Facing the Facts in Russia (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Facing the Facts in Russia 
There's an old saying that “the daughter of Time is Truth”. In Russia at last we have indications that people are beginning to discover the truth that capitalism exists in that country as much as in the rest of the world.

Granted it’s a rather different form of capitalism, without Stock Exchanges. State capitalism is the term often used for the type of capitalism existing in Russia and in most other “developing nations”. In the Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist we have recorded in recent years several instances of Russian dissenters whose conclusion is that Russia is a state-capitalist country.

"Our system is state capitalism . . ."
Two underground leaflets from Moscow were reproduced in the Socialist Standard in January and March 1973.

Both said that not Socialism but state capitalism was the system in Russia (though the solution was said to be the establishment of a “social democratic” party). The present ruling class in Russia maintains dictatorial control of the State apparatus and thus the struggle for democratic “rights” is bound to be the form which protests take. What should be understood is that the appearance of a reform or opposition party, failing to have Socialism as its objective, would only further the interests of some new or rising capitalist group.

We are hardly surprised to find that Solzhenitsyn, the darling of the Liberal establishment, takes the Kremlin line (Western Socialist, No. 5, 1974). That is to say, he takes the line that Russia is a socialist country. An awful abuse of what Socialism really means. By labelling Russia’s tyrants “socialists”, he joins the Tories and their like who see the whole world as a Wild-West all-action movie, goodies versus baddies, with “socialism” cast in the role of villain.

After Solzhenitsyn’s superficial prejudice, it is refreshing to read Sakharov’s view (Time, Aug. 4, ’75). Sakharov is active as a champion of the civil rights movement and a liberal, not a revolutionary. He describes himself as “a confirmed evolutionist and a reformist”, from which we may infer that he sees the struggle for Socialism as not important at the present time. In the meantime there are lots of things to put right, like putting Sellotape on the ceiling when the problem is caused by slates falling off the roof and letting the weather in.

But he does start out with something which is worth noting:

 Contemporary Soviet society is based on state capitalism, a total party-government monopoly over economy, culture, ideology and the other basic spheres of life. In periods of crisis, such a system engenders rule by terror; in quieter periods, it engenders the dominance of bungling bureaucracy, mediocrity, apathy and dissipation among the people, and the permanent militarization of our economy . . . Much of our financial resources provide a high standard of living for the privileged strata of society that Djilas called the “new class”. Every day radio loudspeakers tell the ordinary Soviet citizen that he is the master of his country, but he knows perfectly well that the real masters are “the bosses” who, morning and evening, are whisked along quiet, closed-off streets in their armoured limousines.

The Dog-Meat Society
For decades now Socialists have been declaring that Russia is a capitalist (or “state”-capitalist) country, with wage-workers exploited just as much as those in this country. Indeed, if the evidence of my own eyes is anything to go by, the Russian workers are worse off than those here. A view which Sakharov appears to share:

  You (in the West) do not have your backs to the wall; even if you reduced your standard of living to one-fifth of what it is, you would still be better off than people in the world’s wealthiest socialist country. Workers in the Soviet Union have the right neither to strike nor to appeal to higher authorities.
  The average apartment building in this country resembles a low-income housing project in America, though ours has fewer conveniences and is more crowded. In most parts of the country one has to stand in line for hours to get meat, and even then it is sometimes not fit for a dog.

I seem to have heard that bit about dog-meat somewhere else. A Roman Catholic Community Services worker in Los Angeles was quoted in the Western Socialist (No. 3, 1975) as saying: “Our people have so little, they don’t have the money to buy dog-food. Dog-food would be a luxury.”

So the dictators of the Kremlin cause workers to queue for offal, and the world’s wealthiest and best- fed state, a so-called democracy, reduces some of its workers to the degraded and half-starved state where even dog-food would be a luxury. And they actually expect these same workers to rise up patriotically to defend their way of life. To fight a war to defend dog-meat — ye gods!

