Social Reform Movements - Communism
The Consequences of Socialist Rule
Some German History - The Origin of Socialism
This is a website update which was added on February 11, 2008. The information was taken largely from encyclopediae which were written prior to the time of political correctness (lies put forth by those who wish the downfall of the United States) and from a the text of The Sword and Shield which has been mentioned elsewhere on this website.
The following was taken verbatim from a 1960 encyclopedia. It is the most factual and well-written example I have found from a source pre-dating this era of ignorance and political correctness in so-called educational material. Of course, because of its date of publication, it does not show how accurately it describes what the Democratic Party in doing in the United States today. The Communist Party often changes its name when such is expedient, but this time it is ironic that it has almost gone back to one of its first names, Social Democrats, by infiltrating and taking over an existing political party. Those who can look critically at the fruits of the party can still see what it has become regardless of what it calls itself.
The first major attack in this century [the 20th century] against the established social order occurred in Russia toward the end of World War I. The czarist regime was overthrown in a bloodless revolution in March 1917, and it seemed as if Russia would have the opportunity to develop democratic institutions for the first time in her history. The majority of the Russians wanted political liberty as well as fundamental social change. Inexperienced in the conduct of public affairs, and failing to understand the true nature and goals of the Communist Party, the new democratic government allowed the Communists, led by Nikolai Lenin and Leon Trotsky, to subvert, and quickly destroy, the new democratic state.
The Communists used in 1917 the techniques which they have since repeated over and over again throughout the world. Lenin had stated as early as 1902 (in What Is to be Done?) that the Communists could never hope to persuade successfully the majority of the people, or even of the working class, to embrace the program and leadership of the Communist Party. What the Communists therefore needed, Lenin pointed out, was to combine legal with illegal work, infiltrate the police and armed forces, the government, schools, churches, trade unions, and other organizations which possessed strategic importance in the conquest and consolidation of power. Above all, Lenin urged the Communists in What Is to be Done? to train a "cadre of professional revolutionaries", who would give full time attention to political activities, and who would develop the techniques and procedures required for the revolutionary conquest of power. Although the Communists had thus clearly stated, from the Communist Manifesto on, that they intended to seize power by revolution and violence, the democratic government of Russia in 1917 treated the Communist Party and just another political party.
Between March and November of 1917, the Communists used three classical methods of gaining power which they were to repeat later in almost identical fashion in other countries. First, they presented themselves in their propaganda as a people's party dedicated to liberty, democracy, and social justice, opposed to all forms of reaction and social injustice. In an agrarian country like Russia, the Communists played up, in particular, the need for agrarian land reform, and encouraged the seizure of land by the peasants even before they were in control of the government. A generation later, the Chinese Communists were portrayed as just "agrarian reformers," thus following the pattern of propaganda established by the Russian Communists in 1917. The second technique which the Russian Communists employed was to infiltrate other political parties as well as trade unions, soldiers' councils, and local government authorities. In particular, the Communists managed to infiltrate, and gradually disrupt, the Social Revolutionaries, the largest party in Russia, dedicated to political democracy and social reform, and especially concerned with the questions of the peasants [they had been serfs for generations - very much like slaves]. This technique of infiltration was again employed by the Communists during and after World War II, when they tried to take over Socialist parties in a number of countries. Their most notable successes in that endeavor were in Italy and, to a lesser extent, in Czechoslovakia after World War II. The third method used by the Russian Communists in their revolution was force. In free elections, the Communists polled about one-quarter of the popular vote. Though this represented a far from negligible proportion, considering their fanaticism and activism, the Communists accepted the fact that in a free election they could not hope to win. In November 1917, therefore, the Communists seized the key positions of power in Moscow, and from there the revolution quickly spread all over Russia. Opposition to the Communist revolution sprang up spontaneously in various parts of the country, and a civil war ensued which lasted until 1921.
The ravages of World War I, followed by the devastations of the civil war, made immediate social reform impracticable. Lenin was realistic enough to see that the Russian people would literally starve to death if communist principles were imposed at that time. As a result, he inaugurated in 1921 the New Economic Policy [NEP]. Its main objective was to maintain and increase production on the farms and in the workshops and factories, by retaining the old capitalist incentives of efficiency and profit. The application of this policy for about seven years gave Russia a breathing spell, allowing the Communist rulers to consolidate more effectively their power, and giving the Russian people the temporary illusion that the bark of communism was worse than its bite. But in 1928 Stalin decided that the time had come to put Communist principles into practice, and he withdrew the temporary concessions earlier made by Lenin (who had died in 1924).
The First Five Year Plan, starting in 1928, aimed at rapid industrialization of Russia, to be supplemented by the collectivization of farming. In 1917 many peasants had sympathized with Bolshevism [the earlier name for Communism], not for reasons of theory or ideology, but because the Bolsheviks promised them the land they had tilled and coveted for centuries. The reasons which motivated Stalin to force collectivization on the peasants were manifold. First, the Communist rulers felt that agricultural production would be raised by mechanizing it, and such mechanization could be more easily effected on large-scale collectivized farms than on small, individually owned ones. Second, individual ownership and operation of farms was a basic denial of a key principle of communism namely, that all means of production be transferred to public ownership. Collectivization would bring agriculture in line with industry, which was developed on the basis of state ownership and operation from the start. Third, the Communist rulers saw in continued individual farm ownership a direct political and psychological threat to the acceptance of totalitarian political direction from from the center. The independent peasant had to be transformed into a dependent agricultural proletarian [back to serfdom]; as a member of a collective farm, the peasant was constantly working with others, talking to others, eating with others, and he could thus be more easily supervised and regimented. Another reason which lay behind collectivization was the need for newly developing industries in the cities, and the required labor force could be obtained only by mechanizing agriculture and thus saving human labor [on the farms]. Finally, collectivization has also an important military objective; in case of war, they [the collective farmers] were to provide the nucleus for organized resistance behind the lines. As events proved later in World War II, such military expectations were largely justified, and the Germans were never completely able to suppress Russian guerilla activities behind the lines.
The cost of fundamental social and economic change in Russia was heavy. In the process of collectivizing the farms in the years 1929-1933 between four and five million peasants lost their lives, or were uprooted from their homes and deported to slave labor camps in in Siberia or the Arctic. Resisting collectivization, the peasants slaughtered as much livestock as they could, and at the end of collectivization livestock had greatly decreased in numbers, although the population had risen from 150 million to 200 million in the meantime. Thus, the number of cows fell from 33.2 million in 1928 to 27.5 million in 1954, and the total number of cattle dropped from 66.8 million to 64.9 million in that period. Imposed low prices for farm products induced many peasants to grow as little grain as possible in the early years of collectivization, and as a result there was widespread famine in Russia, and particularly in the Ukraine, where the element of peasant resistance was strengthened by that of nationalism. After World War II, The Communist regime wanted to go a big step further and collectivize the collective farms, thus creating new "agro-towns" in which the original scheme of destroying the individuality of the peasant was to be carried to its extreme conclusion. However, the peasants resisted again, and this time their resistance was more effective than in 1929-1933. While thousands of collective farms were amalgamated into huge combines, the scheme as a whole was abandoned.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, the leaders of the Soviet Union, from Malenkov downward, publicly admitted that the agrarian policy of Soviet communism had been a failure, and that Soviet agriculture was unable to feed the population in an adequate manner. The failure of collectivization was also more or less tacitly admitted in the communized states of eastern and southeastern Europe, and from 1953 on a policy of emphasizing food production was pushed in the Iron Curtain countries. In Yugoslavia, the Tito government allowed the peasants to decide, in 1952, whether they wanted to stay in collectives or return to individual farming, and an overwhelming majority of the peasants quickly opted for the latter.
In the field of industrialization, progress under communism has been immense, as was proved by Russia's ability to withstand the onslaught of German militarism in World War II. Though Russia received some strategic supplies from the United States as lend-lease during the war, the bulk of industrial production needed to defeat Germany came from Russian workshops and factories. Yet Russian industrialization from the First Five Year Plan on, was conceived primarily, not as a means of increasing the material welfare of the people, but the power of the state. For this reason, the government consistently emphasized heavy industry, especially vital production of armaments, while being less concerned with the development of consumer goods industries. The net result of economic change in Russia over a generation is not so much economic communism as a totalitarian state economy. In terms of sheer industrial power, Russia now ranks second in the world, preceded only by the United States. But this ranking is significant only in appraising the power of the state to wage war - not in appraising the opportunity of the people to live the good life. Viewed from the latter angle, living standards in Russia are still way behind North America, most countries of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and numerous other nations throughout the world.
Moreover, the price for this rapid industrialization has been steep. Millions of Soviet subjects have been employed for years in slave labor camps to provide cheap (but inefficient) labor. The number of slave labor camp inmates is estimated to run from a conservatively low figure of five million to the more likely figure of seven to eight million. Another step in bringing back midieval serfdom to the Russian worker is the abolition of free mobility of Soviet workers since 1940. Just as in the Middle Ages, the peasant was glebae adscriptus (attached to the soil), from which he could remove himself and his family only with the consent of the landlord, the Soviet worker, too, is attached to his job, and may not change it without special permission of his employer, the state.
Economic change in the Soviet Union has failed to solve the problem of social justice, for the sake of which change was to be undertaken in the first place. During the first 15 years of the Soviet regime, the attempt was made to limit inequalities of income to a moderate range of differential. From the middle of the 1930's on, with the inauguration of the era of purges, the last vestiges of equalitarianism were wiped out, and an entirely new policy brought into being. Wages based on performance rather than fixed hourly rates became the norm - a wage policy which labor unions in free nations had fought for for two generations as a system of inhuman exploitation. The old-fashioned capitalist appeal for higher production to be compensated by higher incomes was covered up with slogans like "socialist emulation" and workers were driven on to ever higher and higher production efforts by the policy of Stakhanovism, inspired by the alleged feats of a coal miner named Stakhanov. Whereas the original Communist concern had been with problems of distribution, Soviet policy has in practice concentrated on production. The incentive of higher profit rather than service to the community has become the main appeal of Soviet social and economic policy, and the philosophy of equality has been derided as a "petty bourgeois prejudice." In line with this antiequalitarian policy, personal income taxes are among the lowest in the world, and most of the revenue of the state derives from sales taxes and other indirect levies which propotionately hit the lower income groups hardest. Inheritance taxes, too, are lower than the representative capitalist countries, and are designed to stimulate personal effort and savings.
