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Re: Reagan, the Cold War, and the people of Eastern Europe
Originally posted by Admiral
I was going to post this in Che's Vietnam thread, but the discourse moved away from the point I wanted to make.
I really hate and despise how Reagan gets all the credit for ending the Cold War. I don't hate it because I think that Reagan did things that lengthened the cold war, or made it worse. In fact, I'm willing to accept that his policies ended up putting more international pressure on the USSR than existed before. I hate the crediting of Reagan because he was not critical to the collapse of the USSR.
The people who were are the people of the Warsaw Pact, the people making up Solidarity, the people "living in truth" in Hungary, in the Czechleslovakia, and elsewhere. It was these people who undid the totalitarian regimes in place in their countries, not by challenging it outright, but by building communities outside the jurisdiction of the State. These people were somewhat supported by the West, primarily by John Paul II and the Church, but not really by the US (where was the US in 1948? In 1956? In 1968? And didn't something go down in 1960 as well?).
It was these people who forced reform in the Warsaw Pact, who made Gorbachev realize that the USSR could not survive without restructuring, and whose power prevented Gorbachev from brutally repressing the breakaway republics the way he may have wanted to.
The dominant theory of power in the West holds that force equals power, and this has precluded recognition of the resistence in Eastern Europe. They didn't use force, they did not resort to violence (Romania is the exception), so in the eyes of many, there has to be some other impetuous for the collapse of the USSR. These people have turned to Reagan, for he is an obvious substitute. He was the most prominent anti-communist, he stepped up the rhetoric, he must be responsible.
And this really points to a greater failing. We like to look for problems in the USSR in its economy. It was Communist, therefore in its economy we can find its fatal flaws. And here, we are deluding ourselves. Yes, Reagan's arms race put a strain on the Soviet economy, but that, on its own, is meaningless. The South's economy was in shambles during the Civil War here, and yet they fought on. The economy only becomes an issue when there are greater problems.
And the real problem is the authoritarian/totalitarian state. In the Warsaw Pact, it was the violence of the state that became the problem. In the face of a hostile state, and especially with that state being the puppet of a foreign power, the power of the discontented masses won the day. Hannah Arendt argues that violence and power are mutually exclusive, and that a state perpetuated by violence must eventually fall. The Eastern Bloc demonstrates just that. The people opposed the state monopoly of violence with constructive nonviolence, building broad movements like Solidarity that did not violently challenge the state but created a system where the violence of the state became irrelevent.
In order to maintain control over the Eastern Bloc at this point, the USSR would have had to kill the vast majority of the people there. Had Gorbachev sought to retain control, he would have fought a bloody war that in the end would have failed just as the Soviets failed in Afghanistan, and we failed in Vietnam. It is in recognizing this that Gorbachev shows his leadership skills.
The question, then, is how this transfers into the implosion of the USSR. Basically, the totalitarian USSR only survived because it kept people ignorant about the West, with the people accepting their oppression because they accepted the state-constructed differences between themselves and the West. When Gorbachev allowed liberalization of the Warsaw Pact, people in the USSR demanded the same rights, especially in places like the Baltic Republics, which still remembered their pre-WWII independence. Once again, with the people on the side of reform, Gorbachev would've had to fight a very difficult guerilla war to maintain Soviet unity. It is worth noting that when the hardline communists launched a coup, the spirit of reform had spread so much that the soldiers themselves, often thought by politicians to be pawns without independent thought, identified with the reformers more than their superiors, and refused to obey orders.
So, my overall point is that the "Reagan Ended the Cold War" crowd not only distort history, they do it in such a way as to rob a truly brave group of people the recognition these people deserve. Once again, Reagan did contribute to an economic crunch that exacerbated conditions and may have shortened the USSR's life by a couple of years. But the seeds for the defeat of the USSR were sown in ashes of the Prague Spring of 1968, and were tended by the people of the Eastern Bloc. Had Reagan been the only power opposed to the USSR, we would still be in a cold war today.
