Brown (2010) The Rise & Fall of Communism.
Citation: Brown, Archie (2010) The Rise & Fall of Communism, London: Vintage.
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Brown (2010:50-51): Argues that too much is sometimes made of Bolshevik organisation, given mass expansion of membership and open leadership agreements in 1917. Strict discipline was advocated on paper, but only became a reality later.
Brown (2010:51): “Although 7 November entered history as the day of the successful Bolshevik revolution, in many respects it was more of a coup than a revolution. It supplanted the regime that had been established as a result of the earlier (February) Revolution, which had commanded widespread support. At the time they seized power, the Bolsheviks were not the most popular party in Russia.”
Brown (2010:53): Peasants supported both sides in civil war, “but the cruelty of both sides rapidly alienated them.”
Brown (2010:53): Bolsheviks moved from voluntary enrolment to forced conscription.Trotskiy also recruited former imperial officers, alongside political commissars.
Brown (2010:53-54): Whites included Imperial officers, as well as strong support from the Cossacks. Most soldiers on both sides were peasants. “While most factory workers supported the Bolsheviks, the peasants were deeply ambivalent about the civil war. Those who could keep out of the conflict did so. Sometimes they would welcome the arrival of the Whites, only to find that they wished to restore the old system of landlordism, whereupon the peasants would cooperated with the Reds to drive them out. What they wanted, as some of them put it, was neither a Red nor a White, but a Green government, by which they meant one that would safeguard the distinctive interests of the rural communities.”
Brown (2010:54): Czechs among key foreign actors to help anti-Bolsheviks. Small British forces protected equipment provided to tsarist troops, but full-scale invasion rejected by British prime minister. France, the US, Italy, Canada and Japan also dispatched small contingents. “They, perhaps, helped to delay the defeat of the Whites, but did not play a decisive role.” 40,000 Czechs were militarily superior and secured victories against the Bolsheviks as they travelled home.
Brown (2010:54-55): Cheka established December 1917 to conduct Red Terror against the Bolsheviks’ enemies.
Brown (2010:55): Sees Trotskiy’s effectiveness as war commissar, the Cheka, superior Bolshevik organisation, and leadership by Lenin and Stalin as all being important to Bolshevik victory. “Yet force and organization alone did not produce the victory of the Reds in the civil war. Although there was still at this stage open argument within the party, the Bolsheviks possessed a more coherent ideology than the Whites. The latter not only failed to win over the peasant majority in the country, they also produced neither an outstanding leader nor a unifying idea.”
Brown (2010:59): Three major events occurred in 1922 that had significant long-term consequences. Stalin became General Secretary of the Communist Party, becoming the only person on all three leading executive bodies (Politburo, Orgburo, Secretariat) and acquiring control over appointments. Lenin suffered a strong, which reduced his ability to oppose Stalin’s rise, and a further stroke in March 1923 ended his political career. Ukraine, Belaru, Transcaucasia and Russia united as the Soviet Union.
Brown (2010:65): “The Soviet Union’s unpreparedness for war had been greatly exacerbated by Stalin’s purges. For some reason he trusted Hitler more than he trusted many of the senior officers who had fought in the Red Army during the civil war. In the late 1930s he killed of a high proportion of the Soviet army officer corps. Thus the Soviet Union suffered heavier losses in the earliest stages of the war on the Russian front than would have occurred if their army had been properly prepared and professionally led.” This lack of preparedness cam despite rapid industrialisation producing an industrial base that could support the armaments industry.
Brown (2010:84): In April 1924, Stalin attacked Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ and advocated instead ‘socialism in one country.’ ‘Peaceful coexistence’ became the foreign policy equivalent.
Brown (2010): Third period of Comintern consisted of rejecting alliances with other socialist parties and demonstrating allegiance to Moscow, even at cost of domestic support.
Brown (2010:88): Fourth period started from 1933 and lasted until the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Consisted of a united front against fascism, allowing allegiance with social democrats, liberals, and even religious groups. It was the period when the Comintern’s “international appeal was greatest to many idealists and staunch anti-fascists.”
Brown (2010:91): Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed August 1939. Contained secret clauses on the partition of Poland, Soviet repression in Baltics. Came shortly after Britain and France had signed, in September 1938, the Munich Agreement that ceded Sudetenland to Germany. “Stalin’s pact with Hitler was much more far-reaching and, as distinct from Chamberlain’s attitude to the Munich agreement, it was not intended by either Stalin or Hitler to be a substitute for eventual armed conflict.”
