Collapse of Communism

Stalin policies resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union:

Peter Rutland is a professor of government at Wesleyan
University in Middletown, Connecticut.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/tmt/442177.html
But Stalins strategic thinking was terribly out of date. There would
be no imperialist attack in the decades after 1945. The deployment
of intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads made war
between the superpowers unthinkable. Moreover, the imperialist
mind-set had destroyed itself in the successive bloodbaths of World
War I and World War II. In the decade after 1945, European colonial
empires were in the process of disintegration, and the United States
itself was not interested in building an empire or starting any new
massive land wars.
Thus, Stalin was protecting himself against a military threat that no
longer existed and was turning the Soviet Union into a multinational
empire at the very moment when the practice of empire-building
became an anachronism and nationalism was growing in strength.
Stalins defenders and there are still many of them in
contemporary Russia portray him as a visionary leader who saved
the Soviet Union from the Nazi onslaught. They justify the suffering
of Soviet citizens under Stalin as the price that had to be paid to
industrialize the country quickly and guarantee its national security
against foreign enemies two prerequisites to provide its citizens
with a brighter future. But in reality, Stalin was trapped in outdated
19th-century assumptions about the character of warfare and the
nature of power in the late 20th-century world.
In trying to protect himself from Western imperialism, Stalin set the
Soviet Union on a path to self-destruction. The Soviet Union was
saddled with a bloated military that absorbed at least 1/4 of its gross
domestic product, and it had to deploy millions of soldiers to
maintain control over its Eastern European possessions.
By the end of World War II, Stalin had incorporated the Baltic states,
Moldova and western Ukraine into the Soviet Union. The
overwhelming majority of the people of these occupied territories did
not want to be a part of the Soviet Union, and even the communist
leaders of those nations later shared that sentiment. If Stalin had not
insisted on absorbing the Baltic states but had let them go the way
of Finland independent of Russia since 1918 perhaps
Gorbachevs reform efforts during the perestroika period could have
succeeded. As it turned out, his reforms were quickly derailed by the
nationalist unrest in the Baltic states and the Caucasus. Whats more,
Gorbachevs willingness to tolerate limited force to suppress
nationalists within the Soviet Union, from Azerbaijan to Lithuania, led
to the defection of Boris Yeltsins democratic forces from the
perestroika coalition.
Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1990 for
his willingness to preside over the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet
empire in East Europe. But the crucial decision to refuse to use
Soviet troops to maintain order in the communist bloc was taken not

by Gorbachev in 1988, but by Yury Andropov in 1981. In the face of

the Solidarity movement in Poland, the then-KGB head Andropov
persuaded General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that it would be
counterproductive for the Soviet Union to repeat Prague 1968 by
invading Poland not least because the army was bogged down in
Afghanistan. Polands communist leaders would have to fix the
problem themselves mainly through martial law, which bought
them a few more years in control. In 1988, Gorbachev was merely
stating publicly what had already been de facto Soviet policy since
1981.
Great powers must adapt to the changing character of the global
system if they are to stay on top. Leaders must think ahead and not
merely build on recent successes. Neither the politicians nor the
generals should be fighting the last war. Stalin made that typical
error in his strategic choices. He imagined a repeat of World War II
and yet another round of imperial conflict. His successors paid the
exorbitant price and so did two generations of Soviet citizens.
Why did Communism fail?
https://robertnielsen21.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/why-didcommunism-fail-1-dictatorship/#more-1235
An interesting economic perspective about the failure of dictatorship
and triumph of democracy.
A sample:
The enormous totalitarian apparatus is a monolith that will crush
the rest of the economy. The military industrial complex prospers at
the expense of the rest of the economy.
History Chanel article: A clear content outline
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fall-of-soviet-union
Mikhail Gorbachevs Glasnost and Perestroika
In March 1985, a longtime Communist Party politician named Mikhail
Gorbachev assumed the leadership of the USSR He inherited a
stagnant economy and a political structure that made reform all but
impossible.
Gorbachev introduced two sets of policies that he hoped would help
the USSR become a more prosperous, productive nation. The first of
these was known as glasnost, or political openness. Glasnost
eliminated traces of Stalinist repression, like the banning of books
and the omnipresent secret police, and gave new freedoms to Soviet
citizens. Political prisoners were released. Newspapers could print
criticisms of the government. For the first time, parties other than
the Communist Party could participate in elections.
The second set of reforms was known as perestroika, or economic
restructuring. The best way to revive the Soviet economy, Gorbachev
thought, was to loosen the governments grip on it. He believed that
private initiative would lead to innovation, so individuals and
cooperatives were allowed to own businesses for the first time since
the 1920s. Workers were given the right to strike for better wages
and conditions. Gorbachev also encouraged foreign investment in
Soviet enterprises.

