A Question about former socialist countries

[Wearenotdeadyet]

I really wonder why the former-socialist countries are so racist now? I mean Russia,Serbia,Crotia etc. What happened to this people and why the racist movements are fastly growing in their countries?? i can't find any answer to this question...

[New Tet]

I really wonder why the former-socialist countries are so racist now? I mean Russia,Serbia,Crotia etc. What happened to this people and why the racist movements are fastly growing in their countries?? i can't find any answer to this question...

Maybe because the Soviet system never fully addressed the problem of racism and national chauvinism within its own borders.

[Coggeh]

Maybe because the Soviet system never fully addressed the problem of racism and national chauvinism within its own borders.
This is true . But all the same it shows that after the collapse of the berlin wall and of the planned economy in Russia and the subsequent failure of capitalism how workers turned on each other and reverted back to racism not seen on this scale since the pre-revolution era .In other words it proves the time old saying of Malcolm X that you can't have capitalism without racism.

[Demogorgon]

I really wonder why the former-socialist countries are so racist now? I mean Russia,Serbia,Crotia etc. What happened to this people and why the racist movements are fastly growing in their countries?? i can't find any answer to this question...
The rapid neo-liberal reforms of the early nineties created extreme inequality. An elite prospered while most people saw their standard of living decrease. Such a situation inevitably breeds social instability. Resentment is not always directed at the case of a problem. In much the same way as resentment in America and much of Western Europe is-absurdly-channeled at immigrants, so is resentment in the old Eastern Block channeled at ethnic minorities. Racism long predates the "socialist" governments and all they ever did was keep the lid on it. They never really addressed the causes. So after those Governments had gone and new economic inequality flared up then it had the perfect environment to expand in.

[New Tet]

This is true . But all the same it shows that after the collapse of the berlin wall and of the planned economy in Russia and the subsequent failure of capitalism how workers turned on each other and reverted back to racism not seen on this scale since the pre-revolution era .In other words it proves the time old saying of Malcolm X that you can't have capitalism without racism.

I agree with the spirit of what you're saying here but am doubtful that capitalism failed in post-Soviet Europe. I think that capitalism succeeded in the former Soviet style countries beyond its own surprised expectations.

There is a connection, l believe, between the success of capitalism and class divided society and the increase of the evils it feeds.

[Communist]

I really wonder why the former-socialist countries are so racist now?

At the risk of being simplistic, you already have the answer in your question.
Because they are no longer socialist. One of capitalism's favorite tools is racism.

[Wearenotdeadyet]

yeah but it sems more brutal than any other country

everyday some immigrants are dying in Russia and the racist groups are raising as hell.. just write youtube "russian skinheads" you will find millions of videos of russian racist beating some caucaisan or middle asian. I think racism in Russia looks more scary than any other country

[Chow Foo]

Blame Capitalism

[robbo203]

There was a fair bit of racism when these regimes previously existed as state capitalist dictatorships

[Jimmie Higgins]

Many of these countries are getting the worst of the world economic collapse and have been suffering from neo-liberal deforms since the end of the USSR.

So a population that is being squeezed by capitalism on the one hand, believes that socialism is corrupt and a dead end because their experience of so-called socialism under state-capitalism... this kind of situation is really a breeding ground for fascism.

[ArrowLance]

Blame Capitalism

Ya, what he said.

[Rjevan]

I think it is because of the undamped turbo-capitalism which rages especially in Russia but also in the other former socialist countries. Very few people get unbelievable rich while the living standarts of the big mass decrease in a shocking way. In this situation people sadly tend to search for scapegoats for their missery and even more sadly they find them in form of immigrants instead of realising that the bourgeoisie and the ruling classes are to be blamed for their misery. It's like in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. People starve and see that everything gets worse almost every day and who do they blame for this? Not capitalists like Stinnes, Krupp or Quandt, no, the Jews, who are seen as "parasites and foreign body" since medieval times. And I think it's the same in the Eastern European states plus racism is actively backed up by their capitalist governments, just see how Russia deals with convicted neo-nazis and boneheads who are accused to have murdered immigrants and then compare their penalties to those of left-wing activists and anti-fascists. Minorities are officially discriminated and slanderous propaganda about them is spread by official newspapers and TV agencies.

