Editing Soviet Union (section)

=== By the political left ===
{{See also|Criticism of communist party rule#Left-wing criticism}}
The left's view of the USSR is complex. While some leftists regard the USSR as an example of state capitalism or that it was an oligarchical state, other leftists admire [[Vladimir Lenin]] and the [[Russian Revolution]].<ref>{{cite journal |journal=[[History of Economics Review]] |title='State Capitalism' in the Soviet Union |first1=M. C. |last1=Howard |first2=J.E. |last2=King |url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.691.8154&rep=rep1&type=pdf |doi=10.1080/10370196.2001.11733360 |volume=34 |year=2001 |issue=1 |pages=110–126 |citeseerx=10.1.1.691.8154 |s2cid=42809979 |via=CiteSeer |access-date=8 October 2020 |archive-date=18 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210818055829/https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.691.8154&rep=rep1&type=pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Council communists]] generally view the USSR as failing to create [[class consciousness]], turning into a corrupt state in which the elite controlled society.

[[Trotskyists]] believe that the ascendancy of the Stalinist bureaucracy ensured a [[degenerated workers' state|degenerated]] or [[deformed workers' state]], where the capitalist elite have been replaced by an unaccountable bureaucratic elite and there is no true democracy or workers' control of industry.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taaffe |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Taaffe |date=October 1995 |title=The Rise of Militant |url=https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ |chapter=Preface, and Trotsky and the Collapse of Stalinism |publisher=Bertrams |quote=The Soviet bureaucracy and Western capitalism rested on mutually antagonistic social systems. |isbn=978-0906582473 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021217071256/https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ |archive-date=17 December 2002 |url-status=live}}</ref> In particular, American Trotskyist [[David North (socialist)|David North]] noted that the generation of [[nomenklatura|bureaucrats]] that rose to power under Stalin's tutelage presided over the [[Stagnation of the Soviet Union|stagnation]] and [[Dissolution of the Soviet Union|breakdown]] of the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite book |last1=North |first1=David |author-link=David North (socialist) |title=In Defense of Leon Trotsky |date=2010 |publisher=[[Mehring Books]] |isbn=978-1-893638-05-1 |pages=172–173 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mVqvouA22IkC |language=en}}</ref>

Many [[anti-Stalinist left]]ists such as anarchists are extremely critical of Soviet authoritarianism and [[Nabat#Decline|repression]]. Much of the criticism it receives is centered around [[List of massacres in the Soviet Union|massacres in the Soviet Union]], the centralized [[hierarchy]] present in the USSR and mass [[Political repression in the Soviet Union|political repression]] as well as violence towards government critics and [[Soviet dissidents|political dissidents]] such as other leftists. Critics also point towards its failure to implement any substantial [[worker cooperatives]] or implementing worker liberation, as well as corruption and the Soviet authoritarian nature.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}}

Anarchists are also critical of the country, labeling the Soviet system as ''[[red fascism]]''. Factors contributing to the anarchist animosity towards the USSR included the Soviet destruction of the [[Makhnovist movement]] after an initial alliance, the suppression of the anarchist [[Kronstadt rebellion]], and the defeat of the rival anarchist factions by the Soviet-supported Communist faction during the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref>{{cite book |title=ABC of Anarchism |orig-year=1942 |first=Alexander |last=Berkman |url=http://assets.zinedistro.org/zines/pdfs/116.pdf |publisher=Freedom Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-900384-03-5 |via=Zine Distro |access-date=8 October 2020 |archive-date=5 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201105124142/http://assets.zinedistro.org/zines/pdfs/116.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Maoists]] also have a mixed opinion on the USSR, viewing it negatively during the [[Sino-Soviet Split]] and denouncing it as revisionist and reverted to capitalism. The Chinese government in 1963 articulated its criticism of the USSR's system and promoted China's ideological line as an alternative.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement |url=http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/cpc/proposal.htm |website=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=24 February 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160131074829/https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sino-soviet-split/cpc/proposal.htm |archive-date=31 January 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Seven Letters Exchanged Between the Central Committees of the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union |url=http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/polemics/sevenlet.html |access-date=21 October 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071225024740/http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/polemics/sevenlet.html |archive-date=25 December 2007 |url-status=dead |website=Etext Archives}}</ref>

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the [[Japanese Communist Party]] (JCP) released a press statement titled "We welcome the end of a party which embodied the historical evil of [[great power]] [[chauvinism]] and [[hegemonism]]".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120715002061.htm |title=JCP struggling to become relevant |website=The Daily Yomiuri |date=16 July 2012 |access-date=12 July 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-date=17 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121017085837/http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120715002061.htm}}</ref>

[[Noam Chomsky]] called the collapse of the Soviet Union "a small victory for socialism, not only because of the fall of one of the most anti-socialist states in the world, where working people had fewer rights than in the West, but also because it freed the term 'socialism' from the burden of being associated in the propaganda systems of East and West with Soviet tyranny—for the East, in order to benefit from the aura of authentic socialism, for the West, in order to demonize the concept."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Polychroniou |first=C. J. |date=17 July 2016 |title=Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions |url=https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-on-anarchism-communism-and-revolutions/ |access-date=21 June 2023 |work=[[Truthout]] |language=en-US}}</ref> Some scholars on the left have posited that the end of the Soviet Union and [[communism]] as a global force allowed [[neoliberal]] [[capitalism]] to become a global system, which has resulted in rising [[economic inequality]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Ghodsee |first=Kristen |author-link=Kristen Ghodsee |date=2018 |title=[[Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism]] |url= |location= |publisher=[[Vintage Books]] |pages=3–4 |isbn=978-1568588902|quote=Without the looming threat of a rival superpower, the last thirty years of global neoliberalism have witnessed a rapid shriveling of social programs that protect citizens from cyclical instability and financial crises and reduce the vast inequality of economic outcomes between those at the top and bottom of the income distribution.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Greene|first1=Julie|authorlink1= Julie Greene |date=April 2020|title=Bookends to a Gentler Capitalism: Complicating the Notion of First and Second Gilded Ages|url=|journal=[[The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era]] |volume=19 |issue=2 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|pages=197–205|doi=10.1017/S1537781419000628|pmc= |pmid= |access-date=}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Bartel |first=Fritz |date=2022 |title=The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism |url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976788 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=9780674976788 |pages=5–6}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Gerstle |first=Gary |author-link=Gary Gerstle |date=2022 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era |url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en& |location= |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=10–12, 149 |isbn=978-0-19-751964-6|quote=The collapse of communism, then, opened the entire world to capitalist penetration, shrank the imaginative and ideological space in which opposition to capitalist thought and practices might incubate, and impelled those who remained leftists to redefine their radicalism in alternative terms, which turned out to be those that capitalist systems could more, rather than less, easily manage. This was the moment when neoliberalism in the United States went from being a political movement to a political order.}}</ref>