Elena Veduta | Monthly Review | The successes achieved by the USSR thanks to the socialist revolution of 1917—which transformed a backward, agrarian country, rich in raw materials and possessing a huge foreign debt, into an advanced scientific and technological power that determined a bipolar world—are overwhelming. However, after the counter-revolution of 1991, Russia returned to its past. It has again become a raw-material appendage of the world capitalist community and continues to slide downward.