Boris Kagarlitsky, one of Russia’s leading Marxist thinkers, is currently imprisoned in a penal colony, serving a sentence of five years for his opposition to the war in Ukraine. His arrest, conviction, and detention has elicited protests from Jeremy Corbyn, former head of the British Labor Party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is the leading figure of the Left in France, and many others in the global progressive movement, including people critical of what they regard as US and NATO moves that provoked Moscow’s invasion.

Kagarlitsky has written many books of great significance, but probably his latest, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left (London: Pluto Press, 2024) is the best distillation of his thinking, which has ranged not only over developments in Russia but globally. A truly internationalist thinker, Kagarlitsky has reflected on the rise and crisis of neoliberalism in the West, the surprisingly swift emergence of fascism as a political force globally, the decline of the American empire, and ways forward for the global Left. Most of his valuable insights, however, have come from his grappling with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise and consolidation of the New Russia, and it these observations he offers in The Long Retreat that this essay will focus on.

There have been a number of works examining the rise, decline, and fall of the Soviet system but few from the angle of serious post-Soviet Marxism, at least when it comes to works translated into English. Kagarlitsky is one of the hardy band of Russian Marxists who have wrestled with providing an explanation, and in this effort he does not hesitate to draw on the insights of non-Marxists like Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and John Maynard Keynes.

Early theoretical reflections on the Soviet experiment

Writing in the 1920’s, all three were not unsympathetic though critical observers of the unfolding Soviet experience. Concerned about the long term prospects of socialism, Max Weber thought that the “premature” effort to implant socialism in Russia was bound to fail owing to the country’s low level of economic development. Schumpeter was more optimistic, seeing the socialist transformation of the country as a “wonderful laboratory,” as did the young John Maynard Keynes who saw “accidents” as an “inevitable consequence of a large-scale, risk-laden but indispensable experiment.”

It is to the judgments of contemporary Marxists, however, that Kagarlitsky pays special attention. Karl Kautsky, he says, was theoretically correct in interpreting the Soviet attempt to build socialism in a society that had not undergone capitalist transformation as not consistent with orthodox Marxist thinking. Rosa Luxemburg was more positive towards the Bolshevik experiment but considered it a tragic necessary choice. The circumstances were, from her perspective, “inauspicious for the success of socialism but for the proletariat that had already won power, the refusal to implement radical changes would turn out to be an act of ‘self-betrayal.”

Lenin was engaged in an actual, unfolding revolution, whose outcome was not predictable but would certainly be tragic if the Bolsheviks did not seize power in the political vacuum left by the collapse of the Russian monarchy and, later, exercise it ruthlessly during the Civil War. Rather than rely on the classical Marxist texts to guide him, however, Lenin, the quintessential man of action, looked to history, that is, to guidance from the Jacobins during the French Revolution. To preserve the gains of the democratic revolution, the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, had to impose dictatorship, and the Bolsheviks, facing a similar threat from the forces of counterrevolution, had no choice but to follow suit.

How the socialist future was compromised

The Bolsheviks were faced with three tasks. One was simply holding on to power. Another was bringing administrative order to a vast country. These two challenges preoccupied the Bolsheviks in the short term, but they did not forget the long-term objective of building socialism. But the short term goals of rolling back the counterrevolution and dealing with economic and social chaos left its mark on the Bolsheviks’ efforts to meet the third challenge when they finally got around to it. Stabilization necessitated recruiting allies and techniques from the military and bureaucratic machinery of the old regime, and when the Bolsheviks turned to the task of building socialism, the weight of these forces inherited from the past made itself felt. Furthermore, building the new society required technical experts to provide that “rationalization” of the economy and polity that Max Weber regarded as the inevitable direction of comprehensive projects of economic transformation, be this spreading capitalism or building socialism.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks may well have felt that the measures of administrative stabilization would be temporary. The flaw in this view, according to Kagarlitsky, is not that '‘authoritarianism fails to work but precisely the fact that such measures do work, and often, may even work very well. So well that abolishing them and overcoming their legacies as society moves on to addressing new tasks can prove extremely difficult.” While the Bolshevik Party had become a “powerful instrument of social progress,” it was transformed in the process of prioritizing administrative stabilization into something different from what it was originally:

After transforming itself from a governing party into a central link in the apparatus of administration, not just political administration but also economic and to a certain degree also military, the communist organization in the Soviet Union was not simply transformed but also changed its ideology, identifying itself more with the state. In essence, it was now a completely different organization, operating under different rules and different aims.

So did the circumstances make it difficult to avoid what eventually emerged as Stalin’s dictatorship? Kagarlitsky is silent on this but provides two suggestive quotes from Joseph Schumpeter, who was a critic —though an honest one in Kagarlitksy’s judgment —of the Bolsheviks: “Stalin followed the established practice of the age. Most national governments have acted as he did and it is pure hypocrisy to profess special indignation in his case.” Further, given that some of these authoritarian governments were dedicated to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks,

It should not be forgotten that the Communist International was founded in that atmosphere of impending life and death struggle. Many things which acquired a different meaning afterwards—such as the centralized management that has unlimited power over individual parties and deprives them of freedom of action—may then have seemed quite reasonable from that aspect.