However, these reforms were slow to bear fruit. Perestroika had

torpedoed the command economy that had kept the Soviet state
afloat, but the market economy took time to mature. (In his farewell
address, Gorbachev summed up the problem: The old system
collapsed before the new one had time to begin working.) Rationing,
shortages and endless queuing for scarce goods seemed to be the
only results of Gorbachevs policies. As a result, people grew more
and more frustrated with his government.

The Revolutions of 1989 and the Fall of the Soviet Union

Gorbachev believed that a better Soviet economy depended on
better relationships with the rest of the world, especially the United
States. Even as President Reagan called the USSR the Evil Empire
and launched a massive military buildup, Gorbachev vowed to bow
out of the arms race. He announced that he would withdraw Soviet
troops from Afghanistan, where they had been fighting a war since
1979, and he reduced the Soviet military presence in the Warsaw
Pact nations of Eastern Europe.
his policy of nonintervention had important consequences for the
Soviet Unionbut first, it caused the Eastern European alliances to, as
Gorbachev put it, crumble like a dry saltine cracker in just a few
months. The first revolution of 1989 took place in Poland, where the
non-Communist trade unionists in the Solidarity movement
bargained with the Communist government for freer elections in
which they enjoyed great success. This, in turn, sparked peaceful
revolutions across Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall fell in November;
that same month, the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia
overthrew that countrys Communist government. (In December,
however, violence reigned: A firing squad executed Romanias
Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaucescu, and his wife.)
Perestroika and Glasnost
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev stepped onto the world stage in March
1985 as the new leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), it was immediately clear that he was different from his
predecessors. Gorbachev, then 54, was significantly younger than
the aging party members who had led the Communist superpower in
previous decadesthe last two of whom had seen their rule cut short
by health problems. Hailing from a younger generation gave
Gorbachev a new outlook on the challenges that faced his country.
Gorbachev realized that he had inherited significant problems. Even
as the USSR vied with the United States for global political and
military leadership, its economy was struggling, and its citizens were
chafing under their relatively poor standard of living and lack of
freedom. Those difficulties were also keenly felt in the Communist
nations of Eastern Europe that were aligned with and controlled by
the Soviets.
Gorbachev took a new approach toward addressing these problems:
He introduced a reform program that embodied two overarching
concepts. Perestroika, his restructuring concept, started with an
overhaul of the top members of the Communist Party. It also focused