At last we have evidence lasting over a period of years that some people in Russia have begun to realize that they are not in a socialist society, only in a state capitalist one, and at the same time they are realizing increasingly the very real drawbacks to state capitalism. Some of these are mentioned by Sakharov, such as corruption and inefficiency among managers, indifference, apathy and appalling conditions for workers, and wasteful military expenditure. He did not mention, although others have done so, the lack of flexibility in responding to market demands.

The Need for Change
Increasingly the Russian government has had to allow foreign trade to take a key rôle in the economy. Russia exports and imports on a very large scale now, and not only wheat. The result is that the Russian economy must become adapted to the ups and downs of world trade cycles. The Iron Curtain is in tatters: détente has taken over.

With economic change there will have to be political change. Mostly the dissenters see this in terms of progressing forward to private enterprise capitalism: after all, if Western free enterprise is so good at turning out cars, freezers and the tellypop, it can’t be as bad as Lenin thought, can it? There have been indications and rumours of demands for a multi-party system, for more press freedom, the right to strike, shorter hours, the right to demonstrate, and many other civil rights, all of which indicate the development of resentment against the regime.

At present most of the demands seem to be for reform as an end in itself. In time we are confident that Socialist understanding will develop, as it has done elsewhere. Why are we so confident, you ask? After all, the Socialist movement even in Britain and America is still very small and many workers reject our message.

Our answer is that socialist understanding derives from the experienced, known facts of capitalist life; from the fact that you are living in that certain sort of society where everything you make belongs to “them”, where all the housing is controlled by “them”, where food and all other necessities can only be bought from “them”, where you struggle to hold down your jobs — tedious, mindless, monotonous, maddening, boring chores, but at least still receive your meal-tickets — where you see the youngsters drift to the cities — who wants to hoe turnips on Cold Comfort Kolkhoz anyway?, where you queue wearily while you know that “they” live comfortably and what’s more are regarded with awe and respect, or perhaps fear, by all their subordinates.

“They” are the surplus-value eaters. Although they have no legal title to ownership of factories, farms or mines, nevertheless they control everything produced by you and your like.

Worm's Eye View

For the worker the state-capitalist system works very like private-enterprise capitalism. The working class are “free”: we own no land and no tools, so we are free to sell our labour-power or put it another way, we absolutely have to sell our labour-power if we want to go on living. Those who control the factories also control what we produce while working at the boss-class’s machinery with the boss-class’s raw materials. In modern conditions, with the high productivity achieved by having large numbers of people working together and by the use of power-driven machinery, we are capable of producing the value of our pay-packets many times over in the course of the week. The difference between what we produce and what we get paid (surplus-value) is used by the boss-class for their own purposes — more capital, profits including puffed-up directors’ salaries, distribution costs including advertizing and market research, limousines, law ’n' order and defence estimates, to name but a few

This system operates all over the world. It is nothing but exploitation. The quest for profits has turned the world into such a dreadful place that the very word civilization stinks. “Where there’s muck there’s brass” can be turned on its head to make better sense: "where there’s brass there’s muck”. In other words, profits pollute. We say this system only lasts because most people are contented with it and continue to go on voting for the likes of “them” to run our lives.

We say democracy can be used in our interests, to get rid of the whole profits and prices system, West or East. We say, the dog-meat system stinks and the only way out is the Socialist way.

Charmian Skelton

About Solzhenitsyn (1974)

Solzhenitsyn with Heinrich Böll in West Germany, 1974

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

So Solzhenitsyn is now able to voice his views openly. It is possible, for the first time, to see how he measures up to the problems not merely of writers in Russia, but of all mankind. What can this Nobel Prize winner tell us?

Before weighing in with criticisms of his manifesto (Sunday Times, March 3), we must make it clear, first, that we have always opposed all forms of censorship, and secondly, that in criticising his ideas we are in no way defending the Kremlinite creed, to which we have consistently expressed our hostility. But however sympathetic we may be to one who has struggled successfully and has made his views heard in spite of all the Soviet censorship and suppression machine, we cannot applaud his political views.

