Imants Dolgins
POL 101
Fall 2000
Shauna Kapsner
In class, on September 13, 2000, we discussed the topic
of “What political biases I have.” All students have different biases, but most
of them were associated with different policies, political parties (democrats
and republicans), and economic and domestic problems. One of my strongest
biases is against communism.
I was born in Latvia in 1980, when Latvia was a part of
the USSR and was still under communist control. I was too young at that time to
make my own opinions about domestic life, politics and economy. Everything was
accepted the way it was. In family, school, media and all around, there was
only one ideology. By the end of 80s, during the national renaissance in
connection with the Soviet campaigns for glasnost (openness) and perestroika
(restructuring) Latvia made its first step toward its freedom. On May 4, 1990,
Latvian legislature passed the declaration on the renewal of independents. I
had become older by that time; and after a couple of years I started to realize
the disadvantages of communism, especially in the form that it was represented
in the USSR.
Now I would like to discuss some of the basic factors
leading to why I don’t like communism. I’m Latvian and during this regime all
minorities were discriminated against by the government. First of all we can
look at the history. Latvia in period between the two World Wars, was a free
country. This freedom ended tragically in 1939 when Hitler and Stalin signed up
a secret Molotov-Robentrop Protocol. On August 5, 1940, the free state of
Latvia became the Latvian Soviet Socialistic Republic. Along with the political
change was the terror attack upon the populace. Within one year, over 100,000
people were murdered or deported. Over 30,000 people were exiled to Siberia, on
the night of June 14,1941 alone, many of them died in the concentration camps
in Siberia. Post-war emigration, immigration of non-balts into the major
cities, deportation and Soviet Russification polices from 1939-1989 dropped the
percentage of ethnic Latvians in Latvia from 73% to 52%. It has been estimated that between 1946 and 1953 deportations
and guerrilla deaths reached 140.000 in Latvia. The Russians and other soviet
immigrants were disproportionately represented in the ruling structure of the
regime and its political and economic administrative posts. Immigrants
generally saw little needs to learn the Latvian language or to identify with
the native population. There is a very good example for this problem. My
roommate was born in Latvia; his parents are immigrants from Russia. He lived
in Latvia all his live but can’t speak Latvian. I can speak Russian very well,
so we communicate in Russian. This is a fact of Russification, and I see it as
discrimination. The worst thing about this is that I never heard anything about
the deportations, about any discrimination. My father was afraid to tell me the
real history about Latvia; he could have had problems with KGB.
Now lets look at the term of political
socialization. Political socialization -The process by which
individuals acquire political attitudes and develop patterns of political
behavior. It is a very important fact to support regime. In a totalitarian
state, such as the satellite states of the former Soviet Union, civil society
is officially nonexistent as the state ostensibly controls all aspects of
public life. The Soviet system used brainwashing –“It is a technique designed
to manipulate human thought or action against the desire, will, or knowledge of
the individual.” The Government was
controlling the physical and social environment and if any individual was
thinking in incorrect way, he had to change his way of thinking. In addition,
individual had to develop loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the ruling
party. People had never heard anything bad about communism at that time. For
example, in every classroom at school, I saw Lenin’s picture, the sickle and
hammer, and posters that were glorifying communism. Sometimes teachers told us
stories about capitalistic economy and how greed and bad it is. There are a lot
of different techniques of brainwashing in the USSR to discuss.
The last thing I would like to look at is the economy of socialism. After
1939, Bolsheviks started collectivization. They established state control over
industry and trade, nationalized all economic property as well as land, and
declared all private sections illegal. My grandfather was a farmer, thus
Bolsheviks took all of his property, land, house, farm (pigs, horses,
etc.) He received only a small
apartment. In addition, he had been forced
to join a collective farm. Output fell and the large amounts of agricultural
products were taken to capital cities (Moscow, Leningrad). In 1932-1933, it
caused the deaths of millions of peasants in Ukraine. In small cities people
could not buy the meat even if they had a meat factory because everything had
been taken. Over all, it was not that easy to get products. To buy a new car,
everyone had to be on a waiting list for some time. It may have taken a year or
two to get a new car. The situation was the same with furniture. Moreover,
there was not a large scale of production; people had some apartments,
furniture, yet there were only seven different car models (regular vehicles) in
all USSR. Government controlled all of the economy, thus there was not any
competition. Everything they made people had to buy, independent of its
quality. Almost everywhere people had to
wait in lines to by groceries. In this situation, money lost all value.
I see this type of government as
totalitarian, where a large scale of ideology is used, and a one party system
exists, terror used to persuade and control of the media and economy are also
controlled. Through such methods, soviet governments denied people
representation in the political, economic, and social decisions that affected
their lives. Such governments have pervasive control over people’s
destinies.
Works Cited
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