on economic issues, replacing the centralized government planning

that had been a hallmark of the Soviet system with a greater reliance
on market forces. The accompanying concept of glasnost sought to
ease the strict social controls imposed by the government.
Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups
and allowed citizens to express divergent views. By 1988, Gorbachev
had expanded his reforms to include democratization, moving the
USSR toward an elected form of government.
Slowing the Arms Race
Gorbachevs internal reforms were matched by new approaches to
Soviet foreign policy. Determined to end his countrys nuclear rivalry
with the United States, he pursued negotiations with U.S. President
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Although Reagan held strong anticommunist views and had intensified the Cold War by initiating a
buildup of U.S. forces in the early 1980s, the two leaders managed to
find common ground.
Gorbachev and Reagan took part in five summits between 1985 and
1988. Their discussions resulted in the signing of the IntermediateRange Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which brought about a major
reduction in both nations weapons stockpiles. The productive
dialogue was the result of fresh thinking on both sides, but progress
on many points began with Gorbachevs willingness to abandon longheld Soviet positions.
The Liberation of Eastern Europe
The Gorbachev initiative that had the most far-reaching effects was
his decision to abandon Soviet control of the Communist nations of
Eastern Europe. Since World War II, leaders of the USSR had viewed
the maintenance of these states as essential to their nations
security, and they had crushed anti-Soviet uprisings in Warsaw Pact
countries (a group of eight Communist nations in Eastern Europe,
including Poland and Hungary) that sought greater independence.
However, just a year after taking power, Gorbachev oversaw reforms
that loosened the Soviet grip on these states. Then, in a landmark
December 1988 speech at the United Nations, he declared that all
nations should be free to choose their own course without outside
interference. To the amazement of millions, he capped this speech by
announcing that the USSR would significantly reduce the number of
troops and tanks that were based in the Eastern Bloc countries.
Gorbachevs move had unintended consequences. He had hoped
that his reforms would revitalize and modernize the Soviet Union.
Instead, they unleashed social forces that brought about the
dissolution of the USSR (which had been in existence since 1922). In
1989, Communist regimes fell in Poland, Hungary, East Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. By the end of that year, the
Berlin Wall had been dismantled and discussions were under way
that would result in the reunification of Germany in October 1990.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/fall-of-communism
Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1989
On November 9, 1989, thousands of jubilant Germans brought down
the most visible symbol of division at the heart of Europethe Berlin

Wall. For two generations, the Wall was the physical representation of
the Iron Curtain, and East German border guards had standing shootto-kill orders against those who tried to escape. But just as the Wall
had come to represent the division of Europe, its fall came to
represent the end of the Cold War. In the White House, President
George H. W. Bush and his National Security Advisor, Brent
Scowcroft, watched the unfolding scene on a television in the study,
aware of both the historical significance of the moment and of the
challenges for U.S. foreign policy that lay ahead.
Germans celebrating
the fall of the Berlin
Wall on November 10,
1989.
Not even the most
optimistic observer of
Presidents Ronald
Reagans 1987 Berlin
speech calling on Soviet
General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev to tear down
this wall would have
imagined that two years
later the communist
regimes of Eastern
Europe would collapse
like dominoes. By 1990, the former communist leaders were out of
power, free elections were held, and Germany was whole again.
The peaceful collapse of the regimes was by no means pre-ordained.
Soviet tanks crushed demonstrators in East Berlin in June 1953, in
Hungary in 1956, and again in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Soviet
military planners were intimately involved in the Polish planning for
martial law in 1980, and Soviet troops remained stationed
throughout Eastern Europe, as much a guarantee for Soviet security
as an ominous reminder to Eastern European peoples of Soviet
dominance over their countries.
The Reagan administrations strong rhetoric in support of the political
aspirations of Eastern European and Soviet citizens was met,
following 1985, with a new type of leader in the Soviet Union. Mikhail
Gorbachevs policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost
(transparency) further legitimized popular calls for reform from
within. Gorbachev also made clearat first secretly to the Eastern
European leaders, then increasingly more publicthat the Soviet
Union had abandoned the policy of military intervention in support of
communist regimes (the Brezhnev Doctrine).
On February 6, 1989, negotiations between the Polish Government
and members of the underground labor union Solidarity opened
officially in Warsaw. Solidarity was formed in August 1980 following a
series of strikes that paralyzed the Polish economy. The 1981 Sovietinspired imposition of martial law drove the organization
underground, where it survived due to support from Western labor
organizations and Polish migr groups. The results of the Round
Table Talks, signed by government and Solidarity representatives on