We should like to have greeted him as a world citizen, an internationalist not a nationalist. But his views are based on an insular patriotism and Russian Orthodox Christianity. He believes in the myth of the “national interest”: indeed he bases his argument against a Russian war with China, not on the view that working-class interests are not at stake, but simply on the calculation that Russia could not win such a war and therefore it would be against Russia’s “national interest”.

Although apparently a fervent Leninist when he started his prison career, he is now a devout believer in Orthodox Christianity. If this is the result of incarceration in those inhuman prisons and labour-camps, it would seem to be an effective practical demonstration of the truth of Marx’s words:

  Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

On War and the Environment
In his manifesto Solzhenitsyn argues on two issues of the day. The first is the prospect of a Sino-Soviet war: he proposes that, since in his view ideology is the main cause of friction, the Russian government should abandon its ideology in the “national interest”. He seems to believe that, if this were done, there would be peace with China.

What the author of August 1914 should know is that nowhere can one find evidence of a war being fought solely because of ideology. Dogs may dislike each other’s colour or breed, but when they fight it is over a bone, or a bitch. Humans likewise don’t fight over creeds, but over markets and minerals, ports and provinces.

Solzhenitsyn’s second argument is not original and he names his sources — the Club of Rome and the Teilhard de Chardin Society. He has adopted their doomsday environmentalism, arguing against pollution and skyscraper cities and for a return to 2-storey houses and horse-transport. He sees a no-growth economy as the solution to the problems of mineral shortages, population pressures and pollution.

His argument, like that of other doomsday writers, takes no account of any possible re-structuring of society. Their computers are never programmed to tell us how world Socialism, with production for use not for profit, would employ the earth’s resources. Like the Club of Rome, Solzhenitsyn assumes that production for profit will go on for ever, and then argues that this system must be reformed to prevent it from destroying mankind’s habitat. Better surely to argue for an end to capitalism, since it is a system which generates waste and seeks constantly to increase the quantity of materials processed, year by year.

Solecisms Versus Marx
But when we come to his views on “ideology” it is plain that Solzhenitsyn has no knowledge of what Marxist theory really is. He has accepted the lies of the Kremlinites and so presents us with a distorted caricature of Marxism, a series of Aunt Sallys which he passionately shoots down in flames.

From this great sage, we learn that Marxism, “a primitive, superficial economic theory . . . declared that only the worker creates value and failed to take into account the contribution of either organizers, engineers, transport or market systems.” To start with, he ignores the fact that Marxist theory puts engineers and transport workers in the working class: they all have a living to earn, they all have to sell their labour-power. Also that in reckoning the value of a commodity, we take into account the wear and tear on machinery, the value of all raw materials used in manufacture and also any socially necessary labour time used in research and development (e.g. by engineers, organizers etc.)

The Marxist theory of value asserts simply that human labour is the sole source of value. But there is a lot more to Marxist economic theory than this basic proposition: to start with there are three volumes of Capital, and it is doubtful if even the sage Solzhenitsyn would describe them as “superficial”.

His other attacks on Marxism are similarly wide of the mark. Most of all he goes wrong on the question of revolution. According to him, Marxism “was mistaken through and through in its prediction that socialists could only come to power by an armed uprising.” Evidently Solzhenitsyn’s education in ideology did not include what Engels wrote on this subject:

  The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past.

Indeed Engels argued that for a complete transformation of society to be undertaken successfully, it must be on the basis of full participation and the support of the mass of the community.

