A tale of the true communism
Lo, dear history revisionists fans of the objective truth! It's your fave provider of alternate history parables anecdotal experiences speaking again. See, today is "an" historic day in the... ehm, history of my tiny country situated on the fringe between Europe and Asia. Btw Monday was another historic day too. All in all, seems like this week is full with history here. First, September 6, 1885 is the day of the Unification of Bulgaria. Just a year after the 1878 Liberation from a 5-century old Ottoman yoke, the Great Powers decided there shouldn't be such a huge new country on the Balkans, so they decided to split it a little bit. So they split it in two, the North getting partial independence, while the South was returned to Turkey with some autonomy. But in 1885, in a daring act of political courage bordering on insanity, and in defiance of all great powers, the North and South decided to re-unite. The Porte didn't have much diplomatic space for manoeuvring at the time and it had to concede the act, but the unexpected blow came from the back - Serbia attacked the newly born country by surprise, as it didn't want to allow the creation of such a big and potentially strong neighbor. In a swift counter-attack, Bulgaria re-grouped and pushed the invaders away, and thus the Unification was confirmed and earned with blood and tears. How poetic.
Why am I saying all this. Because this is probably the first and last post-Medieval act which our guys did on their own, without any support, and in the face of all the so-called Powers (even Russia, which was at the time aspiring for Balkan domination, which was one of the main reasons it intervened back in 1878 and waged a war with Turkey, the result of which was our Liberation; but this time Russia didn't prefer a unified Balkan state - and they were told to STFU, so they did).
All the subsequent commemoration dates are of events that happened mostly under the pressure or influence of foreign powers. That's the curse of small countries, especially those located at key crossroads (like Bulgaria) - they're always disproportionately important for the bigger fish.
Today, September 9, is the day Communism arrived here in 1944. As the Red Army was kicking Hitler's ass all around Eastern Europe and back into his den, our guys swiftly switched sides. The already active resistance forces (mostly communist) in the country made a coup and they overthrew the Monarchy and installed a puppet Soviet regime.
What followed was a controversial period of "cleansing" the "reactionary fascist and capitalist elements" - you can easily guess what I'm referring to. On a side note, my grandpa on my father's side comes from a family of active participants on the Partizan communist side (two of his brothers were executed by the previous pro-fascist regime), while my great-grandpa on my mother's side was detained by the commies because he was "a decadent bourgeois" (meaning entrepreneur) and he disappeared with no traces, his properties seized. Quite a mixed family indeed, and I've heard a lot of families share such a history. Anyway.
The point is, there's still this ghost roaming the Eastern European societies. The ghost of communism. It hasn't gone away completely, even 20 years after communism fell. Many of you would probably be amazed if they saw how revered the "good communist past" is still, mostly by the older generations. And the nostalgia that those memories bring. And believe me, it's not just the usual nostalgia for times long gone which is so typical of the elders, no.
Truly, many of them remember communism for its atrocities and its grotesque manifestations. Others selectively remember only the good things (because, I assure you, there were some advantages, compared to today, though not too many - depends on your POV). But no matter what memories, good or bad, they have, it's a fact that many people around these latitudes are still recalling communism as vividly as if it happened yesterday.
But what was it really like? Does someone like me, who was just 11 when it went away, still hold some memories about communism? When you think about it, it didn't happen so long ago, just a generation back in time. Which is why so many people still remember it, and the former communist agents of the secret services are still being mentioned among those who control segments of today's social and economical life. Personally, I don't remember anything about any agents, as I was just 10-11 y.o. back then, and I was interested in very different stuff. And those who are a little younger than me don't remember anything. Granted, through the prism of my childish mind those times didn't look too bad. But...
First of all, I ought to drop a disclaimer here. Don't think that everyday life consisted of some fanatical party activists holding AK47's and roaming the streets and killing people indiscriminately, a constant revolution going on, mass executions of civilians and torture of women and babies accompanied by the occasional triumphant scream "Glory to Lenin and Stalin!!!" (yes, most slogans contained three exclamation marks at least), or anything like that. And don't think a horde of secret agents were crawling around like roaches and constantly gnawing through the pillars of society, while reporting everything they ever heard to their superiors, who, with a bored Vogon look on their face were dropping verdicts about who should live and who should die today, and they couldn't start their day without signing a dozen death sentences before breakfast. Just on the contrary.
The first thing I remember about communism was the Pioneer organization, very similar to the Boy-scouts. Actually there were two organizations: the Chavdar (kids in elementary school, who wore those blue ties) and the Pioneer organization itself (red ties, secondary school) and then the Komsomol (students organization, too old for wearing silly ties). There was a lot of brainwashing and propaganda of course, but in essence the idea was that pedagogy and education experts had the task to work with the kids in specially assigned education centers - they organized excursions and education trips (like visiting a cow farm and learning about milk production), and setting up special study groups and interest circles dealing with sciences, technology, sports and other interesting things. They were teaching us how to be good pupils, good kids, how to help the elders when crossing the street (even if they didn't want to, hehehe), how to give them way to sit in the bus; there was even a written code of the Chavdar/Pioneer, in a versed form so that the rules could be easier to memorize, etc. Quite a lot of similarities to the boy-scouts, actually. By the way here are the first six rules from the Code:
1. The Chavdar kid loves his free motherland like his own mother (sorry, can't make it in verses but in the original it really was).
2. The Chavdar kid loves work and always helps people.
3. The young Chavdars are good friends.
4. The Chavdar kid is a happy kid, he plays, sings, learns, and reads.
5. The Chavdar kid is kind and polite, he always respects the elders.
6. The Chavdar is good both at home and in school, he remembers: "I'll become a Pioneer one day!"
And surely, come age 10, the blue tie is substituted with a red one. I assure you, that was a big deal! :-)
Something the commies had a big fetish for was the "multiskill development" - something akin to the cult to the Ubermensch in the Nazis. Everyone had to be decently competent in as many spheres of life and knowledge as possible - which meant anyone after the age of 12-14 could change a light bulb, or a flat tyre, and most of us knew 90% of the world's capital cities by heart. We were all so smart, eh? :-)
The ideal was "A good spirit in a healthy body", and there were tons of books (for both young and old) which explained in great detail the basics of healthy food, physical shape, the importance of social relations (how important friends are), etc. There were all sorts of magazines for teenagers - both Bulgarian and Russian literature (Russian was compulsory in school, which is why my Russian is pretty decent still; the similarity of the two languages surely helps too), which were almost free - for a symbolic price you'd get a yearly subscription to all sorts of scientific stuff - biology, physics, electronics, computers, painting, you name it. And some awesome books, most of them translated from Russian, which you'd never, ever be able to find for your kid today - how to do cool chemical experiments at home, how to grow certain bacteria colonies at home, how to look around for specific animal species in the wild nature, how to construct a radio on your own, how to build a boat, how to raise a tent, how to give first aid after a car accident, all cool stuff.
When I became 4th grade (10 y.o.) some smartheads in my school board decided to make me the Supervisor of my class for the Political Activities (huh!?) But instead of writing any declarations about joining the secret services as you might've imagined at first, and getting a cool agent pseudonym like Agent Molotov, and instead of embarking on the rather demanding task of exposing the secret imperialist spies among my class-mates, and reporting who's illegally using unauthorized soft toilet paper smuggled from West Germany... me, like any other 10 y.o. brat who's fond of war games in the street, didn't have any idea what that animal called "political activity" really was supposed to look like. My teacher used to advise me to watch the news on the TV, and that was it. Well, I said to myself, that shouldn't be too hard then, it's just too damn boring but anyway.
And just when I was becoming politically aware, Democracy exploded! And it spared me the pain of joining the Komsomol, and probably ending up studying Political Sciences in Moscow, and making a career in the Politburo. All glory to capitalism! :-)
So I reckon my communist childhood was pretty much the perfect childhood - we weren't wealthy but we weren't poor either; in fact wealth and poverty were irrelevant for 99% of the people. The remaining 1% were the party Nomenclature and those with the good connections, but that's an entirely different league. What I remember from my immediate impressions is the perfect social organization (and truly sociable people), law and order (almost absolute lack of crime - of any sorts), a sense of purpose in life (which, if you read further, you'll see why it was so hollow a sense) and, well, indeed the narrow frames in which one was allowed to move and develop. One could clearly see the options in front of him, and choose from 2 or 3 available paths, and follow the path without diverting (what happens to those who tried to step out of the path, I learned only later). All in all, the purpose of the system was to make everyone a perfect bolt in the larger machine of the utopian communist society. If you accepted the offer, you'd have a decent life. If you didn't, well...
