Lenin + Hitler = developed socialism?

A lot has been written about the similarities between the Bolshevik and Nazi forms of totalitarian socialism. Indeed, one cannot ignore the facts: the Soviet economy lived on five-year plans, while in Germany a four-year plan was introduced. In the USSR the socialist competition was in full play, the winners were awarded with red flags; in Germany there was a social competition, and Adolf Hitler himself handed golden flags to the leaders of the struggle for the “excellent national-socialist enterprise” every year on May 1 (it was the state holiday for both regimes, and it was celebrated in a very similar way). Bolsheviks invented the Stakhanov movement, the Nazis – a professional competition under the motto “Make way to the most skilled and industrious.” Mobile cinema and propaganda-educational theatrical groups constituted an important element of work in both states. The press in the USSR embodied “the party’s line”; in Germany it was called “unification.” In both countries there was a one-party system, Hitlerjugend and Lenin’s Komsomol worked with the youth, the Soviet trade unions and the German labor front worked with laborers. On one side the Reichstag, and on the other the Supreme Council were considered the main representative body, though they were only for show — behind the scenes the party bosses settled all affairs.

And of course, everyone wrote about the similarity of methods and procedures of the Gestapo and the NKVD. Just one example: both Serhii Koroliov and Wernher von Braun were once arrested for the same accusations – for “squandering people’s funds” on some stupid rockets, though von Braun was released quickly and he did create his Fau-2, which Koroliov had to copy under the name of R-1. Yet in 1937 it looked like the young and vigorous Serhii, who even spoke French, according to his contemporaries, with a strong little-Russian accent, somewhat forestalled the also young and vigorous German colleague and competitor Wernher.

However, there were also considerable differences between the two socialisms. First of all, in Stalin’s time the government’s “care” for the living standard of the population was reflected in the constant increasing of production norms with the phrase: “Life has become better, comrades, life has become more joyful.” No wonder, granted that the prescriptions of the Manifest of the Communist Party with “expropriation of land property,” “centralization of credit,” “establishing industrial armies, especially for agriculture,” etc. were realized in practice; this was done with the purpose of “concentrating in the hands of the state all capital, agriculture, industry, transport, and exchange.” This system could not be economically efficient — the state had too heavy of a burden to govern everything, and an ordinary person was transformed into a regular fighter of the “industrial army,” into a splinter in the process of tree felling.

Conversely, Hitler Germany’s really took care of the living standards of genuine Aryans (of course, in exchange for their refusal from political freedoms). In 1933 unemployment benefits were the main source of income for 40 percent of German families. By the mid-1930s unemployment dropped to 2 percent (statistics included everyone without a permanent job; the state engaged them in building autobahns, stadiums, aerodromes, and in public works), and then actually disappeared. Stable salaries became the main source of income, and payments for different needs (leisure, cultural activities, sport, the arts, etc.) from corresponding social funds were additional sources. They had to work hard, but prices were stable, so Germans (after many years of economic chaos and mass unemployment) worked willingly. All this happened without the constant sword of Damocles in the form of the GULAG. As a result, in the second half of the 1930s the average living standard in Germany became the highest in Europe, while in the Soviet Union it was one of the lowest.

At this, from the summer of 1934 (after the leadership of the storm troopers — Sturmabteilung (SA) was purged) till the fall of 1938 political persecutions were limited, for there was no serious resistance to the innovations: former communists readily took to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party because the Fuehrer himself supposed them to be a better human material than former members of any other parties. And even state anti-Semitism had some limits, partially to show the “decency” of the Nazis’ order during the Berlin Olympiad. The Holocaust, destroying gypsies, persecutions of the Poles, and chasing all anti-war elements came later.

Thus, even though this statement can shock many people, in the World War II German soldiers really had what to defend. Even the most powerful propaganda could not have mobilized the nation for the difficult war on all fronts, on sea, and for everyday braveness on the home front under the Allies’ bombs. Nazi ideology was not the main source causing the continuous German opposition to the much more powerful Allies, but the real achievements of dozens of millions people in the 1930s. Of course, these achievements were properly spun by Goebbels’ propaganda, but they existed.

Soviet people didn’t have such reasons to fight, until Hitler with his stupid policy made the peoples of the Soviet Union his mortal enemies. But anyway, for one killed German soldier we had to give 8-10 Soviet ones. In addition, the economy of the Third Reich was much more efficient: under the conditions of the blockade by UN states it managed to provide everything necessary for the army during the confrontation against almost the whole world until the end of 1944 without considerable decrease of production of articles of general consumption and amount of services for the population. Of course, this was reached by means of using the cheap labor brought from occupied countries and the work of prisoners of war, but the fact remains: they took care of “genuine Aryans,” didn’t forget about “Aryan” and “German” peoples, by the way, including Ukrainians in the second half of 1943.

Winston Churchill once said that Stalin made only one serious mistake in his life: showing his party nomenclature to Europe, and Europe to his nomenclature. No wonder that already during his life it became clear to the most perspicacious part of the Soviet nomenclature that the military-dictatorship economy was not efficient. They had to look for something else. What exactly? The cynical anti-communist Beria, who better that other leaders of the USSR knew the real state of affairs in both the super state and the world, in 1953 took the course of canceling slave labor, liquidating the GULAG, dekulakization of collective farmers; his friend Malenkov, who became premier of the USSR, took the course of priority development of light industry. In the opinion of this government tandem, people should be motivated to work not by the state ideology, but by human interests. Of course, the nomenclature executed Beria promptly for this, and Malenkov was soon removed from power. Khrushchev tried to generate enthusiasm for the basis of his social-economic policy, combined with growing corn behind the polar circle — and quickly failed. The failure of Khrushchev would have happened much earlier if he had not intuitively felt what must become one of the corner stones of efficient social policy: mass residential building. The poor, five-story Khrushchevkas saved the system from collapse for some time. And later Khrushchev started scratching his head and finally came to a dangerous conclusion after his visit to Sweden: “Do we have socialism? We have bullshit! Sweden has socialism!”

