Remembering communism

TWENTY years ago, the East German government announced the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Within hours, chisel-wielding crowds streamed on either side of divided Germany like waves crashing on embankments. On the night of November 9, 1989, they started dismantling the 103-mile barrier piece by piece, tearing down one of the most consequential symbols of the Cold War. But the ramparts of an ideology crumbled with the wall. Communism altogether perished in east central Europe and the Soviet Union, and then almost evaporated in rest of the world.

More than 40 years of communist rule ended in the Soviet Union. The next wave hit Poland where Solidarity organised its own civil society against the communist authorities. One by one, communist regimes fell in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. Embers of it lingered in countries like China, North Korea, Nepal, etc. Everywhere else, the most influential ideology of the 20th century withered like an idea whose time had gone.

But the idea by then had cost nearly 92 million lives only between China, the Soviet Union and Cambodia. Countless others died in Asia and Africa due to civil strife, armed conflict, persecution, starvation, and sickness arising from the struggle to configure communism in state apparatus. Millions of idealism-imbibed minds spurned material success in their frenzy to abolish poverty, hunger and inequality from the world.

Communism perhaps had the highest number of converts for a concept that promised no reward in the next life. It had somehow fired the imagination of young minds, which were determined to eradicate exploitation and oppression of man by man. Their dedication and commitment were marked by exemplary sacrifice. For years, the story of Sofia Perovskaia inspired young revolutionaries. In 1881, she and her friends murdered the Czar, and they were hanged for their crime.

At the foot of the gallows, Sofia kissed her lover Jeliabov who died smiling. But she turned away from her comrade Ryssakov out of scorn, because he had broken down during interrogation and behaved like a coward. At the time of hanging, he was dragged to the scaffolds, half-mad with fear and an embarrassment to the revolution.

It's amazing how the most powerful revolution of the twentieth century abruptly sputtered out. May be, after all it was not so abrupt. Some thinkers are of the view that communism died a slow death, its collapse coming as a natural outcome of its degeneration, the gradual rotting of its entire core.

"Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit," Ignazio Silone wrote. So what is the fruit of communism? How do we judge a revolution, whose upheavals left millions dead and which then suddenly vanished like fleeting smoke? These days nobody discusses Das Kapital anymore. Nobody talks about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. What about the Surplus Value of Labour? What has happened to Dialectical Materialism?

Net-net communism has been its own nemesis. It has been defeated in its fight to defeat capitalism. A survey shows that atheists have been a rapidly declining percentage of world population. The credit goes to the fall of communism. About two-thirds of the world's atheist population lived in China. One other factor of diminishing atheist population is ascribed to far higher birth rates amongst religious people.

Here is a note of caution. With the fall of communism, coerced atheism has rapidly fallen. But voluntary atheism and other forms of voluntary non-belief are clearly on the rise. So where is the world heading in the post-communism world? We are living in more affluent societies. The world is more technically advanced. But there is a growing sense of moral inadequacy. Crime is on the rise. Corruption has corroded conscience.

Former communist countries are showing the signs of withdrawal symptom. The Czech Republic is a leading producer of pornography today, while Sofia and Gdansk attract tourists as thriving markets for flesh trade. Russia is a hotbed of child prostitution, and the growing notoriety of the Russian underworld is no secret. Once madly doctrinaire, these countries are reeling from metaphysical chaos.

Constantine Pleshakov, a history professor at Mount Holyoke College, argues that the free market can impoverish a nation as effectively as central planning. The economic impact of a political ideology is subject to discourse. But the intellectual impact is no less intricate. Once deeply espoused, what boils the blood with idealistic fury also freezes it over with nihilistic chill.

Ideology as a specifically sociological concept originated in the work of Karl Marx. The rise of communism was the rise of ideology. So, when the Berlin Wall collapsed, it also smashed the hope of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production.

On the twentieth anniversary, the crumbled wall reminds us of a shattered dream. All men are created equal, but only they could create equality.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a columnist for The Daily Star. Email: badrul151@yahoo.com