Soviet Bloc - Essay Example

Differences and similarities between the former members of the Soviet block Soviet bloc often known by the Eastern or communist bloc represented Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe. Also referred to as 'Satellite States' it included the member countries of Warsaw pact, Yugoslavia and Albania. Many political researchers have continued to write in their work that though member States continued the quest for long-term political stabilisation under the umbrella of serious long term problems, but they remain unable to cope up with the realm of society in a diverse social, economic, and political stigma that emerged in sharper and more pronounced fashion as a threat that limited the possibilities of political stabilisation in the Soviet block. Such crisis that was assessed on the basis of power Included USSR and the East European states and was not just a short term crisis, they were dilemmas, indeed. Our aim in this paper is to reflect critically the differences and similarities on the basis of these theoretical and policy developments between former member states and their key employment outcomes. From World War II (WWII), there arise an imposed domestic revolution in Yugoslavia which emerged as a new socialist order that promised something profoundly new to those who lived under it in the form of social equality. However, the Eastern Europe side after emerging from WWII could have the opportunity to represent a greater break with the past than the promise that the elite class or the powerful would be considered low, that those who had been nothing. Even in member states that were economically developed and followed democracy like Czechoslovakia, this embodied a thrust toward egalitarianism and in response Hungary and Poland, given their traditional elitist social orders and yawning gaps between gentry and mass, it meant no less than transformation of the very bases and premises of society. The Soviet elite was a ruling group that could be clearly defined in context with the Western society where there were competing hierarchies based on wealth, political power, professional status, and religious authority. Mawdsley & White (2000) points out that in a society of the Soviet block, it was the regime itself that chose through the appointments system for the people who occupied the highest-ranking positions in government, in the economy, and in public life (Mawdsley & White, 2000: vi). It was clear that those who were chosen as the elite class were also members of the party bodies through which this form of domination was exercised. The main point that arises here is that to what extent according to Soviet block societies were seen as pyramids to answer a question that even for the Soviet case about how far from the vertex the defining line of the elite should be drawn. In looking at the Soviet elite we should consider all members of the Communist Party. Communist Rule and Policies As a world's first socialist state, the Constitution of Soviet Union only allowed a communist rule which was later by some member countries like Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia introduced elements of market-based reforms before the collapse of the Soviet Union (WB, 2002). As a communist state, it was only possible through Soviet's permission to allow Hungary and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to find their own future and it was Soviet pressure that encouraged Vietnam to do the same (Segal et al, 1992: 10). However, in many cases Soviet's example was not perceived as it was supposed to be accepted like in the Chinese and North Korea, it was dealt with pessimism but it is fair to say that no matter what happened to reform in the Soviet Union, the fate of the Soviet's revolution was important to all. Economic Performance The former member states never fulfilled revolutionary promises, particularly when they promised equality. Parliamentary democracy was neglected and remained involutorial in the region except in Czechoslovakia, yet subordination to the Communist regimes left less personal or institutional freedom than even the authoritarian interwar governments had afforded. What the member states were capable of providing was the political terror and purge trials in the 1930s. With low living profiles and goods scarcity, the broad strata of the population, real incomes had fallen to levels below those enjoyed, or endured, at the close of the prewar period, with restoration of the war's material ravages proceeding slowly. Although the former elites disappeared when new criteria of social value favored proletarians in the allocation of ration cards but socialism came to Eastern Europe in the context of war's destruction, economic backwardness, and scarcity with respect to little material goods. When in the 1920s, the Soviet regime along with the new East European socialist regime faced the need for and attendant problems of rapid and large-scale economic development in order to create the modern industrial economies, it was presumed as a social base for socialism. Therefore following the path of their Soviet predecessor, the East European regimes rapidly abandoned revolutionary egalitarian policies resulting in a short supply of awards for managers, engineers, and highly skilled workers in critical industries. It was decided by the then Government that these personnel would be rewarded according to their work skills and in fields where there is a scarcity of commodities, high rewards and equality would give way to a clearly 'functionalist' pattern of differentiated income. The former members of the Soviet block took initiative in terms of commitment to rapid industrial growth, in the context of poverty and scarcity which meant stressing investment over consumption and future economic capacity over demand. Thus, for the new socialist societies, lacking in any case the prerequisites of affluence, were pushed by their planned economies into still relatively greater scarcity. Member states along with interest group activity both within and outside Russia importantly