Decline and Fall of the soviet Union

Decline and demise of Soviet Union

A lot has been written on the topic. I will only discuss how the long slide of the USSR into oblivion affected my generation and progressive movement in the sub-continent in general. A brief historic review will be in order.
Colonization had affected the habit of independent enquiry and thought adversely. Literacy rate was very low. Schools produced clerks. Very few could afford foreign education. They came from a class, which looked up to the British rulers as the fount of wisdom and pillars of integrity. They kept, if any thing, more distance between themselves and the common citizens than even the rulers did. People if they could read at all, sought solace in religious tracts or fiction of the kind of Arabian nights. Newspapers were few, were dependent on and catered to the government. Their circulation was ridiculously low. Indians had fallen into the morass of ignorance, dependence and inferiority complex. Worse, they were not even aware of their apathy.
Europe had been intellectually vibrant for centuries. Industrial revolution had given them an edge over Asia, Africa and Americas. Military prowess had given them control over the resources, material and human, of the world. Capitalist societies were emergent. Feudal system was on its last legs. Demise of the latter had unleashed tremendous forces of class conflict. In the feudal dispensation, society is paternalistic. The feudal lord allows subsistence level of existence. People live on the land and it gives enough to survive.
It is not that the lord and the serf did not have glaring disparity in standard of living. But the difference was not as much as between an industrialist and his worker. Further if the peasants died of starvation, landowner would be hard out to find replacement. If a worker died, there would be plenty to be had from where he came. The spurt in population growth had created numerous replaceable bodies.
Countries which had been the first to acquire colonies could dispose of excess of their population in subject countries. For all kinds of historical and other reasons the British had forged ahead and captured the lion’s share of colonial loot. They adopted the animal as their symbol. Other European countries, Germany, France, Italy and Spain were not as lucky. Wars for resources of the world ensued. Millions died. That, to some extent, eased the problem of superfluous numbers.
But the loot from colonies, increase in productivity, and ever-newer improvements in technology benefited largely the capitalist class. One only has to read novels of Somerset Maugham to get an idea of the parlous condition of the working poor in Britain even as late as the first four decades of the twentieth century. Comparable literature is available in all European languages.
Human kind owes a debt of gratitude to Karl Marx, and curiously enough to discrimination practiced in Germany against the Jews, which dove him out of his homeland, that he, in collaboration with Engels, enunciated a practical system of directing class conflict to a movement to over throw the rule of capitalists. His ideas should by superficial logic found their first success in the developed industrial countries like Britain, Germany and France. But revolution found its first home in Russia. If one looks at the situation closely, Russia was not an infertile land for revolution. True industry was not as developed, but as a consequence capitalist class was primitive too. The regime was much more iniquitous and repressive too. Human factor has to be kept in mind too. I am committing a heresy in communist theology, but Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin had a little to do with the overthrow of the Czars as well.
The revolution in Russia was a wake up call for the capitalist countries. They tried their best to nip the “evil” in bud. But they failed, largely due to the grass roots support the communists enjoyed and the disarray Western countries found themselves in after WWI.
The nucleus of Indian communist party met in Calcutta in 1917. Lines of demarcation between Islam and Communism had not well established yet. Maulana Hasrat Mohani was among the participants as well the legendary Dada Mansur and Dada Feroz of the Punjab. Other Indian provinces were represented too.
The movement took root in disparate places like Kerala, Hyderabad (Indian), UP and of course Bengal. Bengal deserves an illustrious mention in the annals of the straggle for independence and movement for workers rights. The party made slow though appreciable and steady in roads in Indian national psyche. Vibrant organizations emerged at national and provincial levels. Armed conflict and a movement to rival Mao’s in China would have emerged, but China was lucky, or unlucky that it produced Chiang Kai Shek. He helped accentuate class struggle. In India Gandhi highjacked independence movement.
As discussed elsewhere the Mahatma concocted a rich mix of religion, mysticism and practical politics. No other stratagem would have reached and captured the mind of the vast mass of peasantry that India was. He tried to take Muslims along vigorously supporting the Khilafat movement. But he had made one of his rare tactical mistakes. It was a moribund concept and died soon after wards. Gandhi was surrounded by radical nationalists, retrogressive obscurantists, Hindu national chauvinists, religious revivalists, and liberal idealists. Capitalists who were by and large Hindus with a few Parsis thrown in financed the campaign. Muslims in majority provinces were illiterate peasants, under complete control of non-Muslims. In Muslim minority provinces they enjoyed patronage in excess of their numbers. It was a simple ploy of keeping the majority and minority in provinces at each other’s throats.
