positves and negatives of comunism in russia
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In the months following the October Revolution the original intentions of the Bolsheviks, to establish a single party state, became a reality. Since March 1918, the signing of the Brest-Litovsk agreement and the collapse of the left wing coalition, and up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Communist Party was the sole decision-maker and ideology setter in the USSR. This was a unique situation which many have attempted to explain. By virtue of its survival it must have had operational advantages. However, when taking a closer look at this system, severe weaknesses are evident. The main advantages that can be assigned to the one-party, one-ideology system are: political stability (or better described as continuity), efficiency and ability to manoeuvre quickly and reorient between different policies. The main disadvantages of such a system are the lack of checks and balances, which drives regimes to misuse and excesses of power and eventually brings about disorder and inefficiency. Furthermore, in many cases it is the features that at first glance seem to be advantages of the system, revealed to be only skin-deep advantages and actually become acute operational disadvantages.
This work will consider the role of the party in the political life in the Soviet Union. It will proceed to consider operational advantages such as political stability and continuity, efficiency of the system in the sphere of economics and the successes of the Bolshevik rule, which could be attributed to the freedom of action they enjoyed. Turning to disadvantages, this work will emphasis the draconian consequences of the excesses of power, exercised by the Communist party that could take place in a one-party system. It will also discuss the spread of patronism, corruption and disorder, which became endemic features of the system. This, in effect, made the system inefficient.
As mentioned before, the Communist party did not become the only party in the Soviet Union for a while after they had led the October Revolution. In fact, in 1918-1919 other socialist parties gained respect across the country, creating a situation in which they were either to be legalised or banned.[1] In the period following the Bolsheviks’ victory in the Civil War resentment to their rule grew, especially among the peasants. The Bolsheviks, who felt that their cause was just and the victory belonged solely to them, were increasingly isolated from the rest of the population.[2] In these circumstances rival parties could have been seen as a threat and although they did not participate in the popular uprisings against the Bolsheviks, such possibility always existed.[3] After the Kronstadt sailors’ mutiny in March 1921, Lenin decided that the party should consolidate a firmer rule over the state of affairs in order to secure the survival of the Bolsheviks’ rule.[4]
This move was not only a tactical move to ensure their survival in power but also an ideological move. In Lenin’s social planning, party members were similar to the Guardian in Plato’s Republic ‘devote their lives to doing what they judge to be the interest of he community’ and the ideology was served as the ‘noble lie’’.[5] At the core of the Socialist ideology lies the concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which is, as Lenin puts it, ‘the continuation of class struggle by other means’.[6] Although the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the party are not one and the same – in the Soviet Union this concept was to be achieved through the party. The one party was to become the ‘leading and directing force’ of the Soviet society – spreading into ever increasing spheres of life.[7] By 1923 the basis of the party’s control over the nation was somewhat accomplished.[8] However, it was not until Stalin had established his personal dictatorship that debates inside the party were silenced.
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