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Ah, but was it really that effective? Sure, Eastern European countries stayed within the Soviet sphere (Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 showed what h
by Fins 8y ago
Ah, but was it really that effective? Sure, Eastern European countries stayed within the Soviet sphere (Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 showed what happens if you don't) but they split at the earliest opportunity. While Russia is backtracking if not to communism than to glorification of USSR and Stalin.
- pvg 8y agoIt was enormously effective. Forty years, in half a dozen countries. Forty years in which the rest of the world saw the Wirtschaftswunder from the ashes of Western Europe and Japan, decolonialization, the end of legally mandated racism in the US (on top of its own post-war economic and population boom). We got party meetings and retransmissions of Vremya on Friday nights. It still worked without anyone (statistically) going to the Kolyma, sunny or otherwise, without the voronki roaming the streets every night. Even if we can't agree how or why, it's on us to always think about it in the hope it might in some small way prevent it from happening again. In the places that we left or the places we came to.
- Fins 8y agoIt lasted as long as Soviet troops were stationed nearby and ready to roll in at a moment's notice. As soon as it became clear that they wouldn't, the Wall fell, and the rest followed. In most places even relatively bloodlessly. And because you didn't have the Big Terror to the same extent, life in Eastern Europe was quite a bit better than in the USSR. When we visited a friend in Prague in 1985, he had a collection of "anti-soviet" literature (including Kolyma Stories that would be enough to send anyone in USSR reliving Shalamov's experience. And he didn't even hide it...