In various small communities or villages in Israel, communism has been doing amazingly well. These various small wellsprings of communism have thrived and indeed exist in peaceful coexistence with their neighbouring, non-communist villages. Why then, has communism so failed in Soviet Union, but not in these small groups?

One of the main causes for the downfall of communism in the Soviet Union is the failure of ideology. Lenin had great visions for his country, building on the ideas of Karl Marx, and he believed that communism meant a collective action, and in some ways a free enterprise. His vision was that of a world that entwined Marxism and socialism, he believed that the government should have little or no interference with the country’s economy. However, in this utopian view of the world, he failed to take into account the wants and needs of the individuals in the country. The underlying reason for the ideological failure of communism in the Soviet Union would be due to true human nature.

First of all, power corrupts. Stalin is perhaps the best example to illustrate the point. He was highly corrupted and strived to eliminate his political enemies using unscrupulous means. Perhaps if he had not been thus swayed by power, Soviet Union might have undergone better changes under his command. Furthermore, there were severe violations of Lenin’s principles in the selection and employment of cadres—blood ties were valued over capabilities, and briberies ran rampant. This resulted in huge social gaps that only grew and, finally, resulted in a government that only strove for its own benefits. There was fundamentally nothing wrong with the communist concept, but that human beings tend to work for their own benefit, or the benefit of only their close kin. This would be why communism can work for small groups, but will ultimately fail in a larger area should human nature continue the way it is. The basic need for domination and creation of competition ensures that communism would fail on the large scale as this would in turn increase the amount of competition and thus more divergence from the original, “pure”, communism.

Human beings naturally crave for individualism—we expect, to a certain extent, the free expression of thought and speech. Indeed, the world is composed of many different types of people. Some tend to work hard, some are self-sacrificing, some are lazy, and some will use cruel and unscrupulous means to achieve their ends. In a true communist society, all is supposed to be equal. This would mean that those who work hard will receive only the same amount of payment as those who do no work at all. In an effort for self preservation, the country would soon fall apart as more and more people decide that the effort they put into working is not worth the amount they receive in return. There was no longer any incentive for people to work—and such is the ideological failure of communism. Human nature is such that nobody would like to give their all, in return for nothing. These individualistic tendencies would ultimately prove to be the downfall of communism.

The complexity of human nature in itself would provide a strong basis for harm to the communist ideal. History has shown us that fate and fortune favoured the liberated and individualistic expression over a massive drone of collected wills. In the Soviet Union, the conditions of the masses were horrible as compared to the few who wielded power in their hands. This resulted in dissent and cynical viewpoints from the poor, who did not see the point in working hard for the benefit of the elite few. The corruption in the government had degraded communism such that it had become nothing more than autocracy. In comparing their lives with that of their capitalist counterparts, a want for change in their “communist” lifestyle was only inevitable.

Communism in Russia assumed that all men are good. The leaders of the Soviet Union had placed the value of the security of the country above the lives and needs of the individuals living in the Soviet Union, and assumed that the Russians would gladly give up their lives for the greater good of the community. The various differences in different people—different skill levels, different niches, different characters, all these various changes corrupted and chipped away at the basic formula on which communism was built—that all men are equal. The existence of differing viewpoints and wants and needs may not necessarily directly affect the implementation of communism, but it did and must inevitably, yet perhaps indirectly, affect the carrying out of communist practices.

Perhaps it is also in part due to the extremist processes implemented by the various leaders of Russia that the ideology failed. These extreme changes of the original communist ideology led to its downfall. The “lower classes” believed in communism because it provided a way up for them, instead of because they truly believed in equality, and likewise, the rich and “higher-ups” did not like nor trust communism unless they wielded the power as it would take away their affluence.

As the famous quote from Animal Farm says: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”