Again, according to Solzhenitsyn, Marxism is wrong in stating that the Socialist movement will come to the fore in advanced and highly developed countries first. We have only to use our eyes, to look at countries such as Russia which claimed to be “socialist” and see that this vaunted pseudo-socialism is merely a nasty form of capitalism. In 1917 the S.P.G.B. was pointing to Russia’s backwardness as an indication that the revolution could only bring about an acceleration of capitalist development. Now in 1974 Solzhenitsyn describes how Russian technology has copied Western technology, how pollution increases due to greed for profits and how the people are oppressed by poverty:

  In practice, a man’s wage-level ought to be such that whether he has a family of two or even four children, the woman does not need to earn a separate pay-packet and does not need to support her family financially on top of all her other toils and troubles.

Russia is just as much a capitalist country as America or Britain, Cuba or Kenya. Everywhere the capitalist “mode of production” prevails: we see men and women who possess no land, no tools, nothing, who are driven by fear of want to sell their labour-power by the week or the month, mortgaging their lives in instalments so as to survive till the next pay-day. We see them producing goods galore, “an immense accumulation of commodities”, all their own work, yet they remain unable to afford most of what they need. We see human toil and human skills diverted from man’s real needs — food, clothing, health, housing, culture — to pander to the aristocracy of Big Business, the wasteful war-machine, the accountants, the luxury resorts, and so on.

This is what Marxists oppose: a worldwide system of exploitation of the many by, and for the benefit of, the few. A system which combines wanton waste with wasteful want. Shame it is that Solzhenitsyn has failed to join the movement to end it and has instead sided with those who say that authoritarianism can be made tolerable by reform. He is indeed one of those who “wear their chains with decency”.

Charmian Skelton

Logic, Truth and Politics (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socrates taught that all men desire the truth. If they do not, it is because they do not know the truth; once it is told to them, their eyes are opened and they will naturally pursue it.

The briefest look at history and current events makes plain that Socrates was wrong. In all kinds of situations men learn the truth and then act as if it were an unfounded rumour. Indeed, the simple dicta about truth are turned by everyday experience into untruths themselves: “honesty is the best policy” (well, IS it?) and “the unrighteous never prosper” (manifestly, they do). Three public figures have recently said this should not be so, and that truth should prevail in politics. Because most readers of their statements would agree, and at the same time not dream of acting accordingly, it is worth examining what they said to see where the fallacy is.

On 11th March The Times published an article by Enoch Powell on why he did not stand in the General Election. He wrote:

. . . the assumption so widely, even unquestioningly prevalent now, that any correspondence between the proclaimed intentions and policies of political parties and their actions in office cannot, and perhaps even should not, be expected, is certainly unhealthy; for if accepted, it reduces elections and Parliament to a charade.

Powell instanced his own Conservative Party in 1972 introducing a wage-control policy “which at the 1970 election it renounced and repudiated in the most thorough manner”, and pointed out that this required Conservative candidates to be liars:

What is more, it was universally expected (so far as I could tell) that come an election, the same member would find no problem in presenting himself to the electors as the official candidate of a party seeking support and approval for the actual policies he had consistently denounced.

It seems strange that Powell in the 1974 election supported Labour, whose policies he had “consistently denounced”; and who did exactly the same thing in reverse, introducing a wage-control policy in 1966 and then repudiating it. Powell’s support was given because of one over-riding reason, the belief that a Labour government would get Britain out of the Common Market. But this highlights the whole question of political practicality, and why leaders eat their words. Necessity drives. One of the most famous lies of modern times was put down to a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, in 1949 when he affirmed repeatedly that the government was not going to devalue the pound — right up to the moment when the government did so. The pious Cripps, of whom Churchill said “there but for the grace of God goes God”, simply did not believe it would be done and was left with the consequences of his own utterances.

Looking for an Honest Man

A different version of Powell’s plaint was given in an article on Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, by the Financial Times Ottawa correspondent on 4th January. Trudeau, it was said, had “undergone a change in his thinking about politics”:

He said that he used to think it would be sufficient to put ‘a reasonable proposition to a person for that person to look at it reasonably, without passion’. He had now learned that this is not true. Nine-tenths of politics . . . appeals to emotions rather than to reason. He said he was sorry about that, but had accepted it as a way of life.