influenced the direction of Russia's economic reforms and the priorities of the privatisation initiative. Soviet's lawmakers were particularly swayed by the claims of enterprise personnel and the administrative bodies that coordinated and supervised enterprises slated for privatisation before the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet were dissolved in September 1993. Yeltsin's economic planners, on the other hand, were heavily influenced by the orientations of foreign advisers whose principal emphases were macroeconomic stabilisation and a rapid pace for privatisation, following the appointment of Gaidar to be Russia's chief economic strategist. Gustafson (1999) suggests that there were significant differences in the beginning and ending eras of the century throughout Russia which escort to the differences in members states. Since Marxist ideas began penetrating into Russia even before 1917, the end of the century witnessed the collapse of Soviet system which even before the swing in economic thinking in the west gained much popular impact inside Russia (Gutafson, 1999: 11). Contrasting Russian Reform with Shock Therapy Shock Therapy according to Lavigne (2000) was the consequences of inconsistent policies and proved more efficient than other policies that were aimed to brought trade liberalisation and inflation (Lavigne, 2000). The Soviet block members had no justification for shock therapy advocates, so as to mesh their theory well with constraints that prevailed in Russia. They realise that the key to effective policy is to anticipate such impediments, rather than to use them as excuses in the aftermath of policy misjudgments and any economic reform strategy whose success depends on massive injections of foreign assistance must be judged as poorly suited to today's political situation. On other hand Western approach outside Russian were failing to acknowledge in 1994 the Utopian character of the economic course they had advocated for Russia. The shock therapy approach to stabilisation in April 1994 was desirable to the extent where it offered the most realistic chance of avoiding a political catastrophe. Nelson & Kuzes (1995) point out that one need only recount the political turmoil in Russia from early 1992, in the wake of shock therapy's initiation, through September 1993, when Yeltsin forcibly shut down Russia's duly elected parliament, until December 1993, when Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist message was shown to have found fertile soil, to see a few manifestations of the political catastrophe that resulted from the initiation of the shock therapy experiment in Russia (Nelson & Kuzes, 1995: 94). Soviet Religion There was a huge difference between Russian and Soviet religious education as officials were not ready to invite the Westerners without placing some restrictions on curricula and convocations that would limit its ability to pursue these evangelistic goals. Ministry of Education officials insisted that they adhere to Russia's church state law while on the other hand Alexei Brudnov, Chairman of the Alternative Education Department in the Russian Republic, specified the Russian Ministry of Education that no convocations, no rites, no prayers, no cults would be admitted because they consider it the sphere of church and not the sphere of education and culture. It was decided by the former members that the stipulations of the new religious laws in the Soviet Union would entail the Soviet Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations, therefore the laws passed in 1990 and the Law of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic on Freedom of Religion adopted in the same year required that moral education be educational and not religious (Glanzer, 2002: 35). Within the Soviet block started tensions that actually existed between the two laws, with the Soviet law still banned religious teaching in public schools, on the contrary the Russian law stated religious teaching in an academic or epistemological framework, with religious-philosophical disciplines to be included in the educational program of state institutions. Based on Russian familiarity with the Orthodox Church, the law forbade the elements of a church worship service in the schools (ibid). However, it allowed school directors to permit the teaching of religion as a supplemental subject which the Russian Ministry of Education's work took place under the Alternative Education Department. The communist theory-practice unity claim is the endlessly repeated doctrine that guides practice. This claim is of crucial importance to communist regimes because it provides the cardinal justification for the leading role of the members of the Soviet block and the Communist Party alone understands the science of Marxism-Leninism. Therefore it alone is able to properly guide societal developments and therefore, it alone has the duty and the right to provide that guidance and to direct and control societal praxis. The actual history of the Soviet and the other socialist countries shows that the reverse sequence was the rule where ever since Lenin, practice has guided theory and practical requirements have determined theoretical formulations. The theoretical work of socialists consisted above all of providing the justifications for policies which had been adopted for practical reasons by the member states. Theory was not a guide to action, but a legitimation device for action already taken, for example, as Sperlich (2002) points out that when the communist rulers of the GDR noted that they needed a strong state apparatus to keep their hold on power, GDR theorists dutifully discovered that socialism required a strong state, and that the state would wither away only after it had attained its maximum strength and greatest development. This new discovery, was of course, presented in context with true Marxist orthodoxy (Sperlich, 2002: 9). Restructuring in Transition Since the late 1980s, it is seen that the countries of East-Central Europe (ECE) has able to maintain good relations with the former Soviet Union