past based in the instutitions, upbringing, education and thinking of
people.
There is no doubt that in the West, and in particular in the East,
humanity has taken too long to come to terms with these problems. Moreover,
subsequent generations will bear the consequences and will discover new
disasters particularly in the environment and as a result of the abnormal
military competition between the two world systems. A number of academics
and politicians issued warnings in the middle of the century. The
scientists' rebellion against atomic weapons in the 1950's, the courage of
Sakharov in the USSR, and the actions of Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russel
and Jacques Cousteau are just a few examples. However, the conditions of
political opposition continue to exert an enormous power of inertia. This
inertia comes from the cultures of the existing civilisation, the
nationalism of the modern age and the world conflicts of the 20th century.
One of the main reasons for the acceleration in the crisis of the
two-bloc system and the collapse of the iron curtain was the growth in world
communications. In simple terms, the growth of radio, television, computers
and satellite dishes destroyed the iron curtain, pierced the armour of the
tanks and lead to the formation of a common culture of integration. The
revolution in communications which began at the beginning of the 1960's
brought about incredible political and spiritual changes throughout the
entire world. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones became a world phenomenon
not only as a result of their musical talent but also due to the new methods
of information transfer. In 1971 I went abroad for the first time, to the
German Democratic Republic. I asked my hosts why all the television ariels
faced west and he answered "It makes the German people feel united."
Television had begun to erode the Berlin wall even then.
After the 1960's and the 1970's people felt a new wave of integration
and discovered their common humanity. This was, however, in sharp
contradiction to the collapse of the world and the structures of the
political regimes. The new generations began to grow up in an atmosphere
which was no longer dominated by the dogma of ideology but by music and
spirituality and the thirst for contact with progressive cultural images.
Clearly this was in contradiction with the two-bloc division of the world
and the division between capitalism and socialism.
On the other hand, computers, communications and new world media began
to exert a direct influence on the human conscience and to create the
beginnings of a new previously unknown global culture. Together with the
globalisation of commerce and financial markets, this raised questions about
the basic structures of the third civilisation - nations and nation states.
There is no doubt that their borders had begun to change giving rise to the
problem of the formation of another world structure and of another political
and economic order.
In the 1960's when the cold war emerged from the ice age and the
peoples from the two sides began to get know each other, the first barriers
in their consciousness came down. In the Eastern bloc, intellectual
movements and calls for more freedom caught the leaders quite unawares. In
Czechoslovakia the Prague Spring blossomed, Hungary began a process of brave
economic reforms and in Poland the workers began to fight for their rights.
This period produced the indefatiguable spirits of Vladimir Visotskiy in
Russia, the "Shturtsi" in Bulgaria and Ceslav Niemen in Poland.
Many people in the West also realised that military, political and
cultural confrontation was of little benefit. In the 1960's and 1970's in
the USA and in particular in Western Europe movements for peace and
understanding gained momentum. The demonstrations against the war in
Vietnam, the youth movements in 1968, the hippy peace movements and a number
of other phenomena were manifestations not only of the political status quo
but also of a new emergent culture. The bearers of the new spirituality in
the West in the 1960's were born not so much in the academic environments of
Eaton and Harvard but in the fields of Woodstock and amongst the millions of
fans of John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Ian Gillan.
At the beginning of the 1960's the president of the USA, John F.Kennedy
was the first American statesman to evaluate the Eastern European nations
not merely as the incorporation of evil but recognised that they had
attained certain social achievements from which much could be learned. Of
particular significance was his attempt to build intellectual bridges with
the East and to break the ice of the cold war. Without accepting the
violence of the totalitarian regimes, many intellectuals in the West began
to perceive more clearly not only the mistakes and errors but also the
successes of the Eastern European countries and to propose the application
of certain of the benefits of state socialism, particularly in the social
field.
Year after year the means of global integration - transport, commerce,
radio and television lead to to growth in international contact and slowly
lead to the blurring of the iron curtain between East and West. With the
appearance of the computer and satellite television in daily life and with
the intensity of world radio television and cultural exchange the barriers
between the two systems became more illusory. New means of communication
made the policies of isolation, concealment of truth and global division
absurd. The monopoly of information collapsed as a direct result of the
revolution in communications which in turn lead to the undermining of the
two-polar model.
Despite everything which I have mentioned until now, is it still not
overstated to speak of the collapse of the Third Civilisation? Am I not
attempting to impose original thought in an aggressive way onto the
evolution of human development? I am conviced that this is not so. My
arguments for speaking of a general change in civilisation will be developed
in the subsequent chapters. They involve technological and geo-political
structures, ownership and the transition from traditional capitalist and
socialist societies and the blurring of the concept of the nation state.
Everything which symbolised and represented the modern age - industrial
technology, nation states, capitalism and socialism and the bi-polar world -
has undergone change. As a result of the explosion of world communications
the process of cultural globalisation has begun to accelerate and what
emerged has taken on new sharper features. This trend has gradually created
more and more adherents of a new world and a new civilisation. Sooner rather
than later the two-bloc system of world civilisation was going to collapse.
The question was "when?" and "in what way?"
Chapter two
COLLAPSE I: THE EXPLOSION IN EASTERN EUROPE
1. DECAY AND DEATH
Between 1960 and 1990 a noticeable gap began to open up betweenthe
socialist
countries of Eastern Europe and the industrialisedcountries of Western
Europe.
At the beginning of the 1980's there was a growing danger that this gap
was going
to become insurmountable...
A
lthough the two-bloc structure of the world was entering a period of
common crisis its disintegration began not in the West but in the East. The
changes in Eastern Europe were revolutionary" while in the West they were
seen as "evolutionary". Why?
In my opinion the reasons for this can be seen in the greater
inadequacies of the Eastern European totalitarian regimes to adapt to the
new trends in world development and to adapt themselves to the new
technological and economic conditions which appeared in the 1970's and
1980's. The Eastern European totalitarian bloc was the weakest link in the
world of the Third Civilisation.
As early as the 1950's the Americans, the Japanese and the Western
Europeans had begun to look for completely new approaches to the way in
which their lives were structured. On the one hand, under pressure from the
new external and internal realities which had to be taken into account and
on the other hand as a result of competition with the Soviet Union and other
countries of the Eastern Bloc, the most developed industrial nations began
to improve their systems. Today the economies of the USA, Japan and France
have little in common with what they were in the 1920's and 1930's.
By preserving free initiative, the industrialised Western countries
managed to overcome the danger of monopolism within their economies and
extreme social stratification. In this way they did not allow the
predictions of Lenin that "imperialism cannot be reformed and will
disintegrate under the blows from its own contradictions"[15] to
come true. In fact the opposite was true, after the Great Depression of 1929
and during the post-war period the largest Western European states and the
USA undertook a series of measures aimed at overcoming the danger of further
monopolisation and achieving greater social equality and harmony. Economic
and political power were balanced through moderate state regulation,
anti-monopoly legislation and the stimulation of medium and small-scale
business.
The most significant changes undertaken in the USA and Western Europe
were in the structure of ownership. After the passing Legislation allowing
the transferring of share ownership to employees in 1974 in the USA hundreds
of thousands of employees began to acquire stock in the companies in which
they worked. Similar trends can be seen in Great Britain, Germany, France
and a number of other Wester European countries. They also undertook
programmes to stimulate the development of small and medium business.
Millions of small companies sprang up in the areas of services, tourism,
trade, electrical goods and a number of other branches of the economy. By
some accounts these small enterprises account for up to half the working
population of Western European countries.
At the same time the large family properties in Western Europe and the
USA have lost the position of monopoly and importance which they had at the
beginning of the century. Today neither Rothschild, nor Dupont, neither
Morgan nor Rockerfeller can exert direct influence on questions of national
importance as they could have done a hundred years ago. This has allowed
Western European societies to halt their deterioration and to stop the
growth of class contradictions and gradually to wipe out the gap between the
different social groups. Thirty years after the end of the Second World War
the nature of employed labour had changed beyond recognition and the
proletariate described by Marx dissolved within a entirely new social and
technological environment. If now at the end of the 20th century one is to
visit the factories of, for example, Zussler near Zurich or American
Standard New York, one will see a completely new type of work force with
different interests and a different mentality and, more importantly, a
workforce which is integrated within the decision making processes. These
are no longer the same workers which lead Karl Marx to write "Capital" and
who gave rise to mass political and trade union protests at the beginning of
the 20th century.
