Russian Revolution Centenary: Part Four

Vladimir Lenin had associated imperialism with capitalism. Soviet Union declared itself as an anti-imperialistic State.

Many intellectuals were impressed by the anti-imperialist stance of communism. It appealed to Indians in particular. Before 1947, imperialists had ruled over India for at least 400 straight years. Babur, from today’s Uzbekistan, had established the Mughal Empire in India in the year 1526. (Babri mosque, demolished in 1992, was named after him). Mughals, weakened by the middle of the nineteenth century, were replaced by the British Empire. My parents and grandparents were born in British India, and some of my earlier ancestors presumably had Muslim rulers.

The two empires operated differently. The Mughal Empire began in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Turkey, Iran and other Muslim land). It kept expanding by attacking territories in the south. At its peak, near the end of the 17^th century, it had conquered most of India. The Indian continent was, in some sense, contiguous (adjoining) to the land the Mughals came from. The distance from Samarkand to Delhi was 2000 km. With no sea between them, cavalry could cover it in a few weeks.

The Mughals began to spread across India, marry the locals (Rajputs), and impose their language, music, and religion on the local population. Their rulers ruled from Agra, Lahore or Delhi. Today, the Indian continent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) has more than half a billion Muslims. This is the result of the Mughal rule several centuries earlier.

British Empire, on the other hand, ruled through remote control. No British king or queen Victoria ever shifted base to India. The British simply meant to exploit India as a colony, plunder its wealth. Those who naively think that British rule was good for India should watch the 15-minute clip of Dr Shashi Tharoor’s celebrated debate speech at the Oxford University.

Which of the two empires had a greater impact on India? In terms of damage, certainly the British. As Tharoor points out in his speech, when the British came to India, India was one of the richest countries in the world with 23% of the global GDP. India was the world leader in textiles, steel and shipbuilding. Poverty was unknown. After 200 years of exploitation, expropriation and looting by the British, it was reduced to one of the poorest countries by 1947.

Imperialism is War ! 

The Soviet Union was more like the Mughal Empire, contiguous, and there was much exchange and inter-marriages as a result of the union. Unlike the British leaving India, or French leaving Africa, Russians were not expected to leave the non-Russian republics when the empire ended. In 1991, twenty-five million Russians found themselves on the wrong side of the Russian border. Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) were always strongly anti-Russian. They had won independence in the First World War and considered Russia occupying them illegally after the Second. Those republics denied or made difficult citizenship for those Russians living within their boundaries.

Soviet Union had simply replaced the Russian empire. Lenin’s calling it an anti-imperialist state was as duplicitous as Donald Trump saying nobody has more respect for women than Trump does.

In 1991, due to its prolonged economic failure, USSR was ripe for a breakdown. It could have adopted market economy, and continued its existence. This didn’t happen. It is remarkable that along with its collapse, the union disintegrated into fifteen sovereign states. The disintegration was proof that Soviet Union was an empire, the constituents of which sought independence for a long time. This was further corroborated by the formation of a “Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)” among those nations. The British formed ‘Commonwealth’ as a proxy term for their empire. This was to pretend the empire’s continuation. Both the British Commonwealth and the CIS are powerless bodies. They are like a divorced couple trying to maintain cordial relations.

*****

The Soviet Empire replacing the Russian Empire 100 years ago had fifteen official republics. A staunch Russian nationalist may argue it was a voluntary union in that the Soviet constitution, at least on paper, allowed any republic to secede.

Then what about Poland? Hungary? Bulgaria? Romania? East Germany? Czechoslovakia? (Possibly Afghanistan from 1979).

Russian language, the state planning system, government owning everything, the Soviet way of life, politics, secret police force were all forced on these foreign states. I visited Poland in 1987. It was in a worse shape than the USSR. One of my most memorable memories is a Polish man with a garland of coarse toilet papers around his neck. He was going around displaying that as a trophy. (Toilet paper was also in shortage). Another memory from that trip is my near-death on a Warsaw- Szczecin train in which people were crammed like cattle. For over eight hours, I was squeezed in a mass of flesh, unable to move in any direction, trying desperately to breathe properly.

Poland and other Soviet satellites undoubtedly looked at the USSR as an imperialist power. Twenty-five years after its end, all have joined the EU; some have allowed their territory for American military bases, and all have extinguished Russian language from education.