as one of the most dramatic economic experiments in the 'modern' world. According to Rainnie et al (2002) "Encouraged by a community of neo-liberal economists, and almost forced by international financial institutions (IFIs) through conditional clauses attached to lending programs national governments have widely deployed liberal industrial, employment and social policies" (Rainnie et al, 2002: 7). The policies adopted by the member states of the Soviet bloc encompassed a shift from an overly rigid planned system under the state Soviet model, these policies were aimed to introduce market capitalism. While many key proponents of these policies argue to be the basis for economic rejuvenation after the stagnation and slowdown witnessed in the 1980s, the experience of many economies was somewhat different. A key result of the introduction of liberal economic policies in the Soviet in the 1990s has been the dramatic decline in GDP, which in turn has led to a reduction in employment and investment. The result has been that by the end of the 1990s of all the countries in the region after witnessing their respective economic collapse in the labour markets would transform the organisation of work and continue to undergo dramatic change across the region. While the experience of work and employment varied from country to country there were a number of similarities in the former Soviet block that was subjected to some common trends like high levels of relatively secure employment gave way to widespread official and hidden unemployment, job security was replaced by greater job insecurity, employee representation weakened, dependency on state owned enterprises to provide not only a monetary wage, but also social amenities in kind, was replaced by greater differentials in the value of formal wages and, for the unemployed, reliance on low-value state benefits and on varied informal legal and illegal income generating activities (Rainnie et al, 2002: 9). This, was the main similarities that existed between the former member states and has been described as a transition from a low work intensity, mass underemployment system to one that will increasingly be characterised by highly intensive work practices and mass unemployment driven by the pressures of international competition. Soviet Political Ideology Humphrey (2005) suggests that the relationship between early Soviet political ideology and infrastructure entailed Marxist materialism to be the base that determine the superstructure to build material foundations of a new society (Humphrey, 2005). There were various experiences of the Soviet block that convinced organisation and thinking about post-imperialism, but reality in this case was more complicated in a sense that it witnessed one of the marked characteristics of the post-Soviet order and that was the integrity of the emergence of any of these experiences. It is not surprising to know that the former Soviet block remained absolutely suspended among different potential outcomes since the circumstances of imperial collapse typically created barriers to the easy emergence of stable structures. Governmental institutions were weak enough to respond to the quick emergence of coherent nation-states in the colonial periphery of the empire and by the arbitrariness of many colonial boundaries imposed by the imperial administration (Rubin & Snyder, 1998: 2). Final thoughts Mykhnenko (2005) points out that the difference between performance of Eastern Europe with former Soviet can be elucidated by the structural liabilities and those transition shocks that were the consequence of state socialism and the communist trade (Mykhnenko, 2005). However, the increasing evidence of economic dysfunction of the Soviet block along with its impact on political and social life, has provided a peculiar twist to the notion of Soviet-model systems as examples of mature industrialism. In terms of technology and efficiency, Soviet block has entailed international competitiveness by establishing an underwhelming record. Restructuring across the bloc has moved market economics beyond industrial maturity for ultimate good to postindustrial economy to dominate some of the industries based on manpower. If not aging, this is at best a maturity alarming rather than comforting that Gorbachev's realisation of at least some of the longterm implications of these facts is surely one of the factors motivating his calls for restructuring across the bloc. References Glanzer L. Perry, (2002) The Quest for Russia's Soul: Evangelicals and Moral Education in Post-Communist Russia: Baylor University Press: Waco, TX. Gustafson Thane, (1999) Capitalism Russian-Style: Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England. Humphrey Caroline, (2005) 'Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Volume: 11. Issue: 1, p. 39. Lavigne., M., 2000, "Ten years of transition: a review article", Communist and Post- Communist Studies, 33:4. Mawdsley Evan & White Stephen, (2000) The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev: The Central Committee and Its Members, 1917-1991: Oxford University Press: Oxford. Mykhnenko Vlad, (Dec 2005) CPPR, accessed from Nelson D. Lynn & Kuzes Y. Irina (1995) Radical Reform in Yeltsin's Russia: Political, Economic, and Social Dimemsions: M. E. Sharpe: Armonk, London. Rainnie Al, Smith Adrian & Swain Adam, (2002) Work, Employment, and Transition: Restructuring Livelihoods in Post-Communism: Routledge: London. Rubin R. Barnett & Snyder Jack, (1998) Post-Soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building: Routledge: London. Segal Gerald, Judy Batt, Barry Buzan, Peter J. S. Duncan, David S. G. Goodman, Adrian Hyde-Price, Margot Light, John Phipps, Michael C. Williams & Brantly Womack (1992) Openness and Foreign Policy Reform in Communist States. Routledge. Sperlich W. Peter, (2002) Rotten Foundations: The Conceptual Basis of the Marxist- Leninist Regimes of East Germany and Other Countries of the Soviet Bloc: Praeger: Westport, CT. World Bank, 2002, Transition: Ten Years, Washington, DC: World Bank, accessed from Read More