The Trouble with Fantasies

Stalin appears to be making a comeback in Russia of late, including gaining government support. Chrenkoff has some good thoughts about what is going on over there:

Vladimir Putin gets nostalgic in his address to the Russian people:

"First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century... As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory... The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself."

No, Vladimir, the creation of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. It led to deaths of tens of millions, enslavement of hundreds of millions and half a century of Cold War with its simmering tensions, frequent violent outbursts, and the ever-present specter of nuclear annihilation. After all this, the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the greatest geopolitical blessing of recent times.

As for the Russian people, maybe these tens of millions shouldn't have found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory in the first place. If you have an official policy of colonizing fellow Soviet republics from Latvia to Kazakhstan with ethnic Russians, you should expect that the locals will feel rather resentful about being swamped by the occupier's ideology as well as its people. Of course I feel sorry for the people themselves, most of were just innocent pawns in Kremlin's geo-demographic chess game, and many of whom were actually born outside of Russia, but as for Putin, as the old saying goes, after you killed your parents you can't ask for leniency on the ground that you're now an orphan.

I agree with what Arthur says here. The USSR was all about spreading its people across their empire to encourage loyalty. He concludes on considering how the West will deal with this new reality.

Seven years later, and the situation is even worse than in Harris's fictional account, mostly because Stalin's rehabilitation now seems to be the official priority of the Russian government. And once again, the Western chattering classes which foam at the mouth when Prince Harry dresses up as a Nazi for a fancy costume party, and agonize endlessly whether the new German film "Downfall" makes Hitler look too human, will once again ignore the communist revival going on in Russia. Once again to the disgust of Robert Harris, who while a leftie, is one with a keen sense of history and perspective.

Again, I agree with Arthur. Communism is still seen as chic in many leftist circles. The argument goes that Communism isn't really what failed, it was the fault of the leaders. But all of this doesn't really get to the heart of why this is happening. After all, people don't clammer for the misery that was the USSR without warrant.

I really think that this is at least partly our fault. I will explain what I mean by that in a moment...

My first time in Russia was in '98 shortly after a major collapse of their currency. In spite of the difficult times, the average Russian still seemed very supportive of the collapse of Communism. Especially the younger generation that was around my age, they were happily singing Beatles songs and looking forward to growth. My second trip, a mere year later, showed a lot of that growth. Stores were open everywhere and money was flowing. Part of a new problem, though, was that the Neo-Russians had consolidated so much of that wealth and many people were not seeing the benifits. Moscow was still claiming upwards of 90% of the nation's wealth for their own benifit and people were beginning to see a nasty side of capitalism. We have so much regulation in this country that we don't even notice it anymore, but Russia was experiecing true free-market economics and a lot of people were suffering for it.

Now, how I think we're partly to blame...When Communism fell, the Russians accepted our concept of captialism without flinching. The Russians who I spoke to, unanimously, believed that if they accepted Democracy, it would make them rich and happy like they saw Americans as being. But the struggles came and some of the craftier Russians sold out their own people to make a lot of money. Suddenly, Democracy didn't seem to be doing what the Russians thought it would.

And that's basically where we are today. A lot of people are nostalgic for the old way because they feel that the new system has failed them. And the US didn't prepare Russia for the struggles coming ahead. We were so joy-filled with the collapse of the USSR that we thought the rest would happen on its own. We should have encouraged Russia to make the change to capitalism more slowly, in my opion. China, for all its flaws, is a much better example of how a Communistic economy can turn captialistic slowly and effectively. We encouraged Russians to partake in a fantasy instead of reality. Now Russia, and tomorrow the world, will have to pay the price for that. I only hope that it doesn't come in more blood and pain.