Shadows of Stalin

Opinion Editorial by Tibor Machan -

Traveling through the former Soviet bloc brings unpleasant memories for a former Hungarian refugee. While there are leanings toward freedom, the unapologetic shadow of Stalinist attitudes still looms large.

I am not someone who likes looking at disasters, and I found it very difficult to read books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the labor camps in the old Soviet Union. Even tales of heroic resistance to totalitarianism throughout history have failed to appeal to me.

While the heroism was admirable, there was too much misery in the stories being told.

Nonetheless, I have been doing a lot of lecturing lately in former Soviet bloc countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Armenia, and others. Every time I land in one of these countries I go through some unwelcome emotional upheavals because I can easily imagine not having managed to escape what happened in them. Even though I did, in fact, escape it all when I was smuggled out of Hungary in 1953 as a young boy.

The experience of hiding from the well-armed, murderous border guards was enough to encourage in me a life-long interest in the study of the difference between free and oppressed countries, between those that have been seriously influenced by individualism and classical liberalism and those that have followed the path of collectivism and the centrally-planned economy. And this, in turn, has led to my writing on the topic and to being invited to conferences, seminars and such to engage in debates and make presentations in economics, including in some of these countries.

Seeing the interest shown in the ideas and ideals of the free society by many people in these societies has also lessened my reluctance to think about the Soviet era.

One observation as I travel and lecture in the Republic of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan is that people there who defend the old system do so much more forthrightly than those who champion them in the West.

Those who favor collectivism in the West tend to soften its tenets considerably. They don’t talk so much about ruling others but about how they need help. They don’t speak of how most others are stupid but of how the system deceives them. And leadership is needed to protect them from such deception.

The few defenders of the old regime in the former Soviet bloc countries I have visited are more direct than Western collectivists: Most people are stupid and need the smart ones among us to tell them what to do, how to live, and what goals to pursue. It is not equality or community that is important but being made to do what is right. And that is something only the bright people know. So they should rule, period, whatever the results.

We know, they argue, that when these bright people rule, no one can really control them, and no one can guide how they will implement their rule. So, full confidence is necessary in their role as leaders of the mob.

All the nice sounding substitutes for blatant authoritarianism can be dispensed with. What is important is to make sure that those in the know get to run the show.

It was refreshing to argue with people who didn’t mince words, didn’t use euphemisms as they defended a top-down, fully planned society. There was no mention of the need for democratic participation—after all, why consult all those stupid people who needed to be ruled when the reason they need to be ruled is that they are clueless about how to live?

It would be nice to have colleagues of mine at Western universities who champion statism come right out and defend the idea without mincing words, without prettying up what they are advocating, namely, a society ruled by the elite.

Of which they would surely be members.