Ecosocialism: The Class Political Economy of the Climate Crisis — Part 2: Actually Existing Socialism and Ecology — The Failure of the USSR, the Experiment of Cuba

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Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: April 24, 2026

Series 'Ecosocialism: The Class Political Economy of the Climate Crisis' — Part 2 of 5

In Part 1, we argued using the theory of metabolic rift that capitalism structurally produces ecological crisis. If so, did systems beyond capitalism solve ecological problems? Part 2 confronts this uncomfortable question head-on.

Starting with the Most Uncomfortable Rebuttal

When discussing ecosocialism, the first rebuttal encountered is a historical fact: The USSR was not capitalist, but its ecological destruction was no less severe than capitalism's. The Aral Sea dried up, Chernobyl exploded, Lake Baikal was polluted.

To ignore or gloss over this rebuttal is to abandon intellectual honesty. Rather, we must analyze this failure precisely in order to properly answer the question, "Why ecosocialism?" Was the Soviet failure an inevitability of socialism in general, or a product of particular historical conditions?

1. The Three Periods of Soviet Ecology

John Bellamy Foster, in his analysis of Soviet ecology in Monthly Review (2015), rejects the simplistic schema of 'socialism = ecological destruction.' Soviet ecology can be divided into three periods.

Period 1: Revolutionary Ecology (1917–mid-1930s)

Under Lenin, the USSR implemented the world's most progressive environmental conservation policies for its time. Influenced by the Marx-Engels conception of nature, Lenin took a deep interest in conservation.

Concrete achievements:

Creation of zapovedniki: strict nature reserves for scientific research preserving pristine natural conditions. By 1933, 33 reserves totaling 2.7 million hectares.
Establishment of the All-Russian Society for Conservation (VOOP) in 1924.
Production of world-class ecologists: Sukachev, Vernadsky, Vavilov.
Vernadsky's concept of the 'Biosphere' (1926), Oparin's theory of the origin of life, Sukachev's concept of 'biogeocoenosis' — all products of Soviet science.

The characteristic of Soviet ecology in this period was a dialectical view of nature. Nature was understood not as an object to be conquered, but as a system of interaction between humans and nature.

Period 2: Stalin's Destruction (mid-1930s–1950s)

With the rise of the Stalinist system, Soviet ecology collapsed. The core cause was the Lysenko affair. Lysenko denounced Mendelian genetics as "bourgeois idealism" and used political power to impose his pseudo-agricultural theories.

Results:

Vavilov — the world's foremost plant geneticist — imprisoned, died of malnutrition.
Sukachev and ecological scientists fought against Lysenko's interference, but most were purged or marginalized.
VOOP membership fell from 15,000 in 1932 to 2,500 in 1940.
85% of zapovedniki liquidated (1951).

The outcome of rapid industrialization was, in Foster's words, 'ecocide':

Aral Sea depletion: Massive diversion of water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for cotton monoculture irrigation. Once the world's fourth-largest lake, 90% of the Aral Sea's area disappeared. The livelihoods and health of 35 million people were destroyed.
Chernobyl (1986): Collapse of a bureaucratized nuclear management system. Accident cleanup costs are estimated at ten times the USSR's foreign debt (US$66 billion) and about one-third of 1985 GDP.
Lake Baikal pollution: Construction of a pulp mill near the world's largest freshwater lake, pollution continuing for decades.

This is the history known as 'the ecological failure of actually existing socialism.'

Period 3: Revival of Ecological Thought (late 1950s–1991)

However, the story does not end here. After Stalin, a remarkable revival of ecological thought occurred in the USSR.

After Stalin's death, Sukachev led Soviet academia in publicly denouncing Lysenko as a fraud.
VOOP membership exploded to 910,000 in 1959 — the world's largest environmental conservation organization.
Soviet climatologists issued the world's first warnings of global warming:
Demonstrated the climate feedback mechanism of melting ice sheets.
Budyko developed the theory of Earth's thermal balance — awarded the Lenin Prize.
First conceived the nuclear winter theory — a achievement of Soviet climatologists.
Emergence of 'ecological revolution' mass movements in the 1980s.

The trajectory of Soviet ecology is paradoxical: world-leading ecological thought in the early revolutionary period → destruction under Stalin → world-class climate science again in the later period.

2. Analysis: What Caused Soviet Ecological Destruction?

The equation Soviet ecological destruction = inevitability of socialism does not hold historically. The correct analysis is as follows.

Three causes of destruction under Stalin:

Bureaucratic outputism: With numerical fulfillment of five-year plans as the sole goal, long-term ecological costs were not internalized in planning. This is not a problem of 'planning in general' but of bureaucratic planning without democratic control.

'Conquest of nature' ideology: Under Stalin, the dialectical view of nature of Marx and Engels was deleted, replaced by a Promethean ideology that saw nature as an object to be conquered and remolded by human will. This was a distortion of Marxism, not Marxism itself.

Politicization of ecological knowledge: The ideological control of science, epitomized by Lysenkoism, destroyed ecological rationality. In a system where scientific judgment is subordinated to political loyalty, ecological planning is impossible.

Conclusion: The Soviet ecological failure was not a failure of socialism (social ownership of the means of production + democratic planning), but a failure of bureaucratic dictatorship + absence of democratic control + Promethean developmentalism. This distinction is not a simple excuse — the dramatic difference between the Lenin period and the Stalin period proves it.

3. Cuba's Experiment: Forced Ecological Transition

A contrasting case is Cuba's 'Special Period (Período Especial, 1991–2000).'

