Since I’m based at the Interference Archive for a whole semester, I decided to start sharing interesting things that I find. Here is one: an anarchist analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union as it is happening, in 1990.
It’s fascinating to read an anarchist analysis of the Soviet Bloc at this time. Bob McGlynn of “NYC Neither East Nor West,” who had extensive contacts with anarchists and other lefty dissidents in Eastern Europe, wrote an article in the Love and Rage newspaper (April 1990) titled “Whoopie! East Bloc Explodes!” in which he expresses the great hope but also danger of the time.
The hope:
“Watching one Stalinoid dictatorship after another crumble with embarrassing speed is even more fun than drinking beer! (Well almost.). . .
Many wonder if this [East-West solidarity] movement is over. Not at all. In fact, it’s needed now more than ever, given that Western capitalism is poised to eat the East alive, through debt and capital penetration. . . .
Opposition movements in the Soviet bloc remain. These are made up of anarchists, independent socialists, draft resisters, ecologists, anti-nuclear activists, workers, women, youth, gays. The battle for relative civil liberties may appear to be won, but the war for everything else is on. . .
In many ways, we’re only just beginning. For instance, the sporadic contacts between anarchists in both blocs can now be cemented. In April and Italian group is sponsoring a large gathering of East and West anarchists – the first time ever. In a sense we are at point zero. Now we can really move.”
The danger:
“Western capitalism is poised to eat the East alive, through debt and capital penetration. . . .
The barbed wire and concrete borders are now being replaced by a border less tangible: that of money/commodity relations and rule. And this game, like the old one, has only enough room for a few players.”
In 1990, the future was open for action. McGlynn ends:
“The paradox is that as the world has gotten very interesting recently, it’s also simultaneously becoming increasingly monotone and banal. Pepsi power, etc. This, then, is prime territory for adventurers seeking seams in this seemingly seamless whole. It’s been remarked that with Stalinism collapsing, we are now ‘at the end of history.’ Rather, perhaps, we are only at its beginning.”
Indeed. But McGlynn’s fears were realized as capitalism remade the former Soviet Bloc in its image. Could this have been prevented with more effective anti-state socialist organizing and more widespread solidarity work across borders from below? Was a libertarian socialist alternative possible? Or was the choice always simply between Stalinism and neoliberalism?