Showing posts with label Communist Soviet State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communist Soviet State. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

DIE ROOI GEWAAR

My interest in communism was first sparked by the contrast of what our government led us to believe about Die Rooi Gewaar and what is now seen as a very legitimate part of our country, The South African Communist Party.  I have read as many books on communism in Russia and in Red China as I can lay my hands on. The most tenacious behaviour that determined people’s lives under communist rule was the way in which the state turned family against family, neighbour against neighbour and colleague against colleague.  It created a society of whisperers, people who were too afraid to think for themselves or to utter words that were not aligned with the party line.   The collectivisation of farms and small holdings removed the individual’s belongings and took away his freedom to earn his own living.  He had to give all he owned to the collective farm and then work it for the food for his table.  Everything that was grown or farmed that was more than what could be consumed (and often was not enough for human survival) had to be given to the state. The state was the party and the party were those who were in power.  Everyone lived from hand to mouth and dressed in hand down clothing or had to stand in queues for hours and hours in the hopes of buying just one loaf of bread or a small packet of sugar. Accommodation was extremely poor, more often than not with one family living per room of one house and sharing a kitchen and bathroom.  The shops were empty of goods. 
The only ones who had access to fully stocked shops where those who worked for the party. Their rewards were the ability to purchase anything from the special shops, to have holiday dachas and to eat the best and wear the most expensive clothing.  Those outside the party had to work just to feed themselves.   They would have to watch how they thought, had to be extremely careful of what they said and who overheard them for there was always someone around who was only too happy to take their names to the party police in exchange for some favour.  To tell a joke or to say anything against the communist party would land you in a gulag if you were lucky or tortured and eventually executed.  No one was safe to say how they felt.  Generations grew up in this oppressed society, watching what they said and to whom. 
The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union was not the end of the Communist era and their spies, intelligence personal or police.   They all just evolved to match the new conditions of the new order in Russia.  They are the dark partners who were not swept into the rubble of history.  NATO has grossly underestimated the Soviet era shadow that continues to lie over Russia and their former states. 
The liberation from communism in 1989-91 was exhilarating but the effects were only skin deep.   The free markets that replaced the planned economy, the free media with state censorship and one-party rule with free elections were great changes.  But these changes could not be matched by the change in the human beings that inhabit those systems.  Millions of people grew up under communism and collaborated with it.  The toxic legacy of secret police files, sordid secrets and compromises still smears public life.  It provides scope for blackmailing the guilty while discrediting the innocent.  Even those seen by the West as heroes, such as Poland’s former president Walesa, have come under a cloud of suspicion about past alliance.  All the secret police files which have been buried create great possibilities for pressurising anyone born before 1970.
Daniel Treisman, an American academic, states that Russia is no more messily ruled than other middle-income countries such as Mexico or Turkey.  Elections are rigged, media is manipulated, and there is high-level corruption and abuse of state power.  Unfortunately these are not rare cases.  Russia’s legal system sometimes works, especially in cases that do not involve the interests of the rich and powerful.  NGO’s and charities can function only so long as they stay away from taboo areas such as Chechnya.   Elections in some provinces sometimes still yield surprising results that annoy the country’s leaders.
The similarities of the collapse of apartheid and the collapse of communism are very evident to me.  The collapse of apartheid has left us with a country no more messily ruled than Russia.  And those who were educated in the communist countries who are now in power in South Africa are not averse to using the same tactics which they learned from the communists.
The WikiLeaks revelations that started in November 2010 exposed the concern of diplomats of the level of corruption in Russia and the fusion between business, crime and government.  The spill over into the West caused the then Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, stated in a secret document that Russia was “an oligarchy run by the security services”.
When impeachment was looming for Mr Yeltsin’s family in 1999, he went to the ex-KGB (now FSB) for help.  However, he had strong principles and did not want to muzzle the media and encouraged competition between the intelligence and security services.   By contrast Mr Putin has given the FSB a near monopoly.  The FSB was intended to be a kind of beefed up FBI, responsible for fighting organised crime and spy-catching.  Those times are gone.  The FSB is a sprawling empire, with capabilities ranging from electronic intelligence-gathering to controlling Russia borders and operations within and beyond them.  Its instincts are xenophobic and authoritarian with massive doses of paranoia, ignorance, and nostalgia for the Soviet past.
Mr Putin was the FSB agency director up until 2000.  His successor, Nikolai Patrushev, describes the security forces, whether explosive specialists or counter-espionage operational officers, as Russia’s new nobility, which is cause for concern.
