janw@inmet.UUCP (11/02/85)
/* Written 8:38 pm Oct 31, 1985 by gabor@qantel in inmet:net.politics */ /* ---------- "Re: The myth of Allied invasion of" ---------- */ In article <50400001@hpcnof.UUCP> Larry Bruns wonders if the Bolshevik revolution has been good for us after all, given that it made the USSR weak and inefficient. If it never happened, they would be just as expansionist but infinitely stronger, says the theory: > The combination of this economic power AND the expansionist tendency would > pose a far greater threat to the West than the USSR does today. If this guy's > theory holds water, then we should be GRATEFUL for the 1917 revolution. The problem with this kind of Realpolitik is that it is not real enough. Is it really in our national interest to have a politically and economically backward Russia facing us? Are we really better off because millions 'over there' live miserable and stunted lives? Posing the question in such a narrow ethno-centric fashion seems quite ugly to me; but even on these tunnel-vision terms the answer is clearly no. The unproven assumption here is that Russia would be just as expansionist under any conceivable political system. What this assumption ignores is that the expansionist policies of the past and present have been possible only because their true cost is not visible to the decisionmaking elite. Remember that the Soviet political system is run by people who operate in a vacuum with no effective feedback mechanisms. One of the disadvantages of sitting atop a hierarchical police state is that it takes decades for news of many policy disasters to filter through the system. This is the reason for the paranoid irrationality of their internal and external colonization drive which is far more menacing than your garden-variety expansionist power that could be bought off with agreements on spheres of influence, buffer states and similar well-tried 19th century techniques. Another cost to us of the 1917 revolution is that facing such a centralized, militarized and ideology-driven rival has distorted and coarsened our political system in obvious ways: it made us more centralized, militarized and ideology-driven than we would be otherwise. Overall, I think we would be far less menaced if the USSR has evolved into a country with twice its current economic strength but with a populace that could demand and get a measure of control over its political institutions. ----- Gabor Fencsik {ihnp4,dual,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor /* End of text from inmet:net.politics */
janw@inmet.UUCP (11/03/85)
/* Written 12:44 pm Nov 2, 1985 by janw@inmet.UUCP in inmet:net.politics */ > [Gabor Fencsik {ihnp4,dual,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor ] > [answering <50400001@hpcnof.UUCP> Larry Bruns] I believe Gabor's points to be both true and profound. (I don't know Gabor, but I've never seen an article of his that was not worth re-reading). Let me add this. Though hypotheses in "alternative history" are unverifiable, it is quite likely that, without Communism, the Russian empire would have fallen apart. All the others did (count: Austro-Hungary, Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Spain...). This one survived, and spread, and keeps spreading. Communism provided it (1) with an incomparable machinery of power and (2) with a supranational, internationalist ideology, acceptable to the ruling class of subject lands. It also (3) made economic gain secondary to power gain, so the empire needn't be cost effective to exist. Jan Wasilewsky /* End of text from inmet:net.politics */