In the post-war period and particularly in the 1970's and 1980's a
process of change in the nature of property ownership began which continues
to the present. This in its turn has had direct ramifications upon the
nature of power. This revolution has allowed the USA, Japan and another
twenty or so countries to adapt much more quickly and effectively to the
needs of the modern scientific and technological revolution and to become
global leaders.
At the same time the development of the USSR and Eastern Europe has
been halted as a result of the totalitarian nature of their regimes. It is
true that when it was formed in 1922, the Soviet Union inherited a poorly
developed industrial base and a poorly educated population but it is also
true that the totalitarian regime established by Stalin at the end of the
1920's had destructive and devastating consequences upon all areas of life.
Tens of million of people lost their lives as a result of violence and
repression - this was as a dramatic feature of the Stalinist regime as the
complete repression of free creativity and private initiative.
Centralisation in the decision making process could only provide temporary
benefits in military and defence issues but in all other cases it halted
intellectual, technical and economic development. From the very outset
Stalinism contained within itself the thesis of forced, coercive growth. The
initial results did not hide the truth that, given time, coercive
development was to become transformed into stagnation and regression. The
destruction of private enterprise, the total and coercive collectivisation
of agriculture in December 1922, the substitution of market forces with
party and subjective criteria and the repression of the intelligentsia could
not do anything but leave a profound scar and cause serious consequences for
human development.
During the period between 1950 and 1960 total nationalisation could
still be explained using complex and serious internal reasons, the general
radicalisation of European regimes (especially in the 1930's) and the
necessity to achieve military parity. However, during subsequent decades the
totalitarian regimes became totally bankrupt. Many people in Eastern Europe
still believe that the collapse in the Eastern European systems was due to
the mistakes made by Mikhail Gorbachev and his programmes of "perestroika".
I, personally, believe that the historical role of Gorbachev was a direct
result of the overall negative trends in the development of Eastern Europe
and the universal economic and political crisis which had gripped this part
of the world.
This crisis above all manifested itself in terms of the dramatic
technological backwardness which began to become apparent as early as the
late 1960's and became most marked during the 1980's. Eastern Europe began
to lag behind in electronics, bio-technology, communications, environmental
facilities and many other fields. Because all these technological fields are
so closely linked Eastern Europe began to fall behind in every other
possible field from the production of nails to complex aviation technology.
The technological advantages of the West affected daily life, the workplace
and management. The rate at which the East began to fall behind in the
1980's was so dramatic that certain experts began to speak of a possible
"global technological gorge" opening up between the East and the West, or in
other words a "self-perpetuating backwardness".
With the appearance of micro-electronics, new communications and space
technology, the Soviet military, who had up until now played a key role in
the political life of the totalitarian state, began to realise more and more
clearly that their economic backwardness would sooner or later affect their
military and strategic position. This was also understood by those
politicians with greater awareness unencumbered by political dogma. Although
the USSR had achieved nuclear parity and, in certain areas, superiority,
with the USA, its backwardness in the field of micro-electronics and
communications at the beginning of the 1980's began to change this trend.
The enormous amounts of money expended on military causes undermined the
Soviet economy and doomed it to universal inefficiency.
In a comparison of figures, it can be seen that while in 1960 the GNP
of the USSR was only about $5000 USD less than in the USA, in 1980 this
difference had reached $10,000 and in 1990 - $20,000. In 1960 the
manufacturing output of the USSR was $1000 per head of population more than
in Japan. Only 20 years later Japan was producing goods to the value of
$11,864 per head of population in comparison with $6,863 in the USSR. At the
beginning of the 1990's the gap had widened to $30,000.[16]
A similar process was taking place in comparable smaller European
countries. The German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland
and Bulgaria were experiencing growing difficulties reflected in the drastic
increases in their external debt in the 1980's. Without the need for further
statistics, I believe, that the most obvious example was the difference
between the type of automobiles produced in East and West Germany. Whether
we compare Wartburgs with Mercedes or Trabants with Volkswagens it is quite
clear that we are dealing with two distinct generations of manufacturing
cultures. My example is based on motor vehicles since they reflect the
general level of industry as a whole: metallurgy, chemical production, heavy
machinery construction, electronics, textiles and so on.. While industry in
Western Europe was already using a new generation of production technology,
Eastern Europe was still dominated by a generation of production machinery
which was physically and morally at least twenty five years out of date.
The majority of Eastern Europeans lived in the conditions of
information deprivation. They were fed propaganda of constant progress and
achievement, the collapse of world capitalism and the greater and greater
victories of world socialism. In actual fact the reality was exactly the
opposite. Of course, many progressive leaders in Eastern Europe during this
period were aware of the problems but none of them were able to release
themselves from the common bonds of Eastern European imperialism. This was
made clear by the fate of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the Prague
Spring of 1968, as well as the unrest amongst the Polish workers and the
timid attempts at reform made in Bulgaria in 1986[17]. It was
quite clear that changes could only take place in the context of global
reforms affecting the USSR as well.
The negative consequences of technological backwardness were
exacerbated by the changes in the world economic situation in the mid
1980's. The collapse in the prices of oil and a number of other raw
materials lead to a sharp decline in the ability of the USSR and its allies
to function efficiently and to improve the standards of living of its
peoples. In the 1980's the member countries of COMECON experienced their
greatest difficulties in foreign trade and were obliged to increase their
external debts. From the mid 1980's the Soviet Union and its allies lost
their most important comparative economic advantages and were obliged to
cover their current account deficits with large external loans which even
then came to more than 100 billion dollars.
The nature of the technological changes of the 1970's and 1980's also
raised doubts about economic centralisation. In the 1930's and after the
Second World War technological innovation relied heavily on the centralised
accumulation and management of funds. Energy production, nuclear technology
and chemical production, large irrigation projects, heavy industry and arms
production were very strong arguments in favour of the need for centralised
planning and the active participation of the state in the economy.
On the other hand the technological wave of the 1970's pre-supposed the
decentralisation of the decision making process. The production of software
and personal computer applications, the appearance of tens of thousands of
different types of services and the progress in bio-technology stimulated
and continue to stimulate individual creativity. This was in contradiction
to the very essence of the Soviet type of system.
Consequently the backwardness of Eastern Europe in the 1970's and
1980's was not only a consequence of political and economic conjuncture but
had a long-term and objective character. It was connected with the inherent
backwardness not only of individual areas of manufacturing but of the
primary governmental and economic structures. As a result of the influence
of new technologies on the life of societies, the crisis soon spread to the
personal lives of the individual Eastern Europeans. In the 1970's and 1980's
personal consumption per head of population in Eastern Europe began
progressively to fall behind the average consumption figures for Western
Europe, the USA and Japan.
According to UN statistics for 1960, for every 1000 West Germans there
were 78 motor vehicles in comparison with 20 in Czechoslovakia and 17 in the
German Democratic Republic. In 1985 this figure had risen to 400 in West
Germany in comparison to 180 in East Germany and 163 in Czechoslovakia. In
1960 in the USSR there were 1.6 telephones per hundred people and in Japan -
5.8. In 1984 this figure was 9.8 for the USSR and 53.5 in
Japan[18].
In the late 1960's the economic backwardness of the USSR and its allies
began to spread to non-manufacturing environments. In 1960 infant mortality
per 1000 newly born infants was 26 in the USA, 31 in Japan and 35 in the
USSR. In 1985 this figure had changed to 10.4 per thousand in the USA, 5.7
in Japan and 25.1 in the USSR. Similar comparisons can be made in the area
of science, education, culture and cultural life in general. It would, of
course, be naive and imprudent to ignore the successes which the USSR and
its allies achieved in the area of space research, physics, chemistry and
molecular biology and in certain other areas of technology. These were,
however, rather oases within the overall system rather than its essential
features. They did not change the overall picture of backwardness or its
deepening character.
Clearly, against a background of increasing internationalisation and
more and more intensive exchange of information, the backwardness of Eastern
Europe began to become transformed into a universal moral and political
crisis. In the context of the boom of world communications, radio and
television, satellite communications and information transfer, the truth
could not be hidden for long. The attempts of the USSR and the other Eastern
European countries to propagate lies reached absurd extents to prove that
they were at the head of technological and economic progress. For more and
more people in Eastern Europe it was becoming clear that the backwardness of
their countries in manufacturing and consumerism was a direct result of the
vices of the system itself.