As a matter of fact, despite all the political propaganda and the communist brainwashing, the end result was the creation of a multitude of awake, studious, curious, highly cultured and highly skilled young members of society. Because kids, unlike adults, haven't put freedom anywhere near the top of their priority list; what they need more is attention, empathy, care and guidance. And they did get it in excessive amounts. The HUGE mistake of the system was that it treated its adults the same way like it treated its kids - it believed that it knew better than them what's best for them, and it didn't miss an opportunity to remind them of that. And thus, gradually, during the teen years (which they called adolescence), the lack of freedom to move and develop along your own chosen path would eventually turn those awake, curious, cultured and skilled kids into identical robots as if cast from the same mould, inactive adults, who were used to sitting on their asses without doing much more than following their tasks, without raising their head too much, because the system had its effective mechanisms to squash them in a minute - a tightly knit society which was pretty much self regulating morally and socially, a planned but stagnating economy which relied heavily on ineffective use of financial and natural resources, and a mass of people who turned out to be spiritually crushed, socially inadaptive and mentally handicapped. And that's the big trouble of the subsequent decades. You can't build a brand new society with the old people, with their old mentalities and the old ways. An entire generation will have to pass before the traces of the old regime are entirely gone, much like the story of Moses and his people in Exodus.
But you see, here's an interesting point. Many of us here, all intelligent people, tend to take history for granted - I mean that history which is being served to us. I'm sure many of you good people who've never lived under communism already have your own impressions and convictions and beliefs about how communism must have looked like - these perceptions have been formed through what you've seen in your media, the books you've read, the movies you've watched and maybe the testimonies of friends. But in fact history is not a sum of facts. Actually history happens to be those facts plus their interpretation. We all know the proverb: "History is written by the winners". History is definitely not like physics, or mathematics, or astronomy. The Sun is just there. In history you have books written by people. I can give even more examples of how the history of one and the same event has changed drastically in the history books, including the interpretation of today, September 9, 1944, which is revered by some while hated by others. History is written by the winners. It's full of interpretations. The stuff you read in your history books and which you're all citing with such certainty and conviction was written by someone who had their beliefs and biases. At the time they wrote it, they had a certain background, political context and they couldn't write just whatever they saw. Even ancient historians did that trick, either for fear of persecution from the authorities, or because of their own biases and tendency to auto-censorship. That's why the accounts of most historians, and anything you ever read or hear about history, to that matter, should be taken with a huge grain of salt, especially regarding the more controversial subjects - like communism. And especially when direct evidence is scarce.
And nothing is just black or white. Including communism. Its model had some huge cracks, in its name people committed enormous atrocities which will hang over its perpetrators forever, and it had its advantages and achievements, and it can probably offer even some lessons to be learned from it too.
While there are pieces of historical evidence, anything that has been written anywhere should be taken with a healthy dose of suspicion. Even the prevailing political consensus tends to change over time. History is not frozen. It's very hard to find out what really happened at a given moment, and more importantly why exactly it happened, unless you have a time machine. What we call the "standard accepted interpretation among historians" is actually what most historians have agreed to believe and preach at the present moment, in correspondence to the prevailing public perceptions at the moment, and this has lots to do with political correctness, which tends to change over time in accordance to the dominating discourse and agenda. Like racism - we say "this person is no hero, he was racist" - well of course he was, 100.0% of all people were racist at his time. Context is essential.
Even physics and astronomy, which are considered "exact sciences" are evolving all the time. New evidence brings alterations to the old concepts, and sometimes whole new hypotheses are born. Even exact sciences change all the time, let alone humanitarian sciences like history. There's nothing like an "eternal consensus". And "common sense" is something science (of any sorts) should run away from like water from oil. I've said it before: The University Of Common Knowledge, Faculty Of It Stands To Reason, Department Of One Guy Told Me So At The Bar is a territory of TV pundits and election campaigners offering their spin and throwing talking-points at the public. If we really insist being objective, we should be prepared to use the realistic and logical approach, not the tricks that propaganda guys use. Believe me, I've seen how propaganda works on a mass level, even if at a very young age. For some period, I was myself subject to it. And I can sortof recognize when we're being subject to it even today.
