The towering scholars in the area of Eastern and Central European studies have analyzed Communism as the failed modernization of Russia. Although operating as a secular ideocracy – to recall a brilliant term first employed by Raymond Aron and then reinterpreted by Ernest Gellner – and as a messianic promise of collective salvation, Soviet Communism was always reminiscent of the nearly Byzantine sacrosanct structure of symbolic authority, and the fusion of the sacral and secular elements of power. Modern in intent, yet archaic in symbolic organization, Soviet Communism is likely to continue puzzling and striking, for a long time, many Western scholars as a false promise of modernity with a human face. Therefore, an apt comparison of Communism and Protestantism initiated by Max Weber sheds new light on Communism as a failed civilization-shaping movement.
Analyzing the reasons and sources of the Western misconceptions of the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian émigré political scientist Aleksandras Shtromas subscribed to the point of view of the French philosopher and political scientist Alain Besançon, who succinctly suggested that “failure to understand the Soviet regime is the principal cause of its successes.” Shtromas was starting his harsh criticism of the Western misconceptions of the nature and logic of the Soviet regime from a valuable remark that the Soviet Union by no means represents a continuation of the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire. To think otherwise, according to Shtromas, is a self-deception, “for the Soviet Union is first and foremost an ideological state whose very substance is Communism and whose rulers have at heart only one single interest, that of Communist domination, not only over Russia and its vicinities, but over the entire world.”
Interestingly enough, the distinction that Shtromas makes between the ancien régime of pre-revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union stands in sharp contrast not only to the aforementioned identification of the two widespread in the West, but also to a theory worked out, after 1990, by some politicians in the Baltic countries, according to which the Soviet Union was nothing other than the same old Russian Empire masquerading as a Communist state.
RELATED ARTICLE: Toomas Hendrik Ilves: “We are clearly at the beginning of a period where Russia is a very different partner”
The former Chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament, Vytautas Landsbergis, whose name had long been and continues to be raised as the banner of the independence movement in Lithuania, made it clear that Communism was nothing more than a perfect disguise for Russian imperialism.Like his lifelong friend Aleksandras Shtromas, the Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova has never accepted the political and moral equivalency between Communism and Russian imperialism. In the light of the resurgence of imperialism and the resulting rise of fascism in Russiathat it projects onto Ukraine so cynically and shamelessly, this question seems far from trivial and easy, though.
A high-profile Soviet dissident irreconcilable with the Soviet regime that spoke and acted in its name, Shtromas dismissed all considerations about the alleged fanaticism and ideological single-mindedness of the Soviet people as ill-founded political propaganda. Instead of searching for the special qualities of homo sovieticus or depicting the allegedly ever-present fanaticism and ideological zeal of Russians or the “Soviet people,” he focused on the analysis of the Communist Party and Marxist-Leninist ideology as the sword and the shield of the Soviet regime.
RELATED ARTICLE: The Red Thaw in Eastern Europe
According to Shtromas, the Communist Party is the sole political party-based and oligarchic regime, or partocracy, which wages the never-ending war against its own society, while pretending to be constantly surrounded and plotted against by external and internal enemies – this Orwellian hypothesis regarding the nature of Communism was employed in many of Shtromas’ contributions.
Ernest Gellner aptly described the fall of Communism in 1989-1990 as sudden death of a rival civilization which proudly asserted its legitimacy as heir to the Enlightenment. In fact, it fell in the most banal way leaving the entire generations of Eastern European societies in a political and moral void. It was as if the Pope has declared one day that the whole world of Roman Catholicism was just a huge historic mistake and fiction. People in Eastern and Central Europe were confronted by a cruel question as to whether they were fools or cowards or cynics, and if their lives were wasted and lost.
Lithuania has abandoned Communism in a rather decisive manner. The most important aspect of that story was a strong rejection of the KGB in all its incarnations, whether in administration, new entrepreneurship, or political class. Needless to say, some of high-ranking party officials played a role in Lithuanian politics after 1990, yet nobody had even the slightest doubts about the legitimacy and validity of the independent state of Lithuania. Yet one thing has to be discussed here. Whereas Latvia and Estonia had long regarded their respective Communist Parties as dominated by ethnic Russians both from within and from without, and rightly so, Lithuanian Communists prized their overt and unquestionable domination in their party.
RELATED ARTICLE: Russia and Europe: The Splendour of Money and the Misery of Philosophy
I remember how some of my Estonian colleagues were poking fun on Lithuania in 1992 after the then stunning victory of the former Communist Party in the parliamentary elections. However, the fact was that ever since that party closed ranks with their archrivals and had no gaps concerning Lithuania’s top priorities in foreign policies, such as accession to NATO and the EU. Although the country is still divided when it comes to assess the role of Antanas Sniečkus, the former head of the Communist Party who is said to have been an ardent Stalinist with an oddly sentimental attachmentto Lithuanian culture, nobody has ever put into question the fact that the country was united in its dedication to get rid of the legacy of Communism and join the family of European nations.