It should be noted, on the other hand, that right up until their demise
the Eastern European regimes retained certain benefits such as full
employment, a low crime rate, universal social guarantees and a number of
other features. The price of these benefits from the 1960's onwards,
however, had begun to manifest itself in the form of empty shops, the lack
of basic products, the low standard of living and the lack of personal
freedom etc.. Given such a situation, it was more and more difficult to
speak of the successes of the Soviet style system against the background not
only of a worsening economic situation but also of the moral and political
climate. The Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the uprisings and protests of
the Polish workers, the reforms in Hungary, the dissident movement in the
USSR, the mass movement in favour of emigration to the West was a
manifestation of the growing level of dissatisfaction or unhappiness with
the existing system.
In the 1970's the USA and its Western allies managed to impose a new
leading ideology: the issue of human rights and the rights and freedoms of
all citizens of the world. A number of "capitalist" countries such as
Sweden, Austria and others guaranteed more social benefits, including
pensions, unemployment benefit for young persons etc.. In general, in the
USA, Japan, Western Europe and a number of other smaller countries with a
market economy, life become more attractive and more in tune with the
growing diversity and increase in human needs. In contrast with this in
Eastern Europe and the USSR, there was a sharp increase in crime,
drunkenness, apathy and scepticism.
This lead to major geo-political consequences. After the collapse of
the colonial model, the Soviet Union, despite its concentrated efforts, was
unable to impose its system on the newly liberated countries. The majority
of them adopted systems and models closer to those of Western countries.
Attempts at "socialist revolutions" in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Ghana,
Somalia, Ethiopia and a number of other countries did not produce the
expected results. Poverty remained a problem. The promise of a rapid leap
into the "paradise of socialism" also remained an illusion.
While the USA and Western Europe and later Japan were keen on expanding
their influence in the world via investments, cultural influence and
education, the Soviet Union in order to expand its geo-political influences
concentrated on the support of "revolutionary" regimes, expending colossal
amountsof state money in the process. They maintained the point of view that
in states with poor economies progress could only be achieved via
nationalisation and centralised planning. Life, however, shows that this is
not the case.
The upshot was that in the 1970's and in particular in the 1980's the
Eastern European regimes were in the grips of a universal structural,
economic, political and spiritual crisis, both internally and externally.
Geo-politically this crisis was expressed in terms of the widening gap
between the role of the USSR as a world super power and its real economic
abilities. During the entire post-war period the military expenditure of the
USSR exceeded all permissible economic levels. Military budgets undermined
national development and seriously threatened the future of the system. On
the other hand, despite the economic crisis and evident technological
backwardness the Eastern European governments continued their policies of
universal social guarantees of employment and wages which in the 1980's in
particular lead to chronic increases in foreign debt. Consumption was
greater than production. Financial commitments to the military, price
subsidies and excessive state investments lead to the creation of enormous
budget deficits.
Essentially the system was consuming itself from within. While Western
countries were reforming and adapting to global technological problems, the
crisis in Eastern Europe was worsening. It was becoming more clear that
without radical reforms, backwardness would lead to death.
2. REFORMS AND ILLUSIONS
Attempts by the Eastern European totalitarian regimes to reformwithout
damage
to the foundations of their systems were illusory. These were merely
attempts to prolong the life of a civilisation on the wane.
T
he collapse of the Third civilisation, or if you prefer, its
"reconstruction" could have been an evolutionary process as it was in the
West, through economic reforms and the political evolution of the
totalitarian states. Since the creation of Soviet Russia in 1917 and most
notably during the last decades of its existence numerous attempts at reform
had been made. These reforms merit a general examination and can be divided
into five periods within the history of the Soviet model system.
The first of these was the period between 1917-1929 which I like to
refer to as a time of consolidation and the search for a model of
development. Notwithstanding the civil war and widespread violence the
possibility of returning to some form of democracy still remained. A certain
amount of private property, paricularly in agriculture, had been preserved.
The NEP programme (New Economic Policy) introduced by Lenin in 1921 provided
the opportunity for the use of foreign capital and private initiative.
The second stage of "pure socialism" began at the end of the 1930's
with the destruction of the remains of the NEP and a total assault on
economic, political and cultural life. The coercive formation of the
collective farms, the creation of an enormous army of labour camp slaves,
forced economic growth based on administrative and political methods and the
extermination of millions of political opponents - these were the
foundations of the Soviet Stalinist regime. During this period the Soviet
system developed as a monolithic hierarchical organisation in which the
violence of the party elite and its subordinated security organisations
dominated. From 1930 to 1953 every manifestation of private initiative and
free thought was punished with prison or death.[19]
The third period in the development of the Soviet system began with the
death of Stalin in 1953 and the "thaw" of Nikita Khrushchev. Although to
some extent contradictory, the policies implemented by Khrushchev during
this period were to leave a lasting mark on the further development of the
world. For the first time the truth about Stalin's crimes was revealed and
both Stalin himself and his system lost their authority as the proponents of
social justice and world progress.
The fourth period began in 1964 and ended at the beginning of the
1980's. It was justly named by Mikhail Gorbachev as the period of "zastoi"
(stagnation). During these years Leonid Brezhnev brought a halt to the
"thaw" begun by Khrushchev and began his attempt to immortalise the
totalitarian system through a series of internal and external cosmetic
changes. It was during this period that the USSR and its allies began to
fall behind their Western opponents in the areas of technology and
economics.
The fifth and final stage was the period of "perestroika" introduced by
Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) which was eventually to lead to the collapse
of the Eastern European regimes and the USSR itself.
My reason for this periodisation is that from the beginning to the end
of the Soviet system there were two contradictory political trends: one of
which saw totalitarianism as the essence of the utopian communist dream and
a second which aspired to more flexible, economic and political models.
The second trend appeared directly after the February revolution of
1917 in the ideas of local self-government by workers, the implementation of
the NEP by Lenin in 1921 and 1927, the "thaw" of Khrushchev and finally in
the policy of "perestroika" of Mikhail Gorbachov. The essence of this second
trend was the combination of party and political centralism with relatively
greater freedom for the private sector (especially in trade and agriculture)
and in the area of art and culture. Its origin can be seen in the traditions
of European socialism and social democracy.
In the 1920's the proponents of a more flexible and dynamic political
line - N.Bukharin, G.Zinoviev, S.Kamenev, A.Rikov and others lost their
battle for power, allowing the party bureaucracy to dominate all structures
of society. This was the decisive moment for the development of the essence
of the Soviet model. The victory of Stalinism transformed the USSR - and a
number of other countries after the Second World War - into bureaucratic
command societies.
During the period between 1954-1956 when N.Khrushchev was fiercely
critical of the Stalinist era, he found himself in conflict with the
Stalinist system in all sectors of life. As a child of the very same system,
Khrushchev was condemning not the system but the style and leadership
methods employed by Stalin and the cult of personality. He proposed a
reevaluation of the system and mechanisms of its leadership. Khrushchev's
illusion was that by changing the leadership and functioning of the system
he would make it more effective and resolve its major problems.
During the Brezhnev period (1964-1982) a considerable number of
"improvements" were made to the leadership. The attempts made to revive the
economy by giving greater freedom to industry and a timid embracement of the
private sector clashed with the dominant principles of the totalitarian
system. There was talk of de-centralisation, collective initiative and new
economic mechanisms. However, not a word was said about the party monopoly
on power and finances, banks and the market. It would, however, have been
impossible to have freedom or private initiative without major changes to
the banking system, price liberalisation, reform to the system of investment
banking and the removal of large funds from the hands of the party and state
elite. It was quite absurd to make changes to the structures of property and
administration without changes to the principles of political power or
without profound changes to the legislative system and the guarantee of
constitutional rights and freedoms of its citizens.
History frequently provides us with examples of the combination of
heroism and illusion. Frequently the intellect of leaders and the grandeur
of their objectives have been let down by the naivety of the way in which
they attempted to achieva them. Such was the case with Stalin's opponents in
the 1920's and 30's and the policies of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950's.
