Perpetrator Motivations and Nazi Medicine

I’ve realized that this blog gets the majority of it’s views based on searches into the Browing-Goldhagen debate on Holocaust perpetrator motivations.  While I have posted a few works on the blog on the topic, I have not posted my final research on the subject in my blog, simply due to the length of the project.

I will rectify that by now posting the link and research abstract to the online journal in which my research was published:

http://history.csusb.edu/studentsAlumni/journal2009/fuller.htm

The Ideological Scalpel: Physician Perpetrators, Medicalized Killing and the Nazi Biocracy
By MATTHEW D. FULLER

ABSTRACT:

With the conclusion of the Nuremburg Doctor’s trials in August 1947, the role of German physicians in the concentration camps of Europe became a widely discussed and researched topic in the historiography of the Holocaust. Like many other perpetrators indicted by the Allies following the Second World War, German physicians claimed to have been swept up in the mass indoctrination of the National Socialist movement and had ultimately become powerless cogs within the Nazi totalitarian regime. While this claim may be true in some cases, the historiography of German physicians-turned-killers reveals different sources of motivation which allowed doctors in the Third Reich to reverse the precepts of the Hippocratic Oath in order to therapeutically kill for the greater health of the German Völk.

I hope this research will help any individuals pursuing information into the field of perpetrator motivation.

New Blog Started

About a week ago, I started a new blog at http://freerangegamer.wordpress.com/

It will be my primary blog from now on, and will focus heavily on gaming and gaming culture.  If I have anything that I feel needs to be expressed, but doesn’t fit the theme of my new endeavor, I will be sure to post it here.  So, please, go enjoy what it going on at my new blog…..

Nothing more to see here….

Move along….

http://freerangegamer.wordpress.com/

I say this every year…..

…. but I really need to Blog more.  My final year of school, I was using my blog as a way of sharing the writing I was doing in my history classes, kinda tossing my reflections on history out into the world, just for the sake of it.  Now that I am currently between programs, I think I’ll try to update my blog as often as possible, if only to keep my mind sharp and my writing constant.  So, to all 1 or 2 readers out there, enjoy my meager musings when and if they appear.

A Book Review

In his fairly short, yet incredibly dense work Cruel Delight: Enlightenment Culture and the Inhuman, James Steintrager delves into the intellectual and ethical analysis of the practice of cruelty and its relationship to humanity, as perceived by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. In presenting this morose subject of the human condition, Steintrager endeavors to embark on a multi-faceted analysis of the concept of cruelty through the lenses of Enlightenment philosophy, sociology, history, ethics, art, literature, and intellectual discourse, all within 150 pages. This alone should serve as warning indicator to members of the general academic audience who choose to peruse the pages of this text. Hoping to garner a deeper understanding of the Enlightenment and its accompanying socio-cultural history (the word culture is in the title), this reviewer quickly reached the second and most revealing academic warning at the end of the book’s introduction. Steintrager’s own words cannot be bested in describing the danger an academic is about to find themselves engaged in: “By presenting my material in such a way that a general academic audience will, I hope, find it accessible, I have potentially alienated specialists in my field and not at all guaranteed that general readers will be interested.” (Steintrager, xviii) Thus begins the reader’s cruel journey into the morass of Steintrager’s Enlightenment.

Cruel Delight is composed of three sections (Parts I, II, and III), each addressing separate aspects of the shared concepts of cruelty and inhumanity within the Enlightenment. It should be noted that this is the high-water mark of the text’s organizational structure. Part I, entitled The Inhuman is comprised of two chapters, the first attempting to grapple the construct of, as the author words it, “moral monstrosity,” while the second addresses the definition of inhumanity, in Enlightenment terms. The questions of moral monstrosity and inhumanity are broken down to their philosophical roots, with Steintrager drawing upon the works and ruminations of minds such as Smith, Diderot, Shaftesbury, Hume, Hobbes, and Kant. The list of intellectual heavyweights is impressive, no doubt. However, the muddled presentation of the first two chapters in searching for the root of cruelty within morality and inhumanity is likely to be extremely representative of the reality in which Enlightenment philosophers struggled with the issues at hand. This structure is great for specialists in Enlightenment philosophy (or is it?) but falls far short of roping in the general academic audience (but if they’re alienated, that’s alright, too.)

