Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Preface

In the introduction to his 1957 on the Hungarian uprising, Herbert Aptheker, acknowledged the hazards of trying to evaluate something “so recent in time and distant in space,” but said he did so anyway because he “had to try to understand that upheaval.” In this preface, we acknowledge the same hazard and motivation. Not only was the Soviet upheaval near in time and distant in space, but also it was outside the authors’ usual area of study. One of us is an American historian and the other a labor economist. Both of us, however, were driven to understand what had happened, and we think that we have reached a reasonable interpretation and some original insights. And we desire to put these views to what Aptheker called “the ordeal of careful scrutiny.”

This book would not have been possible without the generous contributions of numerous friends who read the manuscript, corrected errors, suggested sources, added ideas, qualified judgements, challenged jargon, and pared the wordiness. Special thanks goes to Bahman Azad, Norman Markowitz, Michael Parenti, Anthony Coughlan, and Betty Smith for reading the entire manuscript and suggesting editorial and substantive changes. We would also like to thank those who read all or parts of the manuscript and those who shared their ideas and sometimes their encouragement: Gerald Horne, Frank Goldsmith, Erwin Marquit, Sam Webb, Elena Mora, Mark Rosenzweig, Gerald Meyer, Joe Sims, Lee Dlugin, Pat Barile, Danny Rubin, Phil Bonosky, Bill Davis, Evelina Alarcon, Tim Wheeler, Scott Marshall, Noel Rabinowitz, Paul Mishler, Jarvis Tyner, Esther Moroze, Marilyn Bechtell, Gerald Erickson, Constance Pohl, Jackie DiSalvo, Richard and Brawee Najarian, and Jim Miller.

We would also like to thank the librarians, Mark Rosenzweig of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies and Jackie LaValle, for helping with the research, and Eileen Jamison for tracking down numerous books and articles. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Gregory Grossman for helping us find sources on the second economy. We also thank SUNY Empire State College for granting a sabbatical leave to Roger Keeran during which he did some early research and writing. We want to thank Catherine Keeran for her assistance and Alice and John Ward for providing accommodations and company, while Roger did research at the University of Texas. For their consultations on the cover and other matters, we would like to thank David Granville, Derek Kotz, Ian Denning and Charles Keller, and for technical help, John Quinn. For their camaraderie, Michael and Mary Donovan, Bill Towne, and Christina Hassinger of Flannery’s Seminar in Contemporary Politics, get a grateful nod.

Finally, we would like to thank our wives, Carol and Mary, who discussed this project from beginning to end. They also patiently endured lost weekends, obsessive ravings about the importance of an unfashionable topic, book-strewn kitchen tables, seas of paper, and endless distracted hours at word processors.

Mark Twain said, “It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.” He might have added it also makes politics. Among political people, the downfall of the Soviet Union generates strong and diverse views. It seemed to us that everyone who had visited a socialist country, talked to a Soviet citizen, or read a book on socialism had theories to explain and anecdotes to prove what went wrong. Many who read this manuscript had firm ideas of their own and did not share ours. Hence, we must declare with more than usual vigor that all the views, as well as the mistakes, are the responsibility of the authors and the authors alone.