Brown (2010:91-92): 1 September 1939 Germany attacked Poland. Britain and France swiftly declared war. The Soviet Union incorporated part of Poland into Ukraine and attacked Finland. Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40 cost 24,000 Finnish and up to 200,000 Soviet lives. Peace treaty in March 1940 ceded territory to Soviet Union, but the rest of Finland remained independent.
Brown (2010:101): Challenges the characterisation of Communist states as socialist, claiming it should no more be taken at face value than their claim to be democratic; there are a far broader range of movements that claim the socialist label; and the fact many socialist theorists favoured public ownership rather than a strong, centralised state.
Brown (2010:103-104): Distinguishes between early years of Communist governance, which involved establishing a Party monopoly and nationalising industry, from later years, where systems diverged considerably. “To be told that a person was a Communist, meaning a member of a Communist party, could convey surprisingly little about a person’s basic beliefs and values.” Some wanted justice and equality, others vengeance and destruction, others career advancement. They could be reformers or conservatives, liberals or hardliners.
Brown (2010:104-105): Argues that, if label communist is applied rigourously, the only Latin American communist state was Cuba; Africa had none. Soviet Union ceased to be communist during 1989, while China is a hybrid system.
Brown (2010:105-114): Identifies six features – three pairs –that define the communist system. Political system: Monopoly of power of Communist Party and democratic centralism (discussion of issues until a decision reached, then decision was binding and had to be implemented through strict discipline). Economic system: non-capitalist ownership of the means of production and a centralised command economy (decisions made from above rather than demands of customers; planning and targets). Ideological sphere: declared aim of building communism as a final goal and the existence of and sense of belonging to an international communist movement.
Brown (2010:135-136): “Stalin was taken completely by surprise when German troops crossed the Soviet border on 22 June 1941. He had received a number of warnings of impending attack, but chose to ignore them. There were Soviet spies in Berlin who picked up information about plans to invade the Soviet Union, and their agents were able to observe the movement of German troops and equipment towards the Soviet border. Stalin, however, assumed that this was no more than bluff on Hitler’s part (perhaps to confuse the British) and that Germany’s immediate priority was to knock Britain out of the war.” Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy who had a relationship with the wife of the German ambassador to Tokyo, provided precise intelligence that was rejected by Stalin. Pro-Soviet Germans and Churchill also issued warnings. Even the German ambassador to Moscow issued a warning to the Soviet ambassador to Berlin.
Brown (2010:136-138): Beria supported Stalin’s position and had those who reported German plans arrested. Stalin forbade generals from implementing defensive measures against an invasion. By the end of 1941, the Soviet army had 4.5 million men. Three of five Soviet marshals purged 1937-38; the remaining two swiftly demonstrated their incompetence. Senior officers were executed for failing to prevent early German advance; those who escaped captivity were also killed. More people died in Gulag during war than in 1930s, and Soviet troops were deployed in a manner that showed disregard for casualities. “All that notwithstanding, it should never be forgotten (though it often is) that the Soviet Union lost a larger number of people than any other combatant during the Second World War, that the great bulk of these deaths were caused by the barbarity of the Nazi invasion, and that it was the forces of the Soviet Union, more than those of any other country, which defeated Nazi Germany in the ground war in Europe. The Red Army war dead numbered nine million, and almost eighteen million Soviet citizens were killed in the war. The total was five times higher than the number of German war dead.” US lost approximately 400,000, UK 350,000 [compare Blitz and Stalingrad].
Brown (2010:139): Battle for Moscow September 1941-April 1942: 926,000 Soviet soldiers killed. Blockade of Leningrad lasted 900 days, ended January 1944, leaving more than 1 million civilian deaths.
Brown (2010:139-140): Germany lost 800,000 men, 10,000 guns and 2,000 tanks at Stalingrad. Fight waged winter 1942-early 1943. “When the remnants of Hitler’s Sixth Army finally surrendered at Stalingrad, this was a massive boost for the Communist movement worldwide. It greatly strengthened Stalin’s hand in his negotiations with Roosevelt and Churchill.”
Brown (2010:141): Persecution of ROC halted during war. Aleksandr Nevsky, Aleksandr Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov all praised.
Brown (2010:142): Argues “the Nazis were victims of their own ideology” and could have attracted more support in occupied areas if they had treated people with humanity.
Brown (2010): Attributes Soviet takeover in Eastern Europe predominantly to victory in WWII, which boosted its popularity. Planning seen as way of combatting market volatility, and there was greater interest in social equality. In Albania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, the communists achieved power themselves, although Stalin expected them to be loyal to Moscow. In Czechoslovakia, communists took power gradually, there was a generally positive attitude to Russia and suspicion of Britain and France, and the government considered participating in the Marshall Plan until rebuked by Stalin.