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rikov and Bukharin paid for their naivety with their
lives since they were up against not only Stalin's will and cruelty but also
the interests and power of the party-state apparatus. Khrushchev also paid
for his own naivety and was removed from power in October 1964. For the ten
years he was in office, Khrushchev wavered between the desire to put an end
to the Stalinist repressions and the preservation of the system. The same
man who was bold enough to reveal the crimes of Stalin to the whole world
allowed cruel acts of repression against Soviet art and culture. The same
man who had the fortitude to remove the body of Stalin from the mausoleum in
Moscow became a proponent of the super-Utopian idea of the "rapid leap" into
the "paradise of communism".
The enormous belief that good could be imposed from above and that the
system could be revitalised by "the enthusiasm" and privileges of the
nomenclature, were naive. Khrushchev was no less a believer in the system of
state socialism. By throwing Stalin and Beria onto the scrapheap of history,
he deprived the Soviet people of their Divine leader and was obliged to
offer them a new Utopia - the rapid advent of communism, industrial
dominance over the USA and a high standard of living for the people of the
USSR etc.. After Krushchev's removal from power it became more difficult to
delude the people with promises of new Utopias and illusions. The myth of
the infallible leader in Stalin had been shattered. Khrushchev's programme
for entering the era of perfect communism by 1980 had failed. The next
utopia in line was Brezhnev's off-the-peg theory of a developed socialist
society.
Despite all this the logical question arises of why despite its general
instability the Soviet totalitarian system survived for such a long time -
74 years? I believe that there are a number of reasons for this.
The Soviet totalitarian model arose during a period of general crisis
and the large scale transformation of world capitalism, during a period of
globalisation and a search for various models of existence in a new
inter-dependent world. The 20th century was a time of cataclysm, change and
transition and of two world and hundreds of local wars in which more than
150 million people lost their lives. Despite its Utopian nature, the Soviet
system was a model for potential progress which emphasised absolute social
protection, guaranteed the interests of workers andpeasants and total
nationalisation as a condition for concentrating resources and directing
them towards new construction. The belief that universal social guarantees
were the basis for progress provided temporary historical justification for
the centralised type of society.
The continuing existence of the Soviet totalitarian system can be
explained with the desire and the ambitions of many nations rapidly to
overcome poverty and to avoid their possible colonisation by the larger
colonial metropolises. For many countries during the 1950's and the 1960's
the Soviet Union was a guarantee of protection against colonisation by other
countries, despite the fact that "fraternity" with the USSR meant another
type of dependence.
Was it not the case, however, that the crisis of liberalism and the
return to the ideas of nationalisation was also taking place in other parts
of the world? Practically everywhere in the world before and after the First
World War and especially at the end of the 1920's societes were undergoing
radical changes and centralisation. The victory of Hitler in Germany,
Mussolini in Italy, the Left in France and Spain was proof of this. The
crisis of world capitalism brought about by colonialism, monopolisation, the
First World War and the economic crisis of 1929-33 was sufficient motivation
and justification for the actions of Stalin as "necessary policies" in the
context of forthcoming world conflict. For millions of people the Soviet
Union was not so much a country of violent political aggression in which
millions of innocent people lost their lives but rather the power which
defeated Hitler, saved humanity from the death camps of fascism and gave a
chance to many peoples to live their lives in freedom and independence.
In 1932 in the introduction to his criticism of socialism, Ludwig von
Mizes wrote, "In Europe to the East of the Rhine there are very few
non-Marxists and even in Western Europe and the United States his (Marx)
supporters are greater in number than his opponents"[20]. If
today at the end of the 20th century, socialism is perceived as "something
bad in the past", for over half a century - from the 1920's to the 1970's it
was seen as the hope for the majority of mankind.
This is due to the not insignificant achievements of socialism in the
areas of industrialisation, science and technology, culture and art and,
most significantly, the social guarantees of labour, wages, a place to live
and so on. To disregard or to conceal these achievements would be imprudent,
and, indeed, impossible from an historical point of view. Each historical
period notwithstanding the nature of political power leaves behind it
something positive, guaranteeing the furtherance of human life. The
successes of the USSR in industrialisation, transforming it from a country
surviving on the remnants of a system of feudal agriculture into a world
super-power, guaranteed wages, work and income for the vast masses of its
population were for many people sufficient grounds for maintaining the
system.
I, therefore, do not consider the model of state socialism to be the
ravings of a group of mad politicians. Its appearance, existence and
dissemination over the whole world from the second half of the 19th century
to the end of the 20th was a consequence of huge world transformations and
reactions against the imperialist colonial world with its injustices and
wars. Despite its illusions and errors it was a conscious attempt to offer
protection to the interests of the oppressed and division and class
struggles to be replaced with unification and social unity.
I realise how difficult it is only a few years after the collapse of
the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe for these words to be uttered.
However, we should not be too hasty in our evaluation of history from the
point of view of a specific political moment in time. The continued
existence of the Soviet type of system and the popularity of the communist
idea during the greater part of the 20th century was a consequence of the
objective and global processes of transition of the modern world. It was a
part of the processes of world integration, but also a part of the crisis of
the Third Civilisation. The same factors which provided the opportunities to
state socialism also dug its grave. Continuing global integration could no
longer tolerate isolationism. Social guarantees led to the demotivation of
labour. The growth in personal and group self-confidence were limited by the
lack of basic human rights. The reason for the collapse of this system was
its tendency to consume more than it produced and to maintain "balance" via
the methodical use of aggression upon the personal freedoms of its citizens.
The very idea of achieving universal justice and material plenty via
coercion and "forced awareness" were Utopian and inhumane.
The contradictions arose from the economic essence of the system, from
the type of ownership, and not from the style and methods of leadership, as
Khrushchev considered. Khrushchev did not attempt to change the system
which, in its turn, killed him politically. His illusions were inherited
from Bukharin and in the end the system was doomed to failure. However, that
which was planted by Khrushchev, the desire for change, eventually gave
fruit. On the one hand because the reformers within the Soviet party and
state leadership were able to learn from its lessons and on the other since
they were all aware that partial and cosmetic changes would not lead to
success.
Twenty years and four months had passed since Khrushchev was removed
from office when on the 11th of March 1985 Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was
elected to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union.
3. THE TWO OPTIONS AND THE MISTAKE OF GORBACHEV
Gorbachev had two options - to change the system either by liberalising
the economy
or by changing the political system. The first option would have
guaranteed stability
and a gradual transition, the second - conflict and chaos. In any event
neither he nor his successors had a plan for global action.
A
t the beginning of 1985 the majority of the Soviet population was ready
for change. It was tired of the drawn-out death throes of the Brezhnev
leadership, filled with hope when Yuri Andropov came to power, crushed by
his death soon after that and his replacement with the aging Brezhnevite
Konstantin Chernenko. Soviet society and in particular the intelligentsia
during this period were tired of the endless speeches and demagogy, of the
discrepancies between words and reality, of the empty shelves and the
universal lack of everything which the ordinary member of the public might
require. Mikhail Gorbachev found not only fertile ground for change but he
indeed became the natural mouthpiece for the expression of all the ambitions
and hopes of the majority of Soviet society.
During his first year of office Gorbachev made significant changes to
the politburo, the government, the leadership of the armed forces and
foreign ministry. It was during this period that Edward Shevernadze came to
the fore in the Soviet leadership as foreign minister and member of the
politburo. A.Yakovlev became the leader of the propaganda section of the
Central Committee of the CPSU. Boris Yeltsin became the leader of the Moscow
party committee of the CPSU. In practice these were the three political
figures who most radically and faithfully supported the political and
economic reforms.
In 1985 Gorbachev opened up the way for improvements in Soviet and
American relations in the areas of arms control policy and the radical
reduction in first-strike nuclear weapons. The summit meeting held between
Gorbachev and the American president Ronald Reagan in November 1985 in
Geneva was the beginning of a turn-around in world nuclear arms policy. In
1986 Gorbachev accelerated personnel changes in the leadership of the
communist party and the Soviet state as well as in the mass media and local
party apparatus.
I believe that these first two years were decisive for Gorbachev's
choice of strategy. Undoubtedly, the change which he began were on a much
larger scale than those of Khrushchev and affected all areas of life.
Despite this in 1985 and 1986 Gorbachev continued to pursue the idea of
revitalising the system in the aims of "more socialism". In June 1986 in
Habarovsk he formulated the essence of "perestroika" and the need for its
advancement. During this period the people of the USSR were allowed much
people.