Ps. And anyone who ever mentions the terms "socialist" and "communist" in any relation to any politician in the US, should know that this is just stupid and insane. America has never seen real socialism, let alone communism. And it probably never will. For good or bad.
Why am I saying all this. Because this is probably the first and last post-Medieval act which our guys did on their own, without any support, and in the face of all the so-called Powers (even Russia, which was at the time aspiring for Balkan domination, which was one of the main reasons it intervened back in 1878 and waged a war with Turkey, the result of which was our Liberation; but this time Russia didn't prefer a unified Balkan state - and they were told to STFU, so they did).
All the subsequent commemoration dates are of events that happened mostly under the pressure or influence of foreign powers. That's the curse of small countries, especially those located at key crossroads (like Bulgaria) - they're always disproportionately important for the bigger fish.
Today, September 9, is the day Communism arrived here in 1944. As the Red Army was kicking Hitler's ass all around Eastern Europe and back into his den, our guys swiftly switched sides. The already active resistance forces (mostly communist) in the country made a coup and they overthrew the Monarchy and installed a puppet Soviet regime.
What followed was a controversial period of "cleansing" the "reactionary fascist and capitalist elements" - you can easily guess what I'm referring to. On a side note, my grandpa on my father's side comes from a family of active participants on the Partizan communist side (two of his brothers were executed by the previous pro-fascist regime), while my great-grandpa on my mother's side was detained by the commies because he was "a decadent bourgeois" (meaning entrepreneur) and he disappeared with no traces, his properties seized. Quite a mixed family indeed, and I've heard a lot of families share such a history. Anyway.
The point is, there's still this ghost roaming the Eastern European societies. The ghost of communism. It hasn't gone away completely, even 20 years after communism fell. Many of you would probably be amazed if they saw how revered the "good communist past" is still, mostly by the older generations. And the nostalgia that those memories bring. And believe me, it's not just the usual nostalgia for times long gone which is so typical of the elders, no.
Truly, many of them remember communism for its atrocities and its grotesque manifestations. Others selectively remember only the good things (because, I assure you, there were some advantages, compared to today, though not too many - depends on your POV). But no matter what memories, good or bad, they have, it's a fact that many people around these latitudes are still recalling communism as vividly as if it happened yesterday.
But what was it really like? Does someone like me, who was just 11 when it went away, still hold some memories about communism? When you think about it, it didn't happen so long ago, just a generation back in time. Which is why so many people still remember it, and the former communist agents of the secret services are still being mentioned among those who control segments of today's social and economical life. Personally, I don't remember anything about any agents, as I was just 10-11 y.o. back then, and I was interested in very different stuff. And those who are a little younger than me don't remember anything. Granted, through the prism of my childish mind those times didn't look too bad. But...
First of all, I ought to drop a disclaimer here. Don't think that everyday life consisted of some fanatical party activists holding AK47's and roaming the streets and killing people indiscriminately, a constant revolution going on, mass executions of civilians and torture of women and babies accompanied by the occasional triumphant scream "Glory to Lenin and Stalin!!!" (yes, most slogans contained three exclamation marks at least), or anything like that. And don't think a horde of secret agents were crawling around like roaches and constantly gnawing through the pillars of society, while reporting everything they ever heard to their superiors, who, with a bored Vogon look on their face were dropping verdicts about who should live and who should die today, and they couldn't start their day without signing a dozen death sentences before breakfast. Just on the contrary.