Jinnah in his earlier incarnation had engineered an agreement for safe guard of minority rights. INC in the first flush of success over played their hand. They underestimated the clout a combination of Muslims and the Raj would have. Hindu Muslim unity unraveled quickly.
Gandhi, as mentioned earlier, had left communists, high and dry. They advocated militant struggle. Gandhi opted for non-violence. Gandhi’s method was safer, at least in the short term. The rulers could not perpetrate a reign of terror. More over peasants have a mind set very different from that of peasants. They are not totally bereft of possessions. They have unlike industrial workers a bit more to lose than the chains on their bodies. They offered a more fertile ground for Gandhi’s vision of Ram Raj than for the esoteric concepts of class struggle. Secularism, an essential part of communist creed is anathema to them.
The rulers, agents of capitalism themselves perhaps sensed the beginning of the end of their supremacy. They wanted India safe for indigenous capitalists who would be expected to develop fraternal relations with them. They decided to share authority of the government with the representatives o Indian capital, the INC. Gandhi helped by excluding the militant wing by sidelining Subhash Bose. It was not such a remarkable feat. Bose was a misfit in a party which only wanted transfer of power form one set of capitalists to another.
Now INC showed its true colors. Pledges to improve the lot of peasantry, not with standing, all their policies were directed to promotion of Indian capital. Muslims more backward than their Hindu counter parts and with little share in industry, felt the crush even more.
Communist party of India (CPI) saw resurgence in its fortunes. Industrial workers for the first time saw the true face of capitalism. Muslims, their deep indoctrination in the religion not with standing, sought to join the party. They felt that their religion was going to be a handicap any way in any national dispensation, looked for security in secular ideology. Ordinary person on the street had the first inkling of the future. He would be only changing the skin color of his masters. Vicarious contentment that it is your own kind crushing you under his heels does not last long.
But another quirk of history intervened. A replay of struggle between Anglo-Saxon and French capital on the one hand and German Capital on the other was about to raise its head. This time there was a twist though. German Capital had joined hands with Fascists for a better-coordinated effort. Pure Capital is handicapped by the fiction of democracy and representative government, which militates against focus on expedient rearmament. They have to pay lip service to Human rights, liberty and freedom of expression. That dilutes the authority to make people do what you want. Democracy also lacks the jingoist slogans of supreme race and nation which can dupe people for sufficient length of time foot immediate purpose.
German army overwhelmed Europe. Only the British channel and lack of confidence among Hitler’s cohorts saved Britain. Japan had over run British, French and Dutch colonies, save India. Lack of confidence again kept the Japanese from marching into India. The British, more aware of reality on ground had initiated scorched earth policy in Bengal.
Russia had suffered the depredations of Stalin. Soviet army lacked arms, leadership and morale. Hitler was again not fully cognizant of the parlous state of workers paradise. He was conned into signing a pact with the country. That gave critical respite to Soviet rulers. Internecine fratricide was abandoned for the duration. Experience military officers, engineers and scientists were released from penal colonies and asked to serve the national interest. They readily agreed, to escape from inhuman condition of their incarceration or for love of the nation, it is difficult to say. one can not say. But put in an upper human effort, they did.
CPI had to had to toe the soviet line and tone down its criticism of fascism. Idealists in the party found it hard to swallow the line, but the bosses salved their conscience by telling themselves and others that if Soviet Union were overwhelmed, the historic process would be set back by scores of years. Little damage was done to party discipline
Their morale was further boosted when congress resigned in a huff. My uncle who was a student in Lucknow university and an ardent party worker told me that it was a real struggle to keep party workers from celebrating a day of deliverance along with the ML. They were riding high again. They could tell the public that British and Indian capitalists had a disagreement in distribution of loot. The public sympathized with Hitler. He was fighting a common enemy. Soviet Union had a compact with the enemy of their enemy. CPI made further inroads into Muslim youth who were imbued with national spirit and did not think a separate homeland would solve any problems. It would lead to further orthodoxy. Hindus and Muslims had lived in India together for a millennium, with out any friction greater than would be inevitable in neighbors. Vast majority of Muslims were converts from Hinduism any way and had sought escape from the caste system in a new egalitarian religion.
The communist regime in Soviet Union survived and thrived in spite of what they had done to themselves. They had had a reprieve, which they took full advantage of.