Is cruelty a trait of humanity, or is it an aberration which exists outside of but parallel to human existence? Is it directly opposed to benevolence, or is it, in fact, a product of benevolence? Is it malice, pity, or simply curiosity? A scant thirty pages (give or take a few) are given to tackling the intellectual and philosophical attempts of Enlightenment thinkers to address these huge questions on human nature. When reading the Steintrager text, one feels as if they are swirling within a vortex of Enlightenment discourse, catching fleeting glimpses of understandable reasoning and discussion, only to have it disappear and be replaced by related, yet substantially different analysis. The reader, in the end, finds that Steintrager has not presented a coherent summation of the subjects addressed, not surprising given the length of analysis, one which could easily fill volumes. There exists a vague impression upon the reader that cruelty and inhumanity are simply elements of the human condition, but such a conclusion is reached with little help from the author. One might be better off personally reading the primary source documents utilized in Steintrager’s analysis, keeping the concept of cruelty in mind, in order to reach a coherent consensus.

Part II, entitled Curiosity Killed the Cat, offers a reprieve to the reader, one that is needed yet unfulfilling at the same time. The broad presentation of this portion of the text brings the reader closest to the elusive spectre of “Enlightenment culture” referenced in the book’s title. At the heart of this “cultural” analysis is a series of four engravings, titled “The Four Stages of Cruelty” by William Hogarth, completed in 1751. Steintrager utilizes these four images to create for the reader a sense of Enlightenment culture and its underlying cruelty, with other source documentation being juxtaposed sporadically. For Steintrager, these engravings are sufficient in presenting to his audience topics ranging from the European cultural shift for animal rights to the process of habituation to the professional detachment among practitioners of medicine. As a student of history, the reviewer found this section of the book to be an absolute disappointment.

Steintrager repeatedly misses the mark in presenting the reader with a concise, or even chronological, glimpse into the culture of the Enlightenment. The major culprit once again lies in Steintrager’s organization (or lack thereof). As in the first portion of the book, familiar names are bandied about: Rousseau, Kant, Locke and Pope. However, they are utilized awkwardly as the narrative skips from one tangent of thought to another, then another and then back again. Steintrager (successfully) maintains the underlying discussion on inhumanity throughout the section, but the relevance and purpose of the theme have a tendency to be lost among the varying threads of thought the author is attempting to force into line. The reader is, again, left unfulfilled, having gained little perspective and insight into the aspects and evolution of Enlightenment culture parallel to the narrative of cruelty and inhumanity. On the other hand, the reader can take faith in the relevance of the discourse which closes the second section. A discussion of Enlightenment cataract surgery and its metaphysical impacts on individual objectivism in regards to morality makes perfect sense, after all.

The Bedside Manner of the Marquis de Sade, title to part III of the Steintrager text, was the author’s final opportunity to make amends with the general academic audience, this reviewer among them. As the final section begins, Steintrager presents to the reader brief anecdotal analysis of one of the Marquis de Sade’s more documented transgressions, “affaire d’Arcueil,” followed by some examples of contemporary Enlightenment response and a few of the Marquis’ personal writings. The reader is rewarded with a small amount of contextual historical analysis, but fulfillment is quickly lost as Steintrager presses forward. Presenting Sade as something of an amateur surgeon, Steintrager elevates this conception to equally important footing in regards to the Marquis’ infamous sexual practices. Sade was as morally monstrous as the surgeon and human vivisector of the Enlightenment era, nothing more, or so it would appear to be in Steintrager’s analysis. A consensus, however, remains elusive even under repeated re-readings of the chapter dedicated to Sade and his namesake sexual practice of sadism.

