From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Who toppled Communism??
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:36:52 GMT
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <ednschmi.714878159@kraken> ednschmi@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (John Schmidt) writes:

>The trouble with trying to credit any American for the fall of communism is
>that it minimises the bravery and determination of the people who continued
>with demonstrations in the face of well-armed troops and tanks etc.

	That's like saying that acknowledging the fact that Lend-Lease
was essential to British (and arguably of Soviet) survival during
World War II minimizes the bravery and determination shown during the
Battle of Britain or the Siege of Stalingrad.  There's plenty of
credit to go around, here.  And it's a simple fact that if the United
States and the West had _not_ existed, then the collapse of the Soviet
bloc would have happened with very different timing and very different
results.  How much of this was a matter of deliberate strategy may be
argued (though I think it was significant), but the very existence of
rich, successful, free democracies made a hollow mockery of Soviet
claims of being the most efficient form of government and the way to
true freedom.  The existence of a free press somewhere made it
possible for ideas to come into existence which could then filter into
police states.  The existence of rapidly developing technologies made
it impossible for the Soviets to simply suppress dangerous
technologies like telecommunications and computing.  Add to that the
fact that the West _did_ pour lives and treasure into the struggle,
trying to prevent the spread of Soviet influence to new lands.  (Some
might argue that this was in self-interest, but if that's true, it's
true only in the sense that the Russians who finally toppled the
Communists were acting in self-interest, which seems like a perfectly
reasonable self-interest to me.  And precisely what vital geopolitical
interests are we supposed to have been selfishly defending in Vietnam,
anyway?)

	While certainly the greatest _heroism_ belongs to people who
faced gulags and firing squads, there was still an important role to
be played by those outside.  Lech Walesa faced prison, but he was able
to make his mark with the aid of money and supplies piped to him from
the West (in which, according to Carl Bernstein, Ronald Reagan and
Pope John Paul II were instrumental).  The full magnitude of Stalin's
crimes was first uncovered in the West, and only gradually did Robert
Conquest's analysis filter back through underground channels.  It was
Wester diplomacy and strategy which kept Greece out of the Soviet bloc
after World War II.  Western military action which made it possible
for South Korea to be a growing industrial economy rather than a
Stalinist prison-camp like the North.  Western arms made it possible
for the Afghans to resist a Soviet invasion for far longer than would
otherwise have been possible.  And a good argument can be made that it
was the US defense buildup which was the final straw in an economy
where 40% of GNP went to defense (compared to 6% max for the US), and
was what pressed Gorbachev to begin the reforms which would ultimately
leave him without a job.  (Certainly the man who sent tanks into
Lithuania and maintained the importance of Party leadership right up
to the coup wasn't going to stand for election, particularly when only
10% of his people supported him and large numbers of people had the
crazy idea they might not want to be ruled by Moscow.  Gorbachev
wanted to reform the system and make it work, but he was utterly
uninterested in democracy.)

>Cosy analyses from across the ocean using their own mythologies in an
>election context can be both not very illuminating and very offensive.

	As can the presumption that all it takes to make a successful
revolution is determination and a pure heart.  It takes nothing away
from the accomplishments of Washington and Paine and Jefferson to note
that those accomplishments would not have been possible but for the
aid of France.  It takes nothing away from the courage of the British
in fighting Germany to note that Britain would have fallen without
American materiel.  And it takes nothing away from the fortitude of
Russians and others who have suffered in resisting the Soviet tyranny
to note that they could not have won had not the West fought alongside
them.  Yes, there's lesser risk, and lesser glory, in being the
arsenal and the supplier and fighting minor wars far from one's
frontiers.  But this wasn't a fight for glory-- it was a fight for
survival and for freedom.  If we wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,
we could have lit the nuclear firecrackers and gloriously annihilated
the Communist Menace, at no cost save most of our lives and all of
our civilization.  If we wanted safety, we could have made
concessions enough that the Soviets had felt safe in their hegemony,
and might even have retained self-government for a long while.  But we
fought an unglorious, tedious Cold War, filled with stupid moves by
both sides (North Korea's invading the South without bothering to
check with Moscow, the US' Vietnam "strategy", and so on ad infinitum)
but ending, against all expectation, with the destruction of the most
murderous tyranny in the world's history (probably-- we'll have to
wait till the PRC falls and we have the full record of Mao's death
count, but Stalin's tens of millions may still prevail-- and that
doesn't count the partial credit Stalin gets for starting World War
II.) and the bare hope that something decent may come out of at least
parts of it.  And giving credit where credit is due means that credit
goes to Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, and many Presidents in
between, even as it goes to Andrei Sakharov and Boris Yeltsin.  (IMHO,
it _doesn't_ really go to Bush, as he didn't really do much of
anything and was a major force in keeping the USSR together in its
last year of life with his emphasis on "stability"-- but if Bush is
going to be associated with the alleged bad aspects of the Reagan
years, he can certainly try to associate himself with the good ones.)

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections