>>2653207
>I accuse Gorbachev of having presented the market to the people as the path to abundance, but then quietly pushing through, in addition to the expected market for goods and services, a market for capital and labor. With the restoration of the latter, the capitalist mode of production is restored. This means that Gorbachev either didn't know what he was doing or was deliberately changing the social order. In both cases, he acted like a state criminal.
>I accuse Gorbachev of failing to heed well-reasoned warnings regarding the catastrophic consequences of his policies. I say this with all the more reason because I was the first to officially express my doubts about the validity of his policies after just nine months, in a letter dated January 15, 1986, shortly before the 27th Congress of the CPSU.The letter noted the growing interest in Lenin's NEP doctrine in connection with perestroika, the beneficial effects of which many then believed. At the same time, it expressed concern that, for example, measures to support the personal subsidiary plots of collective farmers, workers, and employees were already being "tried to be used by some to contrast small-scale production, supposedly always more efficient, with large-scale production, effectively discrediting the public form of ownership of the means of production. I dare assert," I emphasized, "that amid the general ideological and moral upsurge in the country, a certain variation of the 'Smena Vekhi' views has also emerged among the intelligentsia, which cannot go unnoticed when analyzing the contemporary ideological situation."
Pointing out the discrepancy between Gorbachev's words and actions back then, I reminded him of his 1985 statement: "It is not the market, not the elemental forces of competition, but above all the plan that should determine the fundamental aspects of national economic development. At the same time, we must implement new approaches to planning, actively utilize economic levers, and give greater scope to the initiative of work collectives. We must more clearly define what should be planned at the Union level, and what at the level of the Union republic, region, ministry, and enterprise."
"It is, at the very least, perplexing," I continued, "that many economists are seeking ways to improve the efficiency of the socialist economy beyond the potential inherent in the planned principle, without even attempting to fully exploit it. The activities of associations, enterprises, and, in general, the links of socialist production have not yet been organically integrated with its goal—the satisfaction of society's material and spiritual needs. Yet, it would seem, the key performance indicators of any given collective—salaries, bonuses, and contributions to social and cultural needs—should depend, first and foremost, on the degree of participation of its members in achieving this goal.
Until now, the basis of the plan has not been a comprehensive study and forecasting of public needs, realistically linked to available production capacities and resources…
And one more thing: the currently used cost-based method of determining production results, although formally based on value units, is in fact a direct violation of the law of value. In our conditions, the law of value should guide the manager toward minimizing costs while maximizing the final product; the cost-based method, however, pushes toward maximizing costs with relative indifference to the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the output. This method is one of the reasons for our notorious shortages, one of the factors that, frankly, have a devastating impact on the national economy. In my view, there can be only one solution (and it corresponds to Lenin's concerns, not to what is attributed to him): the alignment of all enterprises with production targets for product range, assortment, and quality, with strict accountability for their profitability (break-even or profitability).
"As for the 'recipes' for overcoming the current difficulties in the capabilities of small-scale production and the market mechanism, they can, of course, yield useful results, but they are local, temporary, tactical, and only with the simultaneous strengthening of proper planned management. Any other strategy would throw us back to those stages of economic development already traversed by our main and formidable adversary—state-monopoly capitalism. This, without exaggeration, is a question of our life, a question of the viability of our system" (Dialogue. 1995. No. 5-6. pp. 70-71).
>I accuse Gorbachev of implementing precisely this "different strategy." It was then, and remains now, shameless demagoguery to claim that there is no alternative. One was proposed and could have been urgently developed. But Gorbachev openly refused to listen to the other side (the letter was passed to him through Anatoly Lukyanov) and surrounded himself exclusively with its opponents. The result is well known. We were deliberately plunged into the elements of wild, antediluvian capitalism, led to the dismemberment of the country and its transformation, piecemeal, into a space for the colonial interests of the imperialist powers.
>I accuse Gorbachev of servility to the West and humiliation of the Fatherland unheard of since the time of the Golden Horde. I accuse Gorbachev of betraying our state secrets to the United States, squandering the nation's gold reserves, unilaterally disarming, and destroying the country's economic and political security. I accuse Gorbachev of biased support for Zionist circles in the Middle East conflict.To this day, many intellectuals still call Gorbachev a "weak" and "tragic" figure. Compared to the historical tasks he was supposed to solve by the people's mandate, Gorbachev is not just weak—he's insignificant. I attribute Gorbachev's "tragic" qualities to the fertile imagination of the willing swashbucklers of whom there have always been many in Rus'. I believe he is a figure who fails to grasp the meaning of tragedy. If Gorbachev had been able to grasp this meaning, honor dictated that he commit suicide.
Of course, Gorbachev has his own special strength. It is the strength of a tenacious schemer, skilled in the unceremonious manipulation of decent people. Here, for all the simplicity and artificiality of his tactics, for all the garishness and lack of meaning in his speeches, no one can compete with him. Another strength of Gorbachev's is his imperviousness to the pangs of conscience. I accuse him of an obvious lack of conscience, a trait shared by his "doppelganger," Yakovlev, who loves to talk about a "chilled conscience." I accuse Gorbachev of having fulfilled only the promises he made abroad, only his commitments to Thatcher and Reagan, Kohl and Bush, but not to his own people. Gorbachev is a social anomaly: he could be trusted, foreign rulers were right in him, but his party colleagues, his fellow citizens, had no right to trust him.
Being a year older than Gorbachev and having graduated from Moscow State University in the same year as him, I consider him a disgrace to our generation and express my contempt for him.
orbachev's betrayal of everything that could be betrayed, his defection to the enemies of the Fatherland and socialism, means that he can have neither friends nor comrades in Russia, nor in the USSR. I have long searched historians for any semblance of this sinister figure, comparing him to Nero, Balthasar Cossa, Ivan the Terrible, and others, and in all of them I have found living human traits. But there is no likeness of Gorbachev anywhere. He has created a "black hole" in social and personal connections, a rift in humanity.