The Czar & the IMF Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 30, 1998 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EDITORIAL: THE CZAR & THE IMF The counterrevolution in the USSR may have set back the worldwide struggle of the workers and oppressed for socialism, but it has done nothing to make capitalism look good. On the contrary, the return to capitalism has brought Russia and the other Soviet republics to their knees, and has brought only suffering to the masses of working people. Take the latest humiliation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin pleading to the International Monetary Fund for a $17-billion loan. The Russian economy has been on the skids since 1991, many firms have been unable to pay their workers for months, and both Yeltsin and his imperialist backers fear a political collapse. But the imperialists never just give away their money. They invest it. If the capitalist banks loan money to capitalist Russia, they'll want that capital to start flowing back to them as quickly as possible--even if it takes selling every last ounce of metallic ore in Russia to do it. And the poorer the credit risk, the more interest they'll demand. The capitalist Yeltsin regime has put Russia in the position of any impoverished Third World country. It is saddled with a huge debt that the Russian people will be paying on for decades. This will prevent any of the promised development that would allow capitalist Russia to compete with imperialist North America, Western Europe and Japan. It's the old story of the "debt trap," but instead of dragging down Brazil or the Congo, this is happening in a formerly powerful socialist country. In the days of the Soviet Union, the planned economy kept them out of the debt trap. The USSR always had more gold on hand than it needed to pay its bills, and always had the highest credit ratings. Centralized control of foreign trade meant that the Soviet government, not individual "entrepreneurs," was in charge of the national economy and the imperialists couldn't get in to loot it. That's what they really meant when they called it a "closed society." If the masses of the population didn't have all the consumer goods available to those with money in the West and Japan, they did have jobs, a roof over their heads, food to eat, education and free health care. And they had achieved all that in just two generations since the 1917 revolution propelled that huge country out of semi-feudal stagnation. Now they have insecurity on all fronts and a president who has to beg from the imperialists to stay in office. Regarding Yeltsin's rush to humiliate himself, he plumbed new depths by bowing to the symbolic burial of the last of the Romanoffs. The last Czar, while capable of the same cruelties toward the masses as his predecessors--like unleashing pogroms--was noted in his time for his general lack of intellect and ability to lead. Like Yeltsin, he depended on treaties with the Western imperialists-- especially France--and sent millions of peasants to their deaths in World War I to uphold Russia's part of these robbers' pacts. When czarism finally crumbled in February 1917, few in the bourgeois world dared lament this moth- eaten and hated monarchy. That Yeltsin could prostrate himself before the presumed body of this deposed tyrant and apologize for his execution is just another sign of how low Russia has fallen under capitalism. But Yeltsin's newfound adulation for the Russian aristocracy reflects even more the decadence of the imperialist bourgeoisie and their utter lack of scruples about promoting anyone who will grease their corporate wheels--be they women-hating Talibans, born-again Russian monarchists or home-grown reactionaries of the Jesse Helms- Rudy Giuliani ilk. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-07.26.98-11:26:39-20022