The Solidarity Economy in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia Aleksand [] Center for Global Justice

On October 18, 2023, the Center for Global Justice lost at dear friend–the reknowned Russian marxist scholar/activist Aleksandr Buzgalin. In commemoration of his life and legacy, the Center is rebroadcasting his last program with the Center– “The Solidarity Economy in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia”–originally broadcast on May 30, 2022. Buzgalin, himself a left opponent of bureaucracy and authoritarianism, refutes in this talk a widespread myth about the former Soviet Union that depicts it as a monolithic totalitarian system devoid of social movements of any significance. Instead he presents a more nuanced picture by reviewing the little-known forms of workers’ democracy that existed in the USSR along with the general characteristic of post-soviet capitalism in Russia.

Aleksandr Buzglin was an economics professor at Moscow State University and Director of Modern Marxist Studies. He was a member of the Organizing Committee of the Russian Social Forums and the coordinator of a social movement called Alternatives and the chief editor of its quarterly journal. Alternatives has organized Marxist study groups in close to 30 cities across Russia and has sucessfully organized self-management in numerous factories