The first thing I remember about communism was the Pioneer organization, very similar to the Boy-scouts. Actually there were two organizations: the Chavdar (kids in elementary school, who wore those blue ties) and the Pioneer organization itself (red ties, secondary school) and then the Komsomol (students organization, too old for wearing silly ties). There was a lot of brainwashing and propaganda of course, but in essence the idea was that pedagogy and education experts had the task to work with the kids in specially assigned education centers - they organized excursions and education trips (like visiting a cow farm and learning about milk production), and setting up special study groups and interest circles dealing with sciences, technology, sports and other interesting things. They were teaching us how to be good pupils, good kids, how to help the elders when crossing the street (even if they didn't want to, hehehe), how to give them way to sit in the bus; there was even a written code of the Chavdar/Pioneer, in a versed form so that the rules could be easier to memorize, etc. Quite a lot of similarities to the boy-scouts, actually. By the way here are the first six rules from the Code:
1. The Chavdar kid loves his free motherland like his own mother (sorry, can't make it in verses but in the original it really was).
2. The Chavdar kid loves work and always helps people.
3. The young Chavdars are good friends.
4. The Chavdar kid is a happy kid, he plays, sings, learns, and reads.
5. The Chavdar kid is kind and polite, he always respects the elders.
6. The Chavdar is good both at home and in school, he remembers: "I'll become a Pioneer one day!"
And surely, come age 10, the blue tie is substituted with a red one. I assure you, that was a big deal! :-)
Something the commies had a big fetish for was the "multiskill development" - something akin to the cult to the Ubermensch in the Nazis. Everyone had to be decently competent in as many spheres of life and knowledge as possible - which meant anyone after the age of 12-14 could change a light bulb, or a flat tyre, and most of us knew 90% of the world's capital cities by heart. We were all so smart, eh? :-)
The ideal was "A good spirit in a healthy body", and there were tons of books (for both young and old) which explained in great detail the basics of healthy food, physical shape, the importance of social relations (how important friends are), etc. There were all sorts of magazines for teenagers - both Bulgarian and Russian literature (Russian was compulsory in school, which is why my Russian is pretty decent still; the similarity of the two languages surely helps too), which were almost free - for a symbolic price you'd get a yearly subscription to all sorts of scientific stuff - biology, physics, electronics, computers, painting, you name it. And some awesome books, most of them translated from Russian, which you'd never, ever be able to find for your kid today - how to do cool chemical experiments at home, how to grow certain bacteria colonies at home, how to look around for specific animal species in the wild nature, how to construct a radio on your own, how to build a boat, how to raise a tent, how to give first aid after a car accident, all cool stuff.
When I became 4th grade (10 y.o.) some smartheads in my school board decided to make me the Supervisor of my class for the Political Activities (huh!?) But instead of writing any declarations about joining the secret services as you might've imagined at first, and getting a cool agent pseudonym like Agent Molotov, and instead of embarking on the rather demanding task of exposing the secret imperialist spies among my class-mates, and reporting who's illegally using unauthorized soft toilet paper smuggled from West Germany... me, like any other 10 y.o. brat who's fond of war games in the street, didn't have any idea what that animal called "political activity" really was supposed to look like. My teacher used to advise me to watch the news on the TV, and that was it. Well, I said to myself, that shouldn't be too hard then, it's just too damn boring but anyway.
And just when I was becoming politically aware, Democracy exploded! And it spared me the pain of joining the Komsomol, and probably ending up studying Political Sciences in Moscow, and making a career in the Politburo. All glory to capitalism! :-)
So I reckon my communist childhood was pretty much the perfect childhood - we weren't wealthy but we weren't poor either; in fact wealth and poverty were irrelevant for 99% of the people. The remaining 1% were the party Nomenclature and those with the good connections, but that's an entirely different league. What I remember from my immediate impressions is the perfect social organization (and truly sociable people), law and order (almost absolute lack of crime - of any sorts), a sense of purpose in life (which, if you read further, you'll see why it was so hollow a sense) and, well, indeed the narrow frames in which one was allowed to move and develop. One could clearly see the options in front of him, and choose from 2 or 3 available paths, and follow the path without diverting (what happens to those who tried to step out of the path, I learned only later). All in all, the purpose of the system was to make everyone a perfect bolt in the larger machine of the utopian communist society. If you accepted the offer, you'd have a decent life. If you didn't, well...