There is no doubt that in the West, and in particular in the East,
humanity has taken too long to come to terms with these problems. Moreover,
subsequent generations will bear the consequences and will discover new
disasters particularly in the environment and as a result of the abnormal
military competition between the two world systems. A number of academics
and politicians issued warnings in the middle of the century. The
scientists' rebellion against atomic weapons in the 1950's, the courage of
Sakharov in the USSR, and the actions of Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russel
and Jacques Cousteau are just a few examples. However, the conditions of
political opposition continue to exert an enormous power of inertia. This
inertia comes from the cultures of the existing civilisation, the
nationalism of the modern age and the world conflicts of the 20th century.
One of the main reasons for the acceleration in the crisis of the
two-bloc system and the collapse of the iron curtain was the growth in world
communications. In simple terms, the growth of radio, television, computers
and satellite dishes destroyed the iron curtain, pierced the armour of the
tanks and lead to the formation of a common culture of integration. The
revolution in communications which began at the beginning of the 1960's
brought about incredible political and spiritual changes throughout the
entire world. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones became a world phenomenon
not only as a result of their musical talent but also due to the new methods
of information transfer. In 1971 I went abroad for the first time, to the
German Democratic Republic. I asked my hosts why all the television ariels
faced west and he answered "It makes the German people feel united."
Television had begun to erode the Berlin wall even then.
After the 1960's and the 1970's people felt a new wave of integration
and discovered their common humanity. This was, however, in sharp
contradiction to the collapse of the world and the structures of the
political regimes. The new generations began to grow up in an atmosphere
which was no longer dominated by the dogma of ideology but by music and
spirituality and the thirst for contact with progressive cultural images.
Clearly this was in contradiction with the two-bloc division of the world
and the division between capitalism and socialism.
On the other hand, computers, communications and new world media began
to exert a direct influence on the human conscience and to create the
beginnings of a new previously unknown global culture. Together with the
globalisation of commerce and financial markets, this raised questions about
the basic structures of the third civilisation - nations and nation states.
There is no doubt that their borders had begun to change giving rise to the
problem of the formation of another world structure and of another political
and economic order.
In the 1960's when the cold war emerged from the ice age and the
peoples from the two sides began to get know each other, the first barriers
in their consciousness came down. In the Eastern bloc, intellectual
movements and calls for more freedom caught the leaders quite unawares. In
Czechoslovakia the Prague Spring blossomed, Hungary began a process of brave
economic reforms and in Poland the workers began to fight for their rights.
This period produced the indefatiguable spirits of Vladimir Visotskiy in
Russia, the "Shturtsi" in Bulgaria and Ceslav Niemen in Poland.
Many people in the West also realised that military, political and
cultural confrontation was of little benefit. In the 1960's and 1970's in
the USA and in particular in Western Europe movements for peace and
understanding gained momentum. The demonstrations against the war in
Vietnam, the youth movements in 1968, the hippy peace movements and a number
of other phenomena were manifestations not only of the political status quo
but also of a new emergent culture. The bearers of the new spirituality in
the West in the 1960's were born not so much in the academic environments of
Eaton and Harvard but in the fields of Woodstock and amongst the millions of
fans of John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Ian Gillan.
At the beginning of the 1960's the president of the USA, John F.Kennedy
was the first American statesman to evaluate the Eastern European nations
not merely as the incorporation of evil but recognised that they had
attained certain social achievements from which much could be learned. Of
particular significance was his attempt to build intellectual bridges with
the East and to break the ice of the cold war. Without accepting the
violence of the totalitarian regimes, many intellectuals in the West began
to perceive more clearly not only the mistakes and errors but also the
successes of the Eastern European countries and to propose the application
of certain of the benefits of state socialism, particularly in the social
field.
Year after year the means of global integration - transport, commerce,
radio and television lead to to growth in international contact and slowly
lead to the blurring of the iron curtain between East and West. With the
appearance of the computer and satellite television in daily life and with
the intensity of world radio television and cultural exchange the barriers
between the two systems became more illusory. New means of communication
made the policies of isolation, concealment of truth and global division
absurd. The monopoly of information collapsed as a direct result of the
revolution in communications which in turn lead to the undermining of the
two-polar model.
Despite everything which I have mentioned until now, is it still not
overstated to speak of the collapse of the Third Civilisation? Am I not
attempting to impose original thought in an aggressive way onto the
evolution of human development? I am conviced that this is not so. My
arguments for speaking of a general change in civilisation will be developed
in the subsequent chapters. They involve technological and geo-political
structures, ownership and the transition from traditional capitalist and
socialist societies and the blurring of the concept of the nation state.
Everything which symbolised and represented the modern age - industrial
technology, nation states, capitalism and socialism and the bi-polar world -
has undergone change. As a result of the explosion of world communications
the process of cultural globalisation has begun to accelerate and what
emerged has taken on new sharper features. This trend has gradually created
more and more adherents of a new world and a new civilisation. Sooner rather
than later the two-bloc system of world civilisation was going to collapse.
The question was "when?" and "in what way?"
Chapter two
COLLAPSE I: THE EXPLOSION IN EASTERN EUROPE
1. DECAY AND DEATH
Between 1960 and 1990 a noticeable gap began to open up betweenthe
socialist
countries of Eastern Europe and the industrialisedcountries of Western
Europe.
At the beginning of the 1980's there was a growing danger that this gap
was going
to become insurmountable...
A
lthough the two-bloc structure of the world was entering a period of
common crisis its disintegration began not in the West but in the East. The
changes in Eastern Europe were revolutionary" while in the West they were
seen as "evolutionary". Why?
In my opinion the reasons for this can be seen in the greater
inadequacies of the Eastern European totalitarian regimes to adapt to the
new trends in world development and to adapt themselves to the new
technological and economic conditions which appeared in the 1970's and
1980's. The Eastern European totalitarian bloc was the weakest link in the
world of the Third Civilisation.
As early as the 1950's the Americans, the Japanese and the Western
Europeans had begun to look for completely new approaches to the way in
which their lives were structured. On the one hand, under pressure from the
new external and internal realities which had to be taken into account and
on the other hand as a result of competition with the Soviet Union and other
countries of the Eastern Bloc, the most developed industrial nations began
to improve their systems. Today the economies of the USA, Japan and France
have little in common with what they were in the 1920's and 1930's.
By preserving free initiative, the industrialised Western countries
managed to overcome the danger of monopolism within their economies and
extreme social stratification. In this way they did not allow the
predictions of Lenin that "imperialism cannot be reformed and will
disintegrate under the blows from its own contradictions"[15] to
come true. In fact the opposite was true, after the Great Depression of 1929
and during the post-war period the largest Western European states and the
USA undertook a series of measures aimed at overcoming the danger of further
monopolisation and achieving greater social equality and harmony. Economic
and political power were balanced through moderate state regulation,
anti-monopoly legislation and the stimulation of medium and small-scale
business.
The most significant changes undertaken in the USA and Western Europe
were in the structure of ownership. After the passing Legislation allowing
the transferring of share ownership to employees in 1974 in the USA hundreds
of thousands of employees began to acquire stock in the companies in which
they worked. Similar trends can be seen in Great Britain, Germany, France
and a number of other Wester European countries. They also undertook
programmes to stimulate the development of small and medium business.
Millions of small companies sprang up in the areas of services, tourism,
trade, electrical goods and a number of other branches of the economy. By
some accounts these small enterprises account for up to half the working
population of Western European countries.
At the same time the large family properties in Western Europe and the
USA have lost the position of monopoly and importance which they had at the
beginning of the century. Today neither Rothschild, nor Dupont, neither
Morgan nor Rockerfeller can exert direct influence on questions of national
importance as they could have done a hundred years ago. This has allowed
Western European societies to halt their deterioration and to stop the
growth of class contradictions and gradually to wipe out the gap between the
different social groups. Thirty years after the end of the Second World War
the nature of employed labour had changed beyond recognition and the
proletariate described by Marx dissolved within a entirely new social and
technological environment. If now at the end of the 20th century one is to
visit the factories of, for example, Zussler near Zurich or American
Standard New York, one will see a completely new type of work force with
different interests and a different mentality and, more importantly, a
workforce which is integrated within the decision making processes. These
are no longer the same workers which lead Karl Marx to write "Capital" and
who gave rise to mass political and trade union protests at the beginning of
the 20th century.
