the soviet intelligentsia in the late years of perestroika turned to supporting capitalism literally just to be edgy.
The soviet intelligentsia in the late years of perestroika turned to supporting capitalism literally just to be edgy
Owen Brooks
Justin Nguyen
I would identify this largely with a complete and utter failure of the soviet education system throughout the history of the USSR and in the rest of the eastern bloc.
The education system was excellent at scientific, practical industrial knowledge, note the engineering prowess of the USSR and providing a quality education for all, but it was narrow in the 'cultural dimension', effectively the humanities and notably didn't really include much in the way of Marxist education.
My dad studied political science during the last days of the People's Republic of Poland and his knowledge of marxism is very scant. From what I know from my family, there was no real political education, no education on marxism and a general ignorance about the political sphere throughout society. Soviet socialism in effect dispensed with class consciousness and depoliticised society in a very dangerous way, leaving it extremely vulnerable to external influence and making the socialist system itself vulnerable and incapable of defending itself through this.
I'm pretty convinced that one the main if not the main takeaway from the experience of October and what followed till 1991 is the primacy of ideological education, more so than the proper way to deal with agricultural reform or industrialisation, the proper way to manage economic planning, education is really the chief concern, socialism relies just as much if not more so on the intellectual wealth and well-being of its people as on their material wealth and well-being. No matter how good quality housing, education, employment, diet and opportunities in life are provided for the masses, it proved to be weak because they were not revolutionary but passive, and they were made passive by decades of flawed educational policy among other things.
All future models of socialist governance in revolutionary conditions must establish education in marxism, in materialism and the relevant understanding of history and political economy from at least the secondary level.
Camden Brooks
This is precisely what Cuba does and why it has survived throughout the years, even through the Special Period in the early 90s. Mandatory political and military education throughout the secondary and tertiary levels.
Justin Collins
Where are these excerpts from?
William Morgan
Don't know about the OP, but the quote from Lunacharsky i have from 'Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941'
Parker Fisher
As an afterthought or brief addendum: the malaise of Soviet education and the associated quality of the intelligentsia could be, in a perhaps overly vulgar way, characterised as afflicted with STEMfaggotry not entirely different from that of our contemporary western one. Is the unquestioning, uncritical advocacy of free markets and capitalism among the Soviet economists in the OP to a larger degree than that of western economists, not similar to the spread and frequency of libertarianism and like among today's students of engineering, computing and the like. Was the USSR in its last days experiencing a heightened and earlier version of the same ignorant STEMfag phenomenon?
Levi Robinson
OP here, original caps are from Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System by David Kotz and Fred Weir.
David Jenkins
ITT: Idealism
Or maybe the posh connected kids were already used to living in a hierarchical society and believed their position in the hierarchy of capitalist society would not be at the bottom either.
Economists are usually grouped as part of the humanities.
Josiah Hall
Are you saying STEMfags are reactionaries?
Angel Brown
Sankara was right again, ideological education is indispensable
Carson Miller
They weren't living that well though, Khrushchevite wage-leveling meant that for most of the 70ish years of the socialist economy, journalists, artists, authors, academics, economists, etc. were basically making as much as a manual laborer.
Ethan Reed
Really makes you think.
Luke Nelson
Really makes you think.
Hunter Foster
Even if this cartoonish view were 100% accurate, it still wouldn't explain why they so quickly and radically attached themselves to capitalism and liberal democracy.
Christopher Hernandez
They dint though, the bureaucrat class dissolved the union with a great majority against the dissolution, it was undemocratic
Connor Gonzalez
Sure but in the late years of perestroika, it was the intelligentsia who were mobilizing most actively against the government and heaping praise on capitalism and liberalism. Once they were allowed to criticize the government, they did so very enthusiastically, and from the exact angle that western liberals had for decades.
Oliver Cox
Well, its pretty obvious no? Bureaucrats and intelligentsia looked to gain by plundering the state and turning it into their personal holdings, so they weilded the state apparatus against itself and scantly made it
Robert Jones
bump for interest
Sebastian Gonzalez
wait wait wait
are you telling me the easten block fell because they DIDN'T brainwash their citizens in ideological communism
wtf
Leo Sanchez
If you want to call political education "brainwashing" then yes, it played a factor.
Christian Bennett
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Josiah Butler
Freedom of expression GO TO HELL
Alexander Wright
No, it fell apart for a multitude of different reasons. The reason I made the OP is because the specific phenomenon of the Soviet intelligentsia not only rejecting socialism outright, but embracing capitalism in its most extreme form after glasnost, seems like peculiar behavior, even for a group of people who were not exactly given full freedom of expression. The only conclusion I could draw is that they acted like brats. They embraced total counterrevolution for no other ostensible reason than it was trendy. They were meeting with western academics and getting a skewed perception of what it was like to be a writer, journalist, etc. in capitalist countries. They didn't get to see the professors struggling to make ends meet with shitty part-time teaching jobs. They didn't see the writers who worked at coffeeshops to get by. They saw an idealized version of the west and got wrapped up in its aesthetic. During the late 80's, instead of making measured critique of government policy (which was desperately needed) they pettily insulted the government and forced a culture war which did not but accelerate the breakup of the Union and reversion to capitalism.
If the USSR had done a better job in nurturing a culture of appreciation for humanities, it might not have had this issue. The intellectual class may have actually fought to support the state.
Jonathan Sanders
The appreciation for humanities as well as all other sciences was present in the 60's at least in Czechoslovakia. This was mainly manifested in a tendency to apply natural science to humanities, in order to make humanities more potent. Also books by foreign authors.
What you speak of shows a gross misunderstanding of capitalism by these people. These opportunists believed the apologetics that capitalists in the west used to justify this exploitative system. Their conception of capitalism was based on lies and was actually close to pre-capitalist economy of american colonizers. Free farmers, free craftsmen, free traders, trading on free market. They have no conception of the elementary complexity of material production that goes with first capitalist formations, or today's complex corporations where information processing goes way beyond abilities of one person.
I wish those people were at least honest in their intention of getting rich off of someone else's hard work.
Exactly, it is like beating a dead horse. A totally baseless accusation one gets sick of very quickly if one bothers to think what was the reason behind it.
Absolutely. Teachers were not good at relaying the theory in a manner that makes you able to not only know, but also understand, analyze, compare and apply the knowledge of theory. Blessed be those who understood and were able to make others understand as well. But this was not the case always apparently.