And in this fuelled situation people who tell the frustrated and disappointed masses about old glorious times, imperial glory in tsarist Russia (and sometimes even the USSR) and "national pride" for unique achievements and blame everything on "degenerated foreign bodies, who want to destroy our culture and national identity" have an easy time of it. The living standart of people in e.g. Russia and the whole situation there is not comparable to Western European standarts, we live rather wealthy, comfortable and happy here, this is not the case in countries like Serbia or Russia. And so people are much more open to exteme right-wing policies than here, they feel betrayed because capitalism turned out to be not the paradise they have been promised and so they gladly project their frustration on people who are said to be responsible for their situation, according to the fascists, the media and their own government.

[punisa]

Coming from one of the mentioned countries (Croatia), I can confirm that racism is very high here.
But this goes even beyond that, the intolerance is becoming epidemic - towards everything and everyone.

Currently the country is on the brink of economic collapse. It gets worse by the day.
Recent hush-hush on the street is that the only solution for Croatia is to call IMF for help - and we all know what that means..
Prime minister resigned out of random a week or so ago.

Country is devasted by the rich capitalist elite. The wealth that some aquired is incredible, millions and millions in pockets of a few.
Besides of a few web sites, freedom of media is a rude joke in Croatia.

Still, the revolutionary potential is very very low - compared to other ex-Yugoslavia countries. From what I see/listen/read, masses in Serbia and also Bosnia are steadily increasing its awarness, whille Croatia is on hold.
Why is that? Quite simple really.
To revolt against crooked governemnt you need to inject a little bit of healthy "red" color, and this doesn't fly here.

People in Croatia suffered greatly in an internally montaged war in which Serbia tried to occupy it after Yugoslavia broke up (truth is, ex presidential scumm Milosevic (SERB) and Tudjaman (CROAT) played it togeather from day one).
On these grounds, massive propaganda made sure that regular Croat hates everything that smells like Communism, cause' they translate Communsim = Serbian aggresion.

In the absense of left revolt, people look for other options. This means turning to the far right.
Thus isntead of revolutionary masses you have for example 100.000 people chanting Ustasha and Nazi slogans at concerts (should I also added that these Fascist orgy is payed by the goverment? Taxpayers money that is).
If your timing is right you'll come to Zagreb around new year's or some religious holyday and find thousands dressed in black saluting you in a facist manner on the main square.
You just arrived at the Thompson concert - welcome !
Wonder who payed for this specific fascist orgy? The mayor ! What party the mayor belongs to? Social-democrats ! Now that is some nasty politics, huh?

http://emperor.vwh.net/pix/manyhands.jpg

https://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/Portals/0/images/2008-11-11/Novosti/THOMPSON2-300508Thumbnail.jpg

http://www.057info.hr/images/vijesti/orginal/ustase_1207838399.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Thompson_Maksimir_17.6.2007_3.jpg

http://www.index.hr/images2/Thompson-koncert-29837492-W.jpg

BTW - for those that do not know - the "U" sign you see on shirts and caps is an equivalent to the Nazi swastika. The "U" stands for Ustashe. If you want to learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e)

Ruling capitalist elite, togeather with the Chatolic Church, suck up to the right wingers who idolize them despite everything.

Thus new philosphy poisoned people's fragile skulls - if a man is awfully rich that means he is "succesful", not a "thief".

Among the masses insecurity is rising and life standard is falling daily.
Also classic Marxist example of "downward mobility" is on the rise - pettie burgoise are turning into proletariets very fast.
There is anger and tension everywhere and you feel it when walking down the street.

Regular skinheads are shit, sure they cause some trouble, but nothing to worry about. It's the other 90% of racist, homophobic, conservative population I worry about.

Also we have a huge influx and creation of two radical groups:
- Croatians who are ex soldiers, rarely treated for PTSP
- Croatian immigrants from all parts of the world.

I'aint saying that these two groups are de facto bad, but many kneel to same common symbolism: nation, God, pure ethnicity.

As many of you also know, Croatia was a part of the forces of Axis during WWII. After defeated by Croatian and other Yugoslav partisans, these nazi collaborators fled the reagion. Thousands settled in Canada, US, Australia, Argentina and Chille.
Many of these families, unconstrained and free of de-nazification (like the one in Germany), remained fascist, organized and brought up a lot of children that spent their childhood praying in front of framed pictures of nazi-fascist leaders.
After Croatia declared independance many of these people rushed back to Croatia.

Also many of these living abroad in the course of 50 years (whille Yugoslavia existed) became very whealthy businessmen. Using their money they installed right wing capitalist elite rulers from day one.