In the post-war period and particularly in the 1970's and 1980's a
process of change in the nature of property ownership began which continues
to the present. This in its turn has had direct ramifications upon the
nature of power. This revolution has allowed the USA, Japan and another
twenty or so countries to adapt much more quickly and effectively to the
needs of the modern scientific and technological revolution and to become
global leaders.
At the same time the development of the USSR and Eastern Europe has
been halted as a result of the totalitarian nature of their regimes. It is
true that when it was formed in 1922, the Soviet Union inherited a poorly
developed industrial base and a poorly educated population but it is also
true that the totalitarian regime established by Stalin at the end of the
1920's had destructive and devastating consequences upon all areas of life.
Tens of million of people lost their lives as a result of violence and
repression - this was as a dramatic feature of the Stalinist regime as the
complete repression of free creativity and private initiative.
Centralisation in the decision making process could only provide temporary
benefits in military and defence issues but in all other cases it halted
intellectual, technical and economic development. From the very outset
Stalinism contained within itself the thesis of forced, coercive growth. The
initial results did not hide the truth that, given time, coercive
development was to become transformed into stagnation and regression. The
destruction of private enterprise, the total and coercive collectivisation
of agriculture in December 1922, the substitution of market forces with
party and subjective criteria and the repression of the intelligentsia could
not do anything but leave a profound scar and cause serious consequences for
human development.
During the period between 1950 and 1960 total nationalisation could
still be explained using complex and serious internal reasons, the general
radicalisation of European regimes (especially in the 1930's) and the
necessity to achieve military parity. However, during subsequent decades the
totalitarian regimes became totally bankrupt. Many people in Eastern Europe
still believe that the collapse in the Eastern European systems was due to
the mistakes made by Mikhail Gorbachev and his programmes of "perestroika".
I, personally, believe that the historical role of Gorbachev was a direct
result of the overall negative trends in the development of Eastern Europe
and the universal economic and political crisis which had gripped this part
of the world.
This crisis above all manifested itself in terms of the dramatic
technological backwardness which began to become apparent as early as the
late 1960's and became most marked during the 1980's. Eastern Europe began
to lag behind in electronics, bio-technology, communications, environmental
facilities and many other fields. Because all these technological fields are
so closely linked Eastern Europe began to fall behind in every other
possible field from the production of nails to complex aviation technology.
The technological advantages of the West affected daily life, the workplace
and management. The rate at which the East began to fall behind in the
1980's was so dramatic that certain experts began to speak of a possible
"global technological gorge" opening up between the East and the West, or in
other words a "self-perpetuating backwardness".
With the appearance of micro-electronics, new communications and space
technology, the Soviet military, who had up until now played a key role in
the political life of the totalitarian state, began to realise more and more
clearly that their economic backwardness would sooner or later affect their
military and strategic position. This was also understood by those
politicians with greater awareness unencumbered by political dogma. Although
the USSR had achieved nuclear parity and, in certain areas, superiority,
with the USA, its backwardness in the field of micro-electronics and
communications at the beginning of the 1980's began to change this trend.
The enormous amounts of money expended on military causes undermined the
Soviet economy and doomed it to universal inefficiency.
In a comparison of figures, it can be seen that while in 1960 the GNP
of the USSR was only about $5000 USD less than in the USA, in 1980 this
difference had reached $10,000 and in 1990 - $20,000. In 1960 the
manufacturing output of the USSR was $1000 per head of population more than
in Japan. Only 20 years later Japan was producing goods to the value of
$11,864 per head of population in comparison with $6,863 in the USSR. At the
beginning of the 1990's the gap had widened to $30,000.[16]
A similar process was taking place in comparable smaller European
countries. The German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland
and Bulgaria were experiencing growing difficulties reflected in the drastic
increases in their external debt in the 1980's. Without the need for further
statistics, I believe, that the most obvious example was the difference
between the type of automobiles produced in East and West Germany. Whether
we compare Wartburgs with Mercedes or Trabants with Volkswagens it is quite
clear that we are dealing with two distinct generations of manufacturing
cultures. My example is based on motor vehicles since they reflect the
general level of industry as a whole: metallurgy, chemical production, heavy
machinery construction, electronics, textiles and so on.. While industry in
Western Europe was already using a new generation of production technology,
Eastern Europe was still dominated by a generation of production machinery
which was physically and morally at least twenty five years out of date.
The majority of Eastern Europeans lived in the conditions of
information deprivation. They were fed propaganda of constant progress and
achievement, the collapse of world capitalism and the greater and greater
victories of world socialism. In actual fact the reality was exactly the
opposite. Of course, many progressive leaders in Eastern Europe during this
period were aware of the problems but none of them were able to release
themselves from the common bonds of Eastern European imperialism. This was
made clear by the fate of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the Prague
Spring of 1968, as well as the unrest amongst the Polish workers and the
timid attempts at reform made in Bulgaria in 1986[17]. It was
quite clear that changes could only take place in the context of global
reforms affecting the USSR as well.
The negative consequences of technological backwardness were
exacerbated by the changes in the world economic situation in the mid
1980's. The collapse in the prices of oil and a number of other raw
materials lead to a sharp decline in the ability of the USSR and its allies
to function efficiently and to improve the standards of living of its
peoples. In the 1980's the member countries of COMECON experienced their
greatest difficulties in foreign trade and were obliged to increase their
external debts. From the mid 1980's the Soviet Union and its allies lost
their most important comparative economic advantages and were obliged to
cover their current account deficits with large external loans which even
then came to more than 100 billion dollars.
The nature of the technological changes of the 1970's and 1980's also
raised doubts about economic centralisation. In the 1930's and after the
Second World War technological innovation relied heavily on the centralised
accumulation and management of funds. Energy production, nuclear technology
and chemical production, large irrigation projects, heavy industry and arms
production were very strong arguments in favour of the need for centralised
planning and the active participation of the state in the economy.
On the other hand the technological wave of the 1970's pre-supposed the
decentralisation of the decision making process. The production of software
and personal computer applications, the appearance of tens of thousands of
different types of services and the progress in bio-technology stimulated
and continue to stimulate individual creativity. This was in contradiction
to the very essence of the Soviet type of system.
Consequently the backwardness of Eastern Europe in the 1970's and
1980's was not only a consequence of political and economic conjuncture but
had a long-term and objective character. It was connected with the inherent
backwardness not only of individual areas of manufacturing but of the
primary governmental and economic structures. As a result of the influence
of new technologies on the life of societies, the crisis soon spread to the
personal lives of the individual Eastern Europeans. In the 1970's and 1980's
personal consumption per head of population in Eastern Europe began
progressively to fall behind the average consumption figures for Western
Europe, the USA and Japan.
According to UN statistics for 1960, for every 1000 West Germans there
were 78 motor vehicles in comparison with 20 in Czechoslovakia and 17 in the
German Democratic Republic. In 1985 this figure had risen to 400 in West
Germany in comparison to 180 in East Germany and 163 in Czechoslovakia. In
1960 in the USSR there were 1.6 telephones per hundred people and in Japan -
5.8. In 1984 this figure was 9.8 for the USSR and 53.5 in
Japan[18].
In the late 1960's the economic backwardness of the USSR and its allies
began to spread to non-manufacturing environments. In 1960 infant mortality
per 1000 newly born infants was 26 in the USA, 31 in Japan and 35 in the
USSR. In 1985 this figure had changed to 10.4 per thousand in the USA, 5.7
in Japan and 25.1 in the USSR. Similar comparisons can be made in the area
of science, education, culture and cultural life in general. It would, of
course, be naive and imprudent to ignore the successes which the USSR and
its allies achieved in the area of space research, physics, chemistry and
molecular biology and in certain other areas of technology. These were,
however, rather oases within the overall system rather than its essential
features. They did not change the overall picture of backwardness or its
deepening character.
Clearly, against a background of increasing internationalisation and
more and more intensive exchange of information, the backwardness of Eastern
Europe began to become transformed into a universal moral and political
crisis. In the context of the boom of world communications, radio and
television, satellite communications and information transfer, the truth
could not be hidden for long. The attempts of the USSR and the other Eastern
European countries to propagate lies reached absurd extents to prove that
they were at the head of technological and economic progress. For more and
more people in Eastern Europe it was becoming clear that the backwardness of
their countries in manufacturing and consumerism was a direct result of the
vices of the system itself.