But let us be clear. Kagarlitksy does not excuse the repression of the Stalin period, but he is not obsessed with it, like western and even some Marxist writers. He engages instead in the very Marxist exercise of placing and judging it in its historical context.

Failure of reform

The vibrant discussion of the debates of the period from 1917 to the thirties over the direction of the evolving political economy of the Soviet Union is, unfortunately, not matched by a similar comprehensive theoretical treatment of developments from the end of World War II up to the collapse of the whole system in 1992. Moreover, one has to tease out Kagarlitky’s insights from chapters that not only touch on developments in the Soviet Union and, later, Russia, but deal with broader trends in global capitalism as well.

Though the narrative is vague in parts, Kagarlitsky portrays this period as marked by unsuccessful attempts to decentralize the economy, like the reforms introduced by Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev, in order to achieve efficiency without resorting to market incentives. The reforms resulted in the proliferation of branches and sub-branches of the economy that became primarily concerned with furthering their own administrative interests and welfare. Central planners continued to exert power and authority, but rational coordination was increasingly replaced by competition to get preferential treatment from the central authorities on the part of different middle level managerial groups. As a result, increasing deficits in some goods appeared.

The distribution of these deficit goods became a prime object of lobbying by managers to meet their quotas. Commitments to deliver these deficit goods began to function as a kind of “hard currency” in place of money, with the result being the “formation of a black market, in which clandestine entrepreneurs and speculators played substantial roles.” The relatively coordinated vertical and horizontal system of the Stalin period was transformed “into a conglomerate of groups and clans, each of which had its own ties and mutual obligations to its ‘own’ group of economic bosses and regional chiefs.” It was this economic bureaucracy that governed an increasingly dysfunctional system marked by shortages of consumer goods and even capital goods, leading to popular frustration and alienation.

It seems that what derailed these efforts was an inability to work out a positive relationship between planning and the market. Unfortunately, debate was frozen on whether the market was “good” or “bad.” This should not have been the case since there really was no contradiction between the market and planning.

The question is not of whether the market is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or even of how it is indispensable to a socialist economy as a mechanism enabling the rational use of resources and connecting producers with consumers. Instead it relates to the fact that the development of modern technologies and the formation of new needs (both individual and collective), along with the appearance of new problems, inevitably forces us to go beyond the bounds of the market.

While not denying the necessity of the market, and not attempting to abolish or dismantle it, we find ourselves faced with tasks whose solution demands quite different approaches…The market is irreplaceable if we are discussing the production of footwear or the need to improve the quality of service in restaurants, but we are far less able to rely on it for organizing the supply of electrical energy to whole regions or the financing of fundamental scientific research whose benefits are unlikely to be felt for twenty or thirty years. From this, the conclusion flows necessarily that the more massive and long-term the tasks that society sets itself, the less of a role the market will play in performing them and the greater the need for planning.”

Unfortunately, the realization of the complementary roles of the market and planning could only come with hindsight. The difficulties were not only structural in nature. In his magisterial Capitalism and Ideology, Thomas Piketty contends that it was, in the last instance, ideology that prevented the Soviet leaders from taking the necessary steps to invigorating the faltering economy.

Criminalizing carters and food peddlers to the point of incarcerating them may see absurd, but there was a certain logic to the policy. Most important was the fear of not knowing where to stop. If one began by authorizing private ownership of small businesses, would one be able to set limits? And if not, would this not lead step by step to a revival of capitalism?

Just as the proprietarian ideology of the nineteenth century rejected any attempt to challenge existing property rights for fear of opening Pandora’s box, twentieth century Soviet ideology refused to allow anything but strict state ownership lest private property find its way into some small crevice and end up infecting the whole system. Ultimately, every ideology is the victim of some form of sacralization of private property in one case, of state property in another, and fear of the void always looms large.

Gorbachev: doomed to fail?

It was this system, needing the market but fearful of making concessions to it, that Mikhail Gorbachev inherited in the mid-eighties. It is strange that Kagarlitsky does not treat us to an analysis of the Gorbachev reforms. In fact, not once is Gorbachev mentioned, though perestroika, or economic restructuring is mentioned—once. Yet the Gorbachev period from 1985 to 1991 was pivotal in leading to the crash of the system.

Why did perestroika, which sought to make the system more dynamic by relying on cooperatives and regulated forms of private ownership, fail? Was perestroika an effort to “save socialism” or the opening wedge for the privatization of a socialist economy? Was there a significant social base for the Gorbachev reforms or was it mainly a one-man show that was a spectacle to a passive citizenry? Was the nomenklatura, or bureaucratic and party elites, largely supportive of Gorbachev’s reforms, or was it mainly a saboteur of the process, or did the reform process simply run out of control? Was Deng Xiao Ping right in calling Gorbachev an “idiot” for putting “political liberalization” ahead of “economic liberalization”?

