Challenge: Democratic Soviet Union

1956

The Fuel:
* By 1956 the Soviet Union had begun to suffer two conditions
** Long term productivity issues due to the Quantity => Quality transformation (which were never properly resolved). This relates to the structure of labour discipline in the workforce, which was a highly developed form of crude Taylorism. [1]
** Periodic shallow recessions due to throughput planning failing
* By 1956 the Party had developed a number of future potential lines in the Soviet Union itself, including the nascent "anti-party" bloc, Khrushchev's opportunism, and Mikoyan out on the side.

The Spark:
*Is either of:
**Gomulka not surrounding the Soviet Tanks with Polish Tanks leading to the Polish revolution of 1956, and then the Hungarian revolution of 1956
**Hungary "brewing" for longer due to either an absence of withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, or a longer period of civil war and general strike if more of the Nagy supporting faction escapes intact

The Result:
*A longer period of stress, and absence of control, proves the anti-party bloc fundamentally wrong earlier (it threatens the elite).
*As central European communist parties start advocating workers control, *and* as the continued violence threatens the Party's own leadership resolution procedures and legitimation structures, the kind of people who thought like Mikoyan in 1956 historically come to prominence.
*Pluralist socialism in central Europe, combined with workers councils
*Genuinely Multi-tendential Bolshevism within the Soviet Union, movements to implement "top-down" workers councils from the Mikoyan-type line. A long term tendency in the Soviet Union towards de-Bolshevised communists.

Longer Term:
*There's likely to be an immediate productivity boost. Inefficient management will be voted out, more efficient production techniques implemented.
*The 25 year outcome of this depends on your views on semi-decentralised workers councils. Yugoslavia isn't such a great example here, due to the lack of power in the councils themselves, and the absence of multi-tendential or pluralist socialism.
*Western Communist Parties go bananas
*China seriously militarises the Soviet frontier and the Chinese-Soviet ideological disputes start in 1957.
*PCF goes Maoist? CPA, CPNZ, CPGB go Maoist? PCI jumps on board the new central-european / Soviet thing, but not very efficiently.

yours,
Sam R.



[1] The West had exactly the same problems and began to resolve them in the 1980s through imperialism and a shift to a service economy, and by liquidating the welfare state / social-democracy. The Soviet Union doesn't have these options of external growth or of liquidating "actually existing" socialism while remaining the Soviet Union.
 
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