Brown (2010): Western intervention in Greece tilted power away from the Communists [worth noting that we always talk about Communist takeovers as something forceful, but we use different language to talk about Western intervention against popular communist or Islamist movements].
Brown (2010:162): February 1945 Yalta Conference. Roosevelt’s opinion carried greater weight than Churchill’s. By time of Potsdam conference in July, Roosevelt had died and been replaced by Truman, and mid-way through Churchill was voted out and replaced by Attlee.
Brown (2010:163-164): As a result of various negotiations, border of Poland shifted westwards (on both sides), Konigsberg became Kaliningrad.
Brown (2010:164): “the spread of communism throughout east and central Europe in the early post-war years must, then, be seen in the context of the military outcome of the Second World War, of the vast range of territory conquered by the Soviet army, and of Western respect for the Soviet contribution to the Allied victory and for the scale of their losses. Thus the leaders both of the United States and of Britain in the later war years, and at the Potsdam conference, accepted Stalin’s argument that the USSR must be secure from the threat of attack from the West.”
Brown (2010:176-177): March 1946 Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech. “The political systems of eastern Europe were already being constructed along Soviet lines. The mass media and security police in those countries were, with increasing effectiveness, cutting their citizens off from the free flow of information and greatly restricting the populations’ Western contacts.”
Brown (2010:179-183): Towards the end of the war, the Soviets entered the war against Japan, seize the Kurile Islands and advanced into Manchuria. Supported communist takeover of the region, but takeover of the rest of the country largely achieved without Soviet support — and even against Stalin’s advice. The US was similarly lukewarm in its support of the Kuomintang. Chinese communist victory was a much more indigenous affair than the emergence of communist control in Eastern Europe.
Brown (2010:194): Yugoslavia expelled from Cominform in 1948.
Brown (2010:204-205?): various tensions between Soviet and Yugoslav and Bulgarian leaderships, particularly over regional initiatives and trade. Bulgaria fell into line, while relations with Yugoslavia deteriorated. March 1948 talks on renewing Soviet-Yugoslav trade agreement broke down, Soviet military advisors withdrawn, Tito and Stalin exchanged hostile letters.
Brown (2010:230): Party officials, not members, wielded power at every level of society. Therefore the idea of the party having a monopoly on power is both true and misleading. The Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee topped the hierarchy, with the Communist Party leader supreme over all.
Brown (2010:231): Stalin needed the party bureaucracy, but treated the party itself with disdain — as shown by the failure to hold a party congress between 1939 and 1952.
Brown (2010:237): The name The Thaw comes from a novel by Ilya Ehrenburg, who portrayed the miserable state of Soviet culture under Stalin and was suggestive of a new optimism following his demise. All this was done without as much as an explicit mention of Stalin’s death.
Brown (2010:237): Literature became an arena of political dispute. Vladimir Pomerantsev published an article on ‘sincerity in literature’ that accused the authorities of ‘varnishing reality.’ Новый мир published it. Editor and author attacked, but journal became an important venue for anti-Stalinist literature in the 1960s.
Brown (2010:238): Political prisoners released; some were rehabilitated. Khrushchev downplayed the extent of releases prior to his XX Party Congress address, mentioning only the rehabilitations (7,679 of 153,502 cases). Khrushchev later spoke of his desire to stop processes getting out of control.
Brown (2010): Khrushchev elevated the Party above the police and the Council of Ministers.
Brown (2010:243): Khrushchev’s revelations were damaging to international communism, coming “close to sweeping Communists from power in more than one country” and “prick[ing] the bubble of infallibility with which the Communist Party had surrounded itself.” Portrays speech as beginning of the end for international communism, leading to an exodus from Western communist parties.
Brown (2010:244): emphasises that Khrushchev did not “call into question the political system which had allowed Stalin and the secret police to get away with their atrocities.”
Brown (2010): In 1957, the ‘Anti-Party Group,’ as it became known, consisting of members of Presidium of Council of Ministers, sought to oust Khrushchev. Mixture of ardent Stalinists and people implicated in Stalin’s crimes, and people disillusioned with Khrushchev’s style. Paid little consideration to what would replace Khrushchev and the potential of a return to Stalinism. Khrushchev enjoyed control of security services and army, as well as support from non-voting attendees at Presidium meetings.