Chapter six, dedicated to ethics and human vivisection starts out strong. At last it appears as if Steintrager will salvage a portion of his text, as his discourse on ethics and cruelty is both well-organized and intellectually understandable. The Enlightenment argument for and against human vivisection is presented along ethical lines, with the theme of cruelty and inhumanity running parallel in a solid analysis. This brief portion of the text is both well-written and enjoyable, but it is soon revealed that this glimmer of academic hope is to be crushed by the same problematic structure that has persisted throughout the text. The discussion on ethics quickly deflates and is succeeded by discussions on female sexual repression and eroticized suffering as presented in art coupled with images of Enlightenment era mastectomy tools and techniques, of which there is not discussion presented in the text. It must be admitted that at this point in the book, the reviewer began writing expletives with his highlighter across the text, as all sense of continuity and cohesion fled the pages. Steintrager’s epilogue is also of no consolation to the reader as the author chooses not to summarize the arguments presented within the body of the text. Instead, Steintrager chooses to summarize and subsequently analyze the novel Vathek by William Beckford, failing to relate it to the body of the text and further confusing (and aggravating) the reader.

Bravo, James Steintrager! You have indeed remained true to your prophetic words. Not only have you possibly alienated specialists within the field of Enlightenment studies, you have mostly likely alienated the vast general academic audience as well. Poor structure, oversimplification and over-analysis prove to make this text a frustrating and unfulfilling academic read. In all fairness to the author, the specific mind-frame of the reviewer (in wanting historical contextual analysis) may have been asking too much, but given the extremely broad scope of the attempted analysis, the consolidation of the argument and narrative into such a short volume is unquestionably the author’s shortcoming. While the brief discussion and analysis on ethics in chapter six is a strong point, it falls far short of compensating for the remainder of the work. The inundation of poorly ordered primary sources utilized in the first portion of the text followed shortly by singular analysis of the Hogarth engravings in the second serves to put the reader off balance and grasping at straws. There is a lack of continuity despite the presence of the theme of cruelty and inhumanity, weak as it may be. In regards to historical contextual analysis, an M.A. in French and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature do not a historical author make!

My CSUSB body of work by Wordle.net

This is the summation of everything I’ve written while at Cal State San Bernardino, limited to the top 100 words.  As Nikki says, this is “what my brain looks like.”  Not really sure how I feel about that assessment….

My Blog by wordle.net…

The Historical Evolution of Europe after 1945

With the end of the Second World War in 1945, Europe faced the overwhelming task of literally rebuilding itself from the inside-out and the ground up. As Bruno Foa states in his post-war analysis of the continent, “{I}t is already clear that the economic and social disturbances of the last war were child’s play in comparison with the crisis Europe is now facing . . . {T}he experiences of this war and the new dark age which began on January 30, 1933, have destroyed old frames of references and created conditions favorable to nihilism and despair.” Emerging from what has been dubbed a 30 year European Civil War, the old order of Europe – politically, socially, culturally, and psychologically – had been utterly destroyed. If Europe was to have any chance of finding its new center in the chaotic post-war reality, the old ways of thinking would have to be cast aside in favor of a more progressive and mutually beneficial approach to existence.

    The first order of business for battered Europe was the dismantling of imperialism and recognition of the new state of world affairs. With the United States and the Soviet Union dominating the affairs of West and East Europe, respectively, the self-determination of Europe as a whole, as opposed to individual nationalist states, became paramount in driving forward the economic and social recovery of Europe. The creation of the United Nations in the spring of 1945 was the first major step in bringing the newly emerging Europe closer to a unified reality. The ensuing Cold War, pitting Soviet and Western ideologies against one another forced Central and Western Europe to realize its need for a strengthened existence, as it faced the stark reality that the ideological war between East and West was likely to be fought on the same battlefields as the previous two wars. The implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1947 sped the process of re-stabilization in Europe greatly. As Brose points out, “Marshall’s ERP aimed to facilitate reconstruction, stimulate private European investments and intra-European trade, provide dollar liquidity for the purchase of American exports, and, perhaps most importantly, free Europe from social and economic instability so that it could avoid revolution and afford to help the U.S. militarily.” The infusion of American money (in addition to a not-insubstantial amount of Americanization) helped kick start Central and Western Europe’s miracle of economic recovery. This process proved ideologically and economically beneficial for the United States and Europe, a fact that was not overlooked in the lagging Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe. Additionally, while the Marshall Plan was successful in quelling revolutionary ideas in the west, it fueled the flames of democratic revolution in the east.

