by Will Podmore
But South Africa, with US backing, intervened to prevent Angola’s people also winning their independence. As Piero Gleijeses wrote, “Washington urged Pretoria to intervene. On October 14 [1975], South African troops invaded Angola, transforming the civil war into an international conflict. As the South Africans raced toward Luanda, MPLA [Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola, the national liberation movement] resistance crumbled; they would have seized the capital had not Castro decided on November 4 to respond to the MPLA’s appeals for troops. The evidence is clear – even though many scholars continue to distort it – the South Africans invaded first, and the Cubans responded. The Cuban forces, despite their initial inferiority in numbers and weapons, halted the South African onslaught. The official South African historian of the war writes, ‘The Cubans rarely surrendered and, quite simply, fought cheerfully until death.’”40
On 1 July 1977, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance said that the US government would supply Somalia with arms. This gave the Somali government the green light to attack Ethiopia. As Paul Henze, the US National Security Council specialist on the Horn of Africa, later wrote, “The crucial decision [to intervene] seems to have been taken only … when the Somalis concluded they had a good chance of securing American military aid.”41 On 17 July, Somalia invaded Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government asked the Soviet Union and Cuba to help it to defend itself. The US government then tried to get the UN to condemn, not the aggressor, but those defending Ethiopia.42 But, as Henze pointed out, “The Soviets and Cubans have legality and African sentiment on their side in Ethiopia – they are helping an African country defend its territorial integrity and countering aggression.”43
In 1987-88, Cuba again sent forces to assist Angola to defend itself against South African aggression. Contrary to US government claims, Cuba was entitled under international law to do so. Professor of international law Henry J. Richardson III judged, “the presence of Cuban troops in Angola is quite lawful - a legality underscored by repeated South African military aggression on Angolan territory, and that contrasts sharply with the patent illegality of the South African presence in Namibia.”44 Gleijeses wrote, “The Reagan administration helped Pretoria flaunt [flout] UN Resolution 435 by introducing the principle of linkage: South Africa’s withdrawal from Namibia, the White House declared, would have to occur concurrently with the withdrawal of the Cuban troops from Angola. This blurred the distinction between a legal act (Cuba’s troops were in Angola at the express invitation of the government) and an illegal one (South Africa was occupying Namibia despite the express disapproval of the United Nations). As the Canadian ambassador told the Security Council with unusual candour, this linkage “had no warrant in international law, … is incompatible with resolution 435 and … has been rejected by this Council. Perhaps worst of all, … [it] is totally unnecessary, is a deliberate obstacle and is the cause of grievous delay …. To hold Namibia hostage to what this Council has previously described as ‘irrelevant and extraneous issues’ is palpably outrageous”.”45
Gleijeses commented, “It was the Cubans who pushed the Soviets to help Angola. It was they who stood guard in Angola for many long years, thousands of miles from home, to prevent the South Africans from overthrowing the MPLA government. It was they who in 1988, with the reinforcements Castro sent against Gorbachev’s wishes, forced the South African army out of Angola. It was they who forced Pretoria to abandon Savimbi and hold free elections in Namibia – which SWAPO [South West Africa People’s Organisation] won. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cuban victory over the South African army in southern Angola in 1988 ‘destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor … [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.’ This was Cuba’s contribution to what Castro has called ‘the most beautiful cause’ – the struggle against racial oppression in southern Africa.”46
Gleijeses concluded, “On 22 December 1988, the New York agreements stipulated that Namibia would become independent, that the South African army would leave Namibia within three months. … the New York agreements would not have been possible without the Cubans’ prowess on the battlefield and skill at the negotiating table. Despite Washington’s best efforts to stop it, Cuba changed the course of southern African history. Throughout the 1980s the Cuban military shield prevented the SADF [South African Defence Force] from wreaking even more destruction on Angola and bringing down its government. The Cubans were steadfast in their support for SWAPO, and they were instrumental in forcing Pretoria to accept the independence of Namibia.”47
Speaking in Havana at the traditional 26 July celebration in 1991, Nelson Mandela said that Cuba’s efforts, culminating in the unprecedented defeat of South African regular troops at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in 1988, was a victory for all of Africa. He said, “That impressive defeat of the racist army ... gave Angola the possibility of enjoying peace and consolidating its sovereignty.” He added that it gave the people of Namibia their independence, demoralised the white racist regime of Pretoria and inspired the anti-apartheid forces inside South Africa. “Without the defeat inflicted at Cuito Cuanavale our organisations never would have been legalised”, he asserted. “The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the peoples of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice, unparalleled for its principled and selfless character.”
