Modern revolutionists — And the failed revolutions — Part I

Has always revolutions worked out as planned ? Well to answer this question is a bit tricky but hasn’t it always been a tricky one ? Yeah that’s right politics is all about who’s got the best tricks in their bag. The group with the best tricks win, either it is a democracy, republic, communist or a socialist country. I am pretty sure that you all must have heard these terms at least once in your life time and some of them sounds more similar while some of them hold more opposing views (at least from what you know).

As for the Oxford dictionary a democracy is “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives” where as republic is “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch”

Let’s try their counter parts then for a change, communism is : “a theory or a system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.” where as socialism stands for “a political and economical theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”

So what did you get ? didn’t get anything right ? Yeah indeed I had to read a couple of times to figure out the differences and here’s what I understood a democracy or a republic is something that governs it’s people with an appointed set of representatives where as socialism or communism is more of a people oriented governing system where the wealth is supposed to be equally distributed among it’s people.

So what do you think ? has any of these systems succeeded ? I mean you might have seen all sorts of different governing entities over the years right ? I believe you must have heard of the Soviet Union, the Cold War Period and then the modern Democracies such as the US or even one of my closest neighbours, India (the largest democracy in the world, probably won’t talk about India and our rivalries in this article, trying to give it a break). Well getting back to the discussion let me start off with socialism and it’s very root the Soviet Union. Even though the communist manifesto originated in Europe compiled by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and gave the uprising to a considerable amount of political bodies across Europe, Soviet Russia was the first state to embrace communism into their ruling bodies in 1917 by Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. However over time the Soviet Russia expanded or to be put correctly, annexed most of it’s bordering nations by invading these countries to build the Soviet Union. There were 15 republics in the Soviet Union. Over the course of around fifty years Soviet Union became one of the leading powers of the world. They had the technology, military, intelligence (KGB), man power and many more. They were actually a threat to the now so called leading power of the west, the US. Well of course if you asked someone in the US about this, they would say it never was but the truth being said Russia is still vulnerable to US. This constant war between the US and the Soviet Union was the reason for the Cold War, the partition of the West and the East Germany. Not only that they have had influenced a lot of other governments across the world, that’s exactly how we (Sri Lanka) became a socialist state in the 70’s (this is the sovereign constitution that freed us from the liability to her majesties government, unfortunately or fortunately at the end of the decade our constitution was amended again to form a democracy that’s open to free trade, I’ll talk more about that later). The communism in Vietnam that lead to a long lasting civil war, the communism in Cuba are some of it’s best influences.

You might now be wondering so why did the Soviet Russia failed if it was such a success ? Well building up a large empire or a Union isn’t that easy, over the years we have seen Unions of different interests form and then gets dissolved, such as the states that combines to form a union territory for example the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, then comes the Unions of interests like the European Union, NATO, Common Wealth, or even the non-aligned movements. But not all these will stay together forever, there are a couple of reasons for such unions to get dissolved; for example the racial diversity of the different states, if the states are racially, ethnically or even religiously diverse, it’s bound to create conflicts, it’s not a question of if but rather a question when. Even though the states are combined these states do have independent entities such as the states governments and what if the state governments doesn’t want to cooperate with the central government, their ideologies and the points of interests are different ? What then ? that’s another start to a conflict which might finally lead to a dissolution. Then there could be political rivalries such as Pakistan leaving the common wealth when East Pakistan got separated to form Bangladesh or the politico-financial propagandas like the Britain leaving the EU with the Brexit. In addition to these reasons there were some sociological reasons as to why the Soviet Union failed. As for communism the country’s economy is said to be stabilised and the income inequalities are maintained at a lower level. However it is natural that we human tend to have the need to make more, we like a little bit of competition, budding business is literally a nightmare in a communist country. In addition to that the command of order was a huge issue in the Soviet Union, you will be given orders from high up the hierarchy and all you have to do was act, no questions asked. There were a lot of such issues and problematic orders issued from the higher hierarchical authorities that lead to devastating catastrophes, one such incident was the the Chernobyl accident.