According to official Soviet propaganda the problem of social classes has been solved in Soviet society, because from the Marxist viewpoint their can be no class inequality except on the basis of the private ownership of the means of production. Yet the Soviet reality tells a different story. There are at least four distinguishable classes. In the first group - numbering a few hundred thousand families, perhaps as many as a million - there are the top government officials, party leaders, military officers, industrial executives, scientists, artists, and writers. The second group is made up of the intermediary ranks of civilian and military officials, collective farm managers, and some of the more affluent high skilled workers and technicians in industry. They form about two to three million families. The third class is made up of the bulk of the population, the mass of workers and peasants, numbering over 40 million families. The fourth class includes the millions of slave laborers and other disadvantaged persons who, for political or other reasons, are placed outside the confines of ordinary society. What is remarkable about social stratification in Communist countries is that the income spread between the different classes has been steadily widening, while it has been continuously narrowed in the democratic nations of the West through taxation and other measures. Moreover within the bulk of the population - the working class - the difference between wages of skilled and unskilled workers has been constantly on the increase in the Soviet Union, whereas in democratic nations this differential has been systematically reduced, largely due to the pressure of free labor unions.
The growing inequality between and within classes in Communist states is one of the most explosive sources of unrest and revolt. In the spring of 1953, workers rebelled in Czechoslovakia and Poland against excessively high work norms, and on June 17, 1953, the popular rebellion in East Germany against the Communist government and its Russian protector started with workers' strikes and was mainly fought by factory workers. They rebelled less against the ideology of communism than against the brutal economic exploitation to which they were exposed, an exploitation which meant austerity for the masses of the people and affluence for a small privileged clique of party bosses and government officials. The workers pulled down red flags from offices and factories, and publicly trampled upon, and burned, them. The spectacle of rebelling proletarians trampling upon red flags destroyed the myth, once and for all, that Soviet communism represented the cause of the workers, and it confirmed the fact that the mere transfer of property from private to public ownership did not bring about, in itself, a new society based on justice and equality. As Aristotle put it over two thousand years ago, the main question is not who owns property, but how property is used. In our own day, the experience of communist economic reform demonstrates that the principle issue is not whether the government owns the means of production, but who owns the government.
In the November 1992 issue of Atlantic is an article with the title Russia - The Meaning of 1917. Pertinent parts of this article along with some comments of my own follow.
RUSSIA - THE MEANING OF 1917
The Russian Revolution [of 1917] not only gave rise to the divided world of the Cold War, but also was the impetus behind much of the radical energy and many of the political and economic reforms and utopian points of view that animated revolt against the colonial world order. In a way, all of the progressive transformations of the twentieth century were closely connected to what happened in 1917. This, of course, was also the heart of the Russians' more grandiose and ideological message...
...as we all know, the Russian world has changed utterly. And although... we are beginning to come to terms with the loss of the Soviet Union, historians have barely begun to comtemplate what the loss will mean for them. And if the Soviet Union - the fruit of the Russian Revolution - has gone, what does the revolution itself now mean? Or was their ever such a thing? Let me argue... although there was a violent overthrow of the Imperialist Russian government in 1917, there never was a Russian Revolution.
Academics [may say] that there was a Russian Revolution... because [various people said so]... But we know that Bolshevik rule lasted some seventy-four years and then gave way to chaos or warlordism or primitive capitalist accumulation of whatever is happening in Russia now, and so we may legitimately ask, "Do the events of 1917, or of 1917 to 1921,... still constitute a revolution?"
What is a revolution anyway?... Can we tell revolution from counterrevolution? Even among non-Marxists the notion that revolutions are connected with progress... is still influential... This belief in inevitable historical progress... has been almost entirely destroyed... by the events of the twentieth century, but has hung on the longest on the political left. The drama of the so-called Russian Revolution and its failures has dealt the belief another blow... If we are not sure that there was a [Russian] revolution, what can we say did happen in Russia from 1917 to 1932?
...[The Russian Revolution] actually consisted of a combination of class warfare and nationalist revolts against the centralized Russian empire. It was ultimately quelled by a new elite, which was animated by a radical socialist ideology. The process was touched off by the old regime's loss of legitimacy in the midst of famine and war. In the system that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the Russian political world changed drastically, but oligarchic-autocratic politics remained, in a somewhat more efficient form...
The Russian social system changed drastically too. Virtually all of the upper and much of the middle stratum of the Russian population, especially the upper-middle, disappeared abroad or into prisons and camps. The world created by them - sometimes call the "civil society" - largely ceased to exist after 1917. The people who remained from that world were submerged in a mass of workers and peasants, who themselves began to move upward in the complex process of social mobility which started at about the same time. In that process most of the more successful peasants (the kulaks) were destroyed and the less successful ones were collectivized.
A new elite emerged, highly militant, politicized, and anti-Western, although devoted to creating a variant of Western-style industrial civilization. These leaders regarded political democracy as a sham...
One of the most striking revelations in the collapse of Soviet Russia is how much of its alleged progress was flawed, limited, or even illusory. Education, from humanistic to technical and vocational, had its most important effects - and they are undeniable - on the upper strata of the intelligentsia, but large numbers of workers and peasants participated only marginally in its benefits. Meanwhile, they developed a distinctively communistic culture. They are lacking in initiative, socially and politically passive, and only negatively egalitarian - that is, they are disposed to prevent their neighbors' success rather than emulate it. The huge socialist-communist bureaucracy was parasitic, corrupt, and unable to generate any serious institutional innovation or change after Stalin's death. Industry never developed beyond the smokestack phase, and environmental degradation is worse in the former Soviet Union than anywhere else in the world, except possibly those parts of Eastern Europe where the same government system prevailed. Finally, the problems of inter-communal and interracial hostility, which were supposed to have been solved by communism, were merely held in check, suppressed, or papered over. The hatred between Azerbajianis and Armenians may be worse than it has ever been; the hatreds between nationalities in the Caucasus and Yugoslovia are at least as bad as they were after the second world war, and relations may well deteriorate elsewhere in the former Soviet Union...
Some historians are taking the view that the events of 1917 are merely the most recent of periodic upheavals that have characterized Russian history since the sixteenth century. It seems to me that a good deal of what took place during the so-called Russian Revolution and afterward is akin, for example, to the developments in Russia between the death of Boris Godunov in 1605 and the promulgation of the new law code of 1649. Then, too, a crisis of legitimacy, intensified by war and famine. led to the dissolution of Russia into class war and national war, followed by foreign invasion. A new dynasty was founded. Its leaders, in their search for solutions to the social and economic chaos in the country, found it necessary to increase social control drastically, and political autocracy as well. Serfdom was consolidated, and almost all Russians were bound to the place in which they lived or worked. The earliest forms of industrialization were developed by workers who were moved to wherever the new elite wanted or needed them. The new leaders tried to keep their subjects at work, but flight from the government and it oppression was frequent.
The crisis is usually known as the "Time of Troubles," and its normally assigned dates are 1605-1613. But the new configuration of Russia really took until the middle of the seventeenth century to establish itself. Like its later cousin, the so-called revolution, it could be assigned a much longer duration. Soviet historians always thought that historical developments in seventeenth century Russia - even the consolidation of serfdom - were "progressive," but in their system everything important affecting Russia's evolution had to be progressive. Most Western historians thought that the Russia we could see in the Law Code of 1649 had become even meaner and less free than the Russia of Boris Godunov, and was characterized by even greater rigidity. Peter the Great had to shake it up again a short time later...
An interesting book... is Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution... Brinton compared revolution to a fever in the body politic, or to a thunderstorm, metaphors that would have annoyed Marx very much. On a less analogical note, he was much interested in Pareto's theories about social equilibrium, and tried to develop the idea that revolutions resulted when societies lost their social equilibrium, ultimately restoring it in some new form. Pareto believed that the great revolutions of human history were no more than the struggles of new elites to displace old ones, and that ordinary people were only the foot soldiers of the elite, rather than new classes in the making. Brinton adopted that fundamental view in his analysis...
...Perhaps we should continue to allow the term "revolution" [in Russian Revolution] but view the Russian Revolution as actually beginning in the period prior to the emancipation of the serfs, in 1861, and continuing all the way to the present. Then the communist period becomes only one phase of in very long and disruptive revolutionary process. But if one thinks of the matter that way, then one must think of revolution as being for the Russians the bedrock of all modern life.
A HALF CENTURY'S SLANDER
It was the Nazis who placed Lenin in Russia after he had been exiled. As Goldberg shows, the Nazis were socialists, outrightly proclaiming that they were deadly enemies of... the capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money. The Nazi party-platform demanded guaranteed jobs, the abolition of incomes unearned by work, the naturalization of all large corporations and trusts, profit-sharing in all major industries, expanded old-age insurance, a government takeover of big department stores, the prohibition of child labor, and countless other "progressive" reforms. [Do you recognize these campaign promises?]
The Nazis did a lot things when they were in power. They sought to eliminate the authority of any church and replace such authority with that of the state and the dictates of political correctness. They attempted to eliminate smoking. It is said they led the world in researching organic foods and alternative medicines and that the concentration camp at Dachau was one of their research facilities for such - they used "non-Aryan" humans as lab animals - like we do mice and rats. In fact, such humans were not just non-Aryans, but those of religions and persuasions which Hitler chose to eliminate.
It was not so much, in many cases, what the Nazis proposed and did - so much as the way they did such things. A political system which allows a dictator to arise always eventually finds a dictator that is very objectionable. Socialism is a good example wherever it is found in the world because it relies upon laws and government bureaucracy to force people to do its bidding - rather than using known incentives that have been time-tested to achieve what poor and often unenforceable laws cannot achieve. Fascism was Mussolini's revolutionary socialism - not far from what the socialists in Germany (the Nazis) were promoting.
The change in a country from capitalism and freedom to socialism and slavery can happen in two fundamental ways. It can be put in place by force, by propaganda and slow movement (boiling the frog), or both. This "soft" way of boiling the frog is what is happening in the United States today and has been happening since the KGB's department A began operations in the U.S. in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The article in the Atlantic compares Hillary Clinton and the other leaders of the radical left to Hitler and Mussolini and their political parties. What we have in the present-day Democratic Party leadership is liberal fascism or Nazism, whose first ploy is to accuse the other side of what they (the liberal fascists) are doing (this supposedly distracts the public from the truth). So we have the most appropriate title for the article A Half Century's Slander.
The National Review is a news magazine that, in my mind, has timely and unbiased news, and articles that are well-documented and well-written. The above-mentioned article has so much more than the few points presented here. One should read it all for an in depth look at what is happening.
Bolshevism, Social Democracy, and Communism are all essentially synonyms for the same thing. In Russia it was an experiment based upon Marxism that was forced upon the people by militant, brutal, and ruthless men who wanted power. In most ways it was just another shifting of power from one dictator (the czar) to another with one difference - there was an interim, truly-democratic government which was short-lived and easily brushed aside through force by the Bolsheviks.
To obtain converts for the Bolsheviks, the peasants and workers were given promises which, for the most part, were not kept. This pattern continued as communism spread to other countries. First, disenfranchised and/or discontented people within a target country were fed propaganda which caused them to dislike their government (whether the government was or was not at fault). Then these people were enlisted in the communist cause by promising them what they wanted. Once the communists had taken over, they established a single majority political party which ruled virtually unopposed. This party might have any one of many possible names, but its actions defined what it was regardless of the verbal trappings that accompanied its presence.
