“THE GORBACHEV PHENOMENON”: THE COLLAPSE OF THE USSR THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY

Abstract

The tools of the new political economy are rarely used in the analysis of the problems of the Soviet economy. A homogeneous society without class contradictions, with a quota socialist electoral system, and the absolute dominance of one ruling party formally contradicts the basic premises of this toolkit. At present time most researchers agree, that Soviet society was heterogeneous (some scientists even attribute class contradictions to it), but do not go any further. This progress is contradicted by the idea of the USSR as an ideocratic state, based on the civil religion of Marxism-Leninism. But the latter explains the stability of the political regime, not its collapse. The new political economy makes it possible to notice that the USSR was a formal confederation, which became a reality when party influence was neutralized, as well as a corporate state, within which there was a sharp political struggle for resources. These relations were masked by the myth of public property, which was socialist state property. As it seemed to Soviet theoreticians, a single national economic complex was indivisible. The rupture of economic ties was not beneficial to both enterprises and national elites. Nevertheless, the Soviet conditions made the orientation towards obtaining the maximum of centralized investments with the subsequent withdrawal of the republic from the single economic space quite rational. Institutional conditions, within which the institutions that protect the state from disintegration are neutralized, are periodically encountered in situations of power transit. The «Gorbachev Phenomenon» is a situation in which there is a paralysis of power associated with sharp contradictions within the ruling coalition. In such a situation, the private interests of small groups become politically legitimate, and it is almost impossible to stop the collapse of the state.