So world Communism was a monolithic entity - except when it wasn’t. Gotcha. Thus explaining why the Soviet-Chinese schism was just one monolith breaking apart yet still being a monolith of Communism. Or Vietnam invading neighboring communist Cambodia and China later invading communist Vietnam were all further proof that Communism was a monolith acting in hive-like unity except when it wasn’t. Heck, just say except when it wasn’t softly enough and it’s almost as if Communism was a monolithic entity moving in lock-step from orders coming from the Kremlin!
Okay, apologies, but this one is amusing. I know from American Trotskyists, having been raised by a few of them ( parents AND step-parents ). American Trotskyists so mirrored The Life of Brian that it wasn’t even funny. Well, strike that - it was funny, actually. Very funny.
There was no one to give marching orders to small groups of Trotskyists other than other small groups of Trotskyists, who were hardly the kind of folks to take marching orders from a bunch of Trotskyists :p.
Shush you! Your exposure to the Judean People’s Front has clearly polluted your point of view. Or the People’s Front of Judea. Or the Judean Popular People’s Front. Or the Popular Front of Judea… in any event your a monolith dammit!
Communism and Socialism are doomed to fail on their own. They did. I do remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as being a very scary time for our country. I used to have nightmares about the movie, “Fail Safe”. Once USSR obtained Nuclear weapons that would be the end of the world, if we ever engaged them the fear went away.
For my part, I would never claim that we had to do nothing. The problem is that there were so many things that we could have done differently that might have caused them to collapse more swiftly and certainly would have caused far less trauma and grief through the world, even if it had collapsed more slowly.
George Kennan, generally considered the “architect” of the Cold War, set forth the general policies he believed should be followed to resist Soviet expansion following WWII. However, despite serving as advisor to seven separate administrations regarding those policies, he still wound up criticizing just about every one of them for failures resulting from actions based on his general concepts that ignored the details that he proposed. Time after time his vision proved to have been correct when he was ignored.
Some dangers were greater than others. North America and the antipodes were never at risk, but if the US had not joined NATO and committed itself to the defense of western Europe, it’s certainly possible that the Soviets would have invaded West Germany after Allied troops left and fomented Communist coups in France and Italy.
Well, not necessarily. In Economics Explained, economist Lester Thurow, having carefully analyzed the incredible practical problems of an economy based on centralized planning without the constant corrective feedback provided by the law of supply and demand, concludes that, nevertheless, Stalinism works – for limited but nevertheless very important purposes, such as heavy-capital formation. And look at the evidence: Stalin took over a country that had never been heavily industrialized to begin with, and that limited industrial infrastructure devastated by World War I and the subsequent Russian Civil War. By means incredibly brutal and incredibly wasteful, he spurred the USSR to develop at breakneck speed to the point where, scarcely more than a decade later, it was an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler’s Germany. No way could that have happened, if Russia had had a free-market system during that period.
From Economics Explained:
Chronos, why don’t you pass the time by playing a game of solitaire?
We were well aware of the famines that occurred during the ‘Twenties and Thirties in the Soviet Union (both due to underproduction resulting from the institution of collectivization of farms and crap agrarian policies, and the deliberate famines like the Holodomor) and the general production issues well before the post-WWII economic blockade of Communist nations. (Our knowledge of what was going on in the Peoples’ Republic of China was far more limited, but as it turned out their economic plans were even more devastating.)
As for advances in territory beyond the East Bloc, the Soviets had their hands full just trying to keep the “client states” of the Warsaw Pact from acting up. Invasions into Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) were both extremely costly and resulted in massive international blowback. Between the events of Prague Spring in 1968 and the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, whatever support the legitimacy of the leadership of the Soviet Union had in the West was completely demolished. Afghanistan (into which the Soviet Union was drawn as a result of plots by American leadership during the Carter administration) put the final nail in the coffin; both the cost and loss of prestige destroyed the grasp of the old guard and brought younger men like Gorbachev to power with their badly-needed economic and social reforms. While the magnitude of the economic problems of the Soviet Union wasn’t completely understood, predictions of the ultimate collapse from internal economic failure were accepted from the 'Fifties onward.
However, the threat of Communist expansion made for a great boogyman, not only justifying massive military spending, unprecedented research and development for nuclear weapons, missiles and space vehicles, and the race to the Moon, but was also the sole rationale for establishing the world’s second largest espionage and counter-intelligence bureaucracy. Communism, ironically, was great for business.
Stranger
So far the perspectives offered have been of those living in non-communist countries when the USSR fell. Maybe I can give you a different perspective. I was living in Cuba when the USSR fell, so let me give a few facts.