Hitler having disabled all European rivals on his western flank, save Britain, turned attention to the East. He attacked Soviet Union. It was inevitable. There is greater contradiction between communism and fascism than there is between the latter and capitalism.
Though expected, the onslaught threw CPI into a quandary. The hitherto inter-imperialist war had to be declared people’s war over night. It would be a comfortable somersault but for Indian public opinion, which was strongly anti-British and acting on the reasonable dictum that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, they rooted for Hitler. Josh Malihabadi, by acclamation, dubbed “Shair-e-Inqilab-poet of the revolution anno8nced that he was going to recite a new poem in public. He was so highly regarded that people thronged on the appointed day and time to his residence in Lucknow. One has to marvel at the veneration he was the object of that most of the audience were Hindus who did not understand his highly stylized and Persianised poetry. Police, with their hands full with numerous public protests decided to look the other way. They thought that it would be an innocuous literary affair. It was any thing but. Josh declaimed “ Salam Aai Tajdaare Germany aai Hitlere azam” I salute thee great crowned head of Germany. The crowd went wild.
But CPI was duty bound to do so. Nationalists, religious people, liberals, rightists and non-communist left, roundly condemned them. Britain naturally welcomed the declaration. That gave further ammunition to the detractors of the party. Faiz, a luminary of the left joined the army and went to work for All India Radio. My uncle told me that many of his rivals gleefully called him “Munafiq”, roughly double-dealer.
It is a tribute to the resilience, organization and steadfastness of its members that CPI did not go under completely. They remained a vital part of the spectrum of parties struggling for independence. War over, they resumed mass mobilization campaigns and were pretty successful.
ML had gained legitimacy in 1946 elections. The demand for partition of India could no longer be brushed aside. CPI naturally opposed it. It had reckoned with out the Supremo- Stalin. He decided that all ethnic nationalities should have a right to self-determination. He agreed with Jinnah. No one in CPI or for that matter any communist any where dare ask him about the fate of nationalities in soviet Union whom he had sent in their hundreds of thousands to freeze in Siberia rather than give them the right to self determination. CPI had, Willy nilly, to follow the directive.
I some times wonder if Stalin did it deliberately to sabotage the international communist movement, as some suspect Gorbachev of doing it in eighties.
The country was partitioned. The party in West Pakistan was nearly completely drained of trained cadres, as they were overwhelmingly non-Muslim. A high functionary of CPI who happened to be from a Muslim house in UP had to be exported to take over as the secretary general of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP). This gentleman, Sajjad Zaheer hailed from a highly educated family. He counted judges, administrators and ministers among his close relatives. He was a notable writer too. But he had completely declassed himself. He was, however, not fully accepted by local communists. A trade union leader openly flouted him when he directed him not to confront the government, as his cadre was not organized, steadfast or strong enough. CPP got of to a shaky start.
Not following his own advice, Sajjad Zaheer permitted the party to get embroiled in a half-baked military conspiracy with disastrous consequences for progressive movement in the country.
CPP, however, continued to function and had a new lease of life when Hasan Nasir another scion of an aristocratic house of Indian Hyderabad took over in mid-fifties. He let the East Pakistan party go on its own and set about putting the West Pakistan party in functional shape. He was successful in revitalizing the party, and indoctrinated and took in a large number of students from all provinces of Pakistan. He was able to get rid of fossilized members who were occupying high positions and keeping juniors from making progress up the ranks of the party. He could, however, not to cleanse the organization of several high-ranking officials in the party who were also highly paid agents of the GOP.
Stalin had died. An ostensibly ideological, in actuality a struggle for the slot of the head of international communist movement was brewing between his successors and The Chinese party led by Mao. That was to split the ranks of communist parties down the middle. Parties all over the world struggled with the schism. Hasan Nasir kept CPP together.
But contradictions in Pakistani society had the final say. Ayub took over and subverted the imminent elections. Hasan Nasir was tortured to death in Lahore fort. Government agents in place in the party had a field day. They overcame a dynamic student leader, Sher Afzal Malik whom I have described in grater detail in the chapter on student movement. National Students Federation the flagship of leftist students in Pakistan went aground in late sixties. The decade saw the resurgence of religious, ethnic and sectarian parties among students and in the country.
During my last visit to Pakistan in 2005, I inquired of a friend about progressive movement in the country. He looked at me hard, trying to divine if I was being funny. Convinced that I was in earnest, he told me that at the last count there were eleven factions of NSF, and the country sported as many as thirty-one communist parties. Few had more than three members.