Perhaps the biggest difference between capitalism and communism is that capitalism uses incentives based upon innate qualities found within a human being to achieve the necessary cooperation for a nation to function efficiently and freely - while communism uses force and intimidation leading to less efficiency and very little freedom. This is most apparent here in the United States where the Republicans allow capitalism to flourish so that people can keep their own property, rights, and profits - while the Democrats make ill-conceived laws to gain their ends which are almost impossible to enforce, reduce efficiency and freedom, are generally unconstitutional, and designed to steal money from those who earned it.
The events in Russia between 1917 and 1921 began with a brutal minority who disrupted the process of democracy, killed the majority who opposed them, and continued the process of killing the opposition with each change in leadership. The single-party system that continued in Russia kept the majority from taking over. Therefore, there was never a true democracy in Russia. The huge socialist-communist bureaucracy was parasitic, corrupt, and unable to generate sufficient food and consumer goods to satisfy the demand.
The idea of class struggle is seen in the history of the United States as the lower
economic class introduced graduated-percentage income tax, insurance of all kinds
(which is a form of socialism), and huge government bureaucracies based upon laws
(force) rather than incentives. One of the latest examples of forced socialism
is the health insurers and health providers causing the uninsured to pay 2.5 times the
rate paid by the health insurers for health care. This eventually leads to complete
dependence on the state by the uninsured and forces the taxpayers to pay their medical
bills. Those who could otherwise have been able to afford health care are
fleeced of their savings to become impoverished "wards" of the state.
Examples of what happens within a socialist-ruled country:
1. The state becomes the first priority and the individual exists merely to serve the state (very similar to feudalism or slavery, which were supposedly overcome).
2. Supply and demand are monitored and controlled by the government and there is almost never enough consumer goods at any given location to supply the demand. Even when some capitalistic concepts are introduced, the paranoid rulers tend to maintain control.
3. Elections are supposedly democratic, but usually there is but one candidate chosen by the single majority-party for each office - and the people must vote "yes" or "no" for this candidate. Those who vote "no" are likely to be punished severely.
4. Secret police are used to discover dissidents, rewards are given to informers, complaints are quelled by force, and political opposition is dealt with by execution or banishment.
5. The populace is denied arms of any kind because the rulers fear being deposed by force (either assassination or revolution).
6. Other (usually neighboring) countries are "annexed" by force and whole populations of those countries are are removed to other parts of the empire to prevent nationalism from causing trouble for the conquerors. People from the conquering country are moved into the subject country to take the place of the people who were removed.
7. Rather than having two tests for children - one for aptitude and the other for interests - there is only an aptitude test which allows the state to place individuals in jobs which they can do well but which bore them. This removes the creative incentive and promotes laziness and inefficiency.
8. The workers and peasants are each held to their place of work and kept at work in that place.
9. All radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and other forms of communication are controlled by the state and used for state propaganda. There is no freedom of the press.
10. The goverment is a maze of committees and bureaucracy - and blatant corruption exists in all levels of government.
11. Language is monitored and controlled by the state so that only acceptable words are introduced into the peoples' vocabulary. Words often introduce concepts that the people are not supposed to know - and this could lead to discontent.
12. Government bureacracies become so excessive that merely paying the bureaucrats is a huge tax burden.
13. Barriers, either physical or bureaucratic (or both), are placed around the country to prevent people from escaping. Those who are caught attempting to escape are either shot, imprisoned, or placed in slave camps.
14. The constitutions of communist countries do not usually contain a bill of rights - and if some rights for individuals are allowed, these rights are minimal.
15. Children are brainwashed, made wards of the state, and sometimes even produced in quantity by the state (as was done in National Socialist Germany under Hitler). Children are encouraged to inform on their parents.
16. Usually, religions are discouraged and the state with its current ruler are substituted for religion and God.
17. Schools are places for people to learn skills and party-fed propaganda. True education is denied in fields that could cause individual thought and possible dissension.
At one time, the world olympics was not so politically rotten as it is today. Then
the Russians/USSR began to train their athletes full-time so that they were even more
professional than professionals in the United States. This was the beginning of
the end for "honor" in the olympics.
Variations of the above are found in target countries that have not completely become communist. For instance, in the United States, institutions of higher learning have been taken over by the far left to feed the students propaganda slanted against the government and those who support a non-communist society. These same professors and administrators are the ones who write the textbooks for the young people in grade schools, middle schools, and high schools. Most of the media in the U.S. is now under communist/socialist control and this allows propaganda to be fed to most of the people. Many public schools are now devoid of subjects such as geography, history, and math. When history is taught, it is a different history - based upon political correctness, anti-Americanism, and slanted information. The most logical political party for communist infiltration and control was the old Democratic Party - and now it has become a communist/socialist party using all the dirty tactics common to communist parties throughout the world. Communist infiltration into the Republican Party has driven it to the far right in ways that cause a reaction against the party by the independents and many republicans. Granted, this is more subtle than the blatant communism of the Democratic Party. It is necessary that the communists remove any right for the people be armed, and infiltration into both major parties in the U.S. has led to more legislation and attempts at legislation to take away guns from the people. Income tax was created by the Socialist movement in the U.S. and has proven to be a disaster fueled by ignorance and greed.
There is a movement in the United States to encourage parents to send their children to private schools rather than communist-dominated public schools. However, this is expensive and parents should be compensated for these expenses since their taxes still pay for the public schools. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way to begin to fight against the well-entrenched communists and communist puppets in the public schools. If enough parents removed their children from the public schools, the public schools would become a thing of the past and private enterprise would very likely give Americans better schooling than government-funded institutions.
The communists in target countries rely upon human weakness to further their cause. Fear, greed, laziness, ignorance, intolerance, stupidity, gullibility, and the like are their allies. For decades, the communist infiltration into schools and the media in the United states have been bearing fruit. Each new generation is a little less informed than the last. Once historic truths are lost, they are not found again because the current generation does not even know that such truths ever existed. Therefore, each generation becomes more ignorant than the last. Lies are substituted for truth, repeated over and over again - and these become the new history and the new concepts which destroy faith in the U.S. Constitution, its creators, and the current government. The two history channels on television tend to counteract this tendency as do magazines like the National Review. However, most people tend to watch sensational Hollywood-distortions of history, Hollywood violence, Hollywood political propaganda, liberal news channels, liberal talk shows, and game shows which encourage immorality - and the liberal news magazines and newspapers outnumber the conservative publications by over a thousand to one. The communists need only encourage a drive-by shooting to cause the non-thinkers to give up their guns voluntarily (as if this will take the guns away from the killers). Perhaps these poor fools actually believe that their actions will stop guns from getting into criminal hands. Most of them are not aware of the history of prohibition in the U.S. when organized crime profited from liquor being illegal and more people drank more alcohol than ever before. Nor a they aware that communist infiltrators can cause certain elements in society to become killers.
Taken from a two-volume dictionary published in 1960.
German history began during the 9th and 10th centuries from what had been a group of German tribes, most of which had settled in the lands between the Rhine and the Vistula, but moved on to the west and south. There were times when the tribes formed alliances and times when they fought one another. Usually, when the tribes cooperated with one another, it was because a strong ruler, or extreme circumstances imposed from without, forced them to do so. When a loose coalition was formed with a German king at its head, there was still enough bickering and suspicion among the various state rulers that a true union was impossible.
The tribes evolved into German states with territorial boundaries and rulers with various ranks (dukes, barons, princes, etc.) but the same pattern persisted in which true unity eluded them. This was a problem because other nations could defeat each state separately in times of war - nor was mutual cooperation in other affairs possible.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the Germanic territories consisted of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, and a number of smaller German states. However, Prussia and Austria were not considered part of Germany at that particular time. The existence of two major powers and the ambitions of the princes of the lesser states to hold on to their respective sovereignties made a German federal state impossible. Only a loose coalition called the Germanic Confederation was established after much discussion. This was primarily a defensive alliance and also served as a peace treaty among 39 German states. There was no overall German ruler. The chief organ was the Diet of Frankfurt convening under Austrian chairmanship in a plenary council on which each state had at least one, and the major states up to four, votes - or in small council where 11 major states had one vote each while the smaller ones voted together in six curiae.
This loose confederation was the closest thing to German unity that had been formed to date. There were still nationalist political forces at work as well as liberal reform movements which attempted to remove power from the rulers and place it in the hands of the people. In 1834 the German Customs Union was created by Prussia and most of the south and central German states, but the rest did not join immediately, the Northwest remaining out of it for two more decades.
Austria and Prussia, particularly, fought against the liberal reforms but were unsuccessful. Between 1814 and 1819 all southern German states had introduced constitutions, and there were parliaments who served as examples and training grounds for the growing German liberalism. After the French revolution of July 1830, some of the medium-sized states of northern Germany had constitutions, and in 1840 stronger popular movements became noticeable.
The liberal movements were strongly opposed by the rulers of the German nation-states as well as those of the other European nations who still had rule via monarchy. Most of the European royalty were related by blood and attempted to keep the their hold on a society that had begun as feudalism and was evolving into something that threatened the absolute authority of those in charge. An attack from liberals upon one royal ruler was considered a threat to them all.
There was a Prussian movement to reform the Germanic Confederation into a true union when a revolution in Hungary began in 1848 and carried on into 1849. At that time, Hungary was a part of Austria. Austrian troops alone were not able to suppress the revolution, so Czar Nicholas of Russia sent troops to aid the Austrians. Consequently, the revolution failed and Austria kept Hungary. However, there were political repercussions aimed at Prussia where impetus for the growing liberal movement was attributed, and the Prussian movement to reform the Germanic Confederation failed.
Otto von Bismarck entered politics during the Revolution of 1848-1849 as a diehard member of the Prussian Assembly. He became the Prussian representative of the Diet of the restored Germanic Confederation after the collapse of the revolution. In Frankfurt, however, the overbearing policy that Austria conducted after 1850 turned him into a radical advocate of Prussian self-interest, which he proposed to advance by all diplomatic and military means. By a Prussian success, he also hoped to defeat the liberal movement in Germany. In assuming direction of the Prussian government in 1862, Bismarck opposed Parliament in a heavy-handed manner, demonstrating that the liberals who controlled Parliament were essentially powerless. Under Bismarck a new German confederation evolved and a new constitution (1867).
German industry changed Germany from economic insecurity to prosperity as the industrial age progressed. The old Bismarckian constitution left no opportunity for responsible exercise of German power. Apprehension that regional traditions in Germany would disrupt the Confederation, Bismarck accepted collaboration with the National Liberal Party.
The National Liberals rejoiced over German unification and were ready to wait for full realization of constitutional liberties until the death of the old emperor and the succession of his liberal son. As a concession to the liberals, Bismarck agreed to give the federal government greater authority than he had planned. Another link between Bismarck and the liberals was their common dislike of the political aspirations of German Catholicism.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels issued the Communist Manifesto on the eve of the Revolution of 1848. There was no immediate response to it. However, in the late 1850's a socialist movement arose among the industrial proletariat of Germany under the leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle attempted to advance socialism using tactical (short-range schemes). When he died, Wilhelm Liebknecht became the new leader. The program of the Social Democratic Party led by Liebknecht interpreted the ultimate causes of and aims of political action in terms of Marxist philosophy, but its immediate demands were radical rather than revolutionary. The Social Democrats were internationalists, pacifists, antimilitarists, and democrats. [Does this sound familiar?]