-
Communism as practiced in Cuba and the USSR was committed to spreading the doctrine throughout the world, by whatever means necessary. That including providing material support to communist insurrectionists throughout the world, as Cuba did in Angola in the 1970s; or help to initiate communist insurrections where there wasn’t one yet, as Cuba tried to do unsuccessfully in Bolivia in the 1960s.
-
Those who say ‘communism was destined to fall’ certainly did not live in a communist country before the fall of the USSR. Communist didactic called for the continued existence of communism and the fall of capitalism. It was just something that was hoped, it was expected as factual. When the USSR fell there was a rash of suicides in Cuba among the old guard. I expect something similar happened in the USSR.
-
I can’t speak for other Soviet satellite nations, but Cuba was structured on the soviet model in every way, economically, politically, educationally, in every way. Even now, 16 years after the fall of the USSR Cuba’s model has not changed, even though its largest ally is now China, whose model differs from the USSR.
So in short, the communist block was very much committed to the spread of communism, by violent means if necessary, and it demonstrated that commitment very forcefully. At least internally communism was seen as eternal, and it was capitalism that was temporary. So I would say that west was right to fear communism, and that its dangers were not exaggerated.
For some more perspective, in Cuba we heard about the fall of the Berlin wall, but not as a triumph of freedom, obviously, but as a communist country being overrun by sinister forces. From 1989 to 1991 we spent a lot of time imagining how the USSR would help save the German people from their terrible fate.
I don’t recall for certain, but I am pretty sure Gorbachev was supposed to travel to Cuba in 1991 to bring Castro around to perestroika, glasnost, and uskoreniye, and some natural disaster or something like that forced him to cancel the trip. It was in August when the coup took place, which I saw as beginning actual fall of the USSR. Yes, Gorbachev had given up the independent republics, and control of the press, and the USSR economy was being liberalized, but it was still being done as a ‘new communism’, not something else.
The last real news reported in Cuba about the USSR coup was that Gorbachev had suffered a stroke, and the politburo was now in charge. We did manage to catch news reports from Mexico and the US about the subsequent events.
I saw the end of communism in a scratchy video of Gorbachev reading a statement in front of the Central Committee, after he had been reinstated, and he started to talk about continuing to govern under communist principles, only to have Boris Yeltsin walk up to him and demand that the Communist Party be dissolved. I would love to see that video again, if anyone knows a source that might have it.
At the time I was certain the same would happen in Cuba, but so far Cuba is still hanging on.
My opinion is that the bad things that happened as a reaction to the communist threat to the US (and I think that threat was real), weren’t over-reactions but were just really illogical reactions. McCarthyism was especially ironic because, in its zeal to fight communism, it disposed of some of our ideals, what we are supposed to be all about, and instead embraced methods that were characteristic of those systems they thought they were fighting.
Isn’t a 50-100 year life-span for an entire system of government incredibly short? I mean we’re talking about the rise and fall of an entire social construct in just 1 lifetime. Doesn’t it’s arguably quick mostly self-inflicted collapse argue in favor of an over-reaction on the anti side?
Either that or the anti-side used the right amount of reaction to shorten the lifespan of the communist social construct.
Young people think democracies overreacted to communist threats because all dangers look smaller in retrospect. It now seems obvious that communism was doomed from the very beginning. However, throughout much of the last century communism was ascendant and free nations were in jeopardy. Russia was one of the largest and most powerful nations on Earth when it went communist. Then China, the most populous nation on Earth turned communist. Those two nations joined to start the Korean war, which ended in a very narrow draw. Cuba is less than one hundred miles from the US and the USSR attempted to deploy nuclear weapons where psychopathic america haters like Castro and Guevera would have had control of them. There were communist revolutions happening on every continent. The governments of the US and UK were riddled with spies. The situation was much more dire than it seems in retrospect. When the communist spy Whitaker Chambers, who knew how infested the US government, was switched sides he thought he was leaving the winning side to join the losing.
Before I go on, let me address this particular issue.
Do any of you recall a war on terror prior to 911 ? How about the reaction to the 93 bombing of the WTC. How about Oklahoma 1995. The 98 bombings in Nairobi and the Sudan. The USS Cole in 2000.
How about way back to Beirut 1982. Now tell me, when did the war on terrorism begin in earnest to the point when one can question the possibility of over reaction?
No doubt it was 9/11, 2001 when the US puilled all the stops and went all out against terror.
You suggest that there was a continuity of concern against communism since the Russian Revolution. I disagree.