Today, as the economy is failing, many are getting ready to revolt and demonstrate this fall.
You'll probbably get the photos and say how its very good, but I can't be happy for protestors who march to the prayer "hail Mary", now can I?
(happend just months ago, the workers of one factory that came to zagreb, they even chose a rounding point in front of church )

Its disgusting how in these troubled times some people hold that God will somehow save them.
I'd rather join the riot police and bang their stupid degenerated skulls then join them in such a mockery.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Thank you for the information on Croatia, punisa. It sounds like rebuilding a communist movement there will be an uphill struggle. However, the fact that the far-right is getting subsidized by the government gave me an idea: It opens them to being accused of being government puppets.

If the situation in Croatia is anything like the one in Romania, many people are willing to support someone - anyone - who stands against the status quo, and the far-right gets a lot of support simply because it is the only visible group that opposes the existing system.

So, the best way to erode their credibility is to accuse them of being fake opponents of the system (which, of course, is always true about the far-right). Point out their ties to the government and the rich as evidence of their radicalism being fake.

[punisa]

Thank you for the information on Croatia, punisa. It sounds like rebuilding a communist movement there will be an uphill struggle. However, the fact that the far-right is getting subsidized by the government gave me an idea: It opens them to being accused of being government puppets.

If the situation in Croatia is anything like the one in Romania, many people are willing to support someone - anyone - who stands against the status quo, and the far-right gets a lot of support simply because it is the only visible group that opposes the existing system.

So, the best way to erode their credibility is to accuse them of being fake opponents of the system (which, of course, is always true about the far-right). Point out their ties to the government and the rich as evidence of their radicalism being fake.

I agree with your tactics.
There is just so many that ought to be changed. A professional revolutionary wouldn't know where to start.

For one, there is no organized movment. There must be a lot of lefties here, but we are scattered around - unaware of ourselves.
I guess there are also reasons why this is so - the only remaining option would be to go underground, but then recruitment becomes a difficulty.

Also capitalism has its ways to keep you down, many of us are pushing ourselves to the limits just to keep roof over our head and some food at the table.
When the exploitable system occupies your time, little is left for uprising.

There are some traces of socialist ideology, like websites and newspaper. But these are probabbly known only to myself and a handful of other people :(

[zerozerozerominusone]

Blame Capitalism

What a cop out. Why not just blame it on my kitchen sink while you're at it?

Sheesh

[Bright Banana Beard]

Blame stalinist! They fuck up everything we stand for! Arahrharh!

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I agree with your tactics.
There is just so many that ought to be changed. A professional revolutionary wouldn't know where to start.

For one, there is no organized movment. There must be a lot of lefties here, but we are scattered around - unaware of ourselves.
I guess there are also reasons why this is so - the only remaining option would be to go underground, but then recruitment becomes a difficulty.

Also capitalism has its ways to keep you down, many of us are pushing ourselves to the limits just to keep roof over our head and some food at the table.
When the exploitable system occupies your time, little is left for uprising.

There are some traces of socialist ideology, like websites and newspaper. But these are probabbly known only to myself and a handful of other people :(
Well, if or when you have more time, I think you should start by searching for the other communists in Croatia, as scattered as they are. Look on the bright side: you may be scattered, but at least it's easier to keep in contact with like-minded people than it ever was in the past, thanks to cell phones and the internet.

Once you have a small group of committed communists, the next step is to try to make yourselves known and draw in more casual supporters - workers who may not wish to devote much of their time to studying communism, but who hate the existing system and are willing to offer some support to people who promise a better alternative. I don't have any experience with large revolutionary organizations, but I know that for a small revolutionary organization, the most important thing is to build a sense of community. You have to be a group of people who consider each other friends and enjoy each other's company, and you need to have some sort of meeting place where you hang out and everyone is invited to come and listen to what you have to say. Most of all, you have to say and do things that are interesting and/or useful in daily life to the average person. Discussions about communist theory and history are important, but you must be aware that they will only appeal to the hard core of committed supporters, not the much larger number of workers that you need to reach out to. To appeal to those workers who are not interested in theory, you have to talk about practical things like getting together a group of people to deal with a particularly bad boss, or setting up a network of mutual aid between workers in different places who would not have met each other without your organization.

[MarxSchmarx]

All that's been said is of course true.

Also remember that anti-racism was an inherent part of at least the propaganda of the old regimes. Of course reality had nothing to do with it.