There was a depression - and after the depression, in 1873, the Social Democrats attracted more and more industrial workers. The liberals (not the same as the Socialists of the time) of this age did not understand the material and moral destitution of these millions, nor were the Christian churches equal to the task. Socialism offered the workers not only a panacea for their lot, but also a means of restoring their self-respect as members of a class destined to play an historical role. The Social Democratic Party was more than a political party, and more than the labor unions which developed under its direction. It was also a religious organization to its followers.
Bismarck had lost faith in economic liberalism and had become a kind of state socialist. He saw in the Social Democratic movement a major threat to society, and he used two attempts to assassinate William I in 1878, to pass legislation outlawing that party. The Liberals were afraid that other oppositional groups might be treated by Bismarck in a similar manner. There was a split in the National Liberal Party into two factions. One remained loyal to consolidation of the empire. The other was composed of secessionists. Bismarck had finally triggered the split with his domineering policies affecting free trade.
After 1879, Bismarck's power was severely diminished. The secessionists had merged with another party defending free trade to become the Left Liberals. The National Liberal Party became a shadow of its former self after the split, and the Left Liberals did not carry on the old party heritage. The Social Democratic Party thus became the dominant party for left opposition.
The Social Democratic Party had been outlawed, but Bismarck felt that it could never be annihilated by repressive measures. [Note that outlawing the Communist Party in the United States has not worked.] His solution was to propose programs of a socialist nature (social security and various types of insurance) to appease members of the Social Democratic Party. These measures failed because the leaders of the Social Democratic Party wanted self-rule from above and international membership. Subsequently, in spite of Bismarck's efforts, their ranks grew in number.
On March 9, 1988, William I died and his son, William II, ascended the throne. William II was militaristic and authoritarian, but he believed in a personal regime rather than government by ministers. There was conflict between William II and and Bismarck - and Bismarck was dismissed on March 18, 1890. Bismarck's successor, Leo von Caprivi, somehow managed to limit the personal regime of the new emperor. In any case, the policies of Wililam II had not been succeeding, and his capabilities were inadequate to the task of governing in an authoritarian manner. Under William II and with Germany's industrial might, the German military grew and included a new navy. This set the stage for the various machinations between nations that led to World War I.
As World War I began, Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, declared that the war was one of Germany's national defense and integrity. He felt that this declaration would keep England out of the war and also persuade the Social Democratic Party leaders to lend support to the war effort. On the other hand, it was argued that the patriotic attitude of the Social Democratic Party called for the democratization of the German Constitution, beginning with the abolition of the three-classes suffrage in Prussia. There was grim debate in war aims between champions of peace by international compromise and those of peace through victory.
On the question of German constitutional reform, Bethmann-Hollweg promised changes for the postwar period. Ludendorff, deputy chief of staff for the German Army, demanded dismissal of the chancellor. William II accepted Ludendorff's demand, making Ludendorff the virtual dictator of Germany for the ensuing 15 months.
The Social Democrats and the Progressives were concerned about the prospects of the war and the effects of the blockade upon the German people. Some of the Center Party (Catholics) also were concerned. Bethmann-Hollweg resigned and the three parties passed a resolution in favor of a conciliatory peace.
The Germans had moved exiled Lenin back into Russia hoping that he would cause Russia to end her war effort. Just as * Nancy Pelosi in America today has been attempting to sabotage the American war effort by putting her party's interests first, Lenin preferred that Russia lose the war so that his party could take over. Consequently, General Ludendorff felt that the ensuing Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia which Lenin had created offered him (Ludendorff) a chance to win the war. If the war in the East could be won quickly, the German troops in the East could be moved to the West and concentrated there before the Americans could affectively assist the allies. This did not happen because there was opposition to the Bolsheviks (Russian Social Democrats) under Lenin, and Ludendorff was forced to call for peace.
* [Nancy Pelosi is, in many ways, another incarnation of Lenin. Both came from approximately the same social class (Lenin had to change his name and keep his true background a secret so that the masses would accept him). Both were interested in personal power and promoting fascist-socialism rather than the good of their respective nations. Pelosi with her visit to Syria - where Hussein's WMD's were sent - and her warm welcome by the Syrians - did more to cause the the war in Iraq to continue than any other action she could have taken. Furthermore, it sent a message of U.S. weakness and lack of resolve to other terrorist countries. This is only one of many actions similar to what Carter has been doing, and clearly shows how she feels about America.]
For many years, the Social Democratic Party had been the radical opponent of monarchy and militarism, and during the war its unity and prestige had suffered. Its leader's attempts to achieve their aims became splintered and the party split into the Independent Socialists and the Major Socialists. And there were other groups who went so far as to look for a revolutionary fight against the regime.
Bolshevik peace propaganda led to mass strikes in January 1918. At the end of October a German admiral's battle plan led to mutiny and the German Navy then came under the command of various revolutionary sailor's councils. In November, the revolution spread through the German cities. Ultimately, the Emperor resigned and the Socialists elected an executive committee and a council of people's commissars to take over the German government. Most of the Germans objected to the strong radical groups in Berlin. The Independent Socialists wanted to drive the revolution onward before returning to democratic practices, but two influential men urged the earliest possible date for democratic elections. A national conference of council delegates supported their position and national elections were set for January 19, 1919.
The elections were a smashing defeat for the Independent Socialists, with 5.6% for the Independent Socialists and 41.5% for the Majority Socialists. These percentages, when added together, did not produce a majority in favor of socialism. The Majority Socialists were, therefore, forced to form a coalition with the new Democratic Party (which had taken the place of the Progressives) and the Center Party.
The Majority Socialists had formed a practical working alliance with the old bureaucracy and the army. These forces defeated the forces of the more radical left. There was a cold-blooded murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on January 15, 1919, and other excesses averse to democratic processes. While a new constitution was being drafted, during the spring and summer, the counter-revolutionaries gained strength. However, this was all incidental to the events posed by external forces.
On November 11, 1918, an armistice had been signed by which a renewal of hostilities was impossible. Germany succumbed to harsh terms, signing over her battle fleet and heavy armaments. She was to evacuate all foreign territories and withdraw from the Rhine. On January 18, 1919, the peace conference opened and in May the draft of the peace treaty was complete. Germany had to concede all of her colonies and many of her territories - and there were other severe measures imposed. The treaty caused consternation among all German political parties, but nothing could be done but accept the terms.
The Weimar Constitution of August 11, 1919, established a German Riech more centralized than that of Bismarck. The federal government had full tax authority, was responsible for all defense matters, took ownership of all railroads, etc. The President was elected by the people, but the Chancellor he appointed must be endorsed by the majority of the Reichstag. But then the President could dissolve the Reichstag and suspend constitutional guarantees in times of national emergency. And there were numerous lesser details. Bear in mind that the checks and balances found in the United States Constitution did not exist in Germany, and that the possibility of a German President becoming a dictator existed. This was one of the mistakes that the Germans made which would come to haunt them in later times.
During the German Revolution of 1919, the German middle class had swelled the ranks of the Democratic Party. Democracy seemed the best defense against social revolution and the best hope of preserving the Reich. The social revolution was defeated by the Social Democrats, but the peace treaty shattered the expectations for international cooperation. The majority of the Democratic Party had rejected the peace treaty, but it was still identified by the German public with defeat and surrender. The rumor was spread (probably by the party opposition) that the German Army had not been defeated, but "stabbed in the back" by all the socialists with the connivance of the Democrats. In April 1920, a coup was staged and then defeated.
The decline of the Democratic Party continued in subsequent elections, but the Social Democrats recovered. In 1922, the Independent Socialists and the Majority Socialists who together had once been the Social Democrats, re-united. Even so, the unity of the working classes was not restored and a substantial part of the independent votes went to the Communist Party.
Subsequent events after the peace treaty was signed led to a breakdown of the German economy. There were internal revolts, one of the most serious being an attempt by the National Socialists (Nazis) under Adolf Hitler to seize the Bavarian government and march against Berlin (1923).
In the course of the ensuing years, German liberalism lost its foremost leader, and growing unemployment led to conflict between the German People's Party and the Social Democrats. A member of the Center Party, Heinrich Bruning, formed a cabinet without the Social Democrats, hoping that the German Nationalist Party could be won over - and new elections were held on September 14, 1930. Instead, the National Socialists (Nazis) gained in Parliamentary representation - from 12 to 107 seats. The parliamentary machine was crippled for Bruning, so he began to rule by using the emergency Presidential powers. He was fighting an economic crisis, a fascist threat, and impossibility of establishing unity with the Communist Party. The Social Democratic Party decided to tolerate Bruning's policy, and even supported the re-election of Hindenburg over Hitler.
The German Army was the chief support for the Bruning cabinet. However, the cabinet was increasingly criticized by the National Socialists (Nazis) and Nationalists for its meek attitude in foreign affairs and dependence upon the Social Democrats. The army was already affected by the Nazi propaganda, particularly on the junior officer level. Moreover, most of the army felt that the National Socialist Party platform contained elements which could be used to rebuild a strong Germany with army backing. With all this in mind, the President was persuaded to replace Bruning with Franz von Papen.
Parliament was dissolved and new elections were held on July 31, 1932. Only the Nazis did well in during the election, doubling their vote and thus becoming by far the largest party. Nevertheless, Hitler's demand for chancellorship was rejected. Instead, Parliament was dissolved again and another election was held on November 6, 1932, at a time when the first signs of a business recovery were visible. The Nazis lost 2 million votes and there were signs that its leadership was divided. General von Schleicher became chancellor and plotted to build popular support against the Social Democratic Party by playing trade unions against it and attracting the socialist elements of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party. He made a deal which seemed to commit the Nazis to responsibility without giving them the appearance of power. Hitler was to be Chancellor, Wilhelm Frick (also a Nazi) was to be minister of the interior, and Hermann Goering was to be minister of air. Nationalists would be appointed Vice Chancellor, and ministers of the army, foreign affairs, economics, and labor. President Hindenburg approved the scheme which seemed to chain the Nazis to a conservative nationalism. Hitler was made Chancellor on January 29, 1933.
Hitler had grown up in the midst of the social and political disintegration of the dying Habsburg Empire. His pan-German beliefs attracted him to the prosperous and strong German Empire, and as a corporal in the German Army during World War I, he imbibed the ideals of Prussian militarism. To him the Peace Treaty of Versailles seemed only a temporary armistice that provided a breathing spell for the German drive to world supremacy.
