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Tuesday, March 9, 2010
---USSR: 69 Years on the Slow Boat to Failure
USSR: 69 Years on the Slow Boat to Failure
Since its founding after the Russian Civil War in which the Bolsheviks won in 1922, the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had been stable country run by a group of men not chosen by democratic means, until its fall in 1991.
For a country existing in a world of change, where democracy and human rights were becoming increasingly key issues, one will wonder how the communists had managed to stay in power for 69 years.
Firstly, one would suspect that the lack of knowledge on one’s civil liberties was a key factor in the perpetuation on undemocratic reign.
As far as the history of Russia goes, it has never enjoyed democratic rule. It must be noted that before the Bolsheviks took power after the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, the Tzar had been in full control of the country. Democracy was hence absoultely foreign to the Russians.
Under Soviet dictatorship, the press was highly censored and the Soviet borders strictly regulated.
Upon the Bolshevik’s grip on power over Russia, they had swiftly outlawed all other political parties and newspapers besides their party newspaper Pravda. This enforcement of single-party rule and the relentless propagation of propaganda through the Pravda paved the way for dictatorship and oppression.
Censorship of the press and religious institutions played a major role in the suppression of the population. In a predominantly agrarian and industrial society like the USSR, the majority of the population was uneducated. The only way intellectual dissidents could propagate anti-communist propaganda was through the media or religious institutions. As these institutions were all nationalized and censored, the tight grip on knowledge perpetuated. Uneducated people made no noise – and the communists knew that.
Even if there had been dissent amongst the population in the initial years, Stalin had seen to it that such ‘troublemakers’ were sent to harsh labour camps for ‘ideological reforms’, as part of his ‘great purge’. Employing the tactics of fear mongering and brute force, dissidents were slaughtered, locked up or beaten into submission.
Subsequent leaders after Stalin, like Brezhnev, perpetuated this crusing of dissent by locking such 'dangerous individuals' in mental institutions to make null anything they had mentioned against the government.
Over the years, the crushing of opposition and relentless brainwashing of the population led to the transition from generation to generation saw the gradual erosion of peoples’ knowledge about their civil liberties and rights. Without a conscious effort by the citizens to defend and uphold their rights, it was not difficult for the single-party communist government to be established and entrenched in the Russian way of life.
The allure of communism may however, has also played its part in perpetuating communist rule in the USSR. In the USSR, most of the population was either farmers or factory workers. As such industries required large numbers of people to work out, many felt the need to cooperate. The atmosphere for mutual help created by communist ideas remained vital for success. The communist system had also promised to create a welfare state whereby everyone was taken care off, in contrast to a capitalistic meritocracy proposed by the West.
The communist party would have otherwise been successful, perhaps till this day, if not for the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev had made many lethal mistakes.
To improve on the USSR’s communist system, Gorbachev launched the Glastnost policy aimed at gathering public feedback about the system for further improvement. Under this policy, government institutions were made fully transparent and press censorship was lifted. People were now able to publicly voice their unhappiness and condemn the fledging system. As the people came together, they influenced each other back and forth, causing anti-communist ideas spread uncontrollably.
Under Gorbachev, many talented individuals were also given the opportunity to study overseas on scholarships. Having seen how prosperous the capitalist nations were in contrast to the USSR, these educated individuals came home propagating the ideals of democracy and personal freedoms.
Further more, when many hard-line top-level officials within the party spoke against Gorbachev’s reforms, he responded by firing them immediately. The sudden changes in leadership lead to the administration’s inability to reign in the newly-liberated media and the people of USSR, because the new leaders were not as experienced in controlling the masses.
With Petroiska, an economic reform introducing a Capitalist form of economy into USSR, many problems arose. To put it briefly, the reforms caused widespread lack of consumer goods, and ultimately great unhappiness amongst the people.
Without the strong backing from powerful members within the party, and the turmoil throughout the country, Gorbachev’s reforms were set for nothing but failure. Ultimately, Gorbachev’s delayed response to the crisis led to the downfall of the long standing communist rule over the USSR.
-Huiwen