No believable economist would claim that the Russian people benefited from Leninist or Stalinist social and economic policies. It is easier to project an upward trend for Russian living standards after 1918 had the Tsarist regime survived than to make a case that the Soviet system profited anyone, save the commissars. It has proved a common characteristic of communist regimes around the world that — to paraphrase Orwell — all pigs are equal, but some secure access to bigger troughs than others. British visitors to Moscow in the darkest days of the second world war cringed at the extravagance of the banquets they were served at a time when most of the country was starving and even — in extreme circumstances, such as those of besieged Leningrad — eating each other.
Yet until the last years of the 20th century the supply of useful idiots — western apologists for the Soviet Union — seemed limitless, and included such figures as Tony Benn. Anthony Powell’s novel Books Do Furnish a Room captures the enthusiasm for Soviet communism that pervaded post-1945 London socialist sitting rooms and literary gatherings.
No modern reader can set down the works of Solzhenitsyn, Robert Conquest, Robert Service or Anne Applebaum without a sense of awe at the cruelties committed in the name of “the people”, the cause of Russian communism; cruelties indulged almost to this day by their western defenders.
Max Hastings, “The centenary of the Russian revolution should be mourned, not celebrated”, The Spectator, 2016-12-10.
October 8, 2019
QotD: Russian life under Soviet rule
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