The Rise and Fall of Communism [Hardcover]

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I think it can appeal to historians and academics as well as readers who are not normally that much into history. There are references and bibliography and the linguistic and political neutrality of academics, but at the same time the story is accessible, engaging, narrated in good structure and unpretentious language.

Personally I prefer economic and social histories more than political or institutional ones, and this book is mainly about the latter, but that makes sense considering the top down, authoritarian regimes described. Perhaps it's a small weakness that the economy parts are a bit sparse and also that the author's speciality shows when he talks about his topic (the USSR), the parts on other communist countries go a little bit too quickly. There is some repetition of some points (especially in conclusions, summaries and in the last chapter), perhaps it's not necessary as the history is very well written and allows the reader to make up his mind. Details like the above are probably inevitable in such an ambitious wide ranging book, I couldn't even put them down as faults.

About the usual question (in such books) of perceived bias, I can't imagine many people being put off, the author casts a critical eye on communism and explains why elements of totalitarianism/authoritarianism go together with communism. But even if the reader disagrees, the point is not unpleasantly forced, the book focuses on story, not rants or polemics. There's no obvious right wing bias either, the occasional successes of communism are also explained and communism is contrasted to democratic socialism and people on the left like Orwell or Bevan who I thought are portrayed in a flattering light.

Don't be put off by the dry sounding title. First class account of the strange, sometimes breathtakingly cruel history of communism. Mr. Brown certainly knows his stuff but wears his learning lightly and the general reader, like me, is in for a treat. Even at over 600 pages I found myself wishing there was more. Inevitably, the USSR (and its eastern European satellites) and China get most attention, but there are absorbing bits on Cuba, Asia and Africa.

I have no political or ideological axes to grind and I found Mr. Brown to be a fascinating guide, always clear, often funny. Like all good historians he provides detailed, illuminating references so that you can follow up anything that strikes your fancy.

Archie Brown offers a lifetime's reflections on the rise and fall of Communism in this excellent survey. It is not the survey of an idea, communism with a small `c', but of a political movement, with a capital `C'. The idea still persists of course but the regimes that went under this designation have mostly vanished or been transfigured, such as China, or ossified like North Korea.

The book starts with a brief survey of the utopian antecedents of Communism before moving to cover the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin's forced industrialisation of the Soviet Union, the Chinese revolution, through to the gradual fracturing and ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union and its protégé regimes in Eastern Europe in the late 80s/early 90s. It treats developments in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the best, China satisfactorily but is less comprehensive about Communism in the developing world. Vietnam, Cuba and Laos are barely covered. However I think that this emphasis is valid as a book that charts the decline of Communism as a political movement should devote space to the very places where it started and where it ended.

Communism was not monolithic. There were substantial differences in the operations of the various Communist regimes. They even, as in the case of the case of Vietnam and Kampuchea, fought one another. Indeed, the Soviet Union and China fought fatal clashes on their border in the Far East in the late 1960s, which nearly came to all out war. However, all communist regimes were united by the following features:

1. The monopoly political power of the ruling party.
2. Democratic centralism. Decisions are theoretically debated democratically at the centre of power but once taken enforced with great discipline and rigidity within the party and throughout the society at large
3. Non-capitalist ownership of means of production.
4. Dominance of a command economy: decisions as to what should be produced and prices for goods and services were determined bureaucratically.
5. Ideological justification: the declared aim of `building Communism' in the sense of moving to an end-point of a non-hierarchical, classless society and the withering away of the state. Despite all the suffering and sacrifice, is to be found in the achievement of this end-state.

Once the last aim had been abandoned, Communist regimes were left to seek legitimacy in improving living standards. In this contest with the west, they were found wanting. Once they couldn't provide that, the game was up. In Eastern Europe, the game would have been up long before 1989.

Today arguably only North Korea and Cuba meet all five criteria (however it's doubtful whether the ruling elites in either country truly believe that the final withering away of the state will ever be attained). China meets the definition in respect of 1 and 2 but Brown does not count it as communist in this sense in that 3, 4 and 5 have all been long-abandoned. This can be debated but it is clear that China today is remote from the classical Communist model as described above.

Otherwise Brown's book is rich in insight into the mechanics of communist power. Communist regimes did not rule simply by coercion. They provided incentives. For instance Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s (or `Great Purges' as some euphemistically call it) disproportionately targeted professionals, providing opportunities for those at the bottom of the social scale to move into the posts vacated by their former occupants. But the Soviet Union did not rely on terror alone (especially after Stalin) and for a while was able to sustain generous welfare benefits to reconcile its subjects to one-party rule.

Paradoxically then the party of the working-class legitimised itself partially by providing an opportunity for social advancement to the middle class. Mao's Cultural Revolution - intended to sweep away all forms of hierarchy and authority (except Mao's) - succeeded in weakening entrenched bureaucratic interests to the extent that they were too enfeebled to resist the reintroduction of capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s. This in contrast to Khrushchev, whose attempts at reform in the 1950s were stymied by a combined party-bureaucracy.

As far as the end of Communism is concerned, Brown credits the largely peaceful transition in Eastern Europe to Gorbachev - not Ronald Reagan, not Solidarity in Poland and not Pope John Paul II. Solidarity was truly a workers' movement (the same could not be said for the Bolsheviks) but despite overwhelming popular support, it was not able to prevail until the Soviet military guarantee to Poland was withdrawn. Arms spending produced huge strains on the Soviet economy, which sought military parity with the United States but with an economy a quarter of the size. But the system could have staggered on regardless, and reform was not inevitable. There were plenty of ideological stalwarts in the Soviet Union willing to swim against the tide but it doesn't follow that the tide was strong enough to sweep reactionary, recalcitrant elements away.

Brown rejects the economic determinist case that the decrepit, ossified state of the Soviet economy, and the scale of opposition to it in Eastern Europe in the mid-80s, necessitated reform. Gorbachev enjoyed solid popularity in the Soviet Union until 1989, when he lost control of the reform process. Political reform preceded economic reform: the fate of the Soviet Union was not lost on the Chinese who have proceeded in a fashion diametrically opposed to the Soviet approach in the 1980s.

The persistence of a Leninist-inspired form of political organisation in China and a renewed authoritarian creep in post-Soviet Russia may serve to caution those such as Brown who have pronounced Communism dead but I don't think so. Communism as a utopian movement is finished. Russia, where the transition to capitalism was a disaster, did not see a revival of a rump Communist party. What we see now in Russia and China are hybrid-authoritarian regimes that have long-abandoned any pretence that the state will wither away and will lead all humankind to a radiant future with no police, courts, prisons.