*****

The British Empire, Islamic empire and Soviet empire were the three largest empires in history, in terms of the landmass they occupied. While my parents’ generation saw the fall of the British Empire, I witnessed the fall of the Soviet. (I celebrated as heartily as my parents must have).

Interestingly, Soviet Empire, in one respect, differed from both the British and the Mughal empires. During the existence of the USSR, Russian population suffered as much as the Estonians, Uzbeks, Armenians, Poles, or East Germans. When the empire came down, Russians in Moscow forcefully brought down the massive statues of Lenin.

You may remember the image of Yeltsin standing on a tank in front of the parliament and declaring independence from the Soviet tyranny. If the Russian people celebrated the end of the USSR, who were the imperialists?

To understand this, we need to discuss bullying in schools.

*****

In a school class, a single boy or a small group of boys are bullies. That small group is capable of dominating the majority, occasionally terrifying them. The remaining students in the class are either the victims or neutral. Some are forced to join or support the bullies in order to protect themselves. The source of the bully power is the bully himself.

In most societies, political power is similar to that of the school bullies. You will notice that even in democratic societies a very tiny section of politicians are elected by millions. India’s lower house, the more powerful body, has 545 individuals (one of them is India’s prime minister). The upper house has 245 individuals. This bunch of 790 people together has all the federal political power over the 1.3 billion Indians. It’s a minuscule percent, one person out of 1.5 million in central power. In absence of additional checks, such power can always be abused. The power of school bullies is limited by strong teachers or rigorous anti-bullying school policies. Without such checks, the school bullies will cause havoc.

The Soviet dictators were like school bullies with no checks on them. Lenin and Stalin legitimised unfettered dictatorship of the communist party and its General Secretary. For seventy years, a small group of Communist dictators ruled unashamedly (the talk was about a dictatorship of the proletariat, but in reality it was a dictatorship over the proletariat). The power of the politburo was absolute, not subject to external checks or criticism. Just like they suffered under Tsar, many Russians suffered under the Soviet rule. Though the Latvians and Czechoslovakians looked at Russians as the imperialists, it was not the Russian people but this small section of Soviet bullies who had formed the empire.

This point is valid in most democratic and dictator societies. I have close friends in Russia, America and England. Should I blame them for Putin or Trump or Brexit? Absolutely not. When I am critical about the British Empire it has nothing to do with my British friends or their ancestors. It has to do with a few British thugs (one may add people like Winston Churchill to that group) keen to build and expand the empire.

Masses are generally apathetic or helpless. In the USA, a democratic icon, nobody can any longer become its president without having access to some 2 billion dollars.  Financial power, also concentrated in the hands of a small group, operates in collusion with political power. What is an average American voter, given a choice between Trump and Hillary, supposed to do? He is almost as helpless as an ordinary Russian under Tsar, Stalin, Brezhnev or Putin. The only difference is that the helpless creature in America is free to shout or protest. The Soviet citizen never was.

Soviet Communism experiment: Lesson no. 4A: One should not judge a person or people by the political situation or leaders in their country. It is wrong and nonsensical.

*****

An empire tries to expand its boundaries, primarily by conquering foreign lands and subjugating foreign people. Usually the vanquished belong to a different race, different religion, speak a different language, have their own customs, traditions, and folktales.

Ukrainians and Belarusians were Slavic people, closer to Russians. (That doesn’t always help as shown by the current Russia-Ukraine conflict). But people in the six Muslim republics and the three Baltic republics were very different. Forcing them into the Soviet Union didn’t work out.

Is that a danger for the European Union? No doubt, European Union is voluntary; far more civilised and has enough checks and balances. However, perception rather than reality that people different than you are ruling over you is likely to cause EU’s downfall in future. Brexit leaders managed to convince sections of population that Britain was reporting to Brussels. I am in Poland at the time of writing this essay. Poland is now in the clutches of vicious ultra-nationalists. Modern Nazis are the rulers in Austria. Though they didn’t seize the power, nationalists also have a strong mandate in France. It is possible that European Union may disintegrate much before celebrating its own centenary.

Soviet communism experiment: Lesson no. 4b: European Union is as abstract a concept as the Soviet Union was. No such homogeneous nation or people exist. If perceived as an Empire ruling over its subjects, it can collapse and disintegrate in the same way the Soviet Union did. That is the unfortunate lesson from the Soviet case study.

Ravi