Prof. Rostislav Ulyanovsky has followed his article on the economic plight of developing countries in the August (No. 34) issue of New Times, Moscow, by another on “aspects of the political scene” in the third world in the September (No. 38) issue of the magazine. Like the previous piece, which was discussed in these columns on September 22, this article, too, deserves attention because it indicates in an equally sharp manner that a debate is on among Soviet academicians on the right policy towards the third world.
Prof. Ulyanovsky himself admits the existence in the Soviet Union of men who contend that “with the achievement of independence, the national bourgeoisie has ceased to be an anti-imperialist force and has associated itself with imperialism.” He could not possibly have given a clearer hint that a debate is on and the issue is Soviet policy towards the third world.
On a surface view it appears that he strongly disagrees with the detractors of the national bourgeoisie in developing countries. But in fact his position is rather ambivalent.
He doubtless reaffirms the traditional Soviet view that while the “big, monopolistic commercial and industrial bourgeoisie” tends to compromise with imperialism, “the small and middle-bracket urban bourgeoisie, the middle strata of society” remains committed to the struggle against imperialism abroad and feudalism at home. But this statement as well as quotations from Mr. Brezhnev’s report to the 25th Congress of the CPSU wherein he paid tribute to the ruling groups in a majority of third world countries “for defending their economic and political rights against imperialism with mounting energy” do not fit too well into the general scheme of the article.
Movement
To begin with, Prof. Ulyanovsky holds that “with the realisation of the initial aims of the national liberation movement and the deepening of its social content, the balance between the progressive and conservative trends in the policy of the national bourgeoisie gradually, but not always and everywhere, shifts in favour of the latter. Its revolutionary anti-imperialism diminishes and its conciliatory national reformism increases the more vigorously the working class and the working peasantry press their demands”.
This by itself is a significant statement in that it knocks the very basis of the familiar Soviet view regarding the unity of purpose between the Soviet bloc and the international communist movement on the one hand and the third world on the other. But Prof. Ulyanovsky does not stop there. He goes on, in effect, to challenge the validity of the class (Marxist-Leninist) analysis for much of Asia and Africa.
As he puts it, “In many developing countries … there is no clear-cut social stratification and the weakness of the diametrically opposed classes (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat)…. naturally creates the conditions for the intermediate strata to advance to the political foreground…”
This, too, is not all. Prof. Ulyanovsky adds: “A feature of many countries of Asia and Africa is the considerable heightening of the independent role of the political superstructure of the state. In the fifteen years from 1960 to 1975 the third world countries had some 90 military coups or attempts at such coups. At present about 20 of the 47 African countries have military regimes. The state machine in these countries is often not directly subordinate to any class organisation…. Mass organisations are established and controlled by the state as such. This gives more freedom of action to the intermediate petty bourgeois strata in power, enabling them at times to ride roughshod over the interests of one or another social group.”
Compromise
Prof. Ulyanovsky contradicts himself. While in one place he lists among “top crust elements of the national bourgeoisie” the new “bureaucratic and military bourgeoisie” which “are indeed increasingly inclined to compromise with imperialism because of their narrow class outlook, fear of the working masses at home, and the desire to prevent their country from adopting a socialist orientation”, elsewhere he speaks of them as the intermediate strata which are “apt to shift either to the right or to the left”, depending perhaps on the personal inclination or whim of the top leader or leaders.
The Soviet professor does not, in any case, explain why some military regimes “evolve in a progressive direction” and others play a “totally reactionary, counterrevolutionary, terrorist role.” He merely cites instances of the two. Even where a definite shift has taken place in the role of the regime in the Soviet view, as in the case of Egypt, Prof. Ulyanovsky fails to offer an explanation.
This contradiction is, however, less pertinent than his admission that the state can be above the classes. Even more staggering is his statement that there are such things as “feudal nationalism” and “nationalism of the newly-baked military and bureaucratic bourgeoisie”. This literally stands Marxism-Leninism on its head because, according to it, nationalism is essentially an ideology of the bourgeoisie, itself the product of the industrial revolution.
His complicated and contradictory ideological formulations notwithstanding, Prof. Ulyanovsky appears to be advancing two broad propositions. First, there is no basis in reality for the view that there exists an identity of interests between communist countries headed by the Soviet Union and the third world. Secondly, the Kremlin should be prepared for sudden shifts of policy on the part of the military-bureaucratic regimes which have come to be established in a number of third world countries.
As for the role of communist and other radical parties, Prof Ulyanovsky seems to be unable to make up his mind. On the one hand, he insists that the anti-imperialist potential of the national bourgeoisie in a country depends on its willingness and capacity to pursue a “policy of social progress” and, on the other, he says that “experience shows that as the revolutionary processes are carried forward in a country nationalism becomes increasingly conservative.” And to make the confusion worse confounded he adds that while, generally speaking, the above assessment regarding nationalism becoming conservative is valid, “this thesis is too loose to serve as a day-to-day tactical compass.”
On the face of it, this assessment of the professor’s position is at odds with his specific endorsement of the policy of “alliance and struggle” – that is of support for what he calls anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic moves of the bourgeoisie while criticising its limitations and inconsistencies – which pro-Soviet communist parties are said to be following in a number of countries. But such a policy is at best tenable in a democratic framework which, as Prof. Ulyanovsky himself is at pains to emphasise, does not exist in a number of developing countries. Above all, how is such a policy consistent with his proposition that conservative trends begin to prevail among the bourgeoisie as the working class and peasantry press their demands?
Prof. Ulyanovsky has by and large made his formulations in very general terms so much so that in his reference to recent developments in West Asia he contents himself with the observation that “there has been a notable revival of pan-Islamism inspired chiefly by Saudi Arabia” and repudiation of the propaganda by “imperialist politicians and reactionary ideologues” that “socialism and Islam are enemies.”
Influence
But clearly he is not writing in a vacuum. He and his colleagues must be as concerned as the men in the Kremlin over the dramatic shift in Egypt’s foreign and domestic policies, Syria’s intervention in Lebanon against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the leftist Muslims, the sharp increase in Saudi Arabia’s influence and America’s comeback in this critically important region. Indeed, the general trend in the third world as a whole can bring little comfort to Soviet academicians and policy-makers. The article without question is an expression of the resulting dilemma.
A similar dilemma was evident in Prof. V. Pavlov’s letter to this paper which appeared in the adjoining column on October 6/7. He acknowledged his inability to explain the contradiction between the developing countries’ growing dependence on the capitalist West and the increasing scale of nationalisation of foreign properties in the former and drew a distinction between national monopolies, including foreign monopolies operating in a developing country, and the multinational corporations which he called supranationals, almost suggesting that the former can be allowed to function.
The Times of India, 20 October 1976