Army circles first launched him on a political career in Munich after the war, and some German industrialists helped him from time to time. In southern Bavaria where the reaction against the events of 1918-1919 was particularly violent, Hitler soon gained political publicity which emboldened him to try the seizure of power in 1923. The failure of this attempt, led him to the use of outwardly legal means of gaining power. After 1926, the National Socialist Party spread its organizational network all over Germany. The depression of 1929 soon multiplied the ranks of the party. In early 1933, the party had more than a million contributing members and an additional million in its semi-military "storm troop" organizations.
The National Socialist Party was tightly organized, animated by the enthusiasm and cupidity that Hitler's oratory aroused. It found its chief popular strength among the lower middle classes and farmers. Former army officers and dissatisfied intellectuals served as the Nazis main functionaries. It was built on a single leadership principle which committed each member to absolute obedience to Hitler, who claimed to be not only their military leader, but also the prophet of a new religion destined to rule for the next millennium. Hitler preached the supremacy of the Nordic ("Aryan") race over the "lower races" like the Latin and the Slav, and over the "subhuman races" like the Jews or Negroes.
Hitler first consolidated Nazi control over Germany herself. This included:
(1) the registration and subsequent removal of all firearms from the populace,
(2) intimidation by use of the storm troopers against the activities of all other
political parties,
(3) arson as a means of terrifying the public,
(4) the suspension of the approval of Parliament for legislation or for monetary
expenditures,
(5) Nazi control of the trade unions,
(6) the abolishing of state rights,
(7) the merging of the Prussian government with German government,
(8) the appointment of Nazi governors to supervise and direct the state governments,
(9) the abolishing of free discussion,
(10) censorship of the press, radio, education, and the arts,
(11) and the eventual outlawing of all political parties other than the
National Socialist Party.
Captain Ernst Rohm who commanded the storm troopers (Hitler's thugs) accused Hitler of selling out socialism to the old generals and capitalists. Hitler, no longer needing Rohm, directed the shooting of all officers and conservatives who were suspected of opposing him. After the death of President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler merged the office of President with the office of Chancellor, making Hitler the de facto dictator of Germany.
Hitler fulfilled his promise of public work projects which included a system of express highways, but was mostly concerned with German rearmament, contrary to the Treaty of Versailles. The other nations, filled with the desire for peace and preferring to look the other way (as most of the American Democrats are doing today in the face of a nuclear disaster), let Germany continue even though intelligence reports indicated what was happening. In spite of the socialistic slogans of the Nazis and growing government control, the German economic system remained capitalistic, and its economic policy resulted in even greater cartellization of German industries than had existed before.
By the brutal methods of the German secret police, a ruthless terror against dissenters was maintained. Concentration camps were filled with scapegoats (Jews) and political prisoners - most of whom eventually were gassed and either buried or burned. Small groups of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, openly criticized the government policies but held their criticisms to ecclesiastical and religious matters. Some of the old army chiefs plotted against Hitler, but were discovered and Hitler had them removed and then took command of the army himself. During the war, Hitler became one of his own worst enemies with his mismanagement of the German military. It is doubtful that the allies could have won without his help.
Second, in Hitler's master plan was the removal of all limitations placed upon German freedom of unilateral action. On October 14, 1933, Germany withdrew from the disarmament conference and League of Nations, claiming the institution at Geneva was only a device to hold Germany in chains. None of the former allied countries - not even France - was willing any longer to go to war in defense of the Versailles Treaty. A Nazi revolt was staged in Austria in the course of which the Austrian Chancellor was murdered. This backfired on Hitler, exposing his aims and methods to the world. However, no adequate action was taken against him. He continued with a program designed to protect Germany until she was ready to strike militarily.
Third, in Hitler's master plan, was for him to rule the continent. On January 26, 1934, Hitler revealed his German Air Force and announced the introduction of compulsory military service in open violation of the Versailles Treaty. The Western powers found it difficult to issue a concerted protest, and impossible to take concerted action. This was typical of what continued to happen until Hitler started World War II by moving militarily against Poland. The various alliances brought the other nations into the war and everyone lost - but especially Germany and Japan.
After World War II, Germany was divided among the Allies with a strong division between the East (Russia) and the West (Britain, France, and the United States). It did not re-unite until many years had passed. In the interim the part of Germany under the Western powers was allowed a new constitution based upon separation of powers. Under this constitution, the President of the Bund is elected for five years by a federal assembly consisting of the members if the Bundestag and an equal number of special delegates elected by the Landtage. His position was decidedly less powerful than that of a president under Weimar Republic but stronger than that of presidents of Western parliamentary states. There was a constitutional tribunal and a supreme court, an elaborate bill of rights including both civil and social rights. The rights were very carefully worded to avoid any future difficulties such as those suffered under the Nazis. There was no direct legislation by the people. There was still the provision that the Bundestag can be dissolved by the President using his emergency powers. This could lead to another dictatorship. Other provisions were too numerous to be shown here. Today, the government in Germany is still essentially the same and the political parties are also very similar to those already mentioned.
The Decembrists -
Karl Marx -
The Revolution of 1905 -
Lenin -
The Social Democrats
World War I -
Lenin Returns -
The Bolshevik Revolution -
Civil War -
The New Economic Policy
The Big Picture -
The Plight of the Church -
The Soviet Political System -
Soviet Propaganda
Incarnations of the Cheka -
Stalin's Reign -
Nikita Kruschev -
The Cold War -
1960 -
1961 -
1962 -
1963
1963 - Relations between Communist Nations -
1964 and the Ousting of Kruschev
1989 -
1990 -
1991 -
2001 -
2002 -
2003 - 2006 -
2007
Russia was once a nation ruled by a czar and his family. The American Revolution followed by the French Revolution sent shock waves around the world and caused many people under the rule of kings, queens, czars, dictators, and any other autocracies to think about their lot in life and how it might be changed for the better.
The first attempt to replace the Russian aristocracy with a constitutional regime was the revolt of the Decembrists in 1875. The leaders of the revolt were officers attached to some of the aristocratic guards regiments stationed in the capital. Most had been influenced by the French Revolution. The czar, Nicholas I, disposed of the troops with artillery fire, hanged the ringleaders, banished many of the participants to Siberia, and tightened his control of his subjects.
Severe police measures and censorship followed. However, certain students
of the educated classes were influenced by Aleksandr Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and
Nikolai G. Chernyshevski. Thus, the movement
did not die with the end of that revolution.
Karl Marx was a German Socialist who was born in Treves on May 5, 1818, and died in London on March 14, 1883. He was educated at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin. In 1842, he took up journalism and eventually became the editor of the Cologne Rheinische Zeitung. He focused on socialist articles to the extent that the paper was suppressed in 1843. Marx then moved to Paris to become one the editors of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher to which he contributed articles on the "Hegelian Philosophy of Right".
In 1845, he was expelled from France and retired to Brussels where he assisted in organizing the German Workingmen's Association. He was also active in the organization of the Communist League, and with Engels issued the famous Communist Manifesto in 1848, which was the first public declaration of international socialism.
Between 1848 and 1869, Marx became active in revolutionary movements in Germany, and in political writing for newspapers and periodicals. In 1873, he devoted his time to completing a work on capitalism, Das Kapital.
Marx is considered the founder of the modern socialist school. Das Kapital is a tribute to his acute reasoning and extensive reading, although it is long, obscure, and filled with tortuous meanings. In it, Marx analyzes his theory of value, which is the measure of the amount of labor required to produce a commodity. He explains how the laborer, under capitalism, is exploited.
His theories were not new and Marx succeeded in confusing rather then elucidating
them. He also traces the development of capitalistic production, the growth
of the working class (proletariat), and how this revolutionizes society.
He lays down the principle that the fundamental factor in the
development of society is the method of production and exchange.
In the revolution of 1905, there were workers' strikes and demonstrations, peasant riots and seizures of large estates, mutinies in the units of the army and navy, and outbreaks against Russian rule in Poland and other non-Russian parts of the empire. Soviets (councils composed of representatives of workers and revolutionary organizations) appeared in a number of towns and cities. The climax was reached in October of 1905 when a general strike paralyzed industry and transportation.
As a result of all this, Nicholas II granted a constitution providing for (1) a Duma (parliament) to be elected on a broad electoral franchise to exercise legislative powers, and (2) certain guarantees of civil liberties. Subsequently anti-Jewish riots swept the country and were used as an excuse to suppress the revolutionary movement. The Soviets were suppressed and an armed uprising in Moscow was put down. Governmental authority was re-established throughout the country, causing some of the governmental concessions to be withdrawn.
Although the goals of the revolution of 1905 were (for the most part) defeated, the
revolution succeeded in rallying four forces. There was (1) the organized workers'
union under Social Democratic leadership, (2) the rebellious peasants who wanted the
estates of the landed gentry, (3) the discontented ethnic minorities eager to escape
from Russian rule, and (4) the Soviets as extralegal agencies of revolutionary
action.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin was born in Simbirsk, Russia, on April 22, 1870, and died in Moscow on January 21, 1924. He was the son of a provincial school inspector who had been raised to the rank of nobility by promotion in government service. His mother was the daughter of a physician who was partly of German descent. She taught him to read and to play the piano, and the whole family read aloud and sang together the great poems and songs of the Russian and European culture.
In 1887, Lenin's brother, Aleksandr, was executed for leading an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Czar. Shortly afterward, Lenin graduated from Simbirsk secondary school with a medal for being the best student. In the fall of 1887, Lenin was admitted to the University of Kazan.
Within a few months, Lenin was expelled from the University for taking part in a student demonstration. Thereafter, he began to read the works of Karl Marx which caused him to organize a Marxist circle. In 1891, he was granted permission to take a law exam which he passed and went on to set up a law practice. Yet he spent most of his time training small numbers of workers in Marxist philosphy.
In 1895, when in Switzerland for medical treatment, Lenin met Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov, the "father of Russian Marxism". When Lenin returned to Russia in the fall, he plunged into the work of Social Democratic agitation along with Julius Martov, the future leader of a rival faction. Both men were arrested and Lenin spent a year in jail, after which he was exiled to Siberia. While in exile, he wrote The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In this book, he analyzed Russian economic life in Marxist fashion and concluded that, as a result of capitalism, a bourgeois revolution was the next important step on the road to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and socialism in Russia.
In 1900, Lenin was released and went abroad to become part of a group publishing
Iskra (the spark), seeking to recall the Social Democrats inside Russia
to the task of preparing for the overthrow of the czar and capture of political
power.
[Note how history repeats itself as in the United States today, the far-left democrats
are socialists which could easily be called the Social Democrats.]
The Social Democrats were divided into factions. The Mensheviks held that Russia was not economically ripe for socialism. Therefore, the proper tactic for a socialist party would be to cooperate with the more liberal middle class elements in working for a "bourgeois" liberal revolution, which would bring to Russia political and civil liberties and the necessary economic and cultural progress. These would make possible a socialist organization of society.
Lenin also recognized that a democratic revolution must precede a socialist revolution, but envisaged an alliance of the industrial workers and the peasants with their antagonism to the land-owning class. Lenin also laid much stress upon the necessity for iron centralized discipline in the revolutionary party.
