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Harmonizing Cultures
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18421 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1990 |
2,995 Words |
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John A. Armstrong
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When you get right down to it, perestroika's great “sin” is that it really chopped away at people's faith - in paradise, in a kind of religious and mystical expectation of “a better future that would justify everything,” a recent Pravda article wryly remarked. In effect, the Soviet journalist continued, Marxism-Leninism - the theme of Soviet indoctrination for 73 years - had been an ersatz religion culminating in “true Communism” where all wants are fulfilled and social harmony is assured.
This post-Cold War era, in concrete terms, and with it the strategic retreat of Soviet power has fundamentally altered the world state system; that is, relations between independent countries. The nominally independent states of Eastern Europe now really determine their own policies. With the Soviet veto essentially removed, reunion of Germany proceeds rapidly, posing certain legal and economic problems, but eliminating the most dangerous bone of contention in Central Europe. Gradual withdrawal of Soviet military forces from positions only 90 miles from the Rhine River to their own territory lifts the threat of invasion that has restricted Western European freedom of action since 1945. Retreat of Soviet power hastens, if it does not directly explain, the shrinkage of U.S. influence in Europe and other major world regions.
Two causes of these profound alterations in the world balance standout: material dissatisfaction and longing for national self-determination. Stagnation of the Soviet economy since the 1960s obviously undermined the promises of Marxist-Leninist ideology. It was, however, ordinary people's comparison of market economy achievements outside the Soviet bloc to the obvious failures of the Soviet system that eventually destroyed their faith in communism. Even strongly loyal elements, like military officers, came to realize that the backwardness of their industrial complex threatened to undermine their world power position.
But the significance of the material causes for Soviet transformation under Gorbachev should not be exaggerated. As far back as 1980, the bloc focus for discontent was Poland. While dissidence in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and within the Soviet Union itself had been temporarily crushed by brutal repression, the Polish Solidarity trade union became the pioneer pressing for reforms, including improvement of the extremely depressed economy. But Solidarity's real backing came from the virtual unanimity of Polish civil society against its communist rulers imposed by Moscow. In turn, this unanimity resulted from the profound fusion of nationalism and religion in the Polish conviction that their nation had a divine mission, symbolized by the election of the first Polish pope - John Paul II. No material demands could have inspired an entire society to make the sacrifices and take the risks that resistance to Leonid the risks that resistance to Leonid Brezhnev's centralized regime required.
The power of religion
The Polish type of intense spiritual identity, commonly termed “ethno-religious,” is widespread in Eastern Europe. Similar conceptions of a special national relation to Roman Catholicism motivated Lithuanians - the first nation within the USSR to risk declaring national independence. In the Ukraine, the second-largest Soviet republic, a majority in the western regions consists of “Uniates” (Ukrainian Catholics within the Catholic communion, but with a special Slavic rite) who are intensely
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