April 4, included free elections for 35% of the Parliament (Sejm), free
elections for the newly created Senate, a new office of the President,
and the recognition of Solidarity as a political party. On June 4, as
Chinese tanks crushed student-led protests in Beijing, Solidarity
delivered a crushing electoral victory. By August 24, ten years after
Solidarity emerged on the scene, Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the
first non-communist Prime Minister in Eastern Europe.
US State Department site:
http://future.state.gov/when/timeline/1969_detente/fall_of_communis
m.html
The collapse of the Berlin Wall was the culminating point of the
revolutionary changes sweeping east central Europe in 1989.
Throughout the Soviet bloc, reformers assumed power and ended
more than 40 years of dictatorial communist rule. The reform
movement that ended communism in east central Europe began in
Poland. Solidarity, an anti-communist trade union and social
movement, had forced Poland's communist government to recognize
it in 1980 through a wave of strikes that gained international
attention. In 1981, Poland's communist authorities, under pressure
from Moscow, declared martial law, arrested Solidarity's leaders, and
banned the democratic trade union. The ban did not bring an end to
Solidarity. The movement simply went underground, and the
rebellious Poles organized their own civil society, separate from the
communist government and its edicts.
In 1985, the assumption of power in the Soviet Union by a reformer,
Mikhail Gorbachev, paved the way for political and economic reforms
in east central Europe. Gorbachev abandoned the "Brezhnev
Doctrine"--the Soviet Union's policy of intervening with military force,
if necessary, to preserve communist rule in the region. Instead, he
encouraged the local communist leaders to seek new ways of gaining
popular support for their rule. In Hungary, the communist
government initiated reforms in 1989 that led to the sanctioning of a
multiparty system and competitive elections. In Poland, the
communists entered into round-table talks with a reinvigorated
Solidarity. As a result, Poland held its first competitive elections since
before World War II, and in 1989, Solidarity formed the first non
communist government within the Soviet bloc since 1948. Inspired
by their neighbors' reforms, east Germans took to the streets in the
summer and fall of 1989 to call for reforms, including freedom to visit
West Berlin and West Germany. Moscow's refusal to use military force
to buoy the regime of East German leader Erich Honecker led to his
replacement and the initiation of political reforms, leading up to the
fateful decision to open the border crossings on the night of
November 9, 1989.
In the wake of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Czechs and Slovaks
took to the streets to demand political reforms in Czechoslovakia.
Leading the demonstrations in Prague was dissident playwright
Vaclav Havel, co-founder of the reform group Charter 77. The
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia quietly and peacefully
transferred rule to Havel and the Czechoslovak reformers in what

was later dubbed the "Velvet Revolution." In Romania, the communist

regime of hardliner Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown by popular
protest and force of arms in December 1989. Soon, the communist
parties of Bulgaria and Albania also ceded power.
The revolutions of 1989 marked the death knell of communism in
Europe. As a result, not only was Germany reunified in 1990, but
soon, revolution spread to the Soviet Union itself. After surviving a
hard-line coup attempt in 1991, Gorbachev was forced to cede power
in Russia to Boris Yeltsin, who oversaw the dissolution of the Soviet
Union.
The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
http://www.historydoctor.net/Advanced%20Placement%20European
%20History/collapse_of_communism_in_eas.html
Communism bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Nationalist sentiments and ethnic tensions had largely been
suppressed during the Cold War as the Soviet Union attempted to
realize Marxs dream of an international workers revolution; however
with the end of the Cold War Civil War nationalist sentiments again
developed, and discontent with Communist rule soon led to the
collapse of the entire bloc. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev
attempted to liberalize Soviet political and cultural practices;
however in doing so, he unleashed forces which forever transformed
Eastern Europe.
The Soviet administrative system consisted of centralized
administrative control which stretched downward from central
committees to state committees and from there to provincial cities,
even to factories, neighborhoods and villages. All was under the
umbrella control of the Communist Party. While this system protected
the status of the elite within the party system, the mass of citizens
within the Soviet bloc were largely apathetic. Leonid Brezhnevs
short-lived successor, Yuri Andropov, attempted to re-invigorate the
system, but did not succeed. At the same time, the economy
worsened, leading to unrest. Andropovs successor, Mikhail
Gorbachev, considered himself a reformer. While he believed in
communism, (his wife, Raisa, was a professor of Marxist-Leninist
thought) he realized it had not kept up with Western capitalism and
technology, which had caused the Soviet Unions status as a
superpower to erode. He therefore initiated a series of fundamental
reforms to revitalize the Soviet system.
Gorbachev began his reforms by criticizing incompetence and
corruption in the governmental bureaucracy. He also attacked
alcoholism and drunkenness, which were endemic problems in
traditional Russian society. Most importantly, he began a series of
programs to restructure the Soviet economy to see that it met the
needs of the populace. This program, known as perestroika
(restructuring) provided for easing of government controlled price
controls on some goods; more independence for state enterprises;
and allowed private cooperatives to provide consumer services at a
profit; a notably capitalist arrangement. The reforms had only limited

