A Future for Socialism in the USSR?

This paper was written before the Fall, and when the fate of the former Soviet Union and Marxism in it was still in question. At the time many people interested in Soviet politics had high expectations for Gorbachev's reform program, with some expectation that it would rescue "actually existing socialism" from its crisis. The paper took a more pessimistic view, correctly identifying, in retrospect, the factors that lead to the internal loss of faith in socialism in the Soviet ruling elite, the basic nature and trajectory of perestroika and itys centrifugal effects on the USSR itself, and the ultimate rise of an authoritarian nationalism. The paper was overoptimistic about the prospects of worker-driven "socialism from below" in the then-USSR, a road not taken (or forcibly amputated), but I feel that it holds up remarkably well as an analysis of what happened with the Soviet Union