It is an idle thought, but I cannot help speculating on the fate of the party if Trotsky had come out on top in his struggle with Stalin.
A brief review of the fate of communist movement in other countries is pertinent to the discussion.
Stalin was followed by a few transient figures till Khruschev took over. He was a vigorous cunning and shrewd peasant. Notwithstanding his exhibition of shoe banging, which did catch the attention of Western powers in a certain way, his era was marked by diplomatic ascendancy of Soviet Union. He was able to cow down Tel Aviv, Paris and London with” promises” of nuclear bomb tipped missiles and was instrumental in getting them to withdraw from Suez Canal. He made Eisenhower suffer acute embarrassment by exposing the clandestine U 2 flights of American spy planes over Soviet Union and parading the pilot of the downed plane Gary powers in public. He humiliated him by canceling a scheduled meeting. He threatened Pakistan with perdition because the spy plane had taken of from Peshawar. He was able to bask in the reflected glory of Sputnik and the exploits of Yuri Gagarin.
Berzhenev who had already reached post-retirement age followed him. His tenure was distinguished, though, by the enormous amount of aid offered to under developed countries. Even Pakistan, firmly in the other camp was gifted with a steel mill. Things moved slowly as the country lacked vigorous leadership. Bureaucracy took advantage of the power vacuum. But a single lapse-the adventure in Afghanistan eclipsed all the past achievements. Soviet union was duped into supporting, sustaining and finally shoring up a regime which had seized power in a fortuitous coup, did not have any public support or little in the army, trained cadre and to add insult to injury was riven by factions. One tin pot dictator followed another. Soviet Union was forced to send its own troops. They were at a greater disadvantage than US troops had been in Vietnam.
The USA had an opportunity they could not have dreamed of. They had an under study in the neighborhood ruled by a flame breathing fanatic. It poured arms, logistic and training support and money at an unprecedented scale.
USA had an inborn advantage. They were supporting an indigenous religious movement against the atheistic communists. It controlled the resources of much of the world, while Soviet Union had to depend on its own. The latter had overextended them by financing progressive movements, and non-progressive governments alike. Their situation was untenable. Their predicament was compounded by the advent of uncontrollable development of media technology. Soviet citizens saw pictures of Western life styles in their drawing rooms. They could not understand, much less accept low living standards while their government sustained anti-progressive regimes. For the first time they openly questioned the sanity of their rulers.
Another interregnum of temporary figures followed the death of Berzhenev. Gorbachev emerged from the ashes and skillfully deployed his unmatched diplomatic skills to keep the edifice on its feet. But the dispensation he was presiding over was hollow. It collapsed at the first touch of whirlwind.
Communist parties in Europe and elsewhere fell like over ripe apples. Parties in France and Italy, which had dictated to ruling establishment, cowered in their own shadows and changed their names. Eastern European parties, rulers till yesterday were swept away.
Chinese party, which had undergone and survived convulsions of Cultural Revolution, post-Mao revisionism was finally taken over by reactionaries. The country is ruled by a party, which in its control of public and private life rivals Hitler’s Nazi party. They practice Capitalist mode of production, and communist intrusion into daily life.
In Pakistan, left lost its glamour even among radical fellow travelers.
Apparent survivors include North Korea, which is more like the dragon lizard, and Vietnam, which has followed the Chinese line. The only true survivor is Cuba, which has with stood the recurrent onslaughts of its giant neighbor to the north.
CPI has shown un-paralleled resilience. Buffeted as it had been by adverse circumstances beyond its control, it rose to the level of credible challenge to Indian national congress (INC). A performance nearly as good as that of INC was confidently predicted in a general election in early fifties when its hopes were put paid by the Sino-Soviet schism. After a low of several years duration, the disparate wings of the party carved a niche for themselves in different parts of India. One of its leaders, chief Minster Basu of Bengal exhibited a rare degree of self-effacement and intellectual honesty when he turned down the offer of Prime Minister ship of India on the grounds that he did not want to preside over a dispensation, which would not allow him to pursue progressive policies.
Signs of revival of progressive movement are on the horizon. In teeth of concerted opposition of the USA a few governments in South America have been able to follow nationalist policies. Maoist have handed a defeat the monarchy and capitalists in Nepal. CPI joined hands with INC and Muslims to defeat BJP, which would be more at, home in Pakistan. A President of Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA) did indeed present a peace award to Advani during a tour of India.