During the Soviet era, the leadership had the best access to foreign goods, luxurious dachas and spacious accommodation.  Now that there is no more need to pretend to be austere for party reasons, they can enjoy the best when, how and where they want it.  Our own leadership too seem to have the same access to these enjoyable living arrangements and conditions.   
J. Michael Waller, an expert on Russia, also believes that the former KGB has retained influence in Russia after the Soviet collapse and returned to power with Mr Putin in charge.  Taking communism down is one thing, removing its structures is completely something else.  
The Russian police and intelligence agencies are as incompetent, nepotistic, corrupt, wasteful and as blinkered as the state they serve.  Given the amount of publicity our South African police have received lately, there seems little difference between the two countries.
In retrospect, the West has over-estimated the scale of the Kremlin’s retreat.  What looked like a roll back from one point of view was a stay-behind operation from another.   “Stay-behind operations were a staple of NATO planning during the early years of the Cold War, and envisaged well-organised networks of saboteurs and spies working to disrupt Soviet rule after an invasion of Western Europe, with access to secret arms caches.  These included the notorious Operation Gladio, which degenerated into political mischief-making in Italy”. (Edward Lucas Spies, 2012, p 314).
Perhaps we should listen to those people in Russia who share our values and to help encourage them rather than demoralise them.  In February 2011, the four leaders of the main opposition party, the Party of People’s Freedom, wrote an article berating the Western countries for their role in facilitating the misrule of Russia.   “We urge Western leaders to discontinue their kisses-and-hugs “Realpolitick”, which has failed and to stop flirting with Russian rulers – behaviour that has not brought any benefits to the West and produces in Russia an impression that Putin’s system is a decent, one, like any other in the democratic world.   It means the West should cease greeting Russian rulers as equals, providing them with legitimacy they clearly do not merit.  It means the West should start exposing corrupt practices by the Russian establishment … should introduce targeted sanctions against the officials directly abusing the rights of their compatriots”.  (Washington Post, 20 February 2011).  
Given that Russia emerged from communist dictatorship only twenty odd years ago, the advocates of Russia suggest that we should be impressed that the country is so normal, rather than being depressed that it is no better.  The temptation of many Westerners is therefore to accept the superficial image of normality and cooperation, without digging too deeply into the violent, thieving and distorted mind-set and personalities behind it – or the pervasive incompetence and partiality for dangerous short cuts.
Given that South Africa emerged from the National Party only eighteen odd years ago, the advocates of South Africa suggest that we should be impressed that the country is so normal. I suggest that we do not accept the superficial image of our country, but look at the persistent incompetence and penchant for short cuts.
When I see the hammer and sickle of the SA Communist Party, I am left with cold shivers that we too could become a society of whisperers.

The Russians, The Boers And My Ignorance

Anglo Boer War 
How ignorant and how skewed can one’s view of the world become through socialisation and the media.  I was shocked to my core after reading a number of books on communism and the Red Danger (as it was known in South Africa) to find that the Russians actually came to the assistance of the white South Africans during the Anglo-Boer War.   Although I had studied Marx, Engels and Lenin, their communism and socialism certainly did not tally with the awfulness of Stalin and Mao’s communism, or the communism that the National Party was so determined to keep out of South Africa’s borders. 
Why did I never think further than my nose?  I knew about the horror of living under Stalin’s rule and I knew about the Soviet ties with the ANC and the South African Communist Party.  I knew that cadres were being trained in Cuba and in other communist countries and that they were coming over our borders to disrupt the Nationalist government.   I knew that the children were fed up with being forced to study in Afrikaans and were burning the schools; I knew that Winnie Mandela was going to set the country alight with her matches and her tyres.  And I knew that the communist countries were helping the ANC.   I also knew that no one had the right to tell anyone else that they could or could not do something based on the colour of their skin.  This I also understood was wrong.  And while I supported the ‘struggle’ for equal rights, I was convinced that if the communists took over we would be in big shit.   At the time, I did not know about the alliance between the SACP and the ANC.  I only knew about the PAC and the ANC.  The very thought of the SACP did not even enter my head. Surely, if the National Party would give everyone equal rights, they would ensure that the communists stayed out of it.  Well, that was my belief.   I never once wondered why the communists would want to help the ANC.
Now that I am mature (I don’t like to say old), I have been reading and researching as much as I can about communism, what it was like to live under the rule of communism and how communism eventually fell away.   I am trying to understand that if history has shown how abusive communism is to human rights, why are we  still be so involved  and tolerant of the SACP?   I am trying to understand how it is possible that group rights (communism) are more important than individual rights?   I am trying to understand if it is at all possible for individual and groups rights to co-exist.   I personally think that it is mutually exclusive and cannot co-exist so that groups and individuals have rights.  If group rights are emphasised, then individual rights are abused and vice versa.