    The death of Stalin ushered in a new era of Soviet Communist control in the east. Helmed by Nikita Khrushchev and mobilized along the lines of his (in)famous Secret Speech, an ideological thaw settled over Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. This slackening of totalitarian Communism, when coupled with the model and influence of resurging Western Europe, facilitated active attempts of democratization and self-determination in Soviet satellites, most notably Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, initially a peaceful student protest, serves as a quintessential example of the thinking the thaw produced. A peaceful student protest rapidly spiraled into outright democratic revolution, a result of Communist reaction to weakening control. “After a decade of Communist control over our country,” wrote Hungarian Andor Heller, “we are going to show our feelings spontaneously, in our own way – something never allowed under Communist rule . . . The peaceful demonstrations of the youth and the workers have been turned by Communist guns into a revolution for national freedom.” The Soviet military response, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Hungarians, severely undermined the hopes of democratic self-determination within the Soviet satellites. A little over a decade later, the economic reform movement in headed by Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia, raised the ire of the Soviet regime. In attempting to keep pace with the rapid technological and economic gains of Western Europe, facilitated by expanding trade agreements and free-market economies, Dubcek implemented the “Action Program” which in-turn sparked cries for social and political reforms as well. The Soviet response was again military in nature, and, although bloodless, showed that the failure of the “Prague Spring” effectively ended any hope of democratic reform in the east.

    The changing democratic and industrial landscape in Western Europe, however, was not without its share of problems. The student revolutions of 1968 challenged the newly established authority of a unifying Europe, particularly in France. Pressure from below resulted in the resignation of de Gaulle, thus removing the largest obstacle hampering deeper unification along economic lines. Additionally, Americanization had come full-circle in its influence of Western Europe. The continent had successfully followed the American model to such a degree that it had become self-sufficient to the point of helping the spread of democracy on its own, such as in Italy and Spain, while also allowing its citizens to be in the frame of mind to question and challenge the establishment, a mark of truly democratic freedom.

    The same democratic freedom, albeit a difficult transformation, was to eventually come to the whole of Eastern Europe. The western model of Democratic Capitalism continued to far surpass the Communism of the Soviet Bloc, which, despite the threatening illusion of strength and solidarity, was collapsing upon its disintegrating infrastructure. Despite the idealistic attempt to reform the Soviet Union back to its Marxist-Leninist roots through the dual efforts of Perestroika and Glastnost, Mikhail Gorbachev preside over the demise of the Communist Era of Russia and Eastern Europe. Much to the shock and delight of the West, the single largest threat to an autonomous and unified European state practically disappeared overnight. The time of the European Union had finally arrived.

    The question presented by the history of post-war Europe is whether the formation of the European Union, as it is today, was inevitable or not. Arguably, the reality of its existence is a product of inevitability for three reasons: the historic push for unification, the fully realized consequences of purely nationalist interests, and the necessity of mutual understanding and protection whilst in the threatening shadow of the Cold War. The push for unification, deeply intertwined with the call for pacifism, had remained a consistent undercurrent within the social dialogue of Europe since before the First World War. However, the evolution of the competitive-state system plunged the continent into two bloody conflicts, the result of which bared the soul of Europe unto itself and begged for a reevaluation of the old modes of thinking. As Western Europe rapidly reorganized itself along multi-beneficial lines while standing between the aggravated ideologies of the East and West, it made perfect sense for the reforming nations to come to grips with their collective past and direct themselves toward a brighter collective, or unified future. While the process has not been met with overwhelming approval or appreciation and continues to face challenges it may or may not be able to handle (the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and the antagonistic reassertion of legitimate power in the Russian Federation, for example), the unification of Europe was, after 1945, immediately recognized as the best defense against a continuation of the European Civil War.

