The Spire

Sean Rego ‘26

Opinions Editor

I will never forget the stories told by my family of their lives under socialism. There are specific dates that will forever be implanted in my head, each with corresponding memories. 1941: my great-grandmother reccounted the exodus of her people from the terror of German national socialism that destroyed our Latvian homeland, only to be subjugated by an equally horrific Soviet Union. 1953: my grandmother recalls being forced in class to mourn the death of the Supreme Leader, who oversaw the execution and persecution of her kin. 1991: in the wake of Soviet collapse, my mother’s generation realized that all they were ever told– by the media, schools, leaders– was a lie. The socialist paradise was a lie. 

As a first-generation American, I’ve had the fortune of never living in a socialist regime. The United States– born in the splendor of the enlightenment and raised in an oceanic fortress– has yet to witness the tribulations of implemented socialism and communism. It is with such circumstance that I concede how easy it is to misinterpret an (admittedly) alluring ideology. Last semester, an article titled Socialism was a Resounding Success was released. In the piece, the author writes off a bevy of horrific injustices, is apologetic for mass murderers and makes dubious claims to uphold the Communist states of past and present. I’ve never written a response in the Spire, but for this article, I feel it my duty to respond to and reject such a horrible opinion, not just for the sake of my own family who lived and died under socialism, but for the many hundreds of millions who have as well. 

First and foremost, the article begins with a handful of linked meta-analyses with data from the 1980s and early 2000s. Although most links are to abstracts of the research, the most recent Hill report goes into depth about why socialism has led to a better quality of life. What’s not mentioned by the author about these analyses is how economic development is viewed as equally important to growth as socialist tendencies, and that socialism itself isn’t necessarily the benefit, rather “constrained authoritarian” governments show good results; funnily enough, Pinochet’s Chile is used as an example of such, making it comparable to socialist regimes with that likewise limit civil liberties. Furthermore, the tests exclude practically all recently developed capitalist countries (like South Korea, Japan and Poland) while including recently developed socialist states like China, which itself has conflicting allegiances considering its massive investment and commercial markets. 

Then we have the case studies nations the author uses, which are riddled with inconsistencies and gaps of information. Cuba is praised for its literacy, lack of homelessness and healthcare by the author, but in the very same articles cited, Cuba is noted for its massive homeless and beggar problems, its lack of housing and its overcrowded public spaces. The Cuban healthcare system has been abysmal for decades and with a skilled workforce that’s over-saturated and neglected, it is no wonder that millions have fled (and are fleeing) the regime in Havana in favor of the vibrance of American capitalism. Over the summer, I had the chance of going to this socialist outpost, which of course had its bright moments of fun cultural experiences. However, it was impossible to ignore the disparities in this communist paradise; Poverty, hunger and government propaganda are omnipresent. Professors and beggars alike dream of escaping the confines of a planned economy. When you see the majority of people waiting in ration lines, searching for basic medical treatment or simply trying to stay afloat, it is disheartening. When countless individuals tell you that they are being strangled by their own government, it becomes very difficult to believe that communism is helping Cuba.

Then the author insults capitalism as negligent towards human life, yet proceeds to make the most egregious claim I have ever seen in the Spire, one that could only be made by someone who woefully underappreciates the monstrosity that was 20th Century Soviet communism. Not only does this author rationalize the gulag system (Soviet concentration-camps), but then goes on to downplay the Holodomor as a “result of growing pains” (blaming the kulaks), revises pre-WWII history and calls valid criticism of Stalin a “right-wing claptrap.” 

After the death of Lenin, a man who tore Russia into pieces and launched a campaign of terror on anyone who disagreed with Bolshevism, Joseph Stalin took power in the Soviet Union. Collectivization had horrific effects on the fledgling state, as it outlawed private farms and forced hundreds of thousands of farmers to give up the land they’d cultivated for centuries. When the author vilifies the kulaks (farmers) for holding their land, he excuses the fact that thousands were shot directly and millions were sent to the gulags. Even in one of the articles the author cites, it states that by 1934, several million were killed by Stalinist forces. The propaganda during this era was horrific, with millions of peasant farmers depicted as subhuman vermin. In their place, the Soviet Union forcibly created kolkhozes (collective farms) which were unpopular, unskilled and ultimately detrimental to the Soviet people. 