I digress … Russian politics has been muddled up with South African politics for much longer than most of us realize.   I did not know that Russia (under the Tsar) sent the Russian Red Cross to the aid of the Boers during the Anglo Boer War, nor did I know that Russian volunteers, and one in particular, played such a large role in helping the Boers fight against the English.   In fact, the Anglo-Boer War was the starting point of direct relations between the two countries.   There are political parallels between the Soviet ties to the ANC and the SACP and the help that Russia sent to the Boers.  The second would not have taken place without the foundation that was laid by the first. The fierce anti-communism of the apartheid government has made it difficult for South Africans to associate with Russians, or even to admit association in the distant part.   It is my opinion that the demise of both communist Russia and apartheid South Africa has been a blessing.  Both political standpoints were barbaric in every sense.
One of the most remarkable Russians who came to the aid of the Boers, first as a Russian war correspondent from the Russian paper Novoie Vremia who swopped his pen for a revolver, was the Deputy Commander of the foreign volunteers, Colonel Maximov.  A Belgium nurse, Alice Bron, wrote about Maximoff during those days in May 1900.  People get to know one another very quickly when in close contact during war.   “…He was brave even to rashness, as all his men told me, while he delighted in relating incidents which showed the indomitable bravery of his Dutch followers…At one point the colonel ordered his men to attack a position. They hesitated; thinking that the attempt was sure to fail.  The colonel, exclaiming, “You’ll see I am right,” dashed forward, and his men followed him.  The colonel was wounded in the foot, shoulder ear and temple.   The temple wound dropped the colonel and his men gathered around him, opening fire to protect him.  This incident shows the bravery of both officer and his men.  (Davidson, A and Filatova I, The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War, 1998, p68).
After the death of Commander Villebois, President Steyn appointed Maximov commander of the European Legion.   His greatest battle was that of Thaba Nchu where he shot the English Captain Towse at almost point blank range.  He lost only two men, while he was one of five seriously wounded.  Maximov was taken to Kroonstad where Nurse Alic Bron found him on 12 May, 1900, just hours before the British troops entered town.  The day before, he had ridden (wounded) to Pretoria and spent the day with President Steyn.  When he returned to Kroonstad the Boers had already left town and blown up the bridge.  The nurse tried to persuade Maximov to leave.  He relates his argument against leaving as such; “Never, never have I run away from an enemy.”   They eventually left Kroonstad, with the colonel on horseback while his secretary, “boy” and nurse rode in a kind of dog-cart.   She described him as bold as a lion but as obstinate as a mule.
After Thaba Nchu, De Volkstem wrote that he was a very brave officer and had faced the enemy at twenty paces.  When it was found that his wounds were too severe (fractured skull) for him to continue to act as veggeneraal, Maximov proposed that the command be handed over to P Blignaut, son of the state secretary of the Republic of the Orange Free State.    The official handing over was held on the 22 May 1900 in the Hollandia Hotel in Pretoria.
Maximov attended the last session of the Transvaal Volksraad before he returned to Russia.  President Kruger and General Smuts personally thanked him for his services to their country and for the blood he had shed in its defence.
The Russian public saw the Boer struggle against the British as a battle between David and Goliath.  The pro-Boer sentiment weakened Britain and also served domestic interests by distracting public attention away from the social and political inequalities at home.   Perhaps the most important reason for the Russian pro-Boer attitude was the growing gold-mining industry.  The Russians would have been interested in the methods and know-how of the Transvaal gold miners for their own newly born gold-mining industry of Siberia and the Ural Mountains.    The increasing Jewish emigration from Russia to the Transvaal also provided a further reason for Russia to establish close ties with South Africa.  Even though the Jews were fleeing due to political pogroms, the Russians were quick to turn this to their advantage by realizing the advantages of having Russian speaking people in South Africa.  This served as a network between Russia and South Africa, along which flowed money, people and information.
I doubt that many South Africans even know about the involvement of Russia in helping the Boers, let alone the unbelievable bravery of Colonel Maximov.   In Russia, Maximov is almost completely forgotten.  Even his grave in Manchuria is forgotten.  Such insignificance is given to a particular Russian individual’s fate because the ordeals of Russia’s people have been so terrible during this century that those who lived either did not care or were too afraid to care about the memory of so many of the dead.  If Maximov had belonged to another nation, his heroism would have been celebrated with pride.
Perhaps the underlying involvement of the Communist Soviet state with the ANC and the SACP was nothing more than a way in which to take control over South Africa’s enormous environmental wealth and the “equal rights struggle” just a means to that end.