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Gorbachev and the failures of the 20th century

2022-09-17T10:44:28.940Z


Communism and fascism ended disastrously, because both spawned dictatorships and wars that led to untold suffering for everyone, starting with their own societies.


The recent death of Mikhail Gorbachev should force us to think.

Because he was not one more of the characters who held power during the stormy Russian history of the last century, but the promoter and person in charge of the reforms that, after proving impossible, ended up leading to the collapse of communism.

And this, in turn, had been one of the two great political projects that the last century offered as alternatives to parliamentary democracy, in whose difficult construction and expansion the most civilized and sensible societies in the world were striving.

The second of those grandiose projects had been fascism, which was also born and died in the 20th century.

Both set out to replace democracy, with its rules and limits on power, by redemptive dictatorships that, according to them, would create overnight a "new man" and inaugurate the definitive phase in human history.

Both ended—another important coincidence—in failure.

But not just any failure, but a disastrous one, accompanied, in both cases, by bloody events of enormous magnitude.

Because the two, who appeared to the world as fierce enemies, joined forces, against all odds, when they saw the possibility of dividing up Poland, thus unleashing World War II.

Gorbachev was, and hence its importance, the liquidator of the first of these projects.

Communism, nothing less than the culmination of the old egalitarian dream, whose origin could go back to Plato or utopian dreams, and whose modern expression was social democracy, from which the revolutionaries originally split.

His core idea was that private property is the ultimate cause of all political and social conflicts, and that the collectivization of goods was, therefore, the necessary step to begin the solution of our problems.

This idea was supported by very substantial studies from the mid-nineteenth century on the history of humanity, explained in terms of class struggle, with economic interests as the ultimate engine of human confrontation.

All that conflictive past had to lead to a last and definitive revolution, which would make the proletariat take power, the absolutely dispossessed and suffering class —that is, pure—, which would organize a collectivized economic system that, for the first time, would not generate any new dominant or oppressive group.

On the contrary, it would give rise to a community whose members would be integrated into their social environment and driven by a cooperative and fraternal attitude.

And peace would finally reign forever in the world.

it would give birth to a community whose members would be integrated into their social environment and driven by a cooperative and fraternal attitude.

And peace would finally reign forever in the world.

it would give birth to a community whose members would be integrated into their social environment and driven by a cooperative and fraternal attitude.

And peace would finally reign forever in the world.

"Fascism", on the other hand, or the family of political phenomena to which that name is applied, was a radical derivative of nationalism, a relatively recent phenomenon, since it came from the time when anti-absolutist revolutions challenged the sovereign rights of dynasties. or imperial monarchies and transferred political legitimacy to the nation.

Fascism elevated that nation to an essential, eternal and sacred reality, superior to any other moral value.

And he built his "new man" on the absolute and radical integration of him in that idealized national community.

The ethical mandate derived from this approach was not precisely peace, but rather the opposite: the predisposition to "die for the country" (translated,

the right and duty to kill in the name of the country) and the establishment of a hierarchical order of nations according to their racial superiority.

But this was accompanied by many other things: dedication to the group, worship of the leader, rejection of a materialism that was supposed to be a product of modernity or cohesion of all the social and cultural forces around the national mystique, whose supreme values ​​an authority would serve. unlimited.

Even described so succinctly, the greatness of both projects is clear.

And a no less brief reference to their historical journey will explain why it is inevitable to add the qualification of disastrous to them.

Because both generated dictatorships and wars that led to untold suffering for everyone, starting with their own societies.

Communism gave rise to Stalin, with his reign of terror —even over his party comrades—, his purges, his secret police, his concentration camps —where between five and ten million people died, basically of hunger—, his participation in wars that caused other dozens of millions of victims... Figures parallel to those attributable to Hitler, supreme leader of the opposite side and usual paradigm —in all fairness— of absolute evil.

None of these dictators, by the way, was a madman to whom power fell due to an unfortunate incident, an error that, if it could be rectified, would clean up the trajectory of that political project.

No. Stalin, for example - or Mao, who should not be forgotten in this list of massive criminals - limited himself to developing the entire dictatorial scheme, based on the single party, the red army and the secret police, designed, and begun to put in motion, without the slightest ethical or political scruple, by Lenin and Trotsky.

As long as we do not recognize this, as long as there are still today those who feel comfortable, and even proud, displaying the "communist" or "fascist" badge on their lapel, we will be hindering a political future whose only legitimacy is democratic.

Every current candidate for power should declare, as the first of his inalienable principles, that his project radically distances itself from those two criminal failures called communism and fascism.

But your statement must be clear: against both at the same time and equally.

Because it is very easy to present yourself as the only enemy of one of these two alternatives.

It is even common to revile them and join anti-communist or anti-fascist fronts.

But it is also typical to be only one of these two things.

Which may very well be a device or disguise to defend, or at least not condemn with equal firmness, the opposite option.

Fascism has a worse press, and today hardly anyone openly identifies with it.

There are groups, like Vox in Spain, that defend positions that are very close to what we call fascism, but avoid the name.

Communism, on the other hand, has survived with less of a pejorative charge.

Regimes such as the Cuban, North Korean, Venezuelan or Nicaraguan regimes are often justified, even praising the "social justice" that prevails there compared to neighboring countries, but avoiding calling them "dictatorships", the only political label that, Actually, it belongs to them.

Furthermore, there are those who declare themselves “communist” and join a democratic government —the current Spanish one, for not leaving home— without blushing or scandalizing those who sit next to them.

That is why Gorbachev's work has been so important.

And that his disappearance forces us to evoke him with respect and gratitude.

José Álvarez Junco

is Emeritus Professor of History at the Complutense University of Madrid.

His latest book is

What to Do With a Dirty Past

(Gutenberg Galaxy).






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Source: elparis

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