26 November 1996
The Second World war forever changed the political and social face of East-Central Europe. The defeat of the fascists and the reactionary forces that supported them created a power vacuum in Eastern Europe which was promptly filled by Soviet communism. The new "Socialist" sphere which grew out of the Soviet liberation of East-Central Europe was to develop into a entirely new society. Vladimír Macura, noted Czech scholar, describes this new society in "The American Bug:
The Building of socialism in the Soviet Union and its
satellites demanded not only the establishment of a
political and economic system, but also an original
cultural and ideological construct, an independent,
self-contained and all-encompassing "semiosphere," a
reality arising from a network of signs which became
obligatory to all those "inside." (Macura 1)
The "socialist world," to which Macura alludes, can be defined as the Soviet-dominated political and cultural conditions active in Eastern Europe beginning shortly after World War II. These conditions can be further defined as the Eastern half of the East-West political dichotomy and the social and cultural effects of Soviet totalitarianism upon the people of East-Central Europe between 1947 and the early 1950’s.
In the words of Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's postwar "cultural supremo" (Crampton 257), "A new alignment of political forces has arisen" (40). This statement, taken from a speech to the Cominform in 1947, means that the former allies in the war against Hitler had splintered into two distinct camps: the "socialist" Eastern camp, comprised of the Soviet Union and the Communist dominated "People's Democracies" of East-Central Europe, and the Western camp, comprised of the United States and the Western European colonial powers. This political dichotomy grew out of ideological differences which had, in the past, been overshadowed by the threat of Nazi expansionism.
The socialist camp defined itself as "the stronghold of anti-imperialist and antifascist policy" and a bastion against "the new expansionist and reactionary policy of the United States" (Zhdanov 39). Communist ideology described the Western camp as fundamentally imperialist, whose "cardinal purpose... [was] to strengthen imperialism, to hatch a new imperialist war, to combat socialism and democracy and to support reactionary and antidemocratic profascist regimes and movements everywhere." (Zhdanov 40) Communist ideology describes itself as truly democratic and the West to be an illusion of democracy with real power being in the hands of business elites.
In contrast, the Western camp envisioned itself as the protector of self determination against the totalitarian, "coercive" forces of Soviet communism. On 12 March, 1947, six months prior to Andrei Zhadnov's "Two-Camp" speech to the Cominform at Szklarska Poreba in September, then President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, addressing a joint session of congress described the Western perspective of the East-West dichotomy:
One way of life is based upon the will of the
majority and is distinguished by free institutions,
representative government, free elections, guarantees,
of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion,
and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will will
of a minority forcibly imposed upon the minority. It
relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press
and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of
personal freedoms. (36)
This Western ideology describes itself as democratic and the East to be an illusion of democracy with real power being in the hands of party elites.
These two arguments are in reference to the political machinations in Greece and Turkey, beginning in the late 1940's, between Western supported "reactionary" governments and Eastern backed Communist cells. The socialist camp viewed the role of the Western camp in World politics as a continuation of the role of pre-war fascists and the other signatories of the Anti-Comintern pact. The Truman Doctrine, which began the U.S. policy of containment of communism was just another capitalist scheme designed to profit the bourgeoisie at the cost of the worker. This viewpoint was fundamental in the establishment of the socialist sphere as it provided clear political distinction, not merely ideological distinction, between the socialist East and the capitalist West.
This political split was widened by U.S. involvement in Korea, several years later. These events coincided with the arrival of the Colorado Potato Bug, which plagues East-Central European farmers in the early 1950's. These events were linked together by the Soviet propaganda machine to further define the socialist camp as a bastion against Western imperialism. Vladimír Macura addresses this point in "The American Bug:"
The unwelcome visit of the "American bug..." helped
to confirm the irreconcilable distortion of the world
into a world of honest socialist labor which results
in rich yields, and a mad world where all values are
topsy-turvy and where "Yankees breed potato-bugs to
destroy the crops." (J. Kubka) ... On one side of the
world the American flying machines were dropping bombs
on Korea and performing "the evil sowing" of pests on
Czechoslovak fields. On the other side of the world
the Soviet aircrafts of peace helped with chemical
treatment of the collective farmland. (Macura 10)
This sarcastic treatment of the use of propaganda to widen the gap between East and West is significant, not only for its depiction of the socialist stance in the widening political division, but also because the division of East and West was a deliberate action. The "socialist world," or more accurately, the communist leadership of the East European nations, as did, too, the Western leadership in the West, knowingly and deliberately contributed the the creation of the "socialist world" through propaganda.