Then there’s the Great Terror, when anyone who even slightly disagreed with the communist high command was deported or executed. From the 1930s until the War, at least 700,000 Soviet citizens died during these degenerate purges. These prisoners overwhelmingly didn’t comprise of Nazis or Tzarist forces, as the author disrespectfully claims, but anyone who so dared to think differently than the Supreme Leader. After their swift annexation into the USSR, 100,000 in the Baltics alone were deported to the camps. Many of the 20% who the author claims to have been released per year from the camps were usually too weak to continue being productive or were drafted into the Red Army against their will. Altogether, throughout the entirety of the gulag system, estimates suggest that 18 million were forced to build an empire of evil, with more than 4 million dying from it (and perhaps more). In the hearts and minds of all Russians are seared the words of Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn and Chukovskaya, who bravely recorded these years of writhing Mother Russia when no one was safe from the scorching red star of socialism. 

Calling the Holodomor a “result of the growing pains” likewise feels perverse. A staggering 4 to 7 million Soviet citizens died during this horrific event. Was famine targeted? Yes. As the author even mentions, it was the kulaks who were so vitriolically hated, who were particularly dehumanized and whose destruction had such disastrous effects. Was the Holodomor avoidable? Yes again. If Stalin hadn’t forcibly taken land from skilled farmers and hadn’t promoted a coerced agricultural system, millions in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia wouldn’t have starved to death. It was largely the Soviet Union’s insane desire for state control over all citizens that created man-made famines and gulag systems; ironically enough, this level of enslavement and devastation is only comparable to the evils of national socialist Germany. It’s almost like these two monstrous dictatorships have more in common than both regimes (and the author to whom I am responding) would admit; both killed millions, both horrifically suppressed minorities, and both helped each other conquer Eastern Europe. By understanding how similar it was to the Nazi Reich, one can see just how evil Soviet communism was. 

The author ends with a few last glorifications of tested socialism, citing that despite the massive famines in China and Russia (both the man-made communist cullings of millions), both had considerable jumps in life expectancy. This of course conveniently ignores the fact that other Asiatic countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also had similar (and even greater) post-war jumps. Rather inconsiderately, the author then tries to pin the tragic starvation of 10 million people per year globally on capitalism, ignoring the fact that we have been cutting down world hunger with tremendous effort, thanks in no small part to the capitalist sphere. Capitalism tries to prevent famine (I cannot say the same for socialism, historically speaking). And of course, in Stalinist fashion, this author then defecates on the social democracies of Western Europe, which are the countries that have had some successful socialist elements.

Considering that I can only respond to a limited amount of the author’s boorish piece, I  recommend for everyone to read the original article. It is, in my opinion, a terrible take on 20^th Century dictatorships like Cuba and the USSR, but perhaps I’m missing something. I also have questions about some of the cited sources, many of which are outdated, irrelevant (one is literally a darth vader parody) or in different languages. As a member of the Spire, I respect the fact that we publish different opinions, even if I find a piece like this extremely unattractive and malformed considering the suffering of millions under socialist regimes (and how easily this author seems to brush it off). As such, I hope my response can be treated with the same respect. 

In 1993, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, told the world that socialism must be rejected based on the 70 year experiment of the Soviet Union. It had failed Russia and her people, he said. Across the world, it has failed hundreds of millions. The forces of socialism and communism have always been alluring and addictive (an opium for the masses, one could say). Time and time again, it has torn down nations with epic histories and vibrant societies. This pervasive ideology was conceived by men sitting in luxurious bourgeois apartments, implemented by robbers and criminals, and then tested on innocent peasants and workers with horrific results. Socialism brutalized Russia, divided Germany, raped Eastern Europe, strangled Cuba and robbed millions more of promised glory. Far from a resounding success, socialism was a failed, greedy and utopian fantasy with dystopian results. It is the ideology that has treated human rights as equally worthless commodities. 

Just as I said in the opening, I will never forget the stories told to me by my family under socialism, and ultimately, I hope we all can appreciate the fortune of living in a society spared from such a corrosive ideology, unlike the hundreds of millions who weren’t. 

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