IT is a fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat in Soviet Russia has not realised the dream of giving everyone "according to his need". Even the progress achieved by the former Soviet Union, in comparison with the conditions, which obtained in Russia prior to the Bolshevik revolution, cannot be considered an achievement of the dictatorship of the Soviet proletariat. The capacity of the dictatorship of the Soviet proletariat can be measured only in terms of the level of growth reached by the Soviet economy (i.e. the level of development of productive forces) in the early days of World War II, because it is only up to that point in time that the growth of the Soviet economy can be credited solely to Soviet economic orientations. Whatever progress was achieved after the war is due to other factors we shall come to further on. In the period between 1917 and 1941, the Soviet economy achieved noticeable growth. Yet the degree of growth cannot be compared to that of the Western world nor even to the present rate of growth achieved by the Soviet Union. It was closer to the present rate of growth in the countries of Eastern Europe. Thus while the dictatorship of the Soviet proletariatdid achieve a certain degree of progress because of economic planning and the protection of the new regime, that progress was never up to the level of what the Soviet Union achieved after the war. It had also begun to slow down noticeably just before the war, when Soviet industry began to slacken in the mid-1930s in terms of investments and development rates. Investments which had been growing until 1936 began to decrease systematically, as indicated by the statistics shown in the following table: Investment in the iron and steel industry alone (by far the most important of the heavy industries) decreased by 35 per cent from 1935 to 1936. This downward trend continued until the late 1930s. Figures definitely point to growth between 1917 and 1936, but to a rate of growth not comparable to that attained by the Soviet Union after the war. Moreover, growth receded from the mid-1930s to the beginning of the war. The decline continued during the war, but that was due to a concentration on the war industries and to the huge losses in factories and agricultural land incurred as a result of the sweeping German invasion. So much for the economic achievements of the dictatorship of the Soviet proletariat before the World War II. As to the development of the Soviet economy after the war, this was due to several factors: • the enormous quantities of raw materials obtained at very low prices from the East European countries which had become Soviet satellites; • the transfer of hundreds of factories from Germany to the Soviet Union; • the two million qualified Germans who were brought to work in all areas of Soviet production, particularly in the chemical and military industries; • the financial aid extended by the West (especially the United States), which also sent great quantities of goods and machinery to the Soviet Union during the last period of the war and immediately after. The assistance was estimated to be worth billions of dollars; • the great wealth obtained from Manchuria after its evacuation by the Japanese; • the annexation of neighbouring territories rich in mines and raw materials. The 13 European provinces annexed by the Soviet Union immediately after the war covered a total area of more than 270,000 square miles, an area greater than the Iberian Peninsula, while the Asian provinces of Manchuria were extremely rich in mineral wealth and water. From the above, it is clear that the economic performance of the dictatorship of the Soviet proletariat can be divided into two distinct stages. A first stage of steady progress was followed by a decline just before World War II. The progress itself was modest and far from what had been expected from the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was noticeable only because Russia was so far behind the countries of Europe. At any rate, it was not an encouraging sign for the European Marxists, who found little in the economic performance of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union or, for that matter, in any country of Eastern Europe, to justify the expectation that this dictatorship could realise the material basis for the establishment of the higher phase of communism. Asecond stage of far greater progress was not, however, due to the intrinsic strength of the Soviet system but, rather to many external factors without which the Soviet economy would have totally collapsed. This is not an idle assertion but one that is substantiated by facts. The first is the enormous difference between the economic performance of the Soviet Union in the period between 1917 and 1941 and its performance in the post-war period up to the present day. Where during the first period progress was slow and nearly ground to a halt as the momentum of the revolution waned, in the second period it surged forward in leaps and bounds. This dramatic upsurge can be explained only by the external factors we have mentioned, whose role in bolstering the Soviet economy cannot be over-emphasised. Second, the countries of Eastern Europe, which did not benefit from the exceptional circumstances available to the Soviet Union after World War II but had to fall back on their own resources, have been able to generate only minimal economic growth, their modest economies able to provide their peoples only with the bare necessities, exactly the same situation that existed in the Soviet Union before the war. That is not to say that even at the present rate of growth of the Soviet economy the standard of living of a Soviet citizen is not far below that of an ordinary citizen in any advanced industrial country. He is still far from obtaining what a simple worker in those countries has access to in the way of basic necessities, let alone luxuries. It may be useful to give the reader an idea of the standard of living in an advanced industrial country to showthat the Soviet experience, at least in its economic aspect, was not an encouraging example to follow for societies which had far surpassedthe inferiorliving standard of the Soviet citizen centuriesbefore. Between 1950 and 1975, the following developments took place in France: • pensions were quadrupled; • 8.5 million new housing units were built; • the number of families owning a washing machine rose from near 0 per cent to 70 percent; • the number of families owning a TV set rose from near 0 per cent to 90 per cent; • in 1953, only 8 per cent of workers owned a private car; by 1972. the percentage of carowning working-class families rose to 66 per cent; • in 1953, 32 per cent of civil servants owned private cars; by 1972, the percentage had risen to 86 per cent; • in 1953, 56 per cent of senior civil servants owned private cars; by 1972, the percentage had risen to 87 per cent; • in 1975, there were six times as many highschool graduates as in 1950; • between 1950 and 1974, France created 5.35 million new jobs in the fields of industry and commerce; • despite the apparent steep increase in prices between 1956 and 1 976, the price of food is considered to have decreased from 100 to 53, while the prices of manufactured goods decreased from 100 to 41.5, bearing in mind the increase in incomes, e.g., equipment that a Frenchman could have obtained in 1956 at the cost of 100 hours, he obtained in 1976 at the cost of only 41.5 hours; and • in 1975, half of the French people owned their homes. Heggy is the 2008 winner of Italy's top prize for literature “Grinzane Cavour”. http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarek_Heggy http://www.tarek-heggy.com
