Communism: a look from inside

My name is Julia. I’m from Belarus. I onsider that communism has touched my country so strongly and painfully that even nowadays we can’t get rid of its symptoms and signs. That’s why I
decided to think over this problem and to try to find out if I’m right and why communistic order has grown so strong roots in Belarus in 1917. I’m sure that those people who have never lived in a
communistic state, who have never felt its influence can’t completely understand what communism is. The matter is that communism (as everything in the world) has two sides.The first is the ideal model, the dream in which people believed and for the sake of which blood flew? To the cause of which many people gave their lives. Indeed, it sounds very good: “Communism is a social order without classes, with public property in the means of production, complete social equality of all the members, where together with many-sided development of people the producing abilities will increase on the base of non-stop developing science and techniques and where all the origins of public wealth will flow as a torrent and where the great principle “from everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs” will come true” (from the program of the Communistic Party of Soviet Union). And what did those who had believed in it get? Taking part in the race
for armament, planned economy, power of non-professionalism over professionalism, people leveling, where everyone had to be the same
with the others. And the result of it in the everyday life was the deficit of products, goods, everlasting queues for everything (for flats,
fridges, furniture…). And the reason of the lack of goods was that all the money were for the sake of military (armament, developing of cosmic technologies) and the rest of it went other socialistic states (Cuba,African countries). Simple soviet people lived in bad conditions (3-4 persons in a room).For those who have never lived in such conditions of life it’s
hard even to imagine that at the end of the XX-th century in 1950-1980-ies to buy some sugar you had to be at the shop at 6.00 a.m.hoping that when it is your turn there will be left a kilo for you (you could get only a kilo per month).

Everything in the USSR belonged to everyone, and this means that everything belonged to nobody. People didn’t feel their responsibility for the quality of their work, for their own lives, for their families anymore – they thought that it was government’s problem and duty. There was no difference if you worked or not so was
there any sense to work? Of course no. And many people thought in the same way. The result was that to stay alive people had to steel, to hope for a miracle, to wait for a wonder. But the worst thing was psychological influence on people: you had to be the same with the others. I know a story about a girl who got an adornment for hair as a present. As she studying at school she put it on next day. But when the head-master saw it he took it off saying that such things depraved society. Sometimes you could even see that even coiffures were alike. Even wearing watch was considered to be a bad manner. This is not speaking about the destroying of the institute of family, the interests of the party were above everything. And the principle “frm everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs”! Who can define my abilities and needs (or they must be the same with others’ ones)? And if everyone has different needs what can we say about absolute equality? And the worst thing was that people didn’t protest… It’s hard to answer why such a system was good for our people, but I’ll try to do it. Geographically our people have always lived on a big territory. We didn’t get used to save nature, resources. So we are in the habit of taking and using but not creating ourselves. The habit of agrarian way of life (which exists nowadays in the form of dachas) does not give us time to think. Our religion has always said that a man is a slave and his fate depends on God only. And it was not reformed as the catholic religion in Europe in the XIV-XV centuries, so I think this old point of view on the world pushed people away from the church in the 1910-ies, and people lost the moral base. Having lost the war between the Tsar Russia and Japan people were disappointed in the Government? Because the russian don’t like to fight, but they like to win wars. And we could believe that those events were just a severe example of naive trusting of my people if the fact that Belarus partially lives in communism even nowadays didn’t existI hold questionnaire of 22 persons of my age in my town with the question “ Do we still live in the age of Communism and why do you think so?” The replies were of three kinds