How is it possible that the Soviet Union, bastion of socialism and proletarian internationalism, collapsed in 1991? What factors led to its collapse, and what were the results? We should look at both the material and ideological basis for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. As Marxist-Leninists, what lessons can we draw from the experience of the fall of the Soviet Union?

As Marxist-Leninists in the United States, we can draw lessons from the experiences of others in carrying out revolution and building socialism. While every revolutionary struggle must be firmly based on the concrete analysis of its own conditions, we should still study closely both the successes and failures in the rich experience of the Soviet Union. From that experience we can draw both lessons from their struggle as well as inspiration from their heroic achievements. In the next article we will examine the causes of the collapse of the USSR and draw lessons from it, but here let’s look at all that it achieved.

The historic task of the working class in the socialist revolution is to eliminate all oppression. This includes the liberation of women and LGBTQ people from the shackles of patriarchy.

The Russian Empire under the Tsar was rightly called a “prisonhouse of nations,” because it oppressed, within its borders, whole nations of people. The Bolsheviks saw that it was a principal task of the socialist revolution to dismantle national oppression and support self-determination for the oppressed nations.

Contradiction is inherent in everything and is what causes things to change qualitatively. In socialist society there are also contradictions. Socialism is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, where the working class uses its state power to take society out of capitalism and towards the classless and stateless society of communism.

The task of socialism is to transition from capitalist society to communist society, from a society ruled by and for the rich, based on exploitation and oppression, to a society without classes and without exploitation and oppression. When the working class takes power and expropriates the wealth and power of the capitalist class, the dictatorship of the proletariat will have to eliminate the contradictions carried over from capitalist society in a planned, thoroughgoing, and step-by-step way. One of the most important tasks of the socialist state is the elimination of what Marx called “bourgeois right.” We already touched on bourgeois right in our previous article, “What is Socialism?” but it is a very important subject and needs to be understood clearly.

In our previous article on the relationship between the superstructure and the economic base in historical materialism, we explained that the superstructure is basically the cultural, ideological, political and legal aspect of the mode of production, which arises from the economic base and, in turn, supports and helps reproduce the economic base. We also looked at how ideology arises from class struggle. Both bourgeois ideology and proletarian ideology arise from the class struggle in the capitalist mode of production, and, since the capitalist class is dominant and controls the superstructure under capitalism, their ideology is likewise dominant.

Marxism isn’t just a philosophical and analytical framework based on dialectical and historical materialism, or a critique of political economy. It is also a theory of revolutionizing society and building socialism. Based on the laws of motion of the capitalist societies that precede it, and the experiences of socialist construction from 1917 until today, Marxism-Leninism is able to give us a vision and roadmap for the socialist transformation of society. Of course, every country has its own concrete path to follow, based on its own time, place and conditions, but we can still draw some lessons from those experiences.

Communists have a proud history of fighting on the front lines of the resistance to fascism, from the International Brigades in Spain, to the Antifascist Resistance in occupied Europe, to the heroic struggle of the Soviet people to defend the USSR and defeat Nazi Germany. The Soviets liberated the survivors of the death camps and led the assault on Berlin. From that practice, theory has been developed to analyze what fascism is, how it develops, and how it should be fought.

Our enemy is monopoly capitalism, the capitalist and imperialist system that exploits the working class here in the United States and oppresses whole nations of people, here and around the world. The monopoly capitalist class, the imperialists, are well organized, and control both the legal and political institutions of the government as well as the military and police. It will take the masses of the people in their millions to overthrow them. We can’t do it alone. The working class must be organized, and it must organize together broadly with its allies. This “united front” against monopoly capitalism is the revolutionary strategy that will carry us forward toward being able to overthrow the imperialists.