The article also described how Trudeau’s minority Liberal government responded to policies which might have affronted their principles but were successful:

The Tories were astounded at how far Mr. Trudeau had gone . . . Some Liberals concede privately that the PM went further than they would have gone, but they are not complaining. They won the confidence vote . . .

The third condemnation was made by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a statement to foreign journalists before he left Russia. Answering the question “How can your compatriots and youth show their support for you?” he said:

Everyone must decisively stop co-operating with the lie everywhere he sees it himself-: where they force him to speak, write, quote or sign, or even simply to vote or even to read.
  In our country the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state.
  In breaking with the lie, we are performing a moral act, not a political one and not one that can be punished by criminal law — but an act that would immediately have an effect on our way of life.

(The Times, 22nd January)

The attack on Russian state-capitalist politics may be accurate, but the inference here and elsewhere in Solzhenitsyn’s speech that “truth” holds sway in western countries is very naive. Possibly the foreign journalists he addressed included some whose business in the last war was to show Russia as a land of freedom and warm hearts, Russia then being an ally against Germany. And there are those who think Solzhenitsyn (like Pasternak, who was awarded a Nobel Prize) is a not-much-more-than-mediocre novelist being declared a “great” one for propagandist purposes. What then of truth and lies?

It is easy to assume that irrationality and cynicism rule the world and this is what man is like. Further examples could fill many pages. The politicians who, on retirement, publish memoirs revealing “all” (yes, I knew MacDonald was a fraud — I was his right-hand man). The getting young men to die horribly for “peace and honour” when only trade and profits at at stake. The idiotic religious beliefs still clogging people’s minds (talking of truth, the Catholic Truth Society and the Protestant Truth Society spend most of their lives calling each other liars, and both do the same to other religious “truths”). The fact that most people want to hear not what is logical but what is gratifying.

Making Sense

But in fact it is rational. The talk about truth is equally misleading as the lies and distortions. It can be said that all truths are relative — this view is what separates the scientist from the religious philosopher who sees them as absolute and eternal. However, despite their lofty language it is the relative, practical view which Powell, Trudeau and Solzhenitsyn are expounding. They want "truths” which will lead, respectively, to the Conservative Party adopting different policies; to the Canadian Liberals getting firmer support; and to the overthrow of the regime in Russia. Their policies are going to be continued anyway, and it is justification on logical or moral grounds that is being sought.

What is pursued in a class-divided society is not truth or reason, but interests. If that is understood, the prevarications and sleights-of-hand are not unnecessary departures but rational actions towards certain ends. It is commonly — and mistakenly — believed that politicians know the truth about the economy and what is going on, and choose not to reveal it or use it to feather their own nests: most people will have read into Enoch Powell’s statement that we need honest men in Parliament.

That is altogether irrelevant. Some politicians are Horatio Bottomleys, but there is no substantial difference between their running of capitalism and that of others whose love of fair play is a byword. Of course there have been honest politicians. At least one leader of the Communist Party has had the reputation of being personally a thoroughly decent fellow — but he told the same whopping and self-contradictory lies as if he had been a rogue.

The contrary statement “all men are liars” is as meaningless as Socrates’ axiom that they seek the truth. Statements about the nature of “all men” — or individual “man” — see human beings stripped of their social conditioning and motivation. As Marx pointed out:

Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

(Grundrisse, p. 265)

Within those relations the individuals rationally follow their interests as members of a particular class. It is Powell, Trudeau and Solzhenitsyn who depart from rationality in their statements by proposing that it can be otherwise. Powell’s article says he found that to ask for consistency and truthfulness was “supposed a subtle and tortuous machination for self-advancement”. No doubt it can be — but what is more to the point is that it machinates to conceal the class division and class interests in society.