I was going to post this in Che's Vietnam thread, but the discourse moved away from the point I wanted to make.
I really hate and despise how Reagan gets all the credit for ending the Cold War. I don't hate it because I think that Reagan did things that lengthened the cold war, or made it worse. In fact, I'm willing to accept that his policies ended up putting more international pressure on the USSR than existed before. I hate the crediting of Reagan because he was not critical to the collapse of the USSR.
The people who were are the people of the Warsaw Pact, the people making up Solidarity, the people "living in truth" in Hungary, in the Czechleslovakia, and elsewhere. It was these people who undid the totalitarian regimes in place in their countries, not by challenging it outright, but by building communities outside the jurisdiction of the State. These people were somewhat supported by the West, primarily by John Paul II and the Church, but not really by the US (where was the US in 1948? In 1956? In 1968? And didn't something go down in 1960 as well?).
It was these people who forced reform in the Warsaw Pact, who made Gorbachev realize that the USSR could not survive without restructuring, and whose power prevented Gorbachev from brutally repressing the breakaway republics the way he may have wanted to.
The dominant theory of power in the West holds that force equals power, and this has precluded recognition of the resistence in Eastern Europe. They didn't use force, they did not resort to violence (Romania is the exception), so in the eyes of many, there has to be some other impetuous for the collapse of the USSR. These people have turned to Reagan, for he is an obvious substitute. He was the most prominent anti-communist, he stepped up the rhetoric, he must be responsible.
And this really points to a greater failing. We like to look for problems in the USSR in its economy. It was Communist, therefore in its economy we can find its fatal flaws. And here, we are deluding ourselves. Yes, Reagan's arms race put a strain on the Soviet economy, but that, on its own, is meaningless. The South's economy was in shambles during the Civil War here, and yet they fought on. The economy only becomes an issue when there are greater problems.
And the real problem is the authoritarian/totalitarian state. In the Warsaw Pact, it was the violence of the state that became the problem. In the face of a hostile state, and especially with that state being the puppet of a foreign power, the power of the discontented masses won the day. Hannah Arendt argues that violence and power are mutually exclusive, and that a state perpetuated by violence must eventually fall. The Eastern Bloc demonstrates just that. The people opposed the state monopoly of violence with constructive nonviolence, building broad movements like Solidarity that did not violently challenge the state but created a system where the violence of the state became irrelevent.
In order to maintain control over the Eastern Bloc at this point, the USSR would have had to kill the vast majority of the people there. Had Gorbachev sought to retain control, he would have fought a bloody war that in the end would have failed just as the Soviets failed in Afghanistan, and we failed in Vietnam. It is in recognizing this that Gorbachev shows his leadership skills.
The question, then, is how this transfers into the implosion of the USSR. Basically, the totalitarian USSR only survived because it kept people ignorant about the West, with the people accepting their oppression because they accepted the state-constructed differences between themselves and the West. When Gorbachev allowed liberalization of the Warsaw Pact, people in the USSR demanded the same rights, especially in places like the Baltic Republics, which still remembered their pre-WWII independence. Once again, with the people on the side of reform, Gorbachev would've had to fight a very difficult guerilla war to maintain Soviet unity. It is worth noting that when the hardline communists launched a coup, the spirit of reform had spread so much that the soldiers themselves, often thought by politicians to be pawns without independent thought, identified with the reformers more than their superiors, and refused to obey orders.
So, my overall point is that the "Reagan Ended the Cold War" crowd not only distort history, they do it in such a way as to rob a truly brave group of people the recognition these people deserve. Once again, Reagan did contribute to an economic crunch that exacerbated conditions and may have shortened the USSR's life by a couple of years. But the seeds for the defeat of the USSR were sown in ashes of the Prague Spring of 1968, and were tended by the people of the Eastern Bloc. Had Reagan been the only power opposed to the USSR, we would still be in a cold war today.
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