As Mandela said, “Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent - and of my people – from the scourge of apartheid.”48 He summed up, “We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?”49 At Mandela’s inauguration as President in 1993, after the defeat of the apartheid system, he embraced Fidel Castro: “You made this possible,” he whispered audibly.50 Cuba’s revolution also inspired other countries to become more independent and self-reliant.51
Chapter 12
The Soviet Union - counter-revolution and catastroika
Afghanistan
In April 1978, the Afghan people overthrew the country’s feudal regime. The new government promoted social justice for ethnic minorities, freed 13,000 political prisoners, introduced free medical care for the poorest, abolished peonage and launched a mass literacy programme. It aimed to provide ‘a modern educational system in which girls as well as boys would go to school, at which young women did not have to wear the veil, in which science and literature would be taught alongside Islam’.1
It gave full rights to women. A 1986 US Army manual praised the new government’s policies towards women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men … abolished forced marriages … extensive literacy programs, especially for women … putting girls and boys in the same classroom … changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics.”2 By the late 1980s, half the university students, nearly half the doctors and most teachers were women.
In response, the US government began a war of intervention against Afghanistan, running armed raids from Pakistan. As President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted, “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujehadin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”3
This US act breached UN Resolution 2625 of 1970, which stated that every state had to refrain from organising or encouraging armed bands to violate another state’s territory. The UN Definition of Aggression adopted on 19 December 19
74 explained, “Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State” and that included “the sending by or on behalf of a State of armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed force against another State.”
The US government, the IMF, the World Bank and the Pakistan Aid Consortium (led by the US and British governments) gave Pakistan’s government more than $5 billion to build and supply bases for attacking Afghanistan. The CIA spent $1.5 billion arming and training the mujehadin, Contra-style opponents of the new government, in its biggest operation since Angola. It raised the money by selling drugs to the USA. MI6 supplied the mujehadin with Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles and trained them at secret bases in Saudi Arabia and Oman. Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington said that the mujehadin ‘have got to receive weapons and that’s that’, to ‘keep the pot boiling’.
The mujehadin raided civilian targets, destroying over 1,800 schools, 40 hospitals and 110 first aid centres. RAND expert Cheryl Benard explained, “We made a deliberate choice. At first, everyone thought, there’s no way to beat the Soviets. So what we have to do is to throw the worst crazies against them that we can find, and there was a lot of collateral damage. We knew exactly who these people were, and what their organizations were like, and we didn’t care. Then, we allowed them to get rid of, just kill all the moderate leaders. The reason we don’t have moderate leaders in Afghanistan today is because we let the nuts kill them all. They killed the leftists, the moderates, the middle-of-the-roaders. They were just eliminated, during the 1980s and afterwards.”4
The Afghan government, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, called on the Soviet Union to help it defend itself. The Soviet Union did so. In August 1980, a House of Commons Committee described the Soviet action as defensive. George Kennan agreed that it was ‘defensive rather than offensive’.5 D. W. Greig observed, “there is no conventional rule prohibiting a state from answering the call of another state to provide it with troops to operate solely within the territory of the latter.”6 Garthoff wrote that the Soviet leaders saw it as ‘the only solution to a specific situation on their borders that was threatening Soviet security’. He concluded, “the Soviet decision was a reluctant recourse to defend vital interests.”7
Counter-revolution
Gorbachev and his allies proposed ‘new thinking’, ‘universal human values’ and ‘market socialism’. In the name of democracy and glasnost, they gave anti-Soviet forces free, full access to the TV, radio and press.8 In the name of restoring the rule of law, they rehabilitated everyone arrested for counter-revolutionary acts including collaboration with the Nazis. Perestroika, under the label of correcting socialism, rejected socialism. From the start, it was a counter-revolution in the name of revolution.
In particular they attacked the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). This strengthened the growing capitalist forces led by Boris Yeltsin - the separatists, corrupt elements in the economy and the party, the mafia.9 Gorbachev’s Third Way led straight to robber baron capitalism, which meant cutting down democracy.10
Unsurprisingly, Trotskyism backed Gorbachev and Yeltsin. When Temps Nouveaux asked Ernest Mandel, the leader of Trotsky’s ‘Fourth International’, “Mikhail Gorbachev, does he proclaim that perestroika is truly a new revolution?” Mandel replied, “Yes, he actually proclaims this, and it is again very positive. Our movement has defended the same idea for 55 years, for which reason we have been taxed with being counter-revolutionary.”11 Mandel also praised Yeltsin, writing, “The reformer Yeltsin represents the tendency which wants to reduce the gigantic state apparatus. Consequently he follows in Trotsky’s footsteps.”12
In December 1987, Gorbachev cut the state purchase of industrial output by half, so half of industry could buy and sell in a new wholesale market. This caused chaos: production fell, shortages grew, wages were not paid and prices inflated for the first time since 1945. His reforms cut wages, job security and social services. Despite better harvests, shortages of the most necessary food items became chronic. His reforms caused economic decline, not vice versa.