 

Bibliography

Brose, Eric Dorn. A History of Europe in the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2005.

 

Fao, Bruno. “Europe in Ruins.” In Sources of Twentieth Century Europe, edited by Marvin

Perry, 284 – 287. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

 

Heller, Andor. “The Hungarian Revolution, 1956.” In Sources of Twentieth Century Europe,

edited by Marvin Perry, 358 – 360. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

Perpetrator Motivations: Revisiting the Browning-Goldhagen Debate

When approaching the historiography of the Holocaust, a fundamental concern for historians and researchers lies in uncovering the motivations of the perpetrators. The question of motivation has consistently challenged scholars working in the field of Holocaust research, centering on the argument of intentionalism versus functionalism. Intentionalists believe that the Nazi Regime’s decision to exterminate European Jewry was methodically planned and executed process derived from Hitler’s rampant anti-Semitism and personal initiative. Functionalists, on the other hand, believe the Holocaust manifested along more utilitarian lines, with the methods and inclinations of the genocidal killers being dictated more by the “situation on the ground” in Eastern Europe which left the perpetrators with rapidly reduced options to deal with the increasing number of Jews in Nazi occupied territories. During the 1990′s, two books, Christopher R. Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, became the focal point of the intentionalist/functionalist debate and through their differences of understanding, helped to reshape historian’s understanding of perpetrator motivations and the causation of the Holocaust.

    Ordinary Men, published in 1992, is an extremely microcosmic approach to understanding what motivated, as Browning describes, “ordinary” Germans to become genocidal murderers. By utilizing a wealth of documentation and post-war testimony regarding the actions of Order Police Battalion 101, Browning discovered a break in the misconception that the murderers of Jews were all fanatical Nazis and ideological automatons and was capable of giving a “human face” to the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Documents used by Browning showed that the members of Police Battalion 101, responsible for the deaths of 83,000 Jews, were men of all ages and from all walks of German life and not representative of the traditional model of genocide-inclined Nazis. Based on the surviving battalion roster, Browning was able to surmise that the battalion’s demographics in regards to social background were extremely representative of the German state as a whole. Given the demographic reality of the men in Police Battalion 101, Browning concluded that by 1942, prior to the battalion’s arrival in Poland and perpetration of genocidal violence, the men “would not seem to have been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on behalf of the Nazi vision of a racial utopia free of Jews.” Additionally, Browning concluded the following analysis to be true of the men of Police Battalion 101:

Reserve Police Battalion 101 was not sent to Lublin to murder Jews because it was composed of men specially selected or deemed particularly suited for the task. On the contrary, the battalion was the “dregs” of the manpower pool available at that stage of the war. It was employed to kill Jews because it was the only kind of unit available for such behind-the-lines duty.

The problem Browning was left with was how to understand the manner in which these “ordinary” Germans were capable of facilitating the deaths of so many Jews.

    Browning believed that the origin of Police Battalion 101′s capability to participate in the murder of Jews was manifold. Following the traumatic initial massacre at Józefów, the men of Battalion 101 were consistently involved in ghetto-clearing operations, deportations, anti-partisan actions, “Jew Hunts,” and additional massacres. Browning asserts that while most men succumbed to the brutalization of their existence and killed, whereas relatively few did not, the majority of the men acted as follows:

The largest group within the battalion did whatever they were asked to do, without ever risking the onus of confronting authority or appearing weak, but they did not volunteer for or celebrate the killing. Increasingly numb and brutalized, they felt more pity for themselves because of the “unpleasant” work they had been assigned than they did for their dehumanized victims. For the most part, they did not think what they were doing was wrong or immoral, because the killing was sanctioned by legitimate authority. Indeed, for the most part they did not try to think, period.

Browning concludes that the combination of factors ranging from a brutalized existence to ideological influence to pressure for conformity resulted in the fundamental psychological shift necessary to create genocidal killers out of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen, however, would summarily disagree.

