By Elmina Fabon Fallar
THE crisis between Russia and Ukraine should urge anyone to know more about these two countries.
Russia is the largest country in Asia. Its capital is Moscow. Russia’s area is 6,592,800 square miles. It comprises the territory of Asia extending West from the Bering Sea to the Baltic Sea and South from the Arctic Ocean to border of China and Arabian Peninsula. Unified in the 9th century, Russia dissolved into independent dukedoms by 1240; its border fluctuated through the centuries, until the formation of the USSR in 1922. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved into independent nations. Russia joined with other nations to form the Commonwealth of Independent states.
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe, off the Black Sea. Its capital is Kiev. It is originally known as Rus. Ukraine was controlled by the Mongols in the 13th century, Lithuania in the 14th and 15th century, and Poland in the 16th century; it had a short period of independence before being absorbed by Russia, then the USSR; Ukraine declared its independence from USSR in 1991.
Communism has transformed Russia irrevocably, but in the process the ideas of communism have themselves been subjected to a profound revision. The communism that haunts or challenges the world in the last quarter of the century is not the utopian vision of Marx and Engels, or even the modified version conjured up by Lenin. It is rather the concrete realities of the new social order forged in the Soviet Union during the past decades.
The Soviet social order as a whole is unique, but its political system has certain features in common with both modern and ancient autocracies and dictatorships. Modern dictatorships that mobilize and manipulate the masses and demand their active support are called totalitarian dictatorships, in distinction from the traditional personal dictatorship or dynastic autocracy that sought to justify or preserve its rule without the active involvement of the masses.
Some reject the labels of totalitarianism. Until the 1960’s they defined the Soviet regime as a dictatorship of the proletariat. They claim that such dictatorship is essentially democratic, since it embodies a system in which a majority (workers and their allies) rule over a minority. Indeed, they reject the idea of Western democracy as being a “bourgeois” or capitalist democracy – that is, democracy for the few: the capitalists.
The political life of the Soviet Union is monopolized by a single party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the only legal political organization in the country. Highly centralized in its organization, the party, as custodian and interpreter of the official ideology, actually governs the country. It furnishes or selects the key personnel in all political, economic, military, and cultural institutions. Not only is the official ideology “total,” but control is total as well. The party does not permit the appearance of any political or social forge that could challenge its monopoly of power.
The Soviet economy is also “total” in the sense that it is almost entirely public. The Soviet state owns outright all the land, water, natural resources, industrial establishments, and financial institutions in the country. None of these can be privately owned. The entire urban working population is employed by the state or by state – and party-directed institutions. In the countryside, most of the rural population works on collective farms, which are theoretically cooperative enterprises. The state owns the land and the farms are governed by state laws and regulations.
Control of the economy is considered indispensable for a centrally directed and planned system. The Soviet state, on instructions from the party, determines the economic development of the country. The state decides what shall be produced and how much. It sets the market price of commodities as well as the wages and salaries of employees and managers. Collective bargaining and strikes are unknown in the Soviet Union. Everything is determined from the top and at the center.
No less under the control of the Soviet state than the economy is the cultural life of the country. The party and state institutions own or control all the media of communication and distribution, all schools and universities, museums, recreational facilities, libraries, newspaper, printing and publishing establishments, radio and TV stations, motion picture studios, and theaters. Control over culture and communications ensures that the party and state can condition the minds of the citizens by controlling their access to information. In the Soviet Union it is assumed that the interests of society must prevail against those of the individual and that the latter can find true freedom only as a member of society. The individual, by definition, cannot have rights and interests in opposition to those of the state. In the event of conflict, those of the individual must give way.
The new Brezhnev constitution, adopted on October 7, 1977, provides somewhat greater procedural safeguards for the enforcement of citizens’ right, and greater access for their exercise than did the previous constitution. Conversely, it spells out greater detail the duties and responsibilities of Soviet citizen, and emphasizes more explicitly the priority of the interests of the state and the collective over those of the individual. Thus article 39 of the new constitution reads, “Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe on the rights of other citizens.”
(A take-down from Modern Political Systems Europe by Roy C. Macridis)
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