The challenge of socialism.

For the working class and oppressed peoples of every nation, the Russian revolution was proof of the practicality of their hopes and beliefs. Working people could achieve political power and use it to build a social system free from exploitation, unemployment and war. Workers and oppressed peoples everywhere gained enormously in confidence. In particular, they saw how in the Soviet Union a communist party based on the theory of scientific socialism had been the vehicle for this breakthrough.

The achievements of the Soviet state and people were enormous. All remnants of feudalism were abolished. Large-scale industry was developed. The achievements of Soviet science in so many spheres were outstanding. In health, housing and social services big steps forward were recorded. There were massive advances in education, and a cultural revolution which changed the face of what had been a very backward society. Women threw off many of the shackles forged by feudal and religious customs and beliefs, achieving equality in law if not always in practice. Whole peoples acquired a written culture and a measure of national self-government as the Tsarist 'prison house of nations' was demolished.

The Soviet Union also made a tremendous impact on the struggle for freedom against imperialism across the world, rendering invaluable aid to the national liberation and anti-apartheid movements. Nor should it be forgotten that Soviet industrialisation, on the basis of state ownership and planning, made possible the defeat of fascism in the Second World War - thereby saving the whole of humanity from unprecedented tyranny.

The Soviet Union struggled to build its socialist system in a backward country, surrounded by hostile imperialist forces. The Soviet people were plunged into two devastating wars - the war of intervention immediately following the revolution, and the Second World War which was followed by the defence burden of the Cold War.

The effects of encirclement and invasion by hostile imperialist forces should not be underestimated. Immense problems were caused for the Soviet Union politically, culturally and economically. The 'siege mentality' provoked by imperialist aggression was a powerful factor giving rise to wrong policies. From the late 1920s onwards, decisions were made which led to serious violations of socialist and democratic principles. More specifically, there developed an excessive centralisation of political power. State repression was used against people who failed to conform. Bureaucratic commands replaced economic levers as an instrument of planning. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the trades unions became integrated into the apparatus of the state, eroding working class and popular democracy. Marxism-Leninism was used dogmatically to justify the status quo.

Theoretically, the working people of the Soviet Union owned everything. But in fact they were masters of very little. Society was actually run by the party leadership, issuing orders from the top down.

After 1945, the centralised planning of nationalised economies had enabled the Soviet Union and its socialist allies to rebuild their war-torn countries and, for 20 years, to outstrip the capitalist world in economic and social development. The Soviet Union developed its own nuclear capability and assisted by the world peace movement - secured a policy of peaceful co-existence, competition and co-operation between the two systems as a particular form of the international class struggle. But from the mid-1970s, the USSR and Eastern Europe began to fall behind capitalism - especially in Japan and Germany - in the quality and rate of growth of its productive forces. The bureaucratic command system of 'actually existing socialism' proved unable to utilise the post-war scientific and technological revolution and develop society's forces of production more effectively than capitalism. The contradiction in Soviet society between its authoritarian form and its socialist content - which could only be resolved by the widest expansion of democracy into all spheres of life - became intractable. Failure to reap the full benefits of the scientific and technological revolution, in conditions of competition with imperialism, laid the basis for the collapse of the socialist system in the USSR, and in those countries modelled upon it in central and eastern Europe.

In particular, the arms race led by the United States had compelled the Soviet Union to channel massive resources into military production, diverting them from civilian needs including consumer goods. The unfavourable comparisons with the West which this created - and which took no account of the way imperialism exploited the Third World - contributed to undermining confidence in socialism among sections of the population in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The scale of the Soviet military programme also created a powerful network of bureaucratic interest groups within the command system, straddling industry, the scientific community and the military establishment.

Attempts to renovate socialist production relations and bring democratic control into political and social life, attempted in the 1960s but stifled, were renewed in the mid-1980s. But perestroika ( 'reconstruction') in the economic sphere failed to win the fullest co-operation of bureaucratic cadres in the Party, economy and state. Established links were disrupted but not replaced by new ones based on a more flexible planning system and the use of market mechanisms.

The policy of glasnost ( 'openness') exposed long-standing distortions of socialism, thereby weakening the confidence of many who had from ignorance or loyalty denied their existence. The old Party-state structures were broken down - but there were no properly functioning political organisations, including the Party itself, to replace them. And because the dogmatisation of Marxism-Leninism had stunted political understanding and creative socialist thought at all levels, the door was opened to illusions about private ownership and the so-called 'free' market.

In these conditions, the capitalist option came to be embraced by key elements of the bureaucratic establishment who saw it as protecting their privileged position. Without a mass political movement based on the working people and led by a Communist Party armed with a clear perspective for socialist reform, the pressure for capitalist development - notably privatisation - became irresistible. The descent into chaos was accelerated by the failure to work out a new Soviet state structure acceptable to the republics and capable of defusing the ethnic conflicts which had begun to break out as a result of economic disruption and bureaucratic sabotage.

The collapse of socialism and the restoration of capitalism has since been a disaster for masses of people in the former Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe. Economic output, wages, social benefits and life expectancy fell dramatically in Russia as speculators, asset-strippers and gangster capitalists siphoned huge amounts of wealth out of the country. The new capitalist class in these countries is often weak and unstable. Economic relations with capitalist countries - formerly confined to trade - are deepening through transnational involvement and financial links with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Imperialism's main economic interest is to exploit the huge natural resources of the former Soviet Union not to encourage the development of a modern, rival capitalist Russia.

As a result of the regression to capitalism, civil war and ethnic conflicts have erupted in the Balkans, the Caucasus and in Central Asia. These have in many cases been encouraged by outside imperialist interference. The major imperialist powers are pushing eastwards towards Russia, economically and militarily. The continuing expansion of the European Union and NATO into eastern Europe threatens peace in a way that the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact never did.