I acknowledge the “first red scare” following the Russian Revolution, but the predominant fear reaction in 1st world countries was short lived. Ignoring Germany, the biggest story in the news was the struggle of republicans, mainly left wingers, socialists, and communists struggling against nationalists in Spain, whose main backer was Moscow. To be clear, Moscow supported the Republicans. So did 2,000 Canadian and 3,000 American self-styled wanna be soldiers. No government refused their opportunity to serve the interesst of Moscow. The US, did not support the nationalists,. ( In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll acknowledge that several prominent US corporations did support the nationalists.)
To put things in today’s perspective for the purpose of understanding the American psyche, consider if America’s state department/homeland security dept would be presently seriously engaged if they allowed 5,000[sup][/sup] Americans to arrive into Pakistan and fight for the Taliban. My gawd, consider 3,000[sup][/sup] Canadian mercenary soldiers fighting for Osama bin Laden.
- minorly adjusted for population inflation
To be clear, The real overreaction and serious strategic opposition to and fear communism did not take place until shortly after WWII. My statement intended to reflect that fact.
Now moving on
First the Iron curtain,then China, IndoChina and Cuba all within 15 years of WWII, while the communist capital was unrestrained in the development of WMD’s, missiles, and long range bombers.
I can still recall the drills, when I was a kid, where sirens screamed throughout the entire town, and I had to assume the position. And how there were nights I was launched into many a sleepless nights thinking of Russian long range bombers flying over our town.
There really was no sure physical defense for anyone. Just get into the best position you can. Vulnurability, big time.
We were scared. We felt we had reason to be.
Communism, 5,6,7,8
Democracy, nate
You couldn’t change that.
Look, I can understand in light our present anti communist success and the sudden ease with which soviet communism evaporated that you might be led to believe it was inevitable. But I was there for most of it , the serious shit, the post WWII communist explosion, and I can tell you that I feel every effort to stand against Moscow and communism played a significant role in its demise.
And that there are a lot of people that are very happy with the anti-communist victory.
Finally, there are those who feel it neccessary to make distinction between soviet imperialism and communism. Academically this position may very well be worth debating. However if one wishes to capture what the word" communism" represented in the western psyche of the 1950s, you need to see that word as Russian imperialism.
Yes, we used the words “Russia” and “Soviet Union” interchangeably back then.
…because it kept the defense dollars flowing. True, Stalin was aggressive and dangerous. But Soviet Communism was bankrupt by the early 1960’s…Kruschev’s space race circus was a cleverly disguised hoax, to maintain (the fiction) that communism was a dynamic force.
Actually, soviet communism had failed several times, and each time was rescued by the west! In 1932, the Ukrainian Famine (masterminded by Stalin) killed over 4 million people-who saved Russia? The evil Americans, led by Herbert Hoover!
Later, as Kruschev was trumpeting his space achievements, food riots were breaking out outside Moscow-what saved communism in the 1970’s? The huge run up in oil prices!
In short, Soviet Russia was teetering on the verge of collapse…but since we needed a threat, we kept it viable.
Finally, when Brezhnev died , the whole rotten structure collapsed.
After 70 years, the whole thing turned out to be one of the worst disasters ever visted upon the human race.
I’m not sure where in your post you addressed my post. La-de-da, let us see . . .
Ah, there it is! That two sentence paragraph there! The one that is jarringly out of sync with your previous comments. Quite frankly, if you disagree that there was not concern about Marxism prior to WWI, and that there were not Red Scares in both the U.S. and Canada during the period between WWI and WWII, scares that lasted throughout that period to such an extent that both countries made it illegal to belong to a political party, you are ignorant of the history of both countries.
Now let’s follow your Red herring . . .
We could quite easily consider that if only it were the case that United States and Canadian troops were in the field fighting the Republicans. (Or Communists, if you prefer.) Your analogy falls; it has no leg to stand on. (I’ll also note, at the risk of Godwinization, that the Nationalists - or, more properly, the Fascists - were materially supported by you know who.)
Y’know, if you want to condescendingly lecture, you’ve picked the wrong party. I also spent the 60’s huddling under the wooden school desks that were going to protect me from nuclear explosions, and - as a Navy brat - I was pretty damn close to the sites of those potential explosions.
I have developed, with maturity, into someone with knowledge of history and with an understanding of the nuances of history. You have not.
One of the first things the new government of Russia did - in fact, one of the most powerful factors that enabled its rise to power - was to acknowledge that Russia was getting the crap kicked out of them by the dribs and drabs the Central Powers could spare from holding down the Western Front. The signing of the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk was hardly an act of one of the most powerful nations on Earth.
