communism: the ideology's history and the legacy left by Mikhail Gorbachev - Economist

The ash heap of history?

Two illuminating new books on communism: the ideology's history and the legacy left by Mikhail Gorbachev

May 10th 2007

IS THERE any reason left to care about Soviet communism? Economists have little time for Marxism-Leninism, finding it inadequate both in theory and in practice. Governments of what were once Soviet territories have eagerly signed up to the class enemy's alliances, NATO and the European Union. Russia itself has moved on. Even China, ostensibly still a major communist power, chose its own path to markets and modernity and is now beating capitalists at their own game.

But two new books will convince doubters that spending time on the Soviet experience is still worthwhile. The authors are both based at St Antony's College, Oxford. Robert Service is the current professor of Russian history, while Archie Brown, after 34 years of teaching, is now emeritus professor of politics.

Both are very much concerned with the Soviet legacy for the present day, although their approaches could hardly be more different. Mr Service has produced a wide-ranging history that traces communism's intellectual origins back through early modern Europe to ancient Greece as well as its modern spread to countries covering a third of the earth's surface. As he puts it: “Communist parties have existed in almost every area of the globe except the polar ice caps.” By contrast, Mr Brown uses a magnifying glass to look at the Gorbachev era and its effects.

Of the two, Mr Brown's book is more immediately timely, but also more problematic. “Seven Years that Changed the World” speaks directly to the heated debate about the end of the cold war. While American triumphalists promote it as a victory for the Reagan administration, Russian foreign-policy makers repudiate what they see as the unnecessary over-capitulation of the Gorbachev era. The consequences of this debate are not just academic. Working from a position of financial strength based on his government's control of oil profits, Vladimir Putin is fashioning policies aimed at undoing the perceived mistakes of recent decades and reasserting Russian influence abroad. 

Mr Brown steers between these two narratives, making a compelling case for Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership—a case that emerges despite a format that awkwardly combines some earlier essays with new analysis. In the 1980s the author was among the earliest to recognise that Mr Gorbachev was a serious reformer. Before getting properly under way, his book includes a selection of more or less unchanged reprints. These prove his prescience, but it would have been better just to have summarised them.

The bulk of the book is a necessary reminder of what Mr Gorbachev and perestroika achieved—even if inadvertently. For what, asks Mr Brown, did Mr Gorbachev sacrifice “the boundless authority, the unquestioning obedience, the orchestrated public adulation”? For freedom of speech, freedom of religion, competitive elections and a host of other accomplishments. The author rightly concludes that the “democratic shortcomings of post-Soviet Russia notwithstanding, the country that Gorbachev bequeathed to his successors was freer than at any time in Russian history.”

The promotion of such values seems all the more remarkable given their tortured transit through the 20th century, as brilliantly described in Mr Service's “Comrades!”. With this volume he has produced one of the best-ever studies of his subject, even if he is much stronger on Russia than on other countries. Eschewing the usual convoluted language of Marxist debates, he provides a gripping account of communism's intellectual origins, pedigree and impact. Concluding that Marx and his followers “were not the fundamental rethinkers of the contemporary world”—he accords that honour to Albert Einstein, Max Weber and others—Mr Service turns from ideas to their practical application. 

He argues that one can indeed trace a single unified history of communism, namely by following the rise and spread of the “truly innovative” Russian model. Through numerous country studies, the author concludes that all durable regimes had essential coercive characteristics in common. They centralised power, eliminated rival parties, attacked religion, established secret police forces and sent dissenters to labour camps. He compares communists both to fascists, with whom he sees ideological differences but practical similarities, and to early Christians. Like the latter, he says, communists enjoyed a feeling of certainty blessed by omniscience, with the deity in their case being “the march of history”.

As is to be expected, even a book as rich as this cannot cover all bases. Culture receives short shrift in favour of politics. Chapters on countries other than the Soviet Union are not as convincing. Why Chinese economic reform succeeded so spectacularly remains inadequately explained. And opponents of Mr Service's damning indictment may justifiably claim that he fails to explain why communism proved so appealing to anyone at all.

Nonetheless, the book remains a remarkable accomplishment, and worrying reading. Even though Soviet communism as an idea may have failed, its interaction with the Russian population contains a powerful warning. Mr Service makes a strong case that “poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in.” Russia in the late 19th century had no legal parties or trade unions, no parliament, limited schooling and no avenues out of poverty for the poor. 

As a result, Russia proved highly susceptible to the lure of what, in current parlance, would be called wingnuts (fanatics on the far left or right). A reader emerges from Mr Service's volume with the sobering conviction that the only enduring means of preventing political extremism is to establish and maintain healthy institutions of civil society: a tall order indeed.