October 17, 2004
AIMED AT STALIN, KILLED LENIN, MAO WAS JUST COLLATERAL DAMAGE:
Socialism, back in the USSR (Wang Chu, Asia Times)
As China prepares to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin for a three-day visit starting on Thursday, beneath the surface a debate is simmering about a long-forbidden topic: what really caused the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.Was it the result of peaceful evolution following the introduction of ideas of Western democracy, human rights and other alluring but superficial artifacts of Western culture? Or, was it, finally, the lack of faith in socialism? That latter possibility flies in the face of the accepted Chinese line, and holds serious implications for Chinese socialism in a nation undergoing breathtaking economic and social changes. But it is being discussed, albeit by a few people, and very quietly at this stage.
Over the past few years, Chinese scholars have begun to re-examine the cause of the collapse of the former superpower Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc from an independent and academic perspective. Their conclusions do not necessarily coincide with the established version published in the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda leaflets. These intrepid Chinese scholars may have set foot in one of the biggest forbidden political zones.
According to well-placed sources, some Chinese academics now embrace the opinions of two American researchers who argue that the breakdown of the Soviet Union resulted from the emergence of various interest groups within the establishment, groups that had lost their faith in socialism. This contrasts with the generally accepted official position that the collapse of the Soviet Union was brought about by a so-called "peaceful evolution" by Western powers. It has been learned that some communist officials share the view that loss of faith in socialism is what ultimately brought down the Soviet state.
Before he became nothing more than a partisan hack, New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote a terrific book about the fall of the USSR, Lenin's Tomb, in which he made the dispositive case that Gorbachev and those around him thought they could reform Socialism by tweaking it a little and that in order to build support for this imagined process allowed some dissent about the shortcomings of the system as it existed at that time. They anticipated that criticism would be directed at distortions of Socialism imported during Stalin's reign, but instead the dissidents went straight to the heart of the matter and demolished the reputation of Lenin himself and systematically destroyed the premises for Bolshevism altogether. By the time Glasnost (Openness) had run its course it was no longer possible to justify Perestroika (Restructuring)--it had become clear that the structure had to be razed. arguments like the one above are just efforts to get the toothpaste back into the tube and pretend that the Kremlin knew what it was doing and that Communists deserve credit for the fall of Communism. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 17, 2004 11:05 AM
Well, isn't it true that Gorbachev had lost faith in Socialism to the extent that he wasn't willing to kill to keep himself in power? It wasn't the Communists who killed Communism, but they accepted its death more gracefully than, say, Saddam accepted the death of Baathism.
Posted by: pj at October 17, 2004 11:30 AMpj:
No. He supported the coup that Yeltsin thwarted and was genuinely shocked when the plotters arrested him.
Posted by: oj at October 17, 2004 11:42 AMThe USSR suffered brain death when East Germans were allowed to travel to West Germany through Hungary without being shot. Everything thereafter was just the autonomic reflexes shutting down.
Posted by: David Cohen at October 17, 2004 12:05 PMMy steel adviser tells this story from the mid-1970s. He was escorting a visiting Russian Academician through a neighborhood of Victorian homes (big old three-deckers) near an Eastern university.
"How many families live in each building?" asked the Russian.
"One."
The Russian refused to believe it.
At first, anyhow.
I don't buy single-cause explanations, but two things happened in the USSR before Reagan began his posturing.
1. It stopped even pretending to be able to feed its people out of its own resources.
2. It let its elites see outside.
The same two factors brought down tsarism, by making everybody angry and by forcing the elites to acknowledge the lie they lived by collaborating with the regime.
Lots of other factors were at work, including resistance to Russianization and, perhaps, Gorbachev's legal education.
But a multinational empire that can't eat and can think is doomed.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 17, 2004 4:52 PMTsarist Russia had the most rapidly growing economy in the West. The USSR squandered everything it inherited.
Posted by: oj at October 17, 2004 5:05 PMI have to go with Mr. Eager's disdain of "single cause" theories. It's not competition with the West or losing faith in Socialism. It's losing faith in Socialism caused by the success of the West.
I would also agree (and I think even OJ is on this one) that Reagan didn't cause the fall of the USSR, it was doomed anyway. Reagan's posturing sped up the fall, removing the blight of Soviet Communism decades earlier, at enormous benefit to humanity. He was able to speed but not cause the fall because the fall depended on both the inner rot of Soviet Communism and the strength and wealth of the West. Reagan did much fo the latter, but the former was beyond his power.
Hopefully this is what President Bush is aiming for as well. He can't reform Islam, but he can create conditions in which those who might are more strongly pushed to do so.
AOG:
It's the Emperor Has No Clothes Effect--Reagan (with Pipes, Solzhenitsyn, and a few others) started it, but when the Russian intelligentsia said the same thing it stunned the Party. Very much the same thing is happening in the Middle Easy as the President talks about folks like the Taliban, Saddam, Arafat, Osama, and Assad in the past tense even before they're officially gone.
Posted by: oj at October 17, 2004 5:52 PMDemocracy and human rights are "superficial" aspects of Western Civ ?
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 18, 2004 10:05 AM