Liberal analysts have written books to answer these questions, but few progressives outside the former Soviet Union have seriously grappled with them, and Kagarlitsky could have helped us gain a deeper understanding of the failed reform initiative of Gorbachev by providing the perspective of a Russian Marxist who lived through that era.

The post-Soviet era

Focusing on the post-Soviet period in Russia, Kagarlitsky makes three important points. First, the political economy that emerged from the half-hearted Kosygin reforms nevertheless paved the way for the privatization that occurred in the era of Boris Yeltsin and later, in that of Vladimir Putin. The “conglomerate of groups and clans, each of which had its own ties and mutual obligations to its ‘own’ economic bosses and regional chiefs,” resulted in the Soviet economy being by the mid-1980’s “already completely ready for privatization. The corporate structure had more or less taken shape and become self-sufficient.” In other words, whole sectors were ripe for the picking by individuals or groups. How this process took place was via manipulation of the “voucher” system that was supposed to make millions of Russians owners of state assets that were being privatized. Piketty details how this scam unfolded:

The idea was that Russian citizens would be given vouchers entitling them to become shareholders in a firm of their choosing. In practice, in a context of hyperinflation (prices rose by more than 2500 per cent in 1992) that left many workers and retirees with very low real incomes and forced thousands of the elderly and unemployed to sell their personal effects on the streets of Moscow while the government offered large blocks of stock on generous terms to selected individuals, what had to happen did happen. Many Russian firms, especially in the energy sector, soon fell into the hands of small groups of cunning shareholders who contrived to gain control of the vouchers of millions of Russians; within a short period of time these people became the country’s new ‘oligarchs.’”

Second, capitalism came to Russia not as something that was organically created from below but as a set of neoliberal practices copied from the West and simply superimposed on society. This “shock therapy” did not bring into being capitalist institutions from scratch, as had been expected by the short-lived “democratic” regime and its western advisers, and led instead to the disintegration of the country’s industrial infrastructure and the rise of “mafia capitalism.”

Third, while the old nomenklatura under socialism felt obliged to pay attention to responding to society’s needs, however inefficiently, as a justification for its existence, the new bourgeoisie that emerged from the piratical privatization of state assets “freed itself from these obligations just as it…freed itself from the old ideology. Neither the structure of the regime, nor its ideology, nor its direct interests dictated to the new masters that they needed to change, develop, or even improve anything. They had achieved their golden age once and for all. Their dreams had come true.”

The crisis of legitimacy and the war in Ukraine

The absence of a legitimating ideology is, however, problematic. The initial rise of Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian brand of rule may have been justified as responding to the chaos and dislocations induced by the economic shock therapy of the 1990s, when the drunken Boris Yeltsin reigned, but that time is long past. A regime that cannot credibly justify its existence by presenting itself as serving and promoting the interests of the larger society inevitably invites a crisis of legitimacy. It is in this crisis, argues Kagarlitksy, that one must locate the war in Ukraine.

The reason for the war has to be sought not in bilateral Russian-Ukrainian relations, or even Russia’s relations with the ‘‘notorious“ collective West. The actions of the Russian leadership, though completely irrational and criminal, were provoked by a rapidly deepening internal crisis within Russia that in turn was closely linked to the crisis of the world system of neoliberal capitalism into which Russia was tightly integrated.

My reading of this passage is not that Kagarlitsky dismisses the geopolitical dimension of the war, where the US and Western Europe crossed a red line that Russian diplomacy had warned against, in their efforts to bring Ukraine formally into NATO, but that this was secondary to a deepening internal crisis of legitimacy that was linked to Russia’s integration into a global capitalist economy that was entering into crisis at various points. Still, he could have stated this more explicitly to avoid the impression that he is downplaying the western provocations that did constitute one of the causes of the conflict, a perspective that has been argued convincingly by, among others, the prominent University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer. Nevertheless, with its focus on the internal roots of the crisis in Russian capitalism’s crisis of legitimacy and its linking this to the comprehensive crisis of contemporary global capitalism, Kagarlitsky’s interpretation of the war falls squarely within the tradition of Lenin’s classic Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Coming to grips with the odyssey of the Soviet mode of production and the kleptocratic regime that succeeded it is of vital importance for the Left since the collapse of socialism in the USSR had a massive demoralizing impact from which it has not yet recovered. As Piketty notes, it has had the effect of narrowing the progressive imagination, triggering “a new kind of disillusionment, a pervasive doubt about the very possibility of a just economy, which encourages identitarian disengagement.” Boris Kagarlitsky’s The Long Retreat is of immense value in helping us understand the causes of the Soviet tragedy, an enterprise that is essential if the global Left is to again imagine the possibility of another world.