Look, I know talking about this is very controversial, and I admit I don’t know much about the subject, but I think the main political mistake was to have the USSR take the form that Lenin permanently defined as: “The important thing is not to provide material for the ‘pro-independence’ people, not to destroy their independence, but to create another new layer, a federation of equal republics.” It may have been the right tactic at the time, following a bloody civil war caused by imperialist invasions from the West, but the problem with this, in my opinion, is that it would create too many terrible vulnerabilities throughout the country in the long run, as we’ve already seen. You might say to me, “So you’re saying the USSR should never have existed.” Not at all; I think this form of political organization is necessary and inevitable in its early stages due to the weakness of forces in a given republic. But as the USSR developed, as the imperialist powers increasingly sought to impose sanctions, sabotage, spread disinformation, and use every possible means to make the revolutionaries betray their proletarian cause, I believe they should have consolidated the republics into a single one, following the model of Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and China.
This is something I’ve never fully understood: wouldn’t it have been more strategic to educate the masses about the need to unite all the federal republics into a single one, so that it would be stronger, more enduring, and better prepared to face both internal and external enemies? Because, logically speaking, if you forever rely on the argument that the independent republics that formed the USSR united voluntarily, then sooner or later nationalist forces will grow strong enough to say: “Well, we can separate voluntarily, because we are independent republics.” Any of them could have replied, “We’d rather build socialism the Yugoslav way; no, we have no need to belong to the Union,” and no one could say anything, because they have the right and the consent to do so. I think this is a mistake.
Once again, I repeat: I don’t know much about how to organize a socialist state politically and administratively, but for example, when I read this in the 1922 Constitution of the USSR:
ARTICLE 3. The sovereignty of the member Republics is limited only in the matters indicated in the present Constitution, as coming within the competence of the Union. Outside of those limits, each member Republic exerts its public powers independently; the U.S.S.R. protects the rights of the member Republics.
ARTICLE 4. Each one of the member Republics retains the right to freely withdraw from the Union.
ARTICLE 5. The member Republics will make changes in their Constitutions to conform with the present Constitution.
ARTICLE 6. The territory of the member Republics cannot be modified without their consent; also, any limitation or modification or suppression of Article 4 must have the approval of all the member Republics of the Union.
or in the 1936 version:
ARTICLE 13: The Union of Soviet Socialist-Republics is a federated state, formed on the basis of the voluntary association of Soviet Socialist Republics possessing equal rights, namely:
ARTICLE 16: Each Union Republic has its own Constitution, which takes into account the specific features of the Republic and is drawn up in full conformity with the Constitution of the U.S.S.R.
ARTICLE 17: To every Union Republic is reserved the right freely to secede from the U.S.S.R.
ARTICLE 18: The territory of the Union Republics may not be altered without their consent.
or the one from 1977:
Article 70. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is an integral, federal, multinational state formed on the principle of socialist federalism as a result of the free self-determination of nations and the voluntary association of equal Soviet Socialist Republics.
Article 72. Each Union Republic shall retain the right freely to secede from the USSR.
Article 76. A Union Republic is a sovereign Soviet socialist state that has united with other Soviet Republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
I wonder: wouldn’t this be exploited by reactionary forces sooner or later in a future where internal counterrevolutions in the various republics gain momentum? Wouldn’t it have been better to centralize them all, not for moral reasons, but because circumstances dictated it? And you might say to me, “Well, what you’re trying to find is precisely what’s called the USSR, the supreme state.” But if that were the case, then why are independent federal republics needed in the first place? Why do we need the concept and reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat if we can voluntarily abandon it? I see a huge contradiction here that the imperialist states exploited to the fullest. In other words, according to the constitution itself, one could infer that the USSR was a treaty, something like the Warsaw Pact. And instead of consolidating this dictatorship of the proletariat, it moved away from it, not merely due to issues of betrayal per se (which is what actually happened), but because the constitution itself influenced this outcome.
Well, he might be able to escape, but he won’t get out once the French workers pour a “secret layer of concrete” over the bunker.