As for Solzhenitsyn, the belief that people will adopt policies of non-cooperation against the Russian state in the cause of truth alone is pitiful. Undoubtedly working people do and will seek change in Russia — for almost any reason but that, and specifically to defend or further their material interests. It is always possible to imagine revolts there against poor living standards and lack of democratic expression, but not as “a moral act” against the iniquity of lying.

Capitalist society is corrupt from the viewpoint of its pretended morality, dressing up property-protecting laws as high ethics and at the same time making trust between man and man improbable. This is part of the degradation it imposes: what kind of world is it that calls its own going-to-work everyday activity “the RAT race”? We have the paradox of knowing it should not be thus but having like Trudeau to accept — and practise — it “as a way of life”.

The alternative is to establish Socialism. This can and will be done when the majority decide they have had enough of capitalism. The movement for Socialism does not commit the irrationality of seeking truth; what it represents instead is the material interest of the working class. However, it is a fact that the Socialist Party does not have to tell lies to exist, because its object is not domination of one section by another but the emancipation of all mankind. And in the same way, truth will be not debated under Socialism — but will characterize all relationships in society.

Robert Barltrop

From a Russian prison camp (1972)

From the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alexander Solzhenitzyn, the Soviet novelist, is a "prophet without honour" in his own country, while in the West his magnificent novels are bestsellers and one has received the ultimate accolade: it has been made into a film.

We are not concerned here with his stature as a writer but rather with the way he adds to our sketchy knowledge of Soviet society. 

In 1945 he was sentenced to 8 years for comments he made about Stalin. His first year he spent working on construction sites around Moscow. He was then transferred to a secret research establishment—which he describes in The First Circle—but in 1950 he was transferred to a camp for political prisoners at Karaganda, in Central Asia till his life in 1953. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published in Russia in '62 in Novy Mir, but his other novels only circulated in manuscript form among friends till they reached the West,

His three novels dealing with the Soviet scene are One Day . . . , The First Circle and Cancer Ward. Respectively they describe the world of the manual worker, the intellectual and the chronically sick.

In One Day we learn how starving and frozen prisoners labour on a construction site (temperature minus 39 degrees), queue for fuel, munch their ration of dry bread and try to wangle a smoke or an easy job. As in the outside world, "you feathered your own nest as best you could". You knew that you were cheated of your rations by all who handled them. Graft was everywhere, and so were the informers. But prisoners spared their energy, needing it for survival.

In The First Circle, he describes an expensive top-secret research institute in Moscow where class enemies, saboteurs and other top scientists, imprisoned in the Thirties and Forties, enjoyed relative luxury. Yet the State is cruelly oppressive here too: the cruelty is of a different type, that's all. At Karaganda it was physical cruelty—hunger, cold and overwork; at Mavrino it is psychological—pressure to meet impossible deadlines successfully, dread of a transfer back to labour camps and fear for their persecuted families. As at Karaganda, and as in all parts of Russia, informers abound—the hallmark of a police state. 

If you ever wondered what has happened to ordinary Russians, these books will tell you much. In the two books together, Solzhenitzyn has covered a lot: from the lowest camp drudges, the wives at home on the collectives, ex-Party members who helped collectivize the countryside at gunpoint and their wives, unable to get work without disowning their husbands, right on up through the secret service rat-race to the Minister, Abakumov, and the Immortal One himself.

Finally in Cancer Ward he underlines the idea that his real subject is not a prison society but Soviet society. The whole of Russia is a sick society, all alike are sick—doctors and patients, jailers and prisoners. All Russia is a prison where every fifth man is an informer.

For all Russians, he says, life is an endless sentence without amnesty, measured by months of deprivation and humiliation. The proletarian is everywhere a prisoner of the system: we are all doing time. Some prisons are plush like Mavrino "the first circle of hell." Others are unspeakable. His explanation of the lush conditions at Mavrino applies equally to the so-called middle-class here: "It has been shown that the better sheep are fed and looked after, the higher their yield of wool."