    Published in 1996, Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, is a far broader approach to perpetrator motivations and presents a sweeping analysis of German history and culture both before and during the Nazi era. Unlike Browning’s multi-causal approach, Goldhagen vehemently asserts that Germany’s cultural history of not just anti-Semitism, but eliminationist anti-Semitism is the prime-mover in motivating German perpetration of the Holocaust. Goldhagen directly challenges Browning’s assessment while simultaneously indicting all Germans when he states:

Germans’ antisemitic beliefs about Jews were the central causal agent of the Holocaust . . . The conclusion of this book is that antisemitism moved many thousands of “ordinary” Germans – and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned – to slaughter Jews. Not economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not the social psychological pressure, not invariable psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity.

According to Goldhagen, the history of German cultural anti-Semitism developed in a manner far different than the rest of Europe, essentially substantiating the Sonderweg thesis normally applied to German political development. Unlike the rest of Europe, German anti-Semitism was especially virulent and destructive and took on a form that was not just exclusionary in form, but eliminationist in regards to European Jews.

    Because the German conscious is grounded in such a radically different conception of anti-Semitism, Goldhagen maintains that it had developed into a defining cultural axiom, and that all that was necessary for ordinary Germans to make the leap to genocidal murder was the green-light from higher authority, namely Hitler and the Nazi party. Goldhagen states German anti-Semitism “was in this historical instance causally sufficient to provide not only the Nazi leadership in its decision making but also the perpetrators with the requisite motivation to participate willingly in the extermination of the Jews.” In essence, Hitler and German society were in collective agreement in regards to the status of Jews, and because of this symbiosis, ordinary Germans, like the members of Police Battalion 101, would become motivated genocidal executioners not because they required to, but because they wanted to.

    Goldhagen’s argument of cultural anti-Semitism as a motivating factor is beneficial, but at the same time is too narrowly (and harshly) focused. From a historical perspective, it is erroneous to group all Germans into the category of anti-Semite, particularly under the heading of eliminationist anti-Semites. Additionally, Goldhagen’s thesis of German anti-Semitic heritage does not sufficiently explain the genocidal actions of the Ukrainian Hiwi auxiliary troops or Lithuanian civilians, both of which perpetrated atrocities against Eastern European Jews with little or no instigation from German occupiers.

For historians, both author’s works provide valuable insights into understanding the motivations of the Holocaust’s perpetrators. At the same time, however, neither is completely sufficient in fully explaining why Germans, such as the men of Police Battalion 101, continued to brutalize and kill Jews time and again. German anti-Semitism, when compared to European anti-Semitism as a whole, does not provide sufficient force alone to facilitate the murderous actions of the perpetrators. At the same time, external environmental and psychological factors can certainly create a complicit atmosphere, but are not concrete enough to drive individuals to cruelty, torture and murder. These revelations have left historians to conclude that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were motivated by a symbiosis of the two arguments, part intentionalist, part functionalist which has moved the historiography down what is known as the “crooked road to Auschwitz.” Although Browning poignantly states in his response to Goldhagen, “[t]hat these policemen were ‘willing executioners’ does not mean that ‘wanted to be genocidal executioners,’” it does not negate the fact that they killed time and time again.

 

 

Bibliography

Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution

    In Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.

 

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.

    New York: Vintage Books, 1996.

The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

Throughout the 20^th Century, Europe has constantly maintained a reality centered on conflict or the threat thereof. Does the creation of the EU give hope for a more peaceful future in Europe?

The 20^th Century was, undoubtedly, the most physically catastrophic and psychologically intense period in human, particularly European, history. Two world wars, the Cold War, and all manner of social and political unrest in between, coupled with three separate genocidal actions (Ukrainian, Jewish, and Bosnian) have deeply reflected the historical fact that Europeans appear to have a deep-seeded cultural inclination do perpetrate violence upon one another. With the creation of the European Union, an existence that has been suggested and pushed by European thinkers since the more “innocent” times preceding The Great War, greater Europe has found itself in a mutually beneficial reality with economic, political, and military advantages. It would appear that the old animosities have been set aside, and the collective conscience of Europe is surging ahead to a cooperative and peacefully self-determined future. However, the cooperative equation still contains the unpredictable variable: Russia.

