A century ago, Russia was convulsing in revolution; the rise of communism was the seminal political event of the 20th century. Its anniversary has been surprisingly tepid. But we should not forget the lessons of revolution
The nickname I was given, like all Bengali boys are at birth was derived from the Russian 'Symchka', that roughly translates as alliance or ‘doing things together’, it was a popular word in early Soviet domestic propaganda to show how the communist Government was bringing the urban elite and the peasantry together. My father was a young communist ideologue like many of his peers in the mid-1970’s, India had just undergone the repressive Emergency period borne out of the economic chaos of the 1973 fuel crisis. A new socialist Government led by Morarji Desai had just come to power, and India too, it seemed, could have been swept up in revolution. Thankfully, democracy returned as did the Indian National Congress a couple of years later.
You do not need to be a scholar of history to understand that Tsarist Russia under Nicholas II was ripe for revolution. Russia was effectively a feudal state, where the peasantry still served under serfdom. The Russian Army, despite early successes, was being devastated on the Eastern front of World War I, a forgotten front of the ‘Great War’ and Russia had been overtaken by revolutionist tendencies before, notably 1905. And it was the Imperial German Empire that arranged to send Vladimir lenin back to Russia to get Russia out of the War. Soon after the revolution, that is exactly what happened, followed by the creation of the USSR — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The term USSR, one so common in my childhood is today forgotten, and the average millennial in India would likely not even have heard of the Soviet Union.
The creation of the Soviet Union was not as simple as many believe. It was a brutal bloody campaign achieved through a civil war and the brutal murder of the Tsar and his family, including his young children. A quarter century later, a devastating attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union would lead to the Soviet state’s greatest hour when the Red Army beat back the invaders and despite horrific losses, no country lost as many soldiers and civilians as the Soviets. The numbers are disputed but range between 20-26 million people depending on which source you believe.
Despite those losses, the Soviets managed to place the first artificial satellite and human being into orbit, both remarkable scientific achievements. That said, for 40 years after the end of the second World War, humanity stood at the precipice of total destruction, and it was the Soviets who with the ‘Tsar Bomba’, a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb, enough to have wiped out all of Delhi, that exploded the world’s most powerful weapon.
But what do we remember the Soviet Union as nowIJ Some of us old enough to remember, would recall the English and Hindi translations of Soviet children’s books, many of them on issues like science. In schools, we were told that the Soviet Union was our friend, and the Americans less so, the Soviets had provided us weapons and backed us in 1971 when the ‘evil’ Nixon-Kissinger regime threatened us. But things were changing, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan could not be hidden from the media and India gradually started looking to the West as thousands of her best and brightest went to the United States, nobody really went to the USSR for a career did theyIJ
The ‘Capitalism is Evil’ and ‘America is not-so-nice’ theories began to collapse along with the Soviet Union, although I do remember at least one teacher weeping openly out of sadness as the Berlin Wall fell, sad because he knew Communism had lost that day.
As a young schoolboy, it was George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ that opened my eyes to communism. Orwell, as one knows now was an anarchist, or at least supported their cause. But it was he who managed to put the idea in one’s head that no matter how idealistic equality and togetherness seem, it is utopian. And that in essence is what brought down communism, because the party structure had become extremely corrupt. And the Soviets did not have a pragmatist like Deng Xiaoping who realised that for a one-party state to survive, the economy must do well.
China remains a communist state, albeit one that is hardly communist but more of an oligarchy. In India too, where the first communist Government was elected years ago, the communist movement has been tied in knots over its sheer hypocrisy, factionalism and lust for power without any understanding of realpolitik and has lost its socialist bearings to a nationalist party.
At the same time, Stalin and Mao, celebrated by some radicals in college campuses in India are being exposed as the terrifying dictators they were, murdering millions of people considered undesirable. The Stalinist purges almost cost the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. Mao’s brutal ‘Cultural Revolution’ not only cost lives but also made China lose another decade and exported something terrifying into Cambodia. And even in modern times, Hugo Chavez’ petro-funded revolution has led Venezuela into economic ruin.
The fact is that communism was nothing more than a nice word for a one-party state ruled by the elite. And while wealth redistribution was the basis of every communist and socialist revolution all that ever did was end up creating another class of elite. China’s pragmatic communists led by Xiaoping, who had seen the disaster of Maoist revolution in front of them, did not redistribute wealth but set about creating wealth while not divesting some of the communist ideals, not least of all by keeping their police state.
That is not to say that liberal western capitalist democracy won the war, far from it. Social media has led to democracy going astray. Communism and the one party state did take Russia from being an European backwater and into a superpower and it is taking the People’s Republic down that path as well. That is not to say that India should also opt for that path, but Indians would do well to remember the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, although given limited attention spans and not even a passing interest in history, it will hardly be remembered other than some party offices in Kerala and Tripura, but even there the Communist parties of India, ridden with internal hypocrisy seem to be on their way out. But one should never forget the ideals. Maybe communism, as lenin saw it was an idea ahead of its time. Way ahead of its time.
(The writer is Managing Editor, The Pioneer)