalist origin, and their economy was partly (but not completely) natural. On the other hand, the Russian state was the leading force and engine of the economy, which owned huge statу enterprises.

Incidentally, Karl Marx, in his preface to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, allowed the possibility of a direct transition from the Russian community to communism, without going through capitalism. Anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries thought about the same, although they understood communism or socialism differently than Marx.

Why, then, cannot it be assumed that Russia could develop alternatively, creating a different non-capitalist system based on the exploitation of slave workers? ?

The second. The society in which I was born and lived in the USSR had nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism is based on three principles - private property (initiative), market relations and hired labor. None of this was in my country.

A private initiative was pursued by the police. State-owned enterprises were not private, they never went bankrupt, because they received subsidies from the treasury and their superiors lived in freebies, blocking the introduction of new technologies. On the other hand, state-owned enterprises could produce an inconceivable amount of defective products, because they did not sell their goods, but transferred them to other state-owned companies or retail chains there and then the state ordered it at prices which established by the state also.

Market relations were poorly developed, and the state led the production, making plans for the whole country, and centrally distributed the produced things.

I am not sure that the workers in a Bolshevik country can be considered "hired". Workers were attached to factory in 1919-1921 and 1940-1956 and did not have the right to change jobs (this is more than a quarter of the total time of the Bolshevik Russia). There was a registration, people were attached to their cities and housing and could not just get housing and work in another city throughout almost the entire history of the USSR. The state forcibly sent students to different jobs after graduation from universities. The state provided a different level of food supply for workers depending on their place of residence. For example, Moscow was supplied better than most regions of Russia. Etc.

First of all, I would like to thank all the participants in the discussion. I am very happy to see such a discussion in this forum. I believe that such discussions are necessary on all important issues of the past, present and future, from the Russian or Spanish revolution to modern Yellow vests in France. This is a real debate, not the argument that one of the participants was politically incorrect.

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Link, I see no reason why I should follow Marx's logic entirely. I don't think that's the Bible. However, I don't think Marx is as straightforward as you draw it.

Marx saw the majority of the Russian population (about 60-70%) lives in non-capitalist communes with public ownership of land and semi-subsistence farming. And he allowed with many reservations the possibility of a direct transition from the world of these communes to socialism, without capitalism.

Many Russian socialists, such as anarchists and socialists-revolutionaryies, thought the same. Their economists argued in the early 20th century that 100 million Russian peasants had not yet become capitalists or wage labourers, but lived in communities of producers linked by collective ownership of land and semi-subsistence farming (semi-natural economy). Russian economist Chayanov wrote that the Russian community has not yet become capitalist. Moreover, the state imposed huge taxes on this community, sucking out of it the means for industrialization (which was carried out through the development of not only private but also public industry).

Moreover. Today we know that during the civil war of 1918-1921 there was a sharp transition of the community to subsistence farming, as the market was destroyed. Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the CheKa and, at the same time, the VSNH (the main Directorate, which led the economy of the USSR), wrote that by 1921 the Russian community had become a group of equal people, and class differences were "leveled" there.

Yes, there was a large industry in Tsarist Russia. But you have to remember that part of this industry was statist and that the working class was no more than 3-4% of the population (peasants were about 80-90%).

And that's what I'm saying. Even if Marx believed that Russia could develop non-linearly from the community directly to communism, why can't we assume the possibility of Russia's transition in the 20th century to a non-capitalist system of exploitation, many features of which it possessed before the revolution? Moreover, the new ruling class of the USSR was originally a mixture of tsarist officials and Bolshevik party members.