But in any event, once those regimes were discredited so thoroughly, anti-racism, like a lot of other "modern" ideas of the old regime (secularism and internationalism, for example) also for a time became less appealing. Indeed, privatization came at a time of the rise of a powerful extreme right in the west, and many easterners who worked in the west were (and are) on the receiving end of more subtle racism.

[Revy]

Article from 1989 called "What if the Soviet Union collapses?" (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959438,00.html)

It talks about predictions from the Soviet leadership that the extreme right-wing would be empowered.

[Yehuda Stern]

I really wonder why the former-socialist countries are so racist now?

I agree with most that has been said so far; although all this does much to indicate that these countries were never socialist. To be more accurate, there's no such thing as a socialist state; there are workers' states that are created after the revolution is successful in part of the world. None of these states, except the USSR until the late 1930s, fit that category either.


It talks about predictions from the Soviet leadership that the extreme right-wing would be empowered.

Well, that's a bit misleading. It talks about predictions from the Soviet leadership that some right wing organization will overthrow the Soviet government and install a military dictatorship. What actually happened is that the capitalist Stalinist ruling class transformed itself into a 'normal' ruling class, and is now giving support to all these racist groups. Which is just more proof that the states they presided over were never socialist.

Interesting trivia bit: the Soviet Stalinist government was responsible for setting up the organization that would eventually become Pamyat.

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

Interesting trivia bit: the Soviet Stalinist government was responsible for setting up the organization that would eventually become Pamyat.

Except that it was founded as a landmark preservation society - that Slavophiles would form their own racket out of a section of it during Perestroika wasn't exactly part of the plot. It was just an innocent little civic organization before Gorby let open antisemitism disseminate in the interest of bourgeois "freedom of speech" and other social-democratic "freedoms" so tolerantly accepted in the West...

As various other posters correctly noted, open racism only emerged with the open domination of society by a capitalist economic system in Eastern Europe. The Soviet state was never directly responisble for it.

Not that I disagree with you fundamentally. Though elements of the nationalism that was to come were largely absent under the formulation we've been acustomed to getting out of Eastern Europe, a regression towards nationalism was already present on the Stalinist agenda by the early '50s, if not earlier: aside from everything else, in one of his last speeches (in 1952) Stalin actually told a conference of delegates from "socialist" states that the international bourgeoisie had now become a threat to patriots from every land, and that the time was right to take up the agenda of socialism for patriotic reasons among peoples everywhere - in order to preserve their national identity! (I watched a Russian-language clip of it on YouTube just a few days ago.)

The aforementioned event happened, of course, during the campaign against "rootless cosmopolitanism" in the USSR - JS couldn't really be a tad bit more explicit about making a U-turn from the early Leninist-Stalinist internationalism of the 1920s and very early '30s.)

Unfortunately, despite Stalin's discrediting by his former lackeys, the Soviet state in the years afterward could hardly be described as a bastion of sincere internationalism after those last years of "Stalin nationalism" - although the present phenomenon of ethnic nationalism is so vicious that none of the old "socialist" regimes would have accepted it.

[Yehuda Stern]

I think you are wrong about the chronology here. As far as I know, Pamyat's predecessor was actually sponsored by the Soviet state with the intention of creating a nationalist organization - though I doubt they wanted to create a specifically fascist one - and the group was already called Pamyat in 1985, when Gorbachev came to power, and it was already anti-Semitic. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Sadly all I can offer at this time is the Wikipedia article on Pamyat.

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

The English Wikipedia article has it as this:


At the end of 1970s a historical association called Vityaz (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vityaz_(historical_association)&action=edit&redlink=1) (Витязь), sponsored by the Soviet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, established an "informal historical, cultural and educational organization" uniting activists-bibliophiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliophile) and amateur historians. One of the purposes of the newly formed organization was to prepare the upcoming celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kulikovo)...

And traces the most viciously antisemtic faction's creation to a split during 1985 (though it's not given when they began their openly antisemitic "Judeo-Masonic" crap).

The Russian Wikipedia article is much more detailed: it says that Pamyat (initially just a "history preservation" clique) had its first nationalist meetings after Gorbachev's rise, most notably in the 1986-87 period.

It certainly wasn't founded as an openly nationalist organization.

[Yehuda Stern]

How is an organization of bibliophiles organization meant to glorify Russian cultures not nationalist? Either way, some of my former claims may have been disproved by this, but the fact remains that the Soviet regime facilitated the creation of Pamyat.

[HeartlessLibertarian]

Blame Capitalism
Yes, because an economic philosophy can distinguish race.