Sunday photoblogging – the end of communism

Great pictures, thanks for sharing them, Pauline (and Chris :-)!

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a dramatic truth was revealed to the world that Western governments and the mainstream press failed to take notice of. It was the revealed truth that the Communist leaders of the U.S.S.R. were not the evil madmen that our leaders had made them out to be.

They were never willing, in a desperate gamble, to launch a first strike against the West, simply in order that they might be able to declare themselves the winner over a devastated wasteland. They actually meant what they said when they declared at various times that peace was always their highest objective.

It was never their intention to ‘conquer the world’, to use their military power to impose a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ on the unwilling leaders of nations around the world. Their military buildup throughout the Cold War was revealed to have not been evidence of their plan to initiate a war against the West just as soon as they were able to achieve a military advantage, but was only evidence of their attempts to deter the West from finding an excuse to launch a preemptive war to effect a regime change favorable to Western leaders.

Perhaps the most important revelation was that the [Central Committee’s] communist leaders actually believed the rhetoric that they were so fond of using. No, they were not perfect or incorruptible, any more than Western political leaders are. Ultimately, however, they were not evil manipulators determined to use the raw power at their disposal to protect their privileged positions at all costs.

Gorbachev could not have carried out any of his reforms without the political support of most of the Central Committee. As a group, these people were willing to risk political implosion if that was what it would take to reduce nuclear tensions with the lunatic nut-case who was running the American government at that time.

It wasn’t that they still wanted to go ahead with their evil plans to Conquer The World but then Ronald Reagan so dispirited them with his own massive military buildup, they decided that they might as well just give up on the idea of being evil, leaving them with no choice but to be ‘good’ and give up their evil ways. Nope, none of that ever happened.

The final revelation was that Ronald Reagan and all of his fellow Cold Warriors were completely wrong about their understanding of what was going on in communist Russia and they were profoundly wrong with the prescription they embraced. They always acted on their belief that popular discontent could be stirred up (Radio Free Europe) among the masses, and that the average Russian could be motivated to rise up in an insurrection and put down their evil oppressors.

When change finally did come to Russia, it was from the top-down, not from the bottom-up. It was the ‘evil’ rulers of the USSR who put into motion the momentum for dramatic institutional change, putting most of their jobs at risk. They may have been a lot of things, but they were not evil. As a political party, the communists had, over the years, come to see themselves as public servants who were obligated to address the needs of their people. They simply were not the bad guys they were made out to be.

And so what is it you’re accusing me of, Chris? Of being too lenient in my judgments of the Soviet leaders? Are you saying that you do believe that it was the intention of Brezhnev to conquer the world? At what point did I claim that the citizens of the U.S.S.R. were perfectly contented with their lot?

If you’ll re-read my comments, you might notice that I did not seek to defend the Communist leadership in Moscow from anything other than the accusation that they were Evil in the sense that they were obsessed with world conquest and indifferent to the needs of their people. Oh, and thank you for implicitly acknowledging that your recommended reading on East Germany was irrelevant to any of the points I was making re: the leadership of the U.S.S.R.

I didn’t come close to painting a sanguine picture of life in Communist Russia, but for some reason you chose to feel threatened by my criticism of popular Cold Warrior fantasies.

Why is that Chris?

Chris:

As for the ruling bureaucracies seeing themselves as “public servants”, well let’s just say that they tended to award themselves a better standard of living than the average.

Hmm… I think maybe I need for you to spell out the point you are trying to make here. Is it that I should have realized that politicians who see themselves as ‘public servants’ in non-communist countries would never tend to award themselves a better standard of living than the average?

A bit of Judaean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judaea action going on here between James and Chris?

on a serious note, alex, i think the differences between james and chris transcend the trivial, unless you believe the differences between social democracy and soviet bureaucracy are trivial.

Come on, isn’t it a fact that what happened in 1989 (the Soviets peacefully letting go of their empire) was a truly amazing and hopeful development. If that’s what 3’s point is, it’s a fair point.

I have no doubt that Chris is a serious person, but he’s in a Monty Python sketch here, unless he pulls out sharpish. Never argue with a man holding a dead parrot.

You know: it’s all fine & well that it turned out the way it turned out. But I recently saw footage of the mass demonstrations just before the great crumbling. Thousands which were marching, chanting ‘Wir sind das Volk’. Damned man, out of context that was the scariest shit I saw for a long time. Kind of put things in context for me: I sure hope that we Westerners never ever have to march in mass demonstrations again.

Back then, many of us hoped that the Eastern working class would, given the choice, reject both Soviet-style dictatorship and western capitalism, in favour of a combination of democracy and collective ownership with self-management

I can’t say much about most of Eastern Europe, and I don’t know for sure about “collective ownership with self-management”, but I do know that many people in Russia hoped to have options other than the ones they were actually given in the early 90’s. (Whether these were real options, given both the situation of the country and the outside pressures, I can’t say, but I do know that quite a lot of people hoped for something other than what they got in the end.) As for me, I wish that Yavlinsky would have had more luck in getting his proposals put into law, both in 1990 and in the later 9o’s.

The sad thing about the fall of the Soviet Union was that millions died anyway. It just didn’t turn out to be the nasty civil war that many people predicted (except in outlying areas like Chechnya). Instead, it was due to increased drug use and alcoholism, which was due to the collapse of the economic system, but aggravated by Yeltsin’s and Gaidar’s shock therapy.

Chris, I think Alex means you’re a serious person arguing with a silly person.

‘[T]his development of productive forces … is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would begin again…’ (Marx, The German Ideology)

Thomas Friedman rises to the occasion:

The most important difference between 11/9 and 9/11 is “people power.” Germans showed the world how good ideas about expanding human freedom — amplified by people power — can bring down a wall and an entire autocratic power structure, without a shot. There is now a Dunkin’ Donuts on Paris Square adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate, where all that people power was concentrated. Normally, I am horrified by American fast-food brands near iconic sites, but in the case of this once open sore between East and West, I find it something of a balm. The war over Europe is indeed over. People power won. We can stand down — pass the donuts.

And of course the Stasi was famous for their skill in abducting and disappearing people.

Whatever – we could engage in a drawn-out back and forth now about your week in the GDR 25 years ago and the way you subsequently referred to it, but frankly it would be a waste of both our time.