Just in case Chris has not answered... There is a good review, making all the points Chris states, in David Kotz. __Revolution from Above__(London: Routledge, 1997). Think there is a new edition.
As the Soviet system lost both its economic dynamism and ideological elan its previous economic development presented enormous rentseeking opportunities. Oil and raw materials were already being spirited out of the USSR from the port of Ventspils in the 1980s, purchased at state prices and sold by opportunists at world rates. Reduced economic growth, plus an exceedingly well educated population created frustrations leading many to seek mobility through actions destructive to society, but personally enriching. Can't think of too many places where the majority decides anything, and certainly not the USSR in 1991 or in the CIS and Baltics since. An older loyal political elite remained, e.g., Pugo, Ligachev, etc. But many professionals and criminals wanted more and seized the opportunity in the context of an increasingly corrupt and failing system to take it. While Yeltsin was originally a popular populist at the end of the Soviet period, he had no mandate for destroying the USSR nor socialism in principle, except in the regions Chris states, in which the Baltics, especially Latvia, were the strongest centers of Bolshevism in 1917. Even the Latvian peasants voted for them! They changed, however, as many leftists left in 1918/19. The 1940 and 1948/49 deportations of Balts USSR sealed their fate as being perceived as occupiers. The deportations themselves, a reflection of Hot & Cold War exigencies in which the Soviets had to both prepare for WW 2, thus the 1940 deportations, and afterwards deal with a US that dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan as a lesson to instruct the Soviets in American power, plus worries of a repeat of the rise of Germany, as happened after WW 1, and thus shore up their borders for any next war. Horribly tragic in its human consequences. For the Balts they only saw it through the lens of Russian imperialism and the communism they associated it with, of which, in part, it was. But, they failed to understand the larger global dimension and thus invited suspicion and hatred of the Russians, especially by those with families deported.... Even with that, most Balts expressed a preference for Scandinavian social democracy, but were delivered a rapacious neoliberalism, from which they are only now 15 years later recovering from, and that largely due to the external factors such as Russia's recovery grounded in high oil prices and the benefits of a Keynesian demand unleashed by the crashed ruble after 1998. Yeltsin, in his bumbling way, hypothesized that Russia was poor because it subsidized all but one of the Soviet republics. Others held this view too, thinking that Russia only need remove the ballast of its welfare dependent republics to economically soar upward. Others too held this view, in the same simple way that many white working class Americans think their financial stress is due to welfare programs at home and abroad, rather than due to any structural deficiencies of neoliberalism. Part of this Soviet nomenklatura then busted up the system and then fed on the carcass. The public had little say. It was done by executive fiat and when the Russian public, or at least a leading segments of workers and the middle class began to finally organize against it in 1993 Yelstin revealed the limits to "democracy" by shelling parliament. That said, people wanted reform within the context of socialism. Dissatisfied with the status quo, this made possible the radical changes introduced from above. Jeffrey Sommers, Visiting Fulbright Professor -Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Stockholm School of Economics-Riga <www2.sseriga.edu.lv> University of Latvia, Center for European & Transition Studies <http://home.lanet.lv/~cets/index_en.htm> --Asst. Prof., Dept. of History, North Georgia College & State University <www.ngcsu.edu> --Research Associate, Institute of Globalization Studies, Moscow <www.iprog.ru/en> --Book Review Editor, H-World/H-Net <www.h-net.org/~world> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 02:18:25 +0200 From: aki_orr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Soviet history Dear Chriss, Could you please cite the source subtantiaite your claim ? The concept of "Large minority" raises two questions: 1. Where did this minority emerge from ? 2. Why was a gigantic political system dismantled if only a minority wanted this ? And in the same vein: Did the citizens of Leningrad reject the name of their city (and accept changing it back into St Petersburg) only by a "large minority " ? ATB, Aki ORR
