incorrectly attributed to Stalin, sums up the worldview of the men andwomen who built communism and who believed that their high-minded goals justified human sacrifice. But once the omelet finally begins to fall apart—or, more accurately, once it becomes clear that the omelet was never cooked in the first place—how do you put the eggs back together again? How do you privatize hundreds of state companies? How do you re-create religious and social organizations disbanded long ago? How do you get a society made passive by years of dictatorship to become active again? How do you get people to stop using jargon and speak clearly? Though often used as shorthand, the word “democratization” doesn’t really do justice to the changes that took place—unevenly and unsteadily, faster in some places and much slower in others—in post-communist Europe and the former USSR after 1989.
Nor does democratization really define the kind of changes that need to take place in other postrevolutionary societies around the world. Many of the twentieth century’s worst dictators held power using the methods described in this book, and consciously so. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya directly adopted elements of the Soviet system, including a Soviet-style secret police force, with direct Soviet and East German assistance. Chinese, Egyptian, Syrian, Angolan, Cuban, and North Korean regimes, among others, have all received Soviet advice and training at different times too. 5 But many didn’t need explicit advice in order to imitate the Soviet Union’s drive to control economic, social, cultural, legal, and educational institutions as well as political opposition. Until 1989, the Soviet Union’s dominance of Eastern Europe seemed an excellent model for would-be dictators. But totalitarianism never worked as it was supposed to in Eastern Europe, and it never worked anywhere else either. None of the Stalinist regimes ever managed to brainwash everybody and thus eliminate all dissent forever, and neither did Stalin’s pupils nor Brezhnev’s friends in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.
Yet such regimes can and did do an enormous amount of damage. In their drive for power, the Bolsheviks, their Eastern European acolytes, and their imitators farther afield attacked not only their political opponents but also peasants, priests, schoolteachers, traders, journalists, writers, small businessmen, students, and artists, along with the institutions such people had built and maintained over centuries. They damaged, undermined, and sometimes eliminated churches, newspapers, literary and educational socie-ties, companies and retail shops, stock markets, banks, sports clubs, and universities.Their success reveals an unpleasant truth about human nature: if enough people are sufficiently determined, and if they are backed by adequate resources and force, then they can destroy ancient and apparently permanent legal, political, educational, and religious institutions, sometimes for good. And if civil society could be so deeply damaged in nations as disparate, as historic, and as culturally rich as those of Eastern Europe, then it can be similarly damaged anywhere. If nothing else, the history of postwar Stalinization proves just how fragile civilization can turn out to be.
As a result of this civilizational damage, postcommunist countries required far more than the bare institutions of “democracy”—elections, political campaigns, and political parties—to become functioning liberal societies again. They also had to create or re-create independent media, private enterprise and a legal system to support it, an educational system free of propaganda, and a civil service where promotions are given for talent, not for ideological correctness. The most successful postcommunist states are those that managed to preserve some elements of civil society throughout the communist period. This is not an accident.
Here, once again, the history of
Nor does democratization really define the kind of changes that need to take place in other postrevolutionary societies around the world. Many of the twentieth century’s worst dictators held power using the methods described in this book, and consciously so. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya directly adopted elements of the Soviet system, including a Soviet-style secret police force, with direct Soviet and East German assistance. Chinese, Egyptian, Syrian, Angolan, Cuban, and North Korean regimes, among others, have all received Soviet advice and training at different times too. 5 But many didn’t need explicit advice in order to imitate the Soviet Union’s drive to control economic, social, cultural, legal, and educational institutions as well as political opposition. Until 1989, the Soviet Union’s dominance of Eastern Europe seemed an excellent model for would-be dictators. But totalitarianism never worked as it was supposed to in Eastern Europe, and it never worked anywhere else either. None of the Stalinist regimes ever managed to brainwash everybody and thus eliminate all dissent forever, and neither did Stalin’s pupils nor Brezhnev’s friends in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.
Yet such regimes can and did do an enormous amount of damage. In their drive for power, the Bolsheviks, their Eastern European acolytes, and their imitators farther afield attacked not only their political opponents but also peasants, priests, schoolteachers, traders, journalists, writers, small businessmen, students, and artists, along with the institutions such people had built and maintained over centuries. They damaged, undermined, and sometimes eliminated churches, newspapers, literary and educational socie-ties, companies and retail shops, stock markets, banks, sports clubs, and universities.Their success reveals an unpleasant truth about human nature: if enough people are sufficiently determined, and if they are backed by adequate resources and force, then they can destroy ancient and apparently permanent legal, political, educational, and religious institutions, sometimes for good. And if civil society could be so deeply damaged in nations as disparate, as historic, and as culturally rich as those of Eastern Europe, then it can be similarly damaged anywhere. If nothing else, the history of postwar Stalinization proves just how fragile civilization can turn out to be.
As a result of this civilizational damage, postcommunist countries required far more than the bare institutions of “democracy”—elections, political campaigns, and political parties—to become functioning liberal societies again. They also had to create or re-create independent media, private enterprise and a legal system to support it, an educational system free of propaganda, and a civil service where promotions are given for talent, not for ideological correctness. The most successful postcommunist states are those that managed to preserve some elements of civil society throughout the communist period. This is not an accident.
Here, once again, the history of
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