According to the European Commission’s website, http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/russia/index_en.htm, the Russian Federation has entered numerous cooperative agreements with the EU in regards to economic trade, the environment, and the upholding of human rights. While this appears to be a positive thing, it still means that Russia maintains autonomy from membership and acts in only limited accordance to the overall aims of the collective partnership. Two wars in Chechnya and the invasion of Georgia prove that the “Russian Bear” is only partially tamed. The velvet glove of democracy still covers the (albeit rusty) mailed fist of Russian Communism. One might be lulled into the belief that the democratic capitalist system is alive and strong in the former Soviet Union, until closer scrutiny is paid to Vladimir Putin. Having served two terms as President and currently serving in the office of Prime Minister, Putin has experienced the top levels of democratic power. However, having been born and raised during the ideological height of the Cold War in addition to being an active member of the KGB until the fall of Communism, one would be remiss to think that new found democracy is enough to wash away the indoctrination received during the highly formative years of his life. Such may be the way of many Russians. Communist ideology is part of modern Russian heritage and culture, and to shake such a defining element of one’s national identity is no small task.

While the former Soviet Union comes to grips with its ideological past, it continues to benefit from the infusion of free-market capitalism, much touted by the West. This “victory,” however, is a double-edged sword. Over the course of the class debates, the fall of Communism, particularly Soviet Communism, was attributed to the dual factors of unsustainable ideology and a crumbling military-oriented economic infrastructure. Essentially, the Soviets were extremely capable of producing military goods like tanks and assault rifles, but could hardly produce adequate common goods like stoves, clothes dryers and razor blades (those produced were of radically inferior quality, by Western standards). With the fall of the Communist regime came the capitalist economy, but NOT the negation of Soviet military potential. This reality poses a critical question for the future of Europe and the West: As cooperative measures between Russia and the EU continue to strengthen the Russian economic infrastructure while at the same time allowing it to maintain massive military potential, what happens when the Russian economy reaches a level of self-sufficiency?

More problematic is the seemingly continued impotence of Western European power. Throughout the 20^th Century, European diplomatic cooperatives have failed to provide a firmly decisive hand in unfolding times of crisis. The League of Nations failed miserably to deal with the rise of Fascism and Nazi Germany, while the United Nations acted in a minimalist fashion when wrestling with Serbian genocidal aggression in Bosnia. Unlike their Russian counterpart, the western democracies of the European Union (with the exception of Great Britain) have grown, for lack of a better term, “soft.” The intellectualization of a century of death and destruction on European soil has left the West with little stomach for blood-shed. While this is completely responsible and both morally and ethically inspiring, it does present possible problems down the road. The Ukrainian Oil Crisis in January of this year, when Russia cut-off the energy supplies it provides to the European Union, revealed a frightening reality of the security threat an invigorated Russia poses. EU leaders recognized the situation, but evaluated it as such:

January’s events strengthened our resolve to continue this work. We do not want to supplant Russia – which will remain a prime supplier for the medium and probably long term. But we need to be clear-headed about the situation. There’s much talk about our energy dependence on Russia, but it’s more accurate to talk of energy
interdependence. The EU may depend on Russia for 25% of our gas and oil supplies, but 70% of Gazprom’s revenue comes from us. This gives both sides powerful incentives to put our energy relations on a firm and predictable basis. The principles of reciprocity, transparency and proportionality are key. We want to strengthen our energy dialogue with Russia, bringing it to accept binding arrangements based on these principles, including in the new EU-Russia Agreement we are negotiating. (http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/09/100&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en)

This response to a serious breach of international relations and security eerily echoes the calls of Neville Chamberlain and his policy of Appeasement. Diplomacy, while being the sensible course of action, may only serve to stave off the inevitable.

