1339) A vida sob o comunismo (como devia ser insuportável...)

Estou lendo este livro:

The Rise and Fall of Communism
by Archie Brown
London: Bodley Head, 2009, 736pp, £25

Mais abaixo uma das muitas resenhas publicadas na imprensa inglesa. Li a introdução e o capítulo sobre o começo do comunismo (o que eu já conhecia).
Agora que o comunismo acabou, em larga medida, os jovens de hoje não tem uma ideia clara sobre o que representou o comunismo -- e o socialismo de maneira geral -- para as gerações precedentes. Mas ele sobrevive apenas em dois pequenos Estados: Cuba (irracionalmente apoiada por "inteliquituais" brasileiros) e Coréia do Norte. O caso da China é diferente: se trata de um país capitalista com um Estado comunista (deu para entender?; eu posso desenhar, ou explicar melhor...).

Estou lendo agora o capítulo 28, "Why Did Communism Last So long?".
Claro, no caso dos países da Europa central e oriental, foi por causa da ocupação soviética, do contrário as sociedades teriam rejeitado o sistema. Bem que tentaram, na DDR, em 1953, na Hungria, em 1956, na Tchecoslováquia, em 1968, mas os tanques soviéticos estavam ali para garantir a sobrevivência de regimes altamente impopulares.
No caso da própria URSS, foi pela eficiência repressora dos mecanismos de controle social do sistema, baseados no terror, nos tempos de Lênin e Stalin, e nos constrangimentos policialescos, na censura extensiva, e no uso da "repressão econômica", ou seja, deixar o dissidente sem trabalho e sem remuneração, o que simplesmente tornaria a sua vida impossível.

Refletindo sobre esse aspecto, isso também ocorre em certos países capitalistas, digamos assim. Por exemplo: deixar um funcionáario do Estado -- e no comunismo TODOS eram funcionários do Estado -- sem função específica e sem remuneração adequada durante muito tempo. Como sob o comunismo, isso atua como um forte desincentivo à contestação e à dissidência individual. Não sei se funciona sempre, mas deve funcionar para a maioria. No meu caso, não funcionou... (de que é exemplo este blog).
Acredito que quem pratica esse tipo de repressão econômica tem uma alma de ditador soviético. Aliás, tem muita gente por aí com alma de ditador soviético...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida (13.02.2010)
PS: leiam a introdução, as primeiras páginas, nesta versão eletrônica para Kindle, no site da Amazon, neste link.

The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown: review
Simon Heffer praises a book by Archie Brown that strips away the romance of communism
By Simon Heffer
Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2009

As an academic historian, Archie Brown has become possibly Britain’s leading expert on communism. Of an age to have travelled widely behind the Iron Curtain when the Cold War was still raging, he brings to his study of the subject not merely decades of immersion in archives and books, but also first-hand observation and experience. All these qualities inform this superb book, which in just over 700 pages gives not only the history of communism, but also the background to it and the reasons for its decline.

Although the doctrine still prevails in one enormously significant country – China – and in four smaller ones (North Korea, which is becoming a bigger problem by the day, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba), Brown’s work is largely in the nature of a retrospective. He traces the philosophical beginnings of the creed through to its implementation in what became the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution: and it is the Soviet Union that is the bedrock of his book from then on. It is not simply, of course, that the USSR was first: it was that it had the manpower, the resources, the firepower and (until Gorbachev) the ruthlessness to impose its will and its system on its satraps and imitators.

The key figure in this was Stalin, whose doctrines (if not his methods of enforcing them) prevailed right up until the mid Eighties. During the Terror Stalin created a rule that was truly totalitarian, and which Brown distinguishes to an extent from communism. He is correct to do so, though he is equally correct to point out that communism, because of its anti-freedom ideology, can only be imposed with varying degrees of coercion. He says communist regimes imposed as a result of indigenous revolution turn out to be more durable than those enforced from outside. The history of what used to be called the Soviet bloc bears that out exactly.

Brown’s relatively concise but also precise exposition of Stalin’s regime is a masterpiece, laced with flashes of dark humour but never understating the sheer monstrousness of a man who goes down in history as a mass murderer on a scale that puts even Hitler in the shade. The brutality that he inflicted on those whom he conquered – such as the unfortunate Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians – becomes more comprehensible when one reads of the arbitrary viciousness he used on people who were supposed to be his adherents, supporters and colleagues.

Although Nikita Khrushchev famously denounced Stalin and his crimes at the 1956 party congress, three years after the tyrant’s death, the ethos did not crack. The Hungarian uprising later that year was put down with typical brutality, for the Soviets then knew no other way. At home, dissidents were no longer shot in the back of the head for having a difference of opinion, and the Gulag became considerably less populated: but Khrushchev himself was happy, in defence of Russian hegemony, to push the world to the brink of war during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

When Leonid Brezhnev succeeded him in 1964 the tone became even more Stalinist: Brezhnev was conscious of having to protect what was effectively Stalin’s inheritance, and did not hesitate to do so. It may have been a time of stability for the USSR, but it also remained one of repression. Just as in Hungary 12 years earlier, Soviet troops put down an attempt by Czechoslovakia to reform after the Prague Spring. As late as 1981, a tame Polish leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, was prevailed on to squash dissidence in that country, contingent on the rise of the Solidarity movement. Communism could not be allowed to be diluted in the Soviet bloc, for it would challenge the Marxist-Leninist doctrines that underpinned the Soviet Union: so the old Stalinist methods of compliance by coercion were brought back whenever necessary.

Brown has crammed an amazing amount of information and analysis into a hugely readable book. He gives the most comprehensible breakdown of how Chinese communism developed, and how the apparent capitalist society the country now has is still, in fact, communist. But his greatest achievement is to strip away, without any partisanship, what some have held to be the romance of communism. He details how corrupt the regime was in Cuba before Castro overthrew it, and he talks of the wonders done in Cuba in the field of health care, in particular. But he equally leaves us in no doubt that Cuba remains a repressive and impoverished place thanks to communism. There are constant reminders of the basic liberties denied to those in communist countries in order to maintain the doctrine; and reminders too of how painfully aware so many of those people were of the freedoms and luxuries of the West.

If this book has any deficiency it is that I should have liked to read more about the systems of repression in places like the Baltic states, where museums exist to catalogue Soviet barbarism against the Baltic peoples. It is most amazing of all that this was so widespread just 20 years ago. Brown’s book is, above all, a monument to the triumph of liberty.