Brown (2010:245-248): Anti-Party group emerged in opposition to Khrushchev and tried to oust him. Included both Stalinists, others were reformists who disliked Khrushchev’s style. Presidium of Central Committee voted 7-4 to remove him. However Khrushchev controlled the security police and the army. Khrushchev also had majority support among candidate members and secretaries of the Central Committee. As word of the attempt to remove him reached members of the Central Committee, more arrived in Moscow and demanded a plenum. Anti-Party group split in face of attacks from Khrushchev’s supporters, and Stalinists (Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov) were isolated and expelled from Presidium and Central Committee. Had they been victorious, a return to Stalinism and repression would have been likely.
Brown (2010:250): Argues that Khrushchev’s removal in 1964, and Gorbachev’s to a lesser degree, illustrate two points: “The first is that even if a leader appoints people to presitigious positions of responsibility, if he then pursues policies which go against their interests, they are liable to turn against him.” The second was that the second secretary of the party had de facto control over party appointments.
Brown (2010:280-284): Communist reform movement in Hungary was directly inspired by the “de-Stalinization Khrushchev accelerated with his Twentieth Party Congress speech.” Student protesters in October 1956 called for an elected Communist Party led by Imre Nagy; expressed solidarity with protesters in Poland; and called for freedom of speech. Nagy was appointed PM but refused to call for Soviet troop intervention to restore order, though he did impose martial law. By the end of October, Moscow had decided to use military force to keep Hungary communist and within the Warsaw pact.
Brown (2010:287): 4-7 November 1956 Hungarian Revolution suppressed. Most of 2,500 Hungarian deaths occurred in this period, 20,000 hospitalised. Over the next few years, 100,000 counterrevolutionaries arrested. 211,000 people fled to the west. Nagi executed in Budapest.
Brown (2010:318-320): Sees origins of the Sino-Soviet split in the Twentieth Party Congress speech, given prior Chinese support for Stalin. Mao’s promotion of the Hundred Flowers campaign to permit more criticism of official policy was also at odds with Soviet resistance to freer expression in eastern Europe. China attacked Yugoslavia as a proxy for the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union criticised the Albanians as code for the Chinese. Mao’s willingness to contemplate nuclear war provoked horror elsewhere.
Brown (2010:398): The Brezhnev era “was a period of a declining rate of economic growth, no political reform worthy of the name, and a conservative Communist regime led by the cautious Brezhnev. The term, though, can also be misleading, for Soviet society changed in these years in ways that were not and could not be wholly controlled from above. Moreover, in spite of the censorship and ideological pressures for conformity, there were struggles between different political and intellectual tendencies going on below the surface of politics.”
Brown (2010:398-399): Brezhnev approved the crushing of the Prague Spring and the invasion of Afghanistan, but he was not the main driving force behind either, and his own position might have been vulnerable had he opposed them.
Brown (2010:398-399): Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik reduced tensions with West Germany and changed perceptions of the country in the Soviet Union and Poland. Brezhnev signed arms control treaties with Nixon and Ford; SALT II with Carter; the Helsinki Final Act in 1975.
Brown (2010:400): Majority of Khrushchev’s domestic reforms reversed within two years of his removal. Criticism of Stalin again became taboo, without reverting to praise — despite efforts by a number of Stalinists to secure a disavowal of the Twentieth and Twenty Second Party Congresses.
Brown (2010:401): Brezhnev “made a virtue out of ‘respect for cadres’ and maintaining bureaucratic stability. […] Provided officials were politically loyal and ideologically orthodox, life for them was more predictable than it had ever been before.”
Brown (2010:404-405): Describes Brezhnev’s rule as “oligarchical rather than autocratic,” his mini-personality cult notwithstanding. He took into account the interests of different factions, the military, the KGB, the ministers, and the Party.
Brown (2010:405-406): Overt dissent rarely challenged the fundamentals of the Soviet system. The dissident movement was tiny and emerged when criticism of Stalinism was blocked and Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel were imprisoned in 1965 for ‘anti-Soviet’ publications abroad. Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov emerged as two of the leading dissidents, and the 1960s also saw the emergence of samizdat.
Brown (2010:408): Sees Russian nationalism as posing the greatest threat to the Soviet Union, and as rapidly increasing under Brezhnev.
Brown (2010:415-418): Sees the Brezhnev record as mixed. Achieved approximate military parity with West; enjoyed considerable energy wealth. However, economic growth halted by the end of his tenure; basic foodstuffs were in short supply. Life was largely peaceful and predictable; education levels were high. Alcoholism increased, life expectancy dropped. The USSR had bad relations with China and the West.