success; and by 1988, widespread shortages of consumer goods

threatened Gorbachevs reform program.
More successful was Gorbachevs program of Glasnost, or
openness, a complete break with the past which had included
censorship, uniformity, and occasionally fabrications designed by the
government for public consumption. Under Glasnost, the works of
writers previously banned were published and sold millions of copies.
Denunciations of Joseph Stalin became commonplace in plays and
movies. Unwittingly, however, Gorbachev had unleashed a force
which could not be easily contained. A veritable cultural revolution
with freedom of expression was on the horizon, despite Gorbachevs
intention of providing only limited personal freedoms.
Democratization was a third element of Gorbachevs reforms, and
also (perhaps unintentionally) further undercut support for the old
Soviet system. The first free elections since 1917 were held in April,
1989; and although Gorbachev intended for him and his party to
remain in control of the government, a minority of independents
critical of his government were elected to the Congress of Peoples
Deputies. Gorbachev and his deputies were forced to watch as the
new Congress rejected many communist programs. The end result
was a new political culture which was completely alien to and at odds
with the old Communist system of power and control by a single
party.
In foreign affairs, Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan
(often dubbed the Soviet Viet Nam) promised to respect the
political choices of the people of Eastern Europe, thereby repudiating
the Brezhnev Doctrine. He also moved to end the Cold War arms
race with the United States. In December, 1987, Gorbachev and
President Ronald Reagan signed an agreement in Washington to
remove all land-based intermediate range missiles in Europe. This
move set the stage for more arms reductions and eased the burden
of military buildup for both countries.
The Revolutions of 1989: Gorbachevs attempts at reform in the
Soviet Union were complemented by insurgent movements in
Eastern Europe which saw the Communist bloc collapse in a domino
effect. The insurgency first appeared in Poland, a country where
attempts to impose collectivization as in Russia and to break the
power of the Catholic Church had failed. (Joseph Stalin had once
commented that imposing communism on Poland was like putting a
saddle on a cow.) A number of popular protests broke out from time
to time in the 1960s and1970s; and attempts to bring in Western
capital and technology (particularly from West Germany which was
friendly to the Polish Communist government) failed because of
bureaucratic incompetence and the oil embargoes of 1973 imposed
because of the Arab Israeli War. The old system was doomed with
the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow, as
Pope John Paul II in 1978the first non-Italian Pope in almost 600
years, and the first ever from a communist country. In 1979, he
delivered a speech in Poland in which he spoke of the inalienable
rights of man. His leadership and the burgeoning economic crisis led
to a moral and spiritual crisis.
August, 1980, sixteen thousand workers at the Lenin shipyard in
Gdansk, (formerly the German city of Danzig) led by an electrician

named Lech Walesa, struck and occupied the plant. They were soon
joined by other workers in solidarity as well as intellectuals, and
had the support of the Catholic Church. The Solidarity Movement was
thus born. The workers demanded free trade unions, freedom of
speech, release of political prisoners and economic reforms. Polands
Communist leader, Wajciech Januzelski responded by proclaiming
martial law, arresting the leaders of Solidarity, and thereby saving
the nation. He was unable to stop the movement, however,
because the government was unwilling (and perhaps unable) to
impose a full scale reign of terror. Solidarity continued to grow as an
underground movement, and the Polish people began acting as if
they lived in a free state, even though they did not. In 1989 with the
country on the brink of economic collapse, Solidarity convinced
Polands communist leaders into legalizing the movement and to
allow free elections to Polands Parliament. The Communists
expected to win most contested seats, and still controlled a majority
in the Parliament, but were roundly defeated in the election. Most of
the contested seats were won by Solidarity leaders. Many angry
voters crossed off the names of unopposed Communist candidates
and wrote in the names of Solidarity candidates. The result was the
Communist Party did not achieve the majority it had anticipated. By
forming a coalition with two minority anti-communist parties,
Solidarity took control of the Government and the editor of
Solidaritys weekly newspaper was sworn in as Polands leader. The
new government slowly eliminated the Secret Police, Communist
government ministers, and other officials; but did so at a deliberate
pace so as not to invite military intervention from the Soviet Union. A
free market system was introduced, and Poland became the first
Soviet Bloc country to experience revolution.
Poland was followed by Hungary. Communist leaders there granted
modest reforms and some political concessions, hoping to prevent a
groundswell of popular opposition as had occurred in Poland. The
opposite happened. The government was forced to hold free
elections in 1990. In an attempt to preserve their position, and put
pressure on the hard line East German government, Hungarys
leaders allowed free emigration from East Germany, and tens of
thousands of East Germans crossed over. This led to widespread
protests in East Germany, often led by intellectuals,
environmentalists and Protestant ministers. In an attempt to stabilize
the country, East Germanys leaders opened the Berlin Wall in
November, 1989. By so doing, they opened the flood gates: East
Germanys leaders were swept aside and a reform government
formed which scheduled free elections. Seeing the handwriting on
the wall, in summer, 1990, Gorbachev and West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl signed an agreement by which Germany solemnly
affirmed its peaceful intentions and pledged never to develop
nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. On October 3, 1990, East
and West Germany were united once more into a single Nation, the
Federal Republic of Germany.
Communism died swiftly in ten days in Czechoslovakia as a result of
the Velvet Revolution. Vaclav Havel, a playwright and moral
revolutionary led protest which took control of the streets and forced
the communist government to form a power-sharing government.

