TRANSLATED BY MICHEL VALE THE RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM on the territory of the former Soviet Union was accompanied not only by unprecedented attacks on the social rights of the population. (Not only rights characteristic of the Soviet system, e.g., the right to housing, were rescinded, but also many of those that in the West are considered a normal attribute of a civilized attitude toward the wage laborer). No less impressive was the ease with which the new bourgeoisie imposed its conditions on the workers. By the late eighties the topic of free trade unions had become extremely popular.
Author: Boris Kagarlitsky
BORIS YULIYEVICH KAGARLITSKY is coordinator of the Transnational Institute’s Global Crisis Project and Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO) in Moscow. He is the author of 15 books on contemporary Russia, most recently Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System (2008).
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