Boris Yeltsin and Russia

Enough already of the rhetoric about the failure of Soviet socialism. How about some historical facts?

1. The 1917 Bolshevik revolution that threw off the yoke of the czar was hardly an experiment by ivory-tower idealists. It was a necessary revolt of workers and peasants led by women in bread lines whose families were starving.

2. Lenin and Trotsky, leaders of the Russian Revolution, fought for democratic socialism (a planned economy to benefit society) under workers’ control and full rights for women and national minorities.

3. Many would have us believe that Stalinism was the logical outcome of the Bolshevik revolution. Not so. Stalin came to power after annihilating Trotskyist opposition. The Stalin bureaucracy developed out of an impoverished and technologically backward Soviet Union, which was invaded and besieged for decades by Western capitalist countries. The more privileged led an assault on democratic socialism and communism to feed their coffers at the expense of the majority.

4. Stalin’s reign of terror in 1930s turned socialism on its head along with everything that Lenin and Trotsky fought for.

So, all the talk about the failure of a 70-year Soviet socialist experiment belies the truth. Genuine, democratic socialism in the U.S.S.R. hasn’t been tried since Stalin came to power. Gorbachev and Yeltsin follow in Stalin’s footsteps, not Lenin’s or Trotsky’s. They have and will sell off the country and further impoverish the people for their own privileges.

The workers, the women waiting in long bread lines, all the poor folks who can’t get housing and food--their story is yet to be told. Chances are they will revolt against Yeltsin’s market economy of big money and high living for a few and poverty for the rest. And though we hear little if anything about the protests of Soviet women, they will likely lead the resistance against capitalism and the fight for genuine socialism just like they did in 1917. Bold predictions for the New Year maybe, but decidedly brighter than what Bush and Baker have in store for the Soviet people.

MARY ANN CURTIS, Los Angeles