This was soon followed by the resignation of the entire Czech

government, and Havel was elected President. Mindful of ethnic
differences, the country later resolved itself into two separate
nations: Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
All the revolutions noted above were accomplished by peaceful
means. This was not to be the case in Romania, the only country in
which violence accompanied political change. Romanias leader,
Nicholae Ceauescu, had ruled with iron fisted Stalinist style while
maintaining independence from Moscow. He and his wife lived in
abject luxury while many in the country starved. When protests
broke out in December, 1989, Ceauescu alone among Eastern
communist bosses ordered his security forces to slaughter the
protesters. The end result was the defeat of the security forces (the
uprising was simply too powerful and had gone too far. Ceauescu
and his wife were captured, held briefly in a tank, and were shot on
Christmas day by military forces. His bloody body and that of his wife
were broadcast across the world lying dead in a parking lot. He was
still wearing the suit he had worn when he was arrested.
In November, 1990, delegates from twenty two European countries
as well as the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Paris
Accords which affirmed that all existing borders in Europe (including
those of the new Federal Republic of Germany) were legal and valid.
The Paris Accords were in effect a Peace Treaty which marked an
end to both World War II and the Cold War. The U.S. and Soviet
Union agreed to scrap significant amounts of nuclear weapons and in
September, 1991, leaders of both countries cancelled round-the
clock alert status for bombers armed with nuclear weapons. Soviet
and American forces for the first time in forty years no longer stood
ready to destroy life itself.
PERESTROIKA
The communist system itself was blamed for the
economic crisis

