Idk, as a socialist I look at it as a broadly genuine effort to create socialism that came before its time in a fairly unfavorable place which then failed precisely because the conditions weren’t really favorable plus there were no real historical antecedents so by definition they didn’t really know what they were doing.
It merits study, I don’t hate everything I see from the USSR (free healthcare, free higher education, heavily subsidized rents, and a policy of full employment don’t all seem like bad things) but more look to it as a historical example and less as a model.
In some ways I think it could be compared to the French revolution – it’s not that the French Revolution and its collapse into Bonapartism proved that abolishing feudalism and establishing a freer social order was fundamentally impossible, it just proved that the conditions weren’t really in place in France in the 1790’s.
Then of course the USSR heavily influenced most other revolutions that came after it during the 20th century so now we have mountains of data about how that specific approach just doesn’t seem to be very effective.
This is generally the thought process that Marxists have. The USSR definitely wasn’t perfect, but it is the first real example that the proletariat was capable of uniting and other throwing the capitalist system. The USSR is fantastic to study to try and determine why it failed. Similarly China is a great resource to study to understand how capitalism can be re-established from within the party.
Most modern communist groups actively engaging in an attempt at revolution were inspired by the Chinese revolution and the cultural revolution that came after it, but none of them are trying to recreate the USSR or China because as we can clearly see those states failed to maintain a socialist character.
Idk, as a socialist I look at it as a broadly genuine effort to create socialism that came before its time in a fairly unfavorable place which then failed precisely because the conditions weren’t really favorable plus there were no real historical antecedents so by definition they didn’t really know what they were doing.
It merits study, I don’t hate everything I see from the USSR (free healthcare, free higher education, heavily subsidized rents, and a policy of full employment don’t all seem like bad things) but more look to it as a historical example and less as a model.
In some ways I think it could be compared to the French revolution – it’s not that the French Revolution and its collapse into Bonapartism proved that abolishing feudalism and establishing a freer social order was fundamentally impossible, it just proved that the conditions weren’t really in place in France in the 1790’s.
Then of course the USSR heavily influenced most other revolutions that came after it during the 20th century so now we have mountains of data about how that specific approach just doesn’t seem to be very effective.
This is generally the thought process that Marxists have. The USSR definitely wasn’t perfect, but it is the first real example that the proletariat was capable of uniting and other throwing the capitalist system. The USSR is fantastic to study to try and determine why it failed. Similarly China is a great resource to study to understand how capitalism can be re-established from within the party.
Most modern communist groups actively engaging in an attempt at revolution were inspired by the Chinese revolution and the cultural revolution that came after it, but none of them are trying to recreate the USSR or China because as we can clearly see those states failed to maintain a socialist character.