To the average citizen in any East-Central European country, the "socialist world" was not merely a political division with the West, but more significantly a new culture, centered around the Communist party's ability to touch every part of the citizen's life. Emir Kusterica's film, When Father was Away on Business, depicts the intrusion of the the state, in this case Tito's Yugoslavia, into the most private moments of citizens' lives. In the film, the "Father" is sent away from his home and family for stating a slightly disparaging remark about the State's anti-Soviet stance. This remark, made in passing to his mistress, was passed to her lover, who happened to be the "father's" brother in-law and a Communist party official. The brother in-law used the remark as pretense for removing the "father" from their community. Although in the film this move could be interpreted as revenge for the "father's" philandering, the very fact that the state had the means to do this attests to the new intrusive culture of the countries of the totalitarian "socialist world." The film depicts friends and family as informants to the government, which found interest in even the slightest remark against the party line. This idea of the vast network of informants was to dominate the culture of the countries of East-Central Europe finding themselves in the "socialist world." This phenomenon was a distinctly a communist, not uniquely a Soviet, creation, as evident in the fact that by the making of the film, Yugoslavia had been ejected from the Cominform and was not a signatory of the Warsaw Pact.
The intrusive nature of the ruling Communist parties throughout the "socialist world" had a profound effect upon the way that the subject people interacted with each other on a social level. Polish emigre and Nobel Prize winning author, Czeslaw Milosz, argues in his book, The Captive Mind, that the nature of the the new informant culture caused the people of the East-Central Europe to adopt a culture of secrecy akin to the Arabic concept of "Ketman."
The people of the Musselman East believe that 'he who
is in possession of truth must not expose his person,
his relatives, or his reputation to the blindness,
the folly, the perversity of those whom it has pleased
God to place and maintain in error.' One must,
therefore, keep silent about one’s true convictions if
possible. (Milosz 51)
Furthermore, Milosz quotes Gobineau in saying "there are occasions where silence no longer suffices... not only must one deny one's true opinion, but one is commanded to resort to all ruses in order to deceive one's adversary." (51) In this sense, the people of the "socialist world" must deceive the state by proclaiming their support for the state and its ideology while hiding their true opinions. For instance, in what Milosz refers to a "National Ketman," where the citizen "manifest[s] loudly one's awe at Russia's achievements in every field of endeavor," while secretly harboring an "unbounded contempt for Russia as a barbaric country." (Milosz 52). This Ketman culture, or culture of secrecy, prompted by the totalitarian phenomenon of intrusion and informants created a distinctly paranoid culture. Although the Unites States, in the 1950's, saw its own intrusive and informant dominated social conditions in the form of the McCarthy trials, the degree to which this culture evolved in the Eastern sphere in the years just after the Second World War was paramount in defining the "socialist world" both in the eyes of the subject people and to the world as a whole.
In the years following the Second World War, East Central Europe was molded into a new society. Political division with the West and the arrival of an intrusive totalitarian culture of informants led to the creation of Macura's "socialist world." To the "outsider," the most obvious definition of the "socialist world" was the political polarization between "socialist" East and "capitalist" West. To the Eastern European citizen, the meaning of "socialist world" had a more profound definition. Each citizen had to live with the eyes and ears of the state gazing into his life and listening to every word. While political dichotomy between East and West served to mold the world into different spheres, socialist and capitalist, it was the intrusive, totalitarian state, and the culture which it created that truly defined the "socialist world" to those within it.
Crampton, R. J. Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1994.
Macura, Vladimír. "The American Bug: A Study in the Cold War." 1-11.
Milosz, Czeslaw. "Ketman," from The Captive Mind. From Stalinism to Pluralism. Ed. Gale Stokes. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 51-56.
Truman, Harry S. "The Truman Doctrine," 12 March 1947. From Stalinism to Pluralism. Ed. Gale Stokes. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 35-37.
When Father was Away on Business. Dir. Emir Kusterica. 1985.
Zhdanov, Andrei. "The Two-Camp Policy," September 1947. From Stalinism to Pluralism. Ed. Gale Stokes. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 38-42.
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