Guaranteed employment combined with lack of

incentives did little to encourage technological

innovation, competence or efficient management

in industry or agriculture

For example, people in agriculture business

making decisions with no background

Private plot farms were proving to be more

productive: 25% or crops on 4% of land

The Revolutionary Movement in eastern Europe and the

collapse of communism
1) recapitulation - everyday life under communism

Today the communism of the Soviet empire may seem to many of

you like ancient history. Yet it was a force in the Western world until
only a decade ago. Even in its inadequacies, the communist model
provided the basis for a critique of Western society that has now
vanished. It also, even in its failure, addressed problems about the
just society with which we must continue to wrestle, especially as the
problems of the limits of economic growth, the vanishing of the fuel
resources of the earth, the contamination of the biosphere, and the
growth of the human population increasingly demand our attention.
From an historical perspective, communism is important too as the
setting for the last act of the great revolutionary movement that had
shaped the modern era. I am referring here to the revolutionary
movement against the communist regimes. With its victories in
1989-90, the modern era of revolution, launched in the American and
French Revolutions of the late 18th century, came to a close in the
struggle to at last make the countries of eastern Europe free (liberal)
societies.
We are left with an ambiguous legacy from the communist
experience: with fewer expectations for the future of the good
society and an inability to address the dire problems facing
humankind; with the despair of terrorism that has become so
prominent over the last decade.
Last time we were discussing long-range factors in the failure of
communism:
-insidious comparisons with the West, and its glittering consumer
society
-the mediocre quality of life under communism, with its want of
creature comforts. Particularly insightful are the collected essays of
Slavenka Draculic, a Croatian journalist who has written about life
under communism in eastern Europe. I would note especially these
among her observations:
-the burdens of everyday life under communism fell especially on
women: long queues, shortages of basic consumer goods, the
onerous tasks of daily life such as laundry without washing machines.
The "critical theory" discourse of Western feminists was a luxury
eastern European women could not enjoy. She mocks it.
-the absence of privacy, exemplified in the subdivision of apartments
in ways that obliged people to live with strangers. Here the issue of
public/private life that we addressed with respect to Western society
presents itself in a different way.
-the shoddy inferiority of consumer goods.
But mostly it was the corrosive effects of communism upon the
human spirit. She notes the negative aspect of the egalitarian ideal:
everyone is equally poor. In practice, it bred envy and resentment.
People became spiteful. Communist society was a "spoiler" society.
There was a total absence of civic virtue. No one volunteered for
public service. Tasks not taken up by governmental bureaucrats were
left unattended.
Life could be dull. What destroyed communist society was less its
material than its spiritual poverty. It offered its citizens little hope for
finding meaning in their private lives, and so everyday life in the East
contrasts dramatically with private life in the West, where, as we

have noted, it has come to take on deeper meaning in the

contemporary age.
Was communism an "inhuman" ideal? Was it incompatible with basic
human needs? The answer depends on the degree to which one
believes human nature to be malleable over the long run.
Communists believed that humans could be socialized in a way that
human nature would be transformed. But if that is so, they were
unable to convince their own citizens, at least in the short run. The
need for privacy, individual initiative, variety of experience, personal
fulfillment remained strong.
Given these long-range problems with the Communist system, why
did it fail in the late 20th century? Why now? Here short-run factors
present themselves.
-the profound hatred of the Soviet empire bred by the military
intervention of the Red Army to suppress reform;
-the court of world opinion, which criticized the communist regimes
more openly;
-the global economy, with its array of vastly superior Western
produced consumer goods;
-the electronic revolution, in which ordinary people in communist
societies could not hope to participate;
-the inability of communist leaders to get beyond Stalinist
conceptions of party organization or to democratize the party;
-the odyssey of the revolutionary movement against communism
from the 1950s to the 1980s. As the revolutions of the early
nineteenth century had been against conservative monarchies, those
of the late twentieth century would be against conservative
communist governments.
II The Revolutionary Movement against the communist
regimes of eastern Europe
We note these general characteristics:
It exemplified the old model, the classic alliance of revolutionary
leaders (often intellectuals) and popular following that dated from
the time of the French Revolution;
This popular movement would topple communist authority by 1989;
The movement was conceived as one of national liberation from
oppressive communist authority, which had proved to be as
tyrannical as the worst of the monarchs of old Europe;
The movement was not coordinated by groups across national lines,
but only shared sympathies;
For study purposes, I note two phases to the growth of the
revolutionary movement:
(1) an initial phase during the 1950s and the 1960s, in which
reformers sought to change the system from within. It is dramatized
in the martyrdom of Imre Nagy in Hungary in 1956 and the
humiliation of Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Both
reform movements within the communist system were suppressed
by the intervention of the Soviet Red Army;
(2) a following phase during the 1970s and 1980s, in which reformers
sought to create a counter-society alongside the existing communist
one. It is exemplified in the creation of informal caucuses of
intellectuals and labor leaders that aired the grievances of the
constituent elements of the society, which had no voice in the

communist political system. Led by such figures as the Czech

intellectual Vaslav Havel and the Polish labor leader Lech Welesa, the
movement inspired the popular movement before which the
communist regimes capitulated in 1989.
other resources:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~ces/publications/docs/pdfs/CEE_
WP7.pdf
- a detailed economic analysis of conditions existing in
Eastern Europe particularly East Germany.
http://www.markedbyteachers.com/gcse/history/why-didcommunism-collapse-in-eastern-europe-and-the-ussr.html
- a sample on line essay: Why did communism collapse?