Brown (2010:460): “Detente meant different things to different people, but could be broadly defined as signifying a relaxation of tension and a reduction of the likelihood of war, which did not, however, preclude struggle in the realm of ideas.” It did not mean ideological coexistence.
Brown (2010:460-462): Soviet Union was the main initiator of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which produced the Helsinki Act in 1975. European countries wanted US involved, but US was a reluctant participant, preferring to deal with USSR bilaterally. The USSR wanted post-WWII borders to be declared immutable, but European countries agreed instead on inviolable (they could be changed consensually, but not by force). Agreements provisions became known as four baskets. Basket One consisted of security and confidence-building provisions that made surprise military attack less likely and committed both sides to respect certain human rights. Basket Two covered economic cooperation, science and technology. Basket Three detailed human rights principles established in Basket One. Basket Four obliged signatories to publish agreement and hold follow-up meetings.
Brown (2010:462-463): Andropov opposed Helsinki for opening up information and economic borders and thus posing a threat. Reagan and Thatcher opposed it as a sell-out to the USSR. Thatcher later conceded that she had been wrong and underestimated the long-term effects of the agreement. Act provided a major stimulus to the dissident movement, which could cite it in support of its calls for greater respect for human rights.
Brown (2010:475-477): Argues that Reagan’s ‘evil empire’ and ‘tear down this wall’ rhetoric, as well as SDI, did more to strengthen hardliners than reformers and made improved East-West relations more difficult. The Soviet Union was more concerned by technological innovation stemming from SDI than a belief the system would work. Sees Reagan as more significant in his hostility to nuclear weapons and willingness to negotiate with the USSR. US policymakers aimed to promote change in the Soviet Union, not bring it down — despite the rhetoric.
Brown (2010:477): Sees the Cold War as helping sustain rather than weaken Communism in Europe, by providing an external enemy and allowing opposition to the state to be portrayed as treason.
Brown (2010:485-486): “The views of every member of the Politburo at the time of Chernenko’s death are known. It is, accordingly, safe to say that if anyone from their ranks other than Gorbachev had been chosen as general secretary, the Soviet Union would have neither liberalized nor democratized.”
Brown (2010:486): Argues that authoritarian regimes are much better equipped to survive poor economic performance, and many Third World regimes did so with fewer levers of control. The economic crisis was apparent to the elite, but there was no significant public unrest. The crisis of 1990-1991 was produced by the reforms, not the system. Reform represents the greatest threat to authoritarian regimes.
Brown (2010:503): Argues the Soviet system ceased to be communist from 1989, because 1988-1989 witnessed the dismantling of its defining characteristics.
Brown (2010:554): Russia was the foundation of the Soviet Union; the latter could survive the loss of the Baltics or Central Asian states, but not the Russian one. “The more power Yeltsin attained in Russia, the more he played the Russian card against the all-Union authorities in general and Gorbachev in particular. While he paid lip service to the summer of 1991 to preserving idea of the Union, his actions played a decisive role in the breakup of the Soviet state.”
Brown (2010:555): Yeltsin ran for election to all-Union legislature in 1989, then Russian parliament in 1990 — where, running in Sverdlovsk, he secured 84%. This allowed him to act as spokesman for the Russian people.
Brown (2010:556-557): Gorbachev from summer 1990 was under continual attack from conservatives on one side and nationalists and democrats on the other. Gorbachev and Yeltsin worked together initially, with them commissioning the 500 day program to transition to a market economy. However, they split when Gorbachev retreated from the plan.
Brown (2010:558-569): Protests in Kazakhstan in late 1986 over the appointment of a non-Kazakh first secretary. 1987 demonstrations by Crimean Tatars in Red Square. Nagorno-Karabakh became hotspot from 1988, with worst violence a pogrom of Armenians in Baku in January 1990. Forced used against Georgian demonstrators in April 1989, invigorating independence movement (suppression occurred when Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were out of country, and was authorised by hardliner Ligachev).
Brown (2010:563): Argues that “the amount of force required to impose Communist or any imperial rule is not static,” but shaped by expectations. Expectations in Eastern Europe were heavily influenced by what happened in the Soviet Union.
Brown (2010:598): Argues “reform produced crisis more than crisis forced reform.” It may have been true that communist system needed reform, but also true that it could not survive radical reform of its political system. Change was possible in the Soviet Union because people accepted the necessity of reform when they were already in positions of power, not because they came to power convinced of that necessity.
Brown (2010:602): Reagan, Thatcher and George Schultz declared the Cold War over by the end of 1988.