The European continent is far from seeing its last taste of bitter warfare. While the formation of the European Union and the capitalization/democratizaton of the Russian economy and political structure serve as stabilizing influences, old tensions continue to permeate the collective reality. The old guard of Communism has undoubtedly remained active below the surface while ethnic tensions continue to exist throughout the continent. Western and Central Europe, despite being unified, strong, and capable, has shown itself to be (potentially) as indecisive/ineffective as it was almost a century ago. At the same time, Russia has repeatedly shown that, despite collaboration and collective bargaining with the EU, it is more than willing to play by its own rules and follow its own agenda, for better or for worse. The creation of the EU and the fall of Communism have simply provided the means with which to extend the timeline of conflict. Given the history of the continent and essentially the nature of man, Europe has simply entered another period of “when,” while the time of “if” still sits somewhere beyond the horizon.

A Gun is the Only Thing a Communist Understands*

In your opinion what are the most important causes of the fall of communism? What cause is the most determinative?

In his work Farce, Reformability, and the Future of the World, Václav Havel reflects on the nature of the Communism’s totalitarian structure. He states, “[t]he system’s totalitarian character conflicts with life’s own intrinsic tendency toward heterogeneity, diversity, uniqueness, autonomy – in a word, toward plurality. This is why life inevitably obstructs and resists a totalitarian system.” In hindsight, these words are an ironic companion to Mikhail Gorbachev’s words in Perestroika, in which he claims that “People, human beings with all their creative diversity, are the makers of history,” and that “Perestroika itself can only come through democracy.” Given the failure of peaceful democratic revolution in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968, it was no surprise that individuals like Havel perceived the reform-minded Gorbachev as more-of-the-same. It was, however, the reform movement helmed by Gorbachev that served as the final straw to break the Communist back, one which had weakened since the death of Josef Stalin.

The first death throe of Communism came with the last death throe of Stalin. Through shocking abuse of totalitarian authority, Josef Stalin was successful in maintaining an iron grip on the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and the Communist Party. Utilization of fear, force, and death all worked in the favor of the party ideology, particularly in tumultuous times. However, as the chaos of war diminished and the relative peace of the Cold War grew, the vibrant energy of the Great Revolution no longer existed in a manner capable of fully sustaining Communist integrity. As Gorbachev points out, “Decay began in public morals; the great feeling of solidarity with each other that was forged during the heroic times of the Revolution, the first five-year plans, the Great Patriotic War and postwar rehabilitation was weakening . . .” With the era of Stalinism ended and the subsequent “thaw” provided by Khruschev’s more moderate form of Communism as revealed in the “Secret Speech,” the ideology began to weaken. With the violent suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the subsequent oppression of Czechoslovakia following the Prague Spring in 1968, the Soviet Union’s interpretation of Communism continually oscillated between authoritarianism and democratization. By Brezhnev’s death in 1982, this oscillation had continually weakened the declining system which fought to maintain rampant defense spending while faced with declining quality control, economic capability, and a dismal standard of living.

The fall of Communism can be likened to a spinning top. In the beginning, the top spins fast, strong and straight, the same way Communism maintained itself through the Stalinist Era. However, once the initial energy is lost, the top must rely on its own inertia to keep spinning. It will continue to do so, but will slowly lose speed and will begin to move away from its original axis. In the end, as the energy plays out, the top slows to a point where it topples and finally stops. Such was the case of the Soviet system of Communism. The inconsistent and oppressive nature of Soviet control could no longer keep pace in the war of ideologies as the democratic West continued to surpass all aspects of the Communist bloc. A crumbling infrastructure at home (the Soviet Union) meant decreased capabilities to react appropriately (from a Soviet perspective) to growing civil unrest and calls for reform. Once Gorbachev came to power, systemic reform was not only wanted, it was desperately needed. The writing was on the wall; the energy of the Revolution was not infinite and the old ways were not enough to maintain sustainability. The ideology had spun too far from its original axis and no amount of force could right it again.

*Title quoted from Václav Havel’s Farce, Reformability, and the Future of the World