LESSONS OF NOVOCHERKASSK
By Alexander Tarasov

The crisis of the stalinist pseudo-socialist empire and of
the stalinist pseudo-socialist ideology, which has been
breaking down before our eyes, has passed through three
stages. The first one was manifested by the death of the
Leader and Master himself and reached its peak in 1956. This
stage was expressed by the XX Congress [at which Kruschev
delivered his famous "secret speech" on the crimes of
Stalin], by the Polish and Hungarian crises, and by the
prisoner revolts in the camps.
The second one began with the "cultural revolution" in
China, and reached its peak in 1968 with the Polish events,
the "Prague spring" and the Red May in Paris.
The third and, as in the case of syphilis, the final stage,
the invasion of Afghanistan and the formation of
"Solidarnosc" in Poland. This stage led to the breakdown of
the Soviet block and to the August bourgeois revolution.
In the history of this crisis, especially of its first
stage, Novocherkassk occupies a special place. Of course
that city was not the only place where the workers rose in
revolt against the CPSU regime. Besides Novocherkassk there
were Karaganda, Temirtau, Alexandrov, Murom, and other
cities. The events in Novocherkassk cannot be compared with
the heroic armed insurrection of the Poznan workers in June,
1956, or the Hungarian political strike of November 3-10,
1956. But, on the other hand, the Novocherkassk revolt was a
mass uprising of workers who were officially considered to
be part of the bulwark of the regime. It did not take place
in the border regions of the stalinist empire, but in the
center itself - in the USSR and, moreover, in Russia. Nor
were these revolts of prisoners, who were afraid of nothing
because they had nothing to lose, like in Vorkuta, Norilsk
and Kengir. Nor were these just spontaneous outbursts of the
people's indignation at the militia's petty tyranny, like in
Murom or Alexandrov. Nor were these troubles deliberately
provoked by the authorities, like in Temirtau.
Novocherkassk was the first experience in post-war Russia of
mass action by a conscious section of the working class to
protect their economic and political rights. The extreme and
extraordinarily tough reaction by the authorities to the
Novocherkassk revolts indicates how seriously the highest
officials in the Soviet regime took these events and how
frightened they were by them.
Novocherkassk was also significant because the workers'
actions took place not in some frontier region (like
Karaganda and Temirtau), where the bulk of the population
consisted of migrants, young people who had arrived by
special recruitment, and former prisoners, but in an old
industrial region, where people had roots, where they had
lived for centuries and acquired connections, families,
property - where they had a lot to lose. Besides,
Novocherkassk, as well as the whole Don, had suffered the
mass repressions at the time of the destruction of the
cossacks, and the hunger of 1932-1933 which could not but
leave a heavy load of fear on the mass consciousness of the
local people. P.P. Siuda directly characterized
Novocherkassk as "the slough" (P.Siuda's letter to the
author, 14.08.88). All the more amazing is the enormous
number of participants in the Novocherkassk events and the
absolute support given to the strikers and the demonstrators
by the citizens, the organized character of the actions, and
the absence of hooliganism or looting, etc.
Of course the Novocherkassk outburst was spontaneous. The
participants in the events presented limited demands and
were naive in their belief in the "good tsar" (in the person
of N.S. Khrushchev). But at that time it could not be
otherwise. No opposition movements with developed programmes
existed in the country. Almost all the people were sure that
the social order established by Stalin was really socialism.
Khrushchev's reforms, the "thaw", had inspired great
expectations in the people. It was bound to take the
Novocherkassk tragedy, the overthrow of Khrushchev, the
strangling of the socialist dreams of the "Prague spring",
and the shooting of the workers' demonstration at the Baltic
seaside of Poland, for the scales of the stalinist dogmas to
fall from the eyes of the politically active minorities in
the countries of the Soviet block, so that they stopped
believing the tall tale about their living in "socialist"
states which "represented the interests of the working
class", and so that they began, following the example of
previous generations of revolutionaries, to create
opposition organizations and movements.<%0>
But events of Novocherkassk were a lesson for the ruling
regime as well. No doubt that Novocherkassk had become a
trump in the hands of the stalinist "hawks" against
Khrushchev: Look, they said, these are the results of
playing with reforms! Novocherkassk had undoubtedly also
weakened the reform wing because the bloody reprisal united
the influential ally of Khrushchev, A.I.Mikoyan, with the
"hawks." It would not be an exaggeration to say that
Novocherkassk was the first toll of the bell for
Khrushchev's regime (the second one was the Cuban missile
crisis).
We might also ask: could the Novocherkassian workers have
won? Strictly speaking, they certainly could not have, i.e.
they could not have changed the stalinist pseudo-socialist
order or even simply the existing regime. But with a
different relationship of forces within the CPSU at the
political summit of the USSR, they could undoubtedly have
achieved a certain liberalization of the regime, as the
Poznan workers had managed to do in 1956 when they brought
to power W.Gomulka with all his reforms. To say nothing of
the fact that in a different ideological climate and
correlation of political forces the particular demands of
the Novocherkassians, i.e. lowering prices, increasing the
wages, improving the provision of food, were very likely to
be satisfied. (The story which also took place during
Khrushchev's rule, about the strike of Odessa dockers who
refused to load the food products lacking in Odessa on the
ships bound for Cuba is quite well known. The authorities
met the demands of the strikers and sent the food to the
city stores.) But no one is capable of changing the past,
and Novocherkassk will continue to be remembered both as an
heroic event, and as a tragic one.