Solzhenitzyn earned the right to claim: "I've got an advantage no spy can make me lose: what I've been through, and seen others go through, should give me a good idea of what history is about, don't you think?"

Any who doubt the existence of these camps is welcome to try to organise a Socialist Party of the Soviet Union: the only Socialists he will meet there will be in the camps, the special prisons and the psychiatric hospitals. And it is no more safe to talk in prison, than it is outside.

Charmian Skelton

Forced Labour Camps In Russia (1963)

Book Review from the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

So there were forced labour camps in Soviet Russia after all. Remember those days during Stalin's reign when this was hotly denied by the servile Communist parties, when even to suggest it was to get yourself called a liar, social fascist, reactionary imperialist, or whatever other term of abuse happened to be fashionable at the time? Well, that's all gone now that Alexander Solzhenitsyn has told his story.

His novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Gollancz, 18s.), describes the appalling conditions in one such camp, where the prisoners were made to toil over twelve hours a day outdoors despite the sub-zero temperatures of the Siberian winter, Their food rations were utterly inadequate, their clothing pitifully thin and ragged. It was indeed an achievement merely to survive from one day to the next.

This was one of many "special" camps, as they were known, set up by Stalin's Security Chief Beria (who was later executed when Khrushchev rose to power). It was organised for those serving from eight to twenty-five years under the notorious Article 58 of the old Criminal Code, but lucky was the man who served only the sentence originally imposed on him. For the authorities had a very convenient habit of adding another term quite arbitrarily, just as soon as the first one has expired. And then perhaps there was exile after that, if he was still alive.

There were many "crimes" for which he could be incarcerated. The hero—not really an inappropriate term—is sent for a ten year stretch on a trumped up charge of spying. Solzhenitsyn himself can speak with some authority here, because he spent eight years in a camp in Kazakhstan. His offence? Making remarks derogatory to Stalin.

This story first appeared in the Russian literary journal Novy Mir (New World) in November last year, and this in itself is significant of a trend in the Soviet Union since the death of Stalin. There has been a tendency to relax the iron fist somewhat, but although thousands of prisoners have been released and allowed to return home, it seems to be the first time that such writing has been allowed to be published. One might almost call it a tacit official admission of the existence of the labour camps.

But more than that, Khrushchev has striven to destroy the image of Stalin for ever, something he had to do if he was to consolidate his own power and gain support for the economic and political changes he knew must come. In the light of this, it was not surprising that Solzhenitsyn was allowed to publish his novel, although it was a sensation when it appeared and caused heated discussion and controversy throughout Russia.

Perhaps there will now be other such novels to push the lid a little further off the Soviet cauldron. Who knows, we may even get a glimpse of life in some of the camps which exist now in that unhappy country. Where else, we wonder, would the thousands of youngsters have gone after being torn from their homes and forcibly transported eastwards, following the 1956 Hungarian revolt? The Russian ruling class can be just as ruthless under Khrushchev, when their interests demand.

For the time being though, it is well to read this book and reflect on the horrors which capitalism is capable of inflicting on us. Solzhenitsyn is a promising writer who has a direct and simple, yet telling style, which even in the first few pages gives us a fair picture of the brutality and degradation of camp life. But perhaps the outstanding tragedy is that it has all been perpetrated in the name of Socialism so that, welcome though the truth now is, the job of the real Socialist is just as hard as ever.

E. T. C.

About Solzhenitsyn

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog

According to the BBC today, Solzhenitsyn "opened the eyes of the world to the evils of Soviet Communism". No, try again. "He exposed the brutality of the Stalin era." Much better. By way of contrast, the Socialist Party has held the same, consistent and correct attitude towards Russia since before Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was born!

