It was a special Christmas in 1991. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. Then on Dec. 25, 1991, the Soviet Union’s bloody hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered for the last time from the roof of the Kremlin.
The following day, the 26th, the Soviet Union was no more. Dissolved was the 74-year reign of mass murder, the persecution of freedom and an imperial obsession with imposing communism on every corner of the globe.
It was an admission the whole Marxist-Leninist ideology that ran the country through the Communist Party had been wrong and could deny it no more. The 15 Soviet “republics” then were free to separate into independent Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the many others.
The Soviet experiment was a century-long attack on human freedom and dignity.
Soviet communism above all was an economic theory based on the writings of Marx and Lenin. Prosperity was supposed to come from greedy capitalists being “liquidated” — a favorite Lenin word. State ownership of the means of production would end exploitation and produce a utopia for workers. Lenin died in 1924 and was succeeded by the even more brutal Joseph Stalin.
In the early 1930s, industrialization was achieved by starving to death as many as 5 million farmers in the Holodomor, mostly Ukrainians, stealing their wheat and selling it on the world market to raise capital to build factories. Stalin sent millions to the gulags, where many of them died from disease. Upwards of 800,000 were murdered during his “Great Purge” of dissidents.
After the death of Stalin, Soviet leaders pulled back from the more brutal tactics, but nevertheless continued to deprive their own people of the freedom to make their own choices. Across the nations behind the Iron Curtain, people yearned to be free.
Elected in 1980, President Ronald Reagan’s market reforms and tough rhetoric against “the Evil Empire” continued to pressure the Soviets. But under Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet boss from 1964 to his death in 1982, the USSR fell into zastoy (stagnation). In 1985, new boss Gorbachev started perestroika (restructuring), limited market reforms. It was too little, too late.
Endemic socialist shortages produced a cornucopia of such jokes as, “A man walks into a shop. He asks the clerk, ‘You don’t have any meat?’ The clerk says, ‘No, here we don’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.’”
It was only a matter of time for the Soviet Union to fall and there’s little doubt it was for the best. Of course, that isn’t to say the fall of the Soviet Union automatically means it has been easy for the post-Soviet states to course-correct.
Russia today still isn’t a democracy and its invasion of Ukraine has produced difficult relations with other nations. Many of the post-Soviet states have experienced widespread corruption and discontent.
There are notable bright spots, of course. The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) boast strong GDPs and are well-integrated within the European Union. Resource-rich Kazakhstan has continued to see economic growth. And, fundamentally, the people of all post-Soviet republics are freer than they were under Soviet tyranny.
Not just its victims, but all of us bear the scars of 74 years of Soviet terror. Let us never forget the cost of tyranny and the price of freedom. And may we always hope for and strive toward a freer and more prosperous world.
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