The Soviet working class responded with strikes, go-slows and other protests. In the first half of 1989, two million working days were lost in strikes. In the coal industry alone, there were twelve strikes, which won concessions from the employer. On average, 15,000 workers were on strike every day.
At the Houston summit in July 1990, Gorbachev endorsed the World Bank programme of shock therapy (all shock, no therapy). He passed a Law on Enterprises which allowed managers to turn factories into private concerns without consulting the workers. In response, the Union of Works Collective Councils and Workers’ Committees, representing two million workers, demanded that workers decided who owned their factories. Workers in the building materials plant of Pollioustrovo held a 21-day strike demanding workers’ ownership of plants.
The Independent Union of Coal Industry Employees, the miners’ union affiliated to the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), tried to save their industry. Union chairperson Vitaly Budko announced, “In essence we are demanding one thing - the funds needed to preserve the Russian coal industry. Above all, funds for the development of new mines and the reconstruction of existing enterprises, for the materials and equipment needed to create safe working conditions and to build housing for miners.” The FNPR achieved wage rises in 1991.
When workers struggled to increase their wages, save social protections, take control of their workplaces, rebuild their industries and keep workers’ ownership of plants, they were fighting for socialism. Opinion polls showed that by large majorities the Soviet people opposed capitalism and supported key features of the Soviet system - public ownership of large-scale economic assets, a state-regulated market, guaranteed employment, controls on prices, standard-of-living subsidies, and free education and health care.13
In April 1991, nine republic leaders agreed to form a new ‘Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics’ which preserved an all-Union state, economy and military. As late as November, Yeltsin said, “The Union will live!”14 On 25 November, leaders of seven republics agreed another treaty which also retained a Union state, economy and military. But Yeltsin aborted all these agreements by his coup of 8 December 1991. In a declaration that was ‘neither legitimate nor democratic’, he ended the Soviet Union:15 “The USSR as a subject of international law and as a geopolitical entity has ceased to exist.” Even Western admirers called it his ‘autumn putsch’.16
The Soviet Union’s collapse was not due to inherent flaws, economic crisis, popular discontent, lack of democracy, or US pressure. The US war build-up strained the Soviet Union but did not crush it. Its economy grew continually: the CIA judged that Soviet output increased every year from 1946 to 1989 except for 1963 and 1979, years of particularly bad harvests. The Soviet Union had huge popular support: in the March 1991 referendum, 112 million people, 76 per cent of those who voted, voted to keep the Soviet Union. The Central Asian Republics voted 90 per cent for the Union.
Historians largely agreed with Fidel Castro: “Socialism did not die of natural causes.” David Kotz and Fred Weir summed up, “We came to the view that the Soviet system had been dispatched, not by economic collapse combined with a popular uprising, but by its own ruling elite in pursuit of its own perceived interests.” They concluded, “The desertion of the state socialist system by the party-state elite did not happen because of the demise of the old system. The reverse is true - the demise of the system occurred because the party-state elite deserted it.”17 Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny agreed, writing of “the key events of 1989-91 – the overthrow of socialist governments in Eastern Europe, the Party’s destruction, the rise of the ‘democrat’ opposition, the deepening economic crisis, and the USSR’s dismemberment. They were interacting processes. In the final analysis one process drove them all: the leadership’s determination to en
d the dominant role of the CPSU which, even at this late date, remained a latent obstacle to Gorbachev’s policies.”18 Peter Nolan also agreed: “The fundamental cause of the Soviet collapse lies in the destruction of the state administrative apparatus and the nation-state under Gorbachev.”19 The Soviet Union’s rulers killed it off. The working class resisted, but not strongly enough to save it.
When the parliament in 1991 opposed the shock therapy, Yeltsin illegally dissolved the parliament and imposed the shock by decree. The 6th Congress of the Russian Federation voted against the shock. Daily mass pickets in Red Square demanded Yeltsin’s resignation. 100,000 people marched in Moscow on May Day in 1992. Medical workers and teachers went on strike. In September, collective farmers and members of the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions demonstrated across the country. In November, 100,000 marched to celebrate the October Revolution. Parliament too opposed Yeltsin’s dictatorial powers. So on 4 October 1993, he launched a tank assault on parliament to crush the opposition, killing 146 people and injuring more than a thousand. He dissolved and outlawed the CPSU, seizing its assets and purging its members.
In the 1990s, Russia’s new capitalist class seized through privatisation the great wealth that the country’s workers had produced during the Soviet era. The nation’s wealth ceased to benefit the working class; instead it benefited the tiny capitalist minority, who put the money into thousands of offshore bank accounts, real estate holdings and offshore companies.