Searching our website, you could be forgiven for thinking that we have had nothing to say about this world famous author. This is not the case as at present only a only a fraction of our published material going back to our inception in 1904 is available online. The Socialist Standard of January 1972, for example, has a piece titled 'From a Russian prison camp':

"...We are not concerned here with his stature as a writer but rather with the way he adds to our sketchy knowledge of Soviet society. In 1945 he was sentenced to 8 years for comments he made about Stalin....His three novels dealing with the Soviet scene are 'One Day', 'The First Circle' and 'Cancer Ward'. Respectively they describe the world of the manual worker, the intellectual and the chronically sick.
In 'One Day' we learn how starving and frozen prisoners labour on a construction site (temperature minus 39 degrees), queue for fuel, munch their ration of dry bread and try to wangle a smoke or an easy job. As in the outside world, "you feathered your own nest as best you could". You knew that you were cheated of your rations by all who handled them. Graft was everywhere, and so were the informers. But prisoners spared their energy, needing it for survival.
In 'The First Circle', he describes an expensive top-secret research institute in Moscow where class enemies, saboteurs and other top scientists, imprisoned in the Thirties and Forties, enjoyed relative luxury. Yet the State is cruelly oppressive here too: the cruelty is of a different type, that's all. At Karaganda it was physical cruelty - hunger, cold and overwork; at Mavrino it is psychological - pressure to meet impossible deadlines successfully, dread of a transfer back to labour camps and fear for their persecuted families. As at Karaganda, and as in all parts of Russia, informers abound - the hallmark of a police state.
If you ever wondered what has happened to ordinary Russians, these books will tell you much. In the two books together, Solzhenitzyn has covered a lot: from the lowest camp drudges, the wives at home on the collectives, ex-Party members who helped collectivize the countryside at gunpoint and their wives, unable to get work without disowning their husbands, right on up through the secret service rat-race to the Minister, Abakumov, and the Immortal One himself.
Finally in 'Cancer Ward' he underlines the idea that his real subject is not a prison society but Soviet society. The whole of Russia is a sick society, all alike are sick - doctors and patients, jailers and prisoners. All Russia is a prison where every fifth man is an informer.
For all Russians, he says, life is an endless sentence without amnesty, measured by months of deprivation and humiliation. The proletarian is everywhere a prisoner of the system: we are all doing time. Some prisons are plush like Mavrino "the first circle of hell." Others are unspeakable. His explanation of the lush conditions at Mavrino applies equally to the so-called middle-class here: "It has been shown that the better sheep are fed and looked after, the higher their yeild of wool."
Solzhenitzyn earned the right to claim: "I've got an advantage no spy can make me lose: what I've been through, and seen others go through, should give me a good idea of what history is about, don't you think?"

But notwithstanding such insights, another article - 'About Solzhenitsyn' - from the April 1974 Socialist Standard reveals some serious flaws in his thinking:

"..Before weighing in with criticisms of his manifesto (Sunday Times, March 3), we must make it clear, first, that we have always opposed all forms of censorship, and secondly, that in criticising his ideas we are no way defending the Kremlinite creed, to which we have consistently expressed our hostility. But however sympathetic we may be to one who has struggled successfully and made his views heard in spite of all the Soviet censorship and suppression machine, we cannot applaud his political views.
We should like to have greeted him as a world citizen, an internationalist, not a nationalist. But his views are based on an insular patriotism and Russian Orthodox Christianity. He believes in the myth of the "national interest": indeed he bases his argument against a Russian war with China, not on the view that working-class interests are not at stake, but simply on the calculation that Russia could not win such a war and therefore it would be against Russia's "national interest"..."

By way of conclusion, his writings did not as the BBC claim help "expose and bring down the Soviet Communist system". Since the collapse of the brutally oppressive system of state capitalism in Russia, can it be said that the life of the working class there has improved dramatically? The same question can be asked about South Africa since apartheid. Another novelist, D.H. Lawrence, gave the answer when he stated "earning a wage is a prison occupation".

Robert Stafford