A third viewpoint was between the first two and was held by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky believed that the working class should seize power without the cooperation of the middle class, but he also believed that a Marxist working class revolution in Russia would be quickly crushed unless it succeeded in kindling revolutions in other more economically advanced nations. This theory is also found in the writings of Lenin and Stalin.
The Socialist Revolutionaries represented another trend, placing in the forefront of their demands the nationalization of the land and confiscation of the big estates. Unlike the Marxist parties, they defended and practiced individual terrorism against prominent officials of hte Czarist regime, and carried out a number of assassinations.
In 1903, there was Party Congress in Brussels and London (these socialists were not welcome in Russia). During and after this congress, Lenin was at odds with all the other prominent Marxist leaders on the issues of organization and tactics. This resulted in the splitting of the party into two major opposing factions: the Bolsheviks under Lenin, and the Mensheviks under Martov and the others. The Bolsheviks found themselves without either party organ or control of the Central Committee.
Lenin clearly expressed his conviction that the Russian bourgeois revolution
should end in a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of proletariat and
peasantry" with the Party leading and the peasants as the bourgeois.
Although the Mensheviks remained in power, Lenin kept his factional machinery
in place, and between 1907 and 1917 the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were
two warring groups.
At the outbreak of World War I, Lenin denounced the European socialists who were willing to remain loyal to the war effort of their respective governments, and (much as it appears that Nancy Pelosi has done today) he declared the defeat of his country to be the "lesser evil" since it would weaken the power of those who were in currently opposing him.
At the beginning of World War I, Russia was on the side of the allies and the war was fairly popular in there. Revolutionaries like Lenin and Trotsky were in exile and lesser revolutionaries had declared a political truce, keeping their loyalties for their country above their party loyalties. However, Russia was technologically and economically inferior, causing her to suffer casualties totaling between 6 and 8 million dead, wounded, and taken prisoner. Bottlenecks developed in industry and transportation which resulted in food shortages in many cities. The Duma became a source of criticism in governmental inefficiency. There was an apparent scandal as various rumors circulated among the nobility about Rasputin's influence on the Czarina. This led to the assassination of Rasputin by members of the nobility, inflaming the common people against them.
The consequences of the foregoing was the fall of the czarist regime on March 12, 1917. Thus, the fall was the result of internal collapse rather than a deliberate plot. The movement started with bread riots and demonstrations, and swelled as a result of strikes. It turned into a revolution on the 12th when troops were called out against rioters. The troops refused to fire and fraternized with the demonstrators. Nicholas II quickly abdicated in favor of his brother, and his brother refused the throne. A provisional government was set in place with Prince Georgi E. Lvov as the head. He was rapidly succeeded by Aleksandr F. Kerenski, a revolutionary. A rival authority with more real power was the Soviets (democratic councils) which were organized in small towns, cities, military units, and peasant communities.
At first the Soviets were under the control of the moderate revolutionaries, but
the provisional government was not strong enough to stabilize the situation and carry
on the war effort effectively. Discipline in the army was never restored and there
were mass desertions from the front. The industrial workers began with demands
for higher wages and shorter hours, and ended in seizing the factories and driving
away the owners and the foremen. The peasants seized the land and distributed
it roughly among themselves.
On April 16, 1917, Lenin returned to Russia in a sealed train provided by the Germans in hopes that his arrival would hasten the end of Russian resistance. Lenin noticed that the trend of the revolution was to the left as the provisional government immediately instituted political and civil liberties, and decreed the release of all political prisoners. The following day, Lenin began taking steps which led to the overthrow of the provisional government.
The war ended before the Germans could take control of Russia, but Lenin and Leon Trotsky established a new government for the Russian Soviet Republic with Lenin at its head - where he remained until the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed in 1922.
Although he had never held any public office, Lenin began his new career vigorously. He directed the the organization of the secret police (the Cheka - later to become the KGB) and the Red Army with Trotsky as War Commissar. The immediate task of the Cheka and the Red Army was to squelch the growing resistance to Bolshevik rule.
The resistance (the White Forces) took control of the Ukraine, southern Russia, and Siberia. They were supported by the allies in hopes of getting Russia back into the war. Meantime, the Poles invaded the Ukraine on their own account.
The Cheka was formed on December 20, 1917, six weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was the first Soviet security and intelligence agency. Feliks Dzerzhinsky was the Polish-born head of the Cheka. "He had been a professional revolutionary for over twenty years, spending eleven of them in czarist prisons, penal servitude, or in exile. Like Lenin, he was an incorruptible alcoholic, prepared to sacrifice himself and others in defense of the revolution."
Under the czar, the secret police were called The Okhrana, and
were hated by most of the Russians. When the Bolsheviks took power,
many of those who had worked for the Okhrana changed their names and
applied for jobs in the Cheka. Intelligence techniques and tradecraft
of the Okhrana were adopted by the Cheka. In essence, the Cheka
was the reincarnation of the Okhrana but was much worse.
The Bolshevik Revolution occurred in November of 1917. The Bolshevik Party later changed its name to the "Communist Party" although it was not actually communistic but rather socialistic in nature. Lenin was one of the leaders of the party, and as early as April 1917, he formally demanded a "republic of Soviets".
For the most part, the way of the Bolsheviks was smoothed as they took the reins of power. They acquired power in the Soviets. Red Guards (armed workers), sailors from a nearby naval base, and rebellious soldiers took over Petrograd and stormed Winter Palace, headquarters of the disintegrating provisional government. This coincided with the opening of a second Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority. This congress passed decrees which laid the foundation of a future Soviet state. All power was transferred to the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies. Private property in land was abolished. All subsoil mineral resources were declared state property, and land was "transferred to the use of all those who work it". There was also an appeal "to all combatant peoples and governments to begin immediate negotiations for an honest democratic peace." A law was passed establishing workers' control over industrial enterprises. This was followed in 1918 by sweeping nationalization of all industrial enterprises.
In the first Soviet cabinet, Lenin was president of the Council of Peoples Commissars
(ministers). Trotsky was Commissar of Foreign Affairs (a post he soon exchanged for
War Commissar). Stalin was Commissar for Nationalities.
The paragraphs which follow were taken almost word-for-word from The Sword and the Shield (the history of the KGB from its inception as the Cheka to the present as provided by from files taken from the KGB archives by Vasili Mitrokhin).
The Cheka's intelligence operations both at home and abroad were profoundly influenced not merely by the legacy of the Okhrana, but also by the Bolsheviks own pre-revolutionary experience in a largely illegal clandestine underground. Many of the Bolshevik leaders had become so used to living under false identities before 1917 that they retained their aliases after the revolution. The Russian nobleman Vladimir Ilyich Ulnov kept the pseudonym "Lenin", and Georgian Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili continued to be known as "Stalin". [Had it be known than Lenin was actually a nobleman by birth it would not have set well with people who had killed the hated nobility. Dzugashvili had his own reasons for remaining "Stalin" as will be shown.]
Both Lenin and Stalin retained many of the habits of mind developed during their underground existence. On highly sensitive matters, Lenin would insist that no copy of his instructions be made, and that the original either be returned to him or destroyed by the recipient. Happily for the historian, his instructions were not always carried out.
Stalin continued to doctor his own pre-Revolutionary record during the 1920s, changing even the day of his birth. The correct date, December 6, 1878, was not made public until 1996. During a visit to a secret section of the Moscow Main Archives, Mitrokhin was once shown an Okhrana file on Dzugashvili (Stalin). The file cover and title followed standard Okhrana format, but upon looking inside, Mitrokhin discovered that the contents had been entirely removed. The probability is that the Okhrana had compromising materials on young Dzugashvili, and that at the first opportunity Stalin had arranged for the file to be gutted. In typical bureaucratic fashion, however, the cover was preserved since the existence of the file was indelibly recorded in secret registers.
Miktrokhin suspects that whoever emptied the file, presumably on Stalin's instructions,
was later eliminated. What Stalin was most anxious to destroy may have been
evidence that he had been an Okhranian informer. Although this falls short of
conclusive proof, a possible trace of that evidence still survives. According
to reports from an Okhranian agent discovered in the State Archive of the Russian
Federation, Baku Bolsheviks before the First World War confronted Dzugashvili-Stalin
with the accusation that he was a provocateur, an agent of the Czar's Security
Police, and that he had embezzled Party funds.
A Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of universal suffrage met in Petrograd on January 18, 1918. The majority of the delegates were Socialist Revolutionaries and the assembly was dispersed by Bolshevik sailors when it refused to accept the Bolshevik program. From this time on, the Soviets remained the sole organs of legislation and administration, and the Soviets were completely dominated by the Communist Party. Political opposition by Socialist parties, tolerated on a very small scale in the first years of the Soviet regime, was finally extinguished altogether.
Negotiations for peace with the Central Powers led to an extremely harsh treaty. Russia was required to give up not only all territory which the Germans had acquired through military means, but also the Ukraine (their major source of food and mineral wealth), southern European Russia, and the Baltic coastal areas. The other prominent Communists opposed acceptance of the treaty, but Lenin insisted that there was no alternative since the Russian Army had completely collapsed.
The international war ceased after this treaty was signed, but a bitter civil war raged in Russia for three years. The new Soviet regime was faced with staggering economic difficulties. The separation of the Ukraine left Russia with a food and fuel shortage. Industrial output declined heavily, and it was impossible to offer peasants normal compensation for their produce. Paper money depreciated rapidly into worthlessness.
A change of mood took place among the peasants when the Soviet government began to requisition food, organized a "committee of the poor" designed to split villages, and to use the poorest peasants to suppress the resistance of the others. Many local uprisings took place. In the summer of 1918 clashes broke out between Soviets and a corps of Czechoslavak soldiers, men who had deserted from the Austro-Hungarian Army to the Russian Army and who were being sent to the western front by way of Vladivostok. Anti-Soviet forces rallied around the Czechs and a government purporting to represent the dissolved Constituent Assembly was set up at Samara (Kuibyshev) on the Volga. There were landings of American and British troops at Archangel in northern Russia, of British troops at Murmansk, and of Japanese and American forces at Vladivostok in the Far East. An uprising organized by the Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow was quickly suppressed.
In September of 1918, a Socialist Revolutionary woman fired a gun at Lenin, seriously wounding him. The anti-Soviet army on the Volga captured Kazan. The territory under Soviet control shrank almost to the size of a medieval grand duchy of Moscow.
The Soviets countered with ruthless terrorism. More than 500 people, mostly members of the "bourgeoisie", were shot in Leningrad alone as a reprisal for the attack on Lenin. "Red terror" was openly proclaimed and raged against suspects in all towns and villages. About this period, The Sword and the Shield contained the following.
During the civil war, beginning in May 1918, the Bolsheviks had to fight for survival against powerful but divided White Russian armies. Lenin viewed their enemies as a conspiracy of Western capitalism. This theory was reinforced by Lenin (who was extremely paranoid) as time went on, and translated itself into the views of the those in the Cheka. In reality, such a "conspiracy" was the work of a group of politically naive Western diplomats and adventurous secret agents who were left to their own devices during the early months of the Bolshevik regime. This paranoid delusion was the beginning of at attitude which continued to pervade and obstruct rational thought within the Cheka as it continued through its various incarnations to the present.