It should be noted, on the other hand, that right up until their demise
the Eastern European regimes retained certain benefits such as full
employment, a low crime rate, universal social guarantees and a number of
other features. The price of these benefits from the 1960's onwards,
however, had begun to manifest itself in the form of empty shops, the lack
of basic products, the low standard of living and the lack of personal
freedom etc.. Given such a situation, it was more and more difficult to
speak of the successes of the Soviet style system against the background not
only of a worsening economic situation but also of the moral and political
climate. The Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the uprisings and protests of
the Polish workers, the reforms in Hungary, the dissident movement in the
USSR, the mass movement in favour of emigration to the West was a
manifestation of the growing level of dissatisfaction or unhappiness with
the existing system.
In the 1970's the USA and its Western allies managed to impose a new
leading ideology: the issue of human rights and the rights and freedoms of
all citizens of the world. A number of "capitalist" countries such as
Sweden, Austria and others guaranteed more social benefits, including
pensions, unemployment benefit for young persons etc.. In general, in the
USA, Japan, Western Europe and a number of other smaller countries with a
market economy, life become more attractive and more in tune with the
growing diversity and increase in human needs. In contrast with this in
Eastern Europe and the USSR, there was a sharp increase in crime,
drunkenness, apathy and scepticism.
This lead to major geo-political consequences. After the collapse of
the colonial model, the Soviet Union, despite its concentrated efforts, was
unable to impose its system on the newly liberated countries. The majority
of them adopted systems and models closer to those of Western countries.
Attempts at "socialist revolutions" in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Ghana,
Somalia, Ethiopia and a number of other countries did not produce the
expected results. Poverty remained a problem. The promise of a rapid leap
into the "paradise of socialism" also remained an illusion.
While the USA and Western Europe and later Japan were keen on expanding
their influence in the world via investments, cultural influence and
education, the Soviet Union in order to expand its geo-political influences
concentrated on the support of "revolutionary" regimes, expending colossal
amountsof state money in the process. They maintained the point of view that
in states with poor economies progress could only be achieved via
nationalisation and centralised planning. Life, however, shows that this is
not the case.
The upshot was that in the 1970's and in particular in the 1980's the
Eastern European regimes were in the grips of a universal structural,
economic, political and spiritual crisis, both internally and externally.
Geo-politically this crisis was expressed in terms of the widening gap
between the role of the USSR as a world super power and its real economic
abilities. During the entire post-war period the military expenditure of the
USSR exceeded all permissible economic levels. Military budgets undermined
national development and seriously threatened the future of the system. On
the other hand, despite the economic crisis and evident technological
backwardness the Eastern European governments continued their policies of
universal social guarantees of employment and wages which in the 1980's in
particular lead to chronic increases in foreign debt. Consumption was
greater than production. Financial commitments to the military, price
subsidies and excessive state investments lead to the creation of enormous
budget deficits.
Essentially the system was consuming itself from within. While Western
countries were reforming and adapting to global technological problems, the
crisis in Eastern Europe was worsening. It was becoming more clear that
without radical reforms, backwardness would lead to death.
2. REFORMS AND ILLUSIONS
Attempts by the Eastern European totalitarian regimes to reformwithout
damage
to the foundations of their systems were illusory. These were merely
attempts to prolong the life of a civilisation on the wane.
T
he collapse of the Third civilisation, or if you prefer, its
"reconstruction" could have been an evolutionary process as it was in the
West, through economic reforms and the political evolution of the
totalitarian states. Since the creation of Soviet Russia in 1917 and most
notably during the last decades of its existence numerous attempts at reform
had been made. These reforms merit a general examination and can be divided
into five periods within the history of the Soviet model system.
The first of these was the period between 1917-1929 which I like to
refer to as a time of consolidation and the search for a model of
development. Notwithstanding the civil war and widespread violence the
possibility of returning to some form of democracy still remained. A certain
amount of private property, paricularly in agriculture, had been preserved.
The NEP programme (New Economic Policy) introduced by Lenin in 1921 provided
the opportunity for the use of foreign capital and private initiative.
The second stage of "pure socialism" began at the end of the 1930's
with the destruction of the remains of the NEP and a total assault on
economic, political and cultural life. The coercive formation of the
collective farms, the creation of an enormous army of labour camp slaves,
forced economic growth based on administrative and political methods and the
extermination of millions of political opponents - these were the
foundations of the Soviet Stalinist regime. During this period the Soviet
system developed as a monolithic hierarchical organisation in which the
violence of the party elite and its subordinated security organisations
dominated. From 1930 to 1953 every manifestation of private initiative and
free thought was punished with prison or death.[19]
The third period in the development of the Soviet system began with the
death of Stalin in 1953 and the "thaw" of Nikita Khrushchev. Although to
some extent contradictory, the policies implemented by Khrushchev during
this period were to leave a lasting mark on the further development of the
world. For the first time the truth about Stalin's crimes was revealed and
both Stalin himself and his system lost their authority as the proponents of
social justice and world progress.
The fourth period began in 1964 and ended at the beginning of the
1980's. It was justly named by Mikhail Gorbachev as the period of "zastoi"
(stagnation). During these years Leonid Brezhnev brought a halt to the
"thaw" begun by Khrushchev and began his attempt to immortalise the
totalitarian system through a series of internal and external cosmetic
changes. It was during this period that the USSR and its allies began to
fall behind their Western opponents in the areas of technology and
economics.
The fifth and final stage was the period of "perestroika" introduced by
Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) which was eventually to lead to the collapse
of the Eastern European regimes and the USSR itself.
My reason for this periodisation is that from the beginning to the end
of the Soviet system there were two contradictory political trends: one of
which saw totalitarianism as the essence of the utopian communist dream and
a second which aspired to more flexible, economic and political models.
The second trend appeared directly after the February revolution of
1917 in the ideas of local self-government by workers, the implementation of
the NEP by Lenin in 1921 and 1927, the "thaw" of Khrushchev and finally in
the policy of "perestroika" of Mikhail Gorbachov. The essence of this second
trend was the combination of party and political centralism with relatively
greater freedom for the private sector (especially in trade and agriculture)
and in the area of art and culture. Its origin can be seen in the traditions
of European socialism and social democracy.
In the 1920's the proponents of a more flexible and dynamic political
line - N.Bukharin, G.Zinoviev, S.Kamenev, A.Rikov and others lost their
battle for power, allowing the party bureaucracy to dominate all structures
of society. This was the decisive moment for the development of the essence
of the Soviet model. The victory of Stalinism transformed the USSR - and a
number of other countries after the Second World War - into bureaucratic
command societies.
During the period between 1954-1956 when N.Khrushchev was fiercely
critical of the Stalinist era, he found himself in conflict with the
Stalinist system in all sectors of life. As a child of the very same system,
Khrushchev was condemning not the system but the style and leadership
methods employed by Stalin and the cult of personality. He proposed a
reevaluation of the system and mechanisms of its leadership. Khrushchev's
illusion was that by changing the leadership and functioning of the system
he would make it more effective and resolve its major problems.
During the Brezhnev period (1964-1982) a considerable number of
"improvements" were made to the leadership. The attempts made to revive the
economy by giving greater freedom to industry and a timid embracement of the
private sector clashed with the dominant principles of the totalitarian
system. There was talk of de-centralisation, collective initiative and new
economic mechanisms. However, not a word was said about the party monopoly
on power and finances, banks and the market. It would, however, have been
impossible to have freedom or private initiative without major changes to
the banking system, price liberalisation, reform to the system of investment
banking and the removal of large funds from the hands of the party and state
elite. It was quite absurd to make changes to the structures of property and
administration without changes to the principles of political power or
without profound changes to the legislative system and the guarantee of
constitutional rights and freedoms of its citizens.
History frequently provides us with examples of the combination of
heroism and illusion. Frequently the intellect of leaders and the grandeur
of their objectives have been let down by the naivety of the way in which
they attempted to achieva them. Such was the case with Stalin's opponents in
the 1920's and 30's and the policies of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950's.