Background: After the collapse of the USSR, Cuba's imports of oil, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and food from the Soviet Union were cut by over 90%. At the same time, the US economic blockade intensified. Food crisis became real.

Transition process: The Cuban government had to make an unprecedented choice under forced conditions. It had to produce food without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and to move without oil. Paradoxically, the crisis became a catalyst for ecological transition.

Urban Agriculture (Agricultura Urbana): Conversion of vacant lots, rooftops, and balconies into gardens, centered on Havana. By the late 1990s, over 8,000 official gardens in Havana, with tens of thousands participating.
Organic Agriculture: Shift to agriculture without chemical inputs. Composting, crop rotation, biological pest control.
Peasant-to-Peasant Knowledge Exchange (MACAC): Horizontal knowledge dissemination, peasants teaching peasants. Over 100,000 households participated from 1997. FAO recognized it as a global model.

Results:

Food self-sufficiency rose from 43% to 100%.
After 4 years, organic productivity exceeded conventional agriculture by 30–43%.
Cuba gained international recognition as a 'world leader in sustainable agriculture.'

Critical assessment — Limits of the Cuban case:

We must also be wary of idealizing the Cuban transition.

Forced transition: Cuba's ecological transition was not a product of ecological awakening but was forced by blockade and poverty. If Soviet support had resumed, the possibility of a different choice cannot be ruled out.
Continued extractivism: While achieving ecological transition in agriculture, Cuba maintained an extractivist approach in mineral resource development (nickel, cobalt mining, etc.). The ecological transition was not comprehensive.
Limits of scale: The model of Cuba, an island nation of 11 million people, is difficult to apply directly to large industrial countries.

4. Bolivia's 'Law of the Rights of Mother Earth': Limits of Legal Recognition

In 2010, the Morales government in Bolivia enacted the world's first law granting legal personhood to nature: the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra). It stipulated seven rights including nature's right to regeneration, biodiversity's right, and right to a life free from pollution.

At first glance, this seems like a practice of ecosocialism. But reality was different.

Extractivist contradiction: While proclaiming the Mother Earth Law, the Morales government simultaneously pushed ahead with road construction through indigenous Amazon territories. It maintained the expansion of lithium, natural gas, and mineral extraction as the core of national development strategy.
Indigenous community resistance: Conflicts between indigenous communities opposing the TIPNIS (Isiboro-Sécure National Park) road project and the government exposed the gap between legal declarations and actual policy.
Law and production relations: Legal recognition can be a necessary condition for ecological transition, but not a sufficient one. If production relations do not change, the rights of nature become a dead letter.

The Bolivian case shows that even a left-wing government, once it internalizes the logic of developmentalism, relegates ecology to a lower priority.

5. Common Lessons from the Three Cases

Reading the cases of the USSR, Cuba, and Bolivia together outlines the conditions for ecosocialism.

Case	Positive Aspects	Limitations/Failures	Cause
USSR (Lenin period)	Zapovedniki, leading ecological thought	Insufficient scale/institutionalization	Short-lived
USSR (Stalin period)	—	Aral Sea, Chernobyl, Lake Baikal	Bureaucratic dictatorship, absence of democratic control, developmentalism
USSR (late period)	World-leading climate science, environmental movement	Cut short by system collapse	Political crisis
Cuba	Organic transition, food self-sufficiency achieved	Forced transition, continued extractivism	External coercion + residual developmentalism
Bolivia	Proclamation of Mother Earth Law	Law-reality gap, repression of indigenous peoples	Production relations not transformed

Conclusion: Three Conditions

Without democratic planning, there is no ecological planning. The Soviet failure was not a failure of 'planned economy' itself, but of bureaucratic planning without democratic control. Ecological rationality cannot be imposed by authoritarian command.

The ideology of developmentalism itself must be liquidated. As long as GDP, output, and speed are the criteria for self-justification — whether under capitalism or 'socialism' — ecology will always be sacrificed to growth. Cuba transitioned when the blockade forcibly broke this logic.

Without transformation of production relations, legal declarations remain dead letters. Bolivia's 'Mother Earth Law' remains symbolic as long as the real control over land, energy, and minerals does not change.

Interim Conclusion: Responding to the Rebuttal 'Socialism Also Failed'

The Soviet ecological destruction is a failure. This should not be denied. But the cause of that failure must be precisely identified.

The Soviet failure was not a case of social ownership of the means of production destroying ecology. It was the result of bureaucratic dictatorship without democratic control, suppression of ecological science, and adoption of the same developmentalist logic as capitalism.

In other words: What the USSR proved was not "socialism destroys ecology," but "developmentalism without democracy — whether capitalist or self-proclaimed socialist — destroys ecology."

The case of Cuba shows the opposite possibility. Under forced conditions, collective ecological transition was possible under resource constraints. This was not because Cubans were more 'moral,' but because structural conditions rendered developmentalist logic inoperable, and alternative rationality emerged.

The lesson ecosocialism must learn from history is this: Abolishing the logic of capital's profit is not enough. The twin traps of developmentalist ideology and bureaucratic planning must be overcome simultaneously. That path leads to the South Korean field, which will be covered in the next installment.

Series Table of Contents

Part 1 (Published): Why Capitalism Structurally Produces Ecological Crisis

Part 2 (Current): Actually Existing Socialism and Ecology — The Failure of the USSR, the Experiment of Cuba

Part 3 (Upcoming): South Korea's Climate Justice Movement — Class Subjects and Strategy

Part 4 (Upcoming): The Political Economy of Energy Transition — Who Bears the Cost

Part 5 (Upcoming): The Politics of Ecosocialism — Degrowth or Socialist Planning