Communism
Communism has failed in Europe because of
its lack of care for the individual,
its corrupt leaders and also because it
went against human nature. Two novels
that demonstrate this statement are the
semi-autobiographical We the Living by
Ayn Rand, and Julian Barnes' The
Porcupine. According to Ayn Rand, Communists
were pitiless. When Kira, the
protagonist of the story, begged for help to save
her lover's life, the only
answer she received from the general was "Why -
in the face of the Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics- can't one aristocrat
die?" (216). Communists say
that they want everyone to be equal and have a
good life, yet they contradict
themselves in that they don't acknowledge each
individual, which is the
make-up of their so-called "collect." Since
individuals didn't matter, people
lived poorly. In Maria Petrovna's words,
"'These are hard times, God have
pity on us, these are hard times'"
(27). Communism crushed people's hopes and
it also broke them down. " 'We
have no future,'" (27) said Simon. Barnes
showed how people didn't matter
in a Communist society by showing how people
were exhausted. "People had
been too busy, or too tired, to make love; that
was another thing that had
broken down...During the last statistical year,
the number of live births had
been exceeded both by the number of abortions
and by the number of deaths"
(63). Individual lives just didn't matter.
Because people were so unhappy, they
did not support the government. To
maintain its standing, the government had to
make sure that everyone lived in
fear. This would decrease the chance of
rebellion. In one of his articles,
Steven Morewood talks about Gorbachev, a
Communist leader. "Gorbachev
concedes 'The totalitarian model had relied on
dictatorship and violence, and
I can see that this was not acceptable to the
people'" (33) Neglect of the
individual was not Communism's only fault.
Corruption among its leaders
was also very common. In We the Living, Pavel
Syerov, a high ranking
Communist, gets involved in a corrupt business. This was
the kind of business
that he himself might have to seize and break up. The
Communist party
itself, especially its high members, became the new-hated
bourgeois class.
"The system was so corrupt and decayed as to be
unreformable," explains
Morewood (33). They lived well off while the rest
of the people suffered.
"Pavel Syerov bought a new pair of boots"
(134), while "Vasili sold the last
shade off the lamp in the drawing
room" (135). Andrei Taganov, a "Commie,"
had more money than he
knew what to do with, while Kira's family could barely
get food because they
were once bourgeois. Corruption among Communist leaders
is the major issue in
The Porcupine. The novel's main character, Stoyo
Petkanov, was the President of
a Communist Balkan state. His government was
overthrown and Petkanov was on
trial for various things, including Theft.
Embezzlement of state funds.
Corruption. Speculation. Currency offenses.
Profiteering. Complicity in the
murder of Simeon Popov....Complicity in
torture. Complicity in attempted
genocide. Innumerable conspiracies to
pervert the course of justice. (15) His
corruption was so great that his own
people hated him immensely. Atanas and
Vera, common people, accuse him of
"mass murder" and
"genocide." They also refer to him as "the bastard."
This
ironic thing about the trial is that Stoyo Petkanov was not the only
guilty of
the crimes. Almost everyone in the courtroom was guilty of one
thing or another.
The Presidents of the Court and the attorneys had nice
cars and apartments while
the common people were jobless and starving.
Everyone was a hypocrite.
Communists wanted everyone to live equally, yet
they didn't mind being above the
people. Another reason that Communism failed
in Europe was that people couldn't
automatically change. It is very hard to
change one's instincts and the ideas
that have governed our society for
hundreds of years. Our instincts are selfish,
one may say, because we'd do
anything to ensure our survival. In a life and
death situation, the "collect"
is the last thing that we have on our
minds. Everyone works for himself or
his family, not for the rest of the people.
This is not necessarily
wrong. The strong and able should be able to rise to the
top. That's the
surest way a person can perform to their fullest potential; if
they know that
there's something rewarding for them. Kira says Don't you know
that there are
things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare to
touch? This
sacred because, and only because, one can say: This is mine? Don't
you know
that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state,
by any
collective, by any number of million? (Rand, 80) Andrei, the Communist,
said
" 'No.'" (80). At the end of the novel, however, he finally
understands why
people do things. Even the "Reds" do the things that
they do because they
believe in their cause. The bottom line is that it is their
cause. Barnes
expresses the absurdity of the Communist regime through the
questions of an
innocent child. Angelina, a little girl, asks her father
"Why were there so
many soldiers when there wasn't a war? Why were there so
many apricot trees
in the countryside but never apricots in the shops? "
(26). If this little
girl had enough logic to question the conditions of her
environment, then
there was definitely something wrong in the society. The
little girl's
curiosity represents our nature, and Communism clearly went
against it.
Communism did not give people equality and justice. It only gave
them
"instability and hopelessness" (Barnes, 69). Ye Albatz states
"The use of
cruelty and violence by Communists to establish equality and
justice really
justifies its extinction" (7). There are still countries
today that have a
Communist government. North Korea and Communist China have
virtually no
relations with other countries. The Korean government wants to
"To spur the
people to harbor the spirit of self- reliance in coping with
the economic
difficulties after the suspension of aid from the Soviet
Union." (
http://www.koreascope.org/english/sub/2/1/nk1_4.htm). Their
people are
imprisoned and unhappy. Communism will probably fail there for the
same
reasons it failed in Russia. The ideals of this regime might have
the
people's good in mind, but people are people and they get carried away.
The
leaders became corrupt, they didn't care about the individual people, and
the
whole idea of Communism goes against human nature. It was virtually
impossibly
for Communism to survive.
Bibliography
Albatz, Ye.
"The CPSU was a totalitarian ruler." Moscow News July 12,
1992: v28 n3535
p.7(1) Bernard, Julian. The Porcupine. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1992.
Morewood, Steven. "Gorbachev and the Collapse of Communism. "
History
Review September 1998: n 31-p.33 (6) Rand, Ayn. We the Living. New
York,
NY: Penguin Group, 1959.
http://www.koreascope.org/english/sub/2/1/nk1_4.htm