Those in favor of the provisional government following the first revolution were a threat to the Bolsheviks, as were the White Russian armies. There were also Ukrainian nationalists who were fighting both the Whites and the Reds for control of their own country.
The Bolsheviks were initially a small minority who became a majority by murdering those who stood in their way. Their chief tool was the Cheka. The peasants stood to lose their land to the state, and when they resisted whole villages were murdered. The nobility or anyone who was educated were hated by the working class and were murdered. The officers in the army and navy were part of the educated and were murdered. Those who were in favor of the provisional government were murdered. The Socialists who did not agree with Lenin's views were murdered. Any White Russians or Ukrainian nationalists were murdered.
On October 15 it was reported to Lenin that 800 alleged counter-revolutionaries had been shot and 6,229 imprisoned. During the civil war, Cheka executions probably numbered as many as 250,000 and may have exceeded the number of deaths in battle. The Bolshevik leadership would be responsible for the rebirth of the hated Okhrana in a more terrible form. In Lenin's book, The State and the Revolution, he had proclaimed that after the revolution there would be no need for a police force, let alone a political force.
Even at a time when the Soviet regime was fighting for its survival during the civil war, many of its supporters were sickened by the scale of the Cheka's brutality. A number of Cheka interrogators, some only in their teens, employed scarcely believable tortures. In Karkhov the skin was peeled off victims' hands to form gloves of human skin. In Voronezh naked prisoners were rolled around in barrels studded with nails. In Poltava priests were impaled. In Odassa, captured White officers were tied to stakes and fed slowly into furnaces. In Kiev cages of rats were fixed to prisoners' bodies and heated until the rats gnawed their way into the victims' intestines.
Some of the secret documents in the KGB archives carry a note that only 10 copies
be made. One was for Lenin and other nine for Cheka department heads.
Lenin kept abreast of Cheka affairs even into operational details and technology,
once telling the Cheka chief to construct large electromagnets capable of detecting
hidden weapons in house-to-house searches. He was certainly aware of the
the atrocities of the Cheka in direct contradiction of his own words.
With the recapture of Kazan, Trotsky's newly organized Red Army began to develop into an organized fighting force. The anti-Soviet movement on the Volga gradually melted away. The military defeat of Germany in the autumn of 1918 led to a withdrawal of German forces from the Ukraine and made possible a new Soviet occupation which reached to the Black Sea. The civil war which had till now been fought mainly by improvised, poorly disciplined units on both sides, assumed a more organized form in 1919.
White (anti-Soviet) armies of which the strongest were led by Admiral Aleksandr V. Kolchak in Siberia and eastern Russia, and by General Anton E. Denikin in the south, oppeared in various parts of Russia and received help in munitions and supplies from abroad (especially from Great Britain). Meantime, the Soviet Red Army was growing in size and military efficiency until, at the height of the struggle it numbered five million.
Kolchak's greatest success was achieved in March 1919, when his forces approached the Volga. However, he was decisively defeated in the spring and early summer, and by the end of 1919 only shattered remnants of his army remained. Kolchak was captured and executed.
Based in the Cossack region of the Don and Kuban, Denikin launched a powerful offensive in 1919. He managed to occupy Orel within 250 miles of Moscow while another White general, Nikolai N. Yudenich, struck at Petrograd. Yudenich was driven back and Denikin's military collapse was even faster than his advance. By the spring of 1920 Denikin had been driven into the Crimean Peninsula. He resigned his command in favor of General (Baron) Pyotr Wrangel, who held out in the Crimea until November of 1920 when he was overrun by the Red Army. Wrangel escaped to Constantinople with most of his troops and many civilians.
The course of the civil war was affected by peasant uprisings against both Reds and Whites. The Ukrainian nationalist movement was a "third force" in the civil war in the south. They were most effective in Guerilla warfare and drew support from the Ukrainian peasants.
The civil war was complicated even more by a national war with Poland from April until October 1920. This began with an attempt by the Polish leader, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, to free the Ukraine from Soviet rule. Pilsudski, allied with the Ukrainian nationalists, occupied Kiev for a short time. However, the Poles were overextended and the Red Army drove them back to the outskirts of Warsaw and Lvov in August 1920. Here, the Poles rallied and pushed back the Russians. The war ended officially on October 12, 1920, with the signing of a peace treaty. Under the treaty, the border between the Soviet Union and Poland was drawn slightly west of the military demarcation line that existed before the war.
Although organized military opposition was crushed by the end of 1920, the Soviet Union
was in an economic crisis. Industrial production had dropped to a fifth of the
pre-war figure. Transportation was disorganized. The system of
requisitioning the "surplus" food of the peasants was bitterly resented and still
provoked peasant uprisings. Those in the cities were starving and epidemic
diseases were rife.
A mutiny of sailors at the Kreinstadt Naval Base in March 1921 coincided with an especially severe peasant rebellion in Tambov Province. This hastened the end of the economic system known as "War Communism" and the production of the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP).
The NEP's main features were (1) the substitution of a fixed tax for the former requisitioning of the peasants' so-called surplus grain grain and other food, (2) the stabilization of currency at the old rate, (3) the legalization within the country of private trade and small industry, and (4) the sanctioning of industrial and mining concessions to foreign capital. The government kept the large industry, mines, banks, and railways for itself - and foreign trade remained a state monopoly. The dictatorship of the Communist Party remained unchanged.
A famine in 1921-1922 took millions of lives. Relief efforts from foreign organizations were severely obstructed by the Communists who considered the aid to be part of a plot to undermine their iron rule. This proved to be another example of the almost homicidal paranoia of the Communists. After this there was improvement and recovery.
Lenin died on January 21, 1924, and there was no weakening of Communist authority.
Trotsky was removed from office, and a triumvirate was then in power consisting
of Stalin, Grigori E. Zinoviev, and Lev B. Kamenev. Soon a political breach
developed between Stalin and the other two when they agreed with Trotsky.
Trotsky argued that the promotion of a "permanent" revolution to convert the entire
world to socialism was the immediate task before the Party. Stalin held that
"socialism in one country" was possible. Trotsky was arrested toward the end
of 1927 and banished to Turkestan. In 1929 he was expelled from Russia.
Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in Mexico by an agent of the NKGB, Ramon Mercader,
in 1940. For some reason, Trotsky had enraged Stalin
beyond rational thought.
When the Bolsheviks seized power in November of 1917, they first permitted the larger groups of minority people to secede. The remaining Russian territory was organized as the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (RSFSR). On July 10, the RSFSR received its first constitution which provided for autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts, and national districts for the small minority peoples remaining with the Russian Federation.
During 1918-1920, much of the RSFSR itself rebelled against Communist rule, restricting the domain of the new republic to part of European Russia. By 1920, however, the RSFSR had re-conquered most the seceding areas, whose subsequent treatment was not uniform. The Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Caucasus were forced to become Soviet republics tightly allied with RSFSR. Central Asia, though ethically non-Russian, was re-annexed by the RSFSR.
On December 30, 1922, as a result of RSFSR pressure, the Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Caucasus Soviet republics joined the RSFSR to form a new nation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). A USSR constitution drafted by Stalin was formally adopted on July 6, 1923. In 1924, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia were detached from the RSFSR, and in 1925, they became the fifth and sixth constituent republics of the USSR. Then in 1929, the Tadzhik SSR was created from RSFSR territory. The new USSR constitution of 1936 formed the Kazakh and Kirgiz SSRs from RSFSR regions. Thus five administrative changes removed all of Soviet Central Asia from the RSFSR's domain, which henceforth was confined to the predominantly Russian-inhabited Siberia and parts of the European USSR.
In 1940, the Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed partly from the newly annexed Finnish territory and partly from the Karelian ASSR of the northwestern RSFSR. In 1956, however, the RSFSR re-annexed Karelia, which was reduced to the status of an autonomous republic. The official explanation for re-incorporation was that Russians far outnumbered Karelians and Finns in the republic. This may well have been true because the people of conquered areas were almost routinely forced to disperse into other areas while Russians were forced to migrate into the conquered areas. This prevented nationalism from re-asserting itself in the conquered areas.
As a result of the USSR's victory in World War II, the RSFSR also annexed the East Prussian region of Konigsberg, which was renamed Kalizingrad Oblast, as well as additional Finnish territory, Tuva, the Kuril Islands, and Southern Sakhalin.
The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic was the largest of 15 Union republics, extending 5,000 miles from east to west and 2,500 miles from north to south. It was bounded on the north by seas of the Arctic Ocean; on the east by seas of the Pacific Ocean; on the south by Korea, China, the Mongolian People's Republic, the Kazakh SSR, the Caspian Sea, the Azerbaidzhan SSR, and the Georgian SSR; on the southwest by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov; and on the west by the Ukrainian SSR, the Estonian SSR, the Baltic Sea, Finland, and Norway. Included in it was the detached oblast of Kalingrad on the Baltic between the Lithuanian SSR and Poland.
The foreign policy of the Soviet Union was dominated by (1) the national interests of the
Russian empire and (2) the avowed ambition of the Communist Party to cooperate with the
Communist movement throughout the world to promote world revolution along Soviet lines.
The church had always been somewhat subservient to the government under various regimes, but within, its ideas and values remained regardless of outward appearances and actions. Under the Soviets, the church in Russia was separated from the state and persecuted. The purposes were obvious. First, the church had to be deprived of all means of influencing national life which was to be rebuilt on an anti-religious pattern with the current dictator to take the place of God in the minds of the people. So the church was prohibited from having any educational or missionary activity. Destruction of churches, heavy taxation, deportation and execution of clergy and active laymen - all the measures were but details in the general scheme of a complete transformation of the whole community. The heads of state felt that they could ill-afford any ideas or concepts other than what they wished the people to know. Even language was slowly altered to permit only a particular view of history and morals that would favor the current regime.
The administration of the church was disrupted - and for a time no administration existed. An attempt to construct another organization to compete with the historical church, made by a group of clergy and sponsored by the government, failed to attract many believers. Several such attempts were made, but ceased to exist long before WWII. In the meantime, one of the bishops was permitted to assume the functions of the acting head, his actions being controlled by the government.
During and after WWII, the church took a more active role and several training colleges for
the ministry were established - but, by strict law, "religous propaganda" was
still illegal.
The entire Soviet political system would be incomprehensible without taking into account the predominant role of the Communist Party which was the sole legal political force in the country. According to Stalin, "in the USSR there is no basis for the existence of several parties, or, consequently, for the freedom of parties - in the Soviet Union, there is a basis only for the Communist Party."
In Article 126 of the Soviet Constitution was found "The most active and politically conscious citizens...united in the All-Union Communist Party...which is the vanguard of the working people...and represents the leading nucleus of all organizations of the working people."