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rikov and Bukharin paid for their naivety with their
lives since they were up against not only Stalin's will and cruelty but also
the interests and power of the party-state apparatus. Khrushchev also paid
for his own naivety and was removed from power in October 1964. For the ten
years he was in office, Khrushchev wavered between the desire to put an end
to the Stalinist repressions and the preservation of the system. The same
man who was bold enough to reveal the crimes of Stalin to the whole world
allowed cruel acts of repression against Soviet art and culture. The same
man who had the fortitude to remove the body of Stalin from the mausoleum in
Moscow became a proponent of the super-Utopian idea of the "rapid leap" into
the "paradise of communism".
The enormous belief that good could be imposed from above and that the
system could be revitalised by "the enthusiasm" and privileges of the
nomenclature, were naive. Khrushchev was no less a believer in the system of
state socialism. By throwing Stalin and Beria onto the scrapheap of history,
he deprived the Soviet people of their Divine leader and was obliged to
offer them a new Utopia - the rapid advent of communism, industrial
dominance over the USA and a high standard of living for the people of the
USSR etc.. After Krushchev's removal from power it became more difficult to
delude the people with promises of new Utopias and illusions. The myth of
the infallible leader in Stalin had been shattered. Khrushchev's programme
for entering the era of perfect communism by 1980 had failed. The next
utopia in line was Brezhnev's off-the-peg theory of a developed socialist
society.
Despite all this the logical question arises of why despite its general
instability the Soviet totalitarian system survived for such a long time -
74 years? I believe that there are a number of reasons for this.
The Soviet totalitarian model arose during a period of general crisis
and the large scale transformation of world capitalism, during a period of
globalisation and a search for various models of existence in a new
inter-dependent world. The 20th century was a time of cataclysm, change and
transition and of two world and hundreds of local wars in which more than
150 million people lost their lives. Despite its Utopian nature, the Soviet
system was a model for potential progress which emphasised absolute social
protection, guaranteed the interests of workers andpeasants and total
nationalisation as a condition for concentrating resources and directing
them towards new construction. The belief that universal social guarantees
were the basis for progress provided temporary historical justification for
the centralised type of society.
The continuing existence of the Soviet totalitarian system can be
explained with the desire and the ambitions of many nations rapidly to
overcome poverty and to avoid their possible colonisation by the larger
colonial metropolises. For many countries during the 1950's and the 1960's
the Soviet Union was a guarantee of protection against colonisation by other
countries, despite the fact that "fraternity" with the USSR meant another
type of dependence.
Was it not the case, however, that the crisis of liberalism and the
return to the ideas of nationalisation was also taking place in other parts
of the world? Practically everywhere in the world before and after the First
World War and especially at the end of the 1920's societes were undergoing
radical changes and centralisation. The victory of Hitler in Germany,
Mussolini in Italy, the Left in France and Spain was proof of this. The
crisis of world capitalism brought about by colonialism, monopolisation, the
First World War and the economic crisis of 1929-33 was sufficient motivation
and justification for the actions of Stalin as "necessary policies" in the
context of forthcoming world conflict. For millions of people the Soviet
Union was not so much a country of violent political aggression in which
millions of innocent people lost their lives but rather the power which
defeated Hitler, saved humanity from the death camps of fascism and gave a
chance to many peoples to live their lives in freedom and independence.
In 1932 in the introduction to his criticism of socialism, Ludwig von
Mizes wrote, "In Europe to the East of the Rhine there are very few
non-Marxists and even in Western Europe and the United States his (Marx)
supporters are greater in number than his opponents"[20]. If
today at the end of the 20th century, socialism is perceived as "something
bad in the past", for over half a century - from the 1920's to the 1970's it
was seen as the hope for the majority of mankind.
This is due to the not insignificant achievements of socialism in the
areas of industrialisation, science and technology, culture and art and,
most significantly, the social guarantees of labour, wages, a place to live
and so on. To disregard or to conceal these achievements would be imprudent,
and, indeed, impossible from an historical point of view. Each historical
period notwithstanding the nature of political power leaves behind it
something positive, guaranteeing the furtherance of human life. The
successes of the USSR in industrialisation, transforming it from a country
surviving on the remnants of a system of feudal agriculture into a world
super-power, guaranteed wages, work and income for the vast masses of its
population were for many people sufficient grounds for maintaining the
system.
I, therefore, do not consider the model of state socialism to be the
ravings of a group of mad politicians. Its appearance, existence and
dissemination over the whole world from the second half of the 19th century
to the end of the 20th was a consequence of huge world transformations and
reactions against the imperialist colonial world with its injustices and
wars. Despite its illusions and errors it was a conscious attempt to offer
protection to the interests of the oppressed and division and class
struggles to be replaced with unification and social unity.
I realise how difficult it is only a few years after the collapse of
the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe for these words to be uttered.
However, we should not be too hasty in our evaluation of history from the
point of view of a specific political moment in time. The continued
existence of the Soviet type of system and the popularity of the communist
idea during the greater part of the 20th century was a consequence of the
objective and global processes of transition of the modern world. It was a
part of the processes of world integration, but also a part of the crisis of
the Third Civilisation. The same factors which provided the opportunities to
state socialism also dug its grave. Continuing global integration could no
longer tolerate isolationism. Social guarantees led to the demotivation of
labour. The growth in personal and group self-confidence were limited by the
lack of basic human rights. The reason for the collapse of this system was
its tendency to consume more than it produced and to maintain "balance" via
the methodical use of aggression upon the personal freedoms of its citizens.
The very idea of achieving universal justice and material plenty via
coercion and "forced awareness" were Utopian and inhumane.
The contradictions arose from the economic essence of the system, from
the type of ownership, and not from the style and methods of leadership, as
Khrushchev considered. Khrushchev did not attempt to change the system
which, in its turn, killed him politically. His illusions were inherited
from Bukharin and in the end the system was doomed to failure. However, that
which was planted by Khrushchev, the desire for change, eventually gave
fruit. On the one hand because the reformers within the Soviet party and
state leadership were able to learn from its lessons and on the other since
they were all aware that partial and cosmetic changes would not lead to
success.
Twenty years and four months had passed since Khrushchev was removed
from office when on the 11th of March 1985 Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was
elected to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union.
3. THE TWO OPTIONS AND THE MISTAKE OF GORBACHEV
Gorbachev had two options - to change the system either by liberalising
the economy
or by changing the political system. The first option would have
guaranteed stability
and a gradual transition, the second - conflict and chaos. In any event
neither he nor his successors had a plan for global action.
A
t the beginning of 1985 the majority of the Soviet population was ready
for change. It was tired of the drawn-out death throes of the Brezhnev
leadership, filled with hope when Yuri Andropov came to power, crushed by
his death soon after that and his replacement with the aging Brezhnevite
Konstantin Chernenko. Soviet society and in particular the intelligentsia
during this period were tired of the endless speeches and demagogy, of the
discrepancies between words and reality, of the empty shelves and the
universal lack of everything which the ordinary member of the public might
require. Mikhail Gorbachev found not only fertile ground for change but he
indeed became the natural mouthpiece for the expression of all the ambitions
and hopes of the majority of Soviet society.
During his first year of office Gorbachev made significant changes to
the politburo, the government, the leadership of the armed forces and
foreign ministry. It was during this period that Edward Shevernadze came to
the fore in the Soviet leadership as foreign minister and member of the
politburo. A.Yakovlev became the leader of the propaganda section of the
Central Committee of the CPSU. Boris Yeltsin became the leader of the Moscow
party committee of the CPSU. In practice these were the three political
figures who most radically and faithfully supported the political and
economic reforms.
In 1985 Gorbachev opened up the way for improvements in Soviet and
American relations in the areas of arms control policy and the radical
reduction in first-strike nuclear weapons. The summit meeting held between
Gorbachev and the American president Ronald Reagan in November 1985 in
Geneva was the beginning of a turn-around in world nuclear arms policy. In
1986 Gorbachev accelerated personnel changes in the leadership of the
communist party and the Soviet state as well as in the mass media and local
party apparatus.
I believe that these first two years were decisive for Gorbachev's
choice of strategy. Undoubtedly, the change which he began were on a much
larger scale than those of Khrushchev and affected all areas of life.
Despite this in 1985 and 1986 Gorbachev continued to pursue the idea of
revitalising the system in the aims of "more socialism". In June 1986 in
Habarovsk he formulated the essence of "perestroika" and the need for its
advancement. During this period the people of the USSR were allowed much