The royalty had all the luxury they want while it’s people suffered. No matter how hard the common man worked, none of them could go beyond their reach, yeah the income was distributed equally among everyone depending on their contribution to the state. This is one of the main reasons as to why democracies are still functioning even though they have their own issues. Generally a democracy functions alongside with capitalistic polices such as the free trade and open markets. As human we have a tendency to collect more, we believe that more wealth is the key to happiness and this is not possible with a communist or a socialist government, no matter how hard they work, they’ll all be at the same level. As Winston Churchill says “Socialism is all about everyone sharing the misery of living altogether”. There won’t be any short cuts to make more money and become rich. This is exactly why the Soviet Union failed, people were done with living a normal life, hard work does not pays off for a satisfactory life. They needed improvements, they needed a change in their monotonous life. I mean if you are reading this now, staying at home for the last two to three months, you probably have had a glimpse of how it feels to live a monotonous life right ? so it’s exactly something like that but rather in a complicated state.

If the citizens of the Soviet Union were so happy, fulfilled and satisfied to share their miseries why did the angry mob brought down the statues in Leningrad in 1990, why was the people looking for a political reformation ? Why did the republics seek for the separation ? Why was Leningrad renamed to St Petersburg after the dissolution of the Soviet Union ? (FYI before Leningrad it was called Petrograd). Not just that, the Soviet Union did not dissolve with a bunch of happy memories and success stories, it did not ! But rather with some dark memories that still haunts some of their former federal subjects. Let me tell you about few of the biggest blunders made by the former Soviet Union; to start off with you have the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine which is quite famous and probably most you know it. The nuclear reactor that exploded causing a catastrophic damage to the humans, wild animal and even the nature. The damage is irreversible, even to this day the evacuated cities are shut down a 30km of the radius is considered as an alienated zone, it will take approximately over 20000 years until the area will be re-habitable, until it’s free of radioactive decay. So that was Ukraine let’s now move towards Uzbekistan, well it’s another Central Asian country most of you doesn’t know much about this place but I’ve personally had the pleasure of associating some of Uzbek’s and they are some of the nicest people on earth, very friendly and helpful. Well getting back to the point, what went wrong in Uzbekistan ? Ever heard of a dying sea in Uzbekistan ? it’s called the Aral sea and it’s a huge lake that’s situated between the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. So what went wrong ? During the period of the Soviet Union, they were looking for techniques to improve the cotton production within their federal teritories, so they diverted the water inflow that took fresh waters into the Aral Sea towards the cotton plantation sites. This in turn created a huge bio hazard, first the Aral sea started shrinking in and then came the pollution. Without fresh water connections inwards there’s no proper water cycles and without proper water cycles the water will start to get spoiled creating huge biological catastrophes. Finally I have another huge humanitarian blunder made by the Soviet Union and there are people who suffers from this to this day. We all know when the Soviet Union annexed most of it’s republics they had to invade or sometimes attack them. So moving a little bit further down their union territories they followed the same procedure with Afghanistan in the late 70’s. They have displaced countless number of Afghanis from the nine years long conflict with the Afghani government and the insurgent groups. People have lost their families, their prophecies, their occupation, their dignity, these are perfect grounds to breed insurgent ideologies into the heads of their people. This is exactly what created the breading grounds for the Afghani insurgents, militias or simply put the Thalibans. The problem here is that by the time the Soviet’s left Afghanistan, it was left in a reckless state, it has gone beyond repairs, anger, hatred took over the place and then came in the religious cults. They took the best advantage of this situation to spread the extremist ideologies, which in turn swallowed Afghanistan as a hungry tiger gulping a loaf of meat after ages. Even to this day they are in a constant state of war, I know how it feels to be born and raised in a middle of a war, the fear, anger and the hatred that runs through your blood.

It’s been a decade since the civil war in Sri Lanka ended but the dark memories of war still haunts in me.

This episode is not over yet but it’s getting too long so I will continue with the rest next week. Until then let me finish off with a quote I came across :

“The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn’t work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds good”. — Thomas Sowell