Complete domination by the Communist Party was assured by the unwritten law in the Soviet
Union that everyone who holds an important executive position, not only in government
but in the armed forces, in management of industry, trade and transportation, in the trade
union and youth organizations, must be a member of the party and
subject to party discipline.
Soviet propaganda outside the Soviet frontiers was closely intermeshed with the foreign policy of the Soviet government and with the aims of international communism. It attempted to represent the Soviet regime as the champion of peace and to attach the stigma of "war monger" to any government, group, or individual in a country associated with opposition to communism. We see the same type of propaganda today, coming from the socialist left (the current-day communists who dominate the Democratic Party in the U.S.).
A favorite propaganda method was to take groups of trade unionists, intellectuals, and others, recruited from known sympathizers with the Soviet system, on conducted tours in the Soviet Union. Before WWII, and especially in the early 1930s, larger tourist groups were admitted to Russia without very much political discrimination, except in the case of known critics of communism. This practice was substantially reduced during the period of political purges before the outbreak of the war, and was not resumed until some years after Stalin's death.
A characteristic feature of Soviet propaganda organization is the creation, under sponsorship and control of communist parties in various countries, of fringe or fellow-traveler organizations, ostensibly not connected with communism, but invariably taking the communist position on disputed issues. Scores of such organizations were identified by name and classified as subversive by the office of the attorney general of the United States.
Propaganda is geared to such ideas as professed support of peace; hostility to the alleged aggressive aims of the United States and other western powers; and support of the Soviet Union, the "peoples democracies", and the Communist regime in China. Standard communist propaganda appeals in all European countries called for the denunciation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), withdrawal of American troops from Europe, opposition to re-arming Germany and Japan, and spreading funds appropriated for armaments on other objects. [We see a similar pattern today in the conduct of many of the Democrats in the United States.] The peace agitation was of a strictly unilateral character. There were never any communist protests against the burden of heavy armaments in Soviet Union and other countries under communist political control.
A very strenuous attempt was made to link communist international propaganda with the cause of peace. A congress held in Stockholm and Warsaw led to the organization of a World Peace Council (WPC) which held its first session in Berlin in February of 1951. At this session the WPC endorsed legislation against war propaganda and urged its national committees to denounce and boycott all publications, school films, radio broadcasts, etc., which contain any incitement to war and to launch a great campaign of enlightenment in which thousands of men of good will in each country will ceaselessly expose the falsehoods that aid the preparation of war. [The schools today in Georgetown, California, USA, have gone so far as to not allow anything pertaining to war to come through the spam filter for the teachers and administrators. Nor are any books pertaining to war allowed in the school library. Had the founding fathers of the U.S. felt the same way, North America would still be ruled by a British king - perhaps be under Hitler's Third Reich.]
While the wording of the resolutions was apparently designed to appeal to the pacifist, the viewpoint expressed clearly reflected the communist inspiration of the movement. It was taken for granted that the United States was the aggressor in the Korean War. Typical of the tone and spirit of the comment on Korean hostilities was the following by the metropolitan Nikolai, a high Soviet ecclesiastical dignitary. From the first day of their aggression in Korea the American neo-fascists proceeded systematically and ruthlessly to destroy the Korean nation. The horrible atrocities, the barbaric bombings of peaceful towns and communities, were undertaken with the sole purpose of wiping out the civilian population. Investigation has proved that the American troops are applying Himmler's technique of inhuman torture to Korean patriots.
Similar anti-American atrocity propaganda was to be found in a report submitted by a women's commission which visited North Korea under the sponsorship of the Women's International Democratic Federation. Members of this commission apparently accepted uncritically everything their communist hosts told them and signed their names to a report from which the following typical excerpts were taken. The people of Korea are being subjected by the American occupants to a merciless and methodical campaign of extermination... In the districts temporarily occupied by American and Syngman Rhee forces, in the period of occupation, hundreds of thousands of civilians, entire families from old men to little children, have been tortured, beaten to death, burned, and buried alive... These mass tortures and mass murders surpass the crimes committed by Hitler...
It is perhaps noteworthy that the inevitability of war, so long as the capitalist system
remains, is an integral part of communist theory. The Sixth Congress of the Communist
International reproached modern socialists for having substituted bourgeois deceit
of capitalism for the theory of the inevitability of war under
capitalism.
The Cheka had numerous incarnations.
(1) In February 1922 it was incorporated into the NKVD as the GPU.
(2) In July 1923 it became the OGPU.
(3) In July 1934 it was re-incorporated into the NKVD as the GUGB.
(4) In February 1941 it became the NKGB.
(5) In July 1941 it was again incorporated into the NKVD as the GUGB.
(6) In April 1943 it became the NKGB.
(7) In March 1946 it became the MGB.
(8) From October 1947 to November 1951 it was the "Foreign Intelligence" as part of KI.
(9) In March 1953 it was combined with the MVD to form an enlarged MVD.
(10) In March 1954 it became the KGB.
(11) Department A, the department of disinformation, of the KGB became essentially
the new KGB and was called the SVR. The last revolution in Russia overthrew
the Communist Party. In the power vacuum that followed, the old Communists
started anew with new names. The Soviet Union had been temporarily dissolved
so that military might became extremely expensive. The solution was to focus
the efforts of the old KGB on disinformation and undermining the target nations'
youth and news media. Since this had been going on since the late 1930s,
the follow-through was not very expensive and is being continued to the present
with excellent results.
For 25 years, Stalin was the undisputed dictator of the Soviet Union. He took the Soviets through World War II and he was given credit for promoting industrialization and collective farming, and for rallying the people after the German invasion of 1944. However, Stalin suffered from extreme paranoia, and anyone who was perceived to be a threat to his dictatorship, immediately or in the future - even Soviet war heroes - was dealth with severely regardless of innocence or guilt. Stalin would charge his targets with treason, personally order their confessions under torture, and then have them executed. He kept his closest lieutenants in a state of constant terror of his next move, and bungled the military leadership of World War II with micro-managing.
Stalin isolated the Soviet people from the rest of the world, fearing that they would realize that the propaganda fed to them by the current model of the KGB was untrue. Tourists were not admitted into the Soviet Union, very few visas were granted to individual travelers, and there was ostentatious police surveillance of foreign embassies and Soviet citizens. Laws were passed making it a crime for Soviet citizens to give unauthorized information to anyone. Marriage between Soviet citizens and foreigners was forbidden and a number of Russian women who had married Britons or Americans were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union to join their husbands abroad.
Scientific and other intellectual contacts with the West were almost entirely suspended and "kowtowing to the West" became a term of reproach. There was systematic effort to prove Russian national superiority by digging up and often exaggerating the significance of experiments by Russians in such fields as wireless telegraphy, aviation, the discovery of the internal combustion engine, etc.
Radio broadcasts within the Soviet Union were filled with Soviet propaganda. Ham radio operators were outlawed because what they might hear from abroad. Soviet language was monitored to prevent certain words from becoming a part of it, and only words which explained the world in terms of Marxism and pro-Soviet concepts were kept. The departments of the current version of the KGB enforced these laws through informers and undercover agents with the general population.
The totality of the above was known internationally as "the iron curtain", and the Soviet Union was considered to be a prison. Today, we have experienced the presence of Sadam Hussein who looked upon Stalin as his idol and mentor, who modeled his regime after that of Stalin's, and who even attempted to look like Stalin. For a closer look at Stalin's methods, one need only to look upon those of Hussein.
Near the end of Stalin's life, the Jewish newspapers, publishing houses, and theaters
were closed in the Soviet Union. A number of Jewish communists in Czechoslavakia
were accused, tortured, put on trial, and executed.
Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev was born in 1894 as the son of a miner in the Kursk region of central Russia, a veteran leading figure in the Communist Party organization. Krushchev had served for some years as secretary of the Moscow Party Committee and for a still longer time was secretary of the party organization in the Ukraine. He rose to supreme power on March 27, 1958, succeeding Nikolai Bulganin as prime minister and combining this office with that of first secretary of the Communist Party. This was possible as a result of political shifts and upheavals which took place over a period of five years following Stalin's death.
Due to the extreme secrecy of the Soviets, the underlying causes of these changes are not known. However, the first noteworthy change was on March 21, 1953, when Molenkov relinquished the office of first secretary of the Communist Party, being replaced by Krushchev in this office, while Molenkov remained as prime minister. A more sensational move in the power struggle was indicated when it was announced on July 10 that Beria had been expelled from the Communist Party as an "enemy of the people". Beria and his subordinates were shot a few months later.
The next big change occurred in February 1955, when Molenkov gave up his post as prime minister and was replaced by Nikolai Bulganin. This was a bloodless purge; Molenkov received the post of minister of electric power. The triumvirate that had taken over after Stalin's death had disappeared because Molenkov was visibly losing power and influence. It was succeeded for a time by a duovirate, Krushchev and Bulganin, the former being the top man in the party, the latter the top man in the Soviet government.
In contrast to Stalin, who had never left the Soviet Union except for a brief visit to Tehran, Iran, during World War II, Krushchev and Bulganin assumed the role of traveling diplomats, going together to Yugoslavia, to the summit in Geneva, Switzerland in 1955, and subsequently to India, Burma, and Great Britain.
The next striking development was the sensational denigration of Stalin by Kruschev in a speech delivered at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party on February 25, 1956. Although the speech was private, news of its contents leaked out and produced perhaps even greater repercussions in Communist parties outside the Soviet Union than existed in the well-disciplined population of the USSR.
Throughout his dictatorship, Stalin had been deified. Those delivering public speeches were obsequiously pro-Stalin, and the speeches were filled with his alleged greatness, virtue, and wisdom. Similar adulation was required for Communist parties in foreign countries. Eulogistic speeches were delivered after Stalin's death, and his body was embalmed and preserved in the same mausoleum as Lenin's in Moscow's Red Square.
At the 20th Party Congress the minister of foreign trade, Anastas Mikoyan, aroused attention by indulging in a few moderately worded criticisms of Stalin. Krushchev went much farther. In his secret speech, he drew a startling picture of the deceased dictator as a paranoid tyrant. Although the facts revealed by Krushchev were sensational and horrifying, the conclusions drawn from these facts were qualified and reserved.
A big step toward Krushchev's consolidation of Supreme Power in his own hands was indicated when an official communique on July 3, 1957, announced the expulsion from the party Presidium of four of Krushchev's principal opponents, Molenkov, Molotov, Lazar M, Kaganovich, and Dmitri T. Shepilov, who for a time had succeeded Molotov as minister of foreign affairs. The Presidium was simultaneously enlarged from 11 to 15 members, of whom the majority also belonged to the party Secretariat, where Krushchev had long been the dominant figure.
Marshal Georgi Zhukov, a prominent military commander during World War II, had been rising along with Krushchev. In 1955, Zhukov was appointed minister of defense and, in 1957, received a seat on the Presidium. But on October 26, 1957, he was stripped of these posts on the grounds that he had not been paying sufficient attention to party leadership in military affairs. In 1958, Bulganin resigned, leaving Krushchev as the