As a matter of fact, despite all the political propaganda and the communist brainwashing, the end result was the creation of a multitude of awake, studious, curious, highly cultured and highly skilled young members of society. Because kids, unlike adults, haven't put freedom anywhere near the top of their priority list; what they need more is attention, empathy, care and guidance. And they did get it in excessive amounts. The HUGE mistake of the system was that it treated its adults the same way like it treated its kids - it believed that it knew better than them what's best for them, and it didn't miss an opportunity to remind them of that. And thus, gradually, during the teen years (which they called adolescence), the lack of freedom to move and develop along your own chosen path would eventually turn those awake, curious, cultured and skilled kids into identical robots as if cast from the same mould, inactive adults, who were used to sitting on their asses without doing much more than following their tasks, without raising their head too much, because the system had its effective mechanisms to squash them in a minute - a tightly knit society which was pretty much self regulating morally and socially, a planned but stagnating economy which relied heavily on ineffective use of financial and natural resources, and a mass of people who turned out to be spiritually crushed, socially inadaptive and mentally handicapped. And that's the big trouble of the subsequent decades. You can't build a brand new society with the old people, with their old mentalities and the old ways. An entire generation will have to pass before the traces of the old regime are entirely gone, much like the story of Moses and his people in Exodus.
But you see, here's an interesting point. Many of us here, all intelligent people, tend to take history for granted - I mean that history which is being served to us. I'm sure many of you good people who've never lived under communism already have your own impressions and convictions and beliefs about how communism must have looked like - these perceptions have been formed through what you've seen in your media, the books you've read, the movies you've watched and maybe the testimonies of friends. But in fact history is not a sum of facts. Actually history happens to be those facts plus their interpretation. We all know the proverb: "History is written by the winners". History is definitely not like physics, or mathematics, or astronomy. The Sun is just there. In history you have books written by people. I can give even more examples of how the history of one and the same event has changed drastically in the history books, including the interpretation of today, September 9, 1944, which is revered by some while hated by others. History is written by the winners. It's full of interpretations. The stuff you read in your history books and which you're all citing with such certainty and conviction was written by someone who had their beliefs and biases. At the time they wrote it, they had a certain background, political context and they couldn't write just whatever they saw. Even ancient historians did that trick, either for fear of persecution from the authorities, or because of their own biases and tendency to auto-censorship. That's why the accounts of most historians, and anything you ever read or hear about history, to that matter, should be taken with a huge grain of salt, especially regarding the more controversial subjects - like communism. And especially when direct evidence is scarce.
And nothing is just black or white. Including communism. Its model had some huge cracks, in its name people committed enormous atrocities which will hang over its perpetrators forever, and it had its advantages and achievements, and it can probably offer even some lessons to be learned from it too.
While there are pieces of historical evidence, anything that has been written anywhere should be taken with a healthy dose of suspicion. Even the prevailing political consensus tends to change over time. History is not frozen. It's very hard to find out what really happened at a given moment, and more importantly why exactly it happened, unless you have a time machine. What we call the "standard accepted interpretation among historians" is actually what most historians have agreed to believe and preach at the present moment, in correspondence to the prevailing public perceptions at the moment, and this has lots to do with political correctness, which tends to change over time in accordance to the dominating discourse and agenda. Like racism - we say "this person is no hero, he was racist" - well of course he was, 100.0% of all people were racist at his time. Context is essential.
Even physics and astronomy, which are considered "exact sciences" are evolving all the time. New evidence brings alterations to the old concepts, and sometimes whole new hypotheses are born. Even exact sciences change all the time, let alone humanitarian sciences like history. There's nothing like an "eternal consensus". And "common sense" is something science (of any sorts) should run away from like water from oil. I've said it before: The University Of Common Knowledge, Faculty Of It Stands To Reason, Department Of One Guy Told Me So At The Bar is a territory of TV pundits and election campaigners offering their spin and throwing talking-points at the public. If we really insist being objective, we should be prepared to use the realistic and logical approach, not the tricks that propaganda guys use. Believe me, I've seen how propaganda works on a mass level, even if at a very young age. For some period, I was myself subject to it. And I can sortof recognize when we're being subject to it even today.
Ps. And anyone who ever mentions the terms "socialist" and "communist" in any relation to any politician in the US, should know that this is just stupid and insane. America has never seen real socialism, let alone communism. And it probably never will. For good or bad.