I’m not sure how Canada addressed that sort of thing in the 1930s, but the U.S. had historically ignored its citizens running off to fight in other people’s wars prior to WWII. The comparison you suggest was simply not possible for that period. U.S. citizens, (often former military, including officers), played significant roles in most of the wars within China in the nineteenth century, many of the wars in South America, and several of the wars in Africa.
In the isolationist attitude that existed between November, 1918 and December, 1941, the U.S. government did not consider it a matter of interest, much less national security, to pay any attention to which side a U.S. citizen joined in a foreign war.
It is also a point that there was never a unanimous opinion in the U.S. that communism was totally evil. There were strong socialist and communist hopeful movements in the U.S., particularly during the 1930s. However, those movements were never attained anything resembling power and were, therefore, marginalized even when they were (briefly) quite large. The issue is not that every American feared communism, but that the people in power and authority all lined up against it so that laws were passed to suppress it, police departments established units to spy on and harrass people who did not condemn it, text books were written to portray it as unmitigated evil, and preachers and major news outlets condemned it.
But this is exactly the overreaction. Fearing the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent, China, as an antagonistic power was a legitimate fear. It was the extension of that fear to the unrealistic anxiety that “communism” was a monolithic institution guided entirely from Moscow that threatened to enslave the world that was unreasonable. The Soviets were almost certainly a threat to Western Europe, justifying the formation of NATO. However, they would have expanded across Western Europe for the same reasons that Rome, always fearful of one more sacking, continued to expand outward over the Latins, the Sabines, The Campanians, the Etruscans, the Umbrians, and later the rest of the Mediterranean and into Gaul. Support for Cuba or North Vietnam or any other distant land was simply the way that the U.S.S.R. intended to counter the threat from the U.S. and Britain. Had we recognized that, we might have played our own moves better in so many places.
The overreaction was not in legitimately fearing the aggression of the U.S.S.R., but in associating that nation’s aggression with a movement that had already lost most of its connection to the actual governing of that nation, setting up or supporting dictators as evil as any “communist,” firing engineers and teachers who might have shown passing interest to leftist movements thirty years earlier in college, withholding aid from legitimate independence movements if they happened to also accept assistance from the Soviets, rather than buying them off with better support.
A wise observation. I did not live in Cuba or the USSR, but I did study Russian in the early 1980s, and would often read my way (slowly and with the help of my Russian-English dictionary) through publications like Pravda and Krokodil, that I could read at the university library.
There was never any doubt, according to the Soviet publications that I read, that communism would live forever; nor was there any doubt that capitalism would fall. It was just a question of when capitalism would fall, and any crack in the capitalist facade was played for all it was worth. News of labour unrest and strikes were played up in the Soviet press as examples of how capitalism was failing the working class in the West; reports of anti-nuke initiatives (e.g. the Greenham Common women, the No Nukes concert) were examples of how out-of-touch western governments were with the wishes of their people. Why wouldn’t westerners want to live under the planned economy of peace-loving communism? It was only a matter of time before these westerners came to their senses, and if things could be helped along a little by comrades in western nations, so much the better.
There was no criticism of communism in these publications, no indication that it needed improvements, no suggestion that perhaps a free market could do certain things better. Not surprising, given the lack of a free press. But the Soviet publications presented a very different picture than that which western media presented of conditions in the USSR and other communist nations. History proved that communism did not last forever, contrary to what Pravda and similar said. But you’d never know it if Soviet publications were your only news source.
There’s a world of difference between deploying nuclear weapons to Cuba and giving nuclear weapons to Cuba to control and do whatever they felt like with. Turkey was exactly zero miles from the USSR and the US had nuclear missiles deployed there during the Cuban missile crisis. They were most assuredly not under the control of the Turkish leadership - and the US quietly and secretly removed them from Turkeyin exchange for the removal of missiles from Cuba to resolve the crisis. In any event the deployment or non-deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba or Turkey was fairly irrelevant to the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction; the US and the USSR were quite capable of destroying each other whether nukes were deployed in Cuba and Turkey or not.
There’s that and the fact that Russia was economically, technologically and industrially backwards when it capitulated to Germany. The industrial output of Russia during WWI was in last place amongst the major nations involved in the war - barring the Ottoman Empire if it’s included as a major power. Then there were those years of civil war to look forward to.
Absolutely true, but to me the most disturbing part was the willingness of those in power and authority to simply ignore the law. Trampling all over the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and any other law was done and deemed OK if the specter of communism was raised; and eventually even that wasn’t necessary.