From time to time, as some of you may have noticed, I watch documentaries on East Germany and other parts of the old Socialist Bloc. One of the things that have learnt from them is that those countries didnt start out with their new leaders intending them to be the totalitarian dictatorships they became. In the wake of the rightist dictatorships found in Eastern and Central Europe before World War Twos end, there was a great deal of hope on the parts of those leaders and their supporters for building a much fairer, democratic, and egalitarian social system in their respective countries. So, what happened, then? Some of it was found in the kinds of societal models found in Marxism-Leninism, especially the Stalinist sort practised in the Soviet Union then, which was one of only two nations practising it before World War Two(the Mongolian Peoples Republic was the other), some of it was because, aside from Yugoslavia and Albania, Marxism-Leninism came to those countries on the bayonets of the Red Army, and some of it was a product of the Cold War between East and West that emerged after World War Two. At the same time, another factor may have been that those leaders and their supporters, having been raised in quite repressive societies and cultures before coming to power, found it very easy to engage in repressive policies and practises once in power. The East German brand of repression was, to me, at least, a kind of mirror image of the National Socialist sort, only further refined and deepened over the 41 years, plus the proceeding 4 years that the GDR was the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany. It was very thorough in coverage and documentation of its citizens activities, and well versed in the dark arts of blackmail, intimidation, and torture, and, while operating in a far smaller geographical and population space than the Gestapo, bested its predecessor in terms of surveillance of its people. In that regard, it was very German indeed, with its meticulousness and thoroughness. The Ministry of State Security, or Stasi, to use the German shortened nick-name for it, also exported its surveillance and other techniques to other nations in the Socialist camp, like Angola, for instance, so, in that regard, its influence could be said to have been greater than the Gestapos, in that regard, too. But, however one looks at it, maybe the most grotesque thing about any of this, regardless of which of the old Socialist Bloc societies one investigates, is that those policies and deeds were carried out in the names of freedom and equality for all, and made those ideals into a sort of sick joke. We in the West, or in other parts of the world, shouldnt sneer over-much at those societies, however, as I believe that we most certainly have our own shares of such forms of repression, some lesser, and some greater, than those societies. This also doesnt validate, at least to me, the excesses and crimes of the old social orders that those societies replaced, either. Czarist Russia had its own secret police, the Okhrana, and its own network of prisons and prison camps in Siberia before the Bolsheviks were more than just a tiny fringe party among the many Russian revolutionary parties and groups found in the Russian Empire in the latter years of the 19th Century and the early years of the 20th Century. If anything, my guess is that the Okhrana served as a kind of model for the Cheka, the first Soviet intelligence agency, with its use of informants, torture, and prison camps. I dont know for certain, but, given what very little I do know about that period of Soviet history, it strikes me as having been very possible. My overall point here is that those of us who seek to make various kinds of social and political changes need to know and be mindful of the mistakes, errors, and crimes made by our predecessors, and how and why they were made, so that we dont repeat them, only in different historical, social, and cultural contexts. As for those on the Right who would say that all of these validates the old social and political orders that they champion, I have to say that it doesnt. Many of those orders were quite bad by themselves, even if they looked like pikers compared with their successors. But, the revolutionaries who became the leaders and middle-ranking personnel of those societies were, as I said before, born and raised in social orders that were often quite repressive. It was in those orders, against which they reacted so violently for reasons of their own, that they first learnt the ideas, policies, and habits they would impose on their peoples once in power. For me, that is how hope and faith in the old Socialist Bloc ended up turning into the sourly twisted joke for most of its peoples that it was by 1989-1991. We can and must do far better than that, I think, and hope that we shall.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 06:38:21 +0000