So the team of Brezhnev-Shelepin came to power, replacing Khrushchev. One hardly remembers the latter today, but in the middle 1960s many privileged functionaries regarded Leonid Brezhnev as an interim figure who must give way to the “real chieftain,” Aleksandr Shelepin, or “iron Shurik,” as his supporters called him. This political figure thought in a straightforward manner, like Stalin: fear and propaganda were the main tools of governing the super state. Komsomol operative detachments wearing special uniforms appeared in the streets of Soviet cities, amusing the eyes of Stalinists, but Shelepin’s troopers failed to assault government institutions: Brezhnev had no equals in the apparatus game, and the team of “iron Shurik” was neutralized, he was moved to the post of the nominal leader of quasi-trade unions. However, the problem remained: what to do?

The answer was found not in the volumes of Marx or Lenin. I do not know the exact name of that brilliant bureaucrat, who, based on personal observations in occupied Germany and on captured documents realized how to solve the conundrum! However, there is no doubt it is not a coincidence but conscious copying of the most efficient constituents of social policy, which ensured stability in Hitler’s time. There are too many “coincidences” of this kind.

At first the team of Brezhnev attempted to shift from the pure command system to market socialism – the variation of socialism which was the basis of Hitler’s system, and then formed a “self-governed socialism” like in Yugoslavia under Tito and in Hungary under Janos Kadar (so-called “goulash socialism”); this kind works successfully in the People’s Republic of China and partly in Belarus. But this attempt was successful only partly – since market socialism (do not confuse it with a social market economy, which requires democracy) works only in conditions of a combination of a despotic government and a permission for more or less developed private property, even if it is subordinated to the authorities. Brezhnev did not dare to do it, while the broad use of Hitler’s forms of “material stimulation” and various funds of mass consumption became a norm for the “developed socialism.”

Moreover, as reparations, the USSR took from Germany numerous enterprises which allowed it to start, already in the 1950s, a mass production of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, radio receivers, and TV sets (by the way, Goebbels made sure back in 1936 that millions of German spectators had the possibility to watch on television the games of the German Olympics and the triumph of the “will and spirit” of the Aryan people there; the ideological use of sport, Olympics and television was copied in the USSR). So they copied this sphere as well, up to the attitude to popular music: Nazis officially stigmatized jazz as “hostile music,” what didn’t prevent them from giving a huge portion of radio programs to “expressly rhythmic music.” In the same manner rock-music allegedly did not exist in the Brezhnev’s times — numerous “vocal-instrumental ensembles” existed instead.

While the Soviet ideology remained totalitarian, the method of creating quasi-liberal periodicals was also borrowed, first of all to attract the intellectuals to the regime, and secondly, to improve the image of the state abroad. The main periodical of this kind was Moscow’s Literaturnaya Gazeta, the format of which was copied from the German weekly Das Reich. About half of this periodical (it was about 30 sheets in big format) was dedicated to serious problems of literature, science, painting, and theater; literary works were regularly published. The best journalists of Germany were gathered in the newspaper, many of them did not have notable pro-Nazi views — professionalism was the main criterion. The tone of the newspaper was mainly neutral, but at this the party’s controllers included in every one or two issues materials which wouldn’t differ much from the general stylistics and at the same time had the “right” ideological load. The weekly was immensely popular: in October 1940 it was published with a circulation of half a million copies, and in March 1944 this circulation reached 1.4 million. The periodical was read outside Germany with pleasure: in Switzerland alone there were about 50,000 subscribers. At the same time, in the late 1930s, the party’s official organ, the morning Volkischer Beobachter was published in big circulations in the Berlin, Munich, and Vienna editions, though its level of journalism was lower than that of smaller “elite” newspapers; but this newspaper, just as Pravda, didn’t have any other task except for being a “mass agitator and organizer.”

The principles of cinema repertoire formation were not original, either. In Stalin’s time there was an obvious proclivity for propaganda movies, and together with them there were “trophy” ones, that is movies created in different countries, captured in German cinema factories. Then the situation changed. Explicitly propagandistic movies (Jew Suss; Hitlerjunge Quex; SA Mann Brand; The Great King; Kolberg) constituted about 10 percent of cinema repertoires. The same in the times of “developed socialism.” American movies (despite all invectives of Nazis and communists against Hollywood) made up approximately the same share. The rest were “life dramas,” music-entertainment and quasi-historical movies.

It is clear that all leaders of despotic regimes try to show off as prominent peace-fighters. But perhaps Hitler and Brezhnev were the most ardent of them in the 20th century. At this, their struggle was closely combined with critique of English-American imperialism and “wrong” socialism (in the first case — Soviet, in the second — Chinese). The argumentation for this is very similar: our state had immense losses during the last war, therefore other states must listen to it, it has the right for reliable guarantees of peace and parity of weapons. It is interesting that Germany continued to struggle for a “just peace” after the beginning of the World War II, initiated, as the said, by “English-French warmongers,” and the USSR – after the invasion in Afghanistan, the necessity of which was explained by the approach of “hawks” from Washington. What “proletarian internationalism” was there? The real ideological work of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the times of “developed socialism” was built, as in the case of the Nazis, on xenophobia and denial of liberal-democratic values.

What Soviet chieftains couldn’t borrow, what they failed to do, was raising a mug of beer, taken from hands of a corpulent Tirol girl, like Herring or Hitler did, or personally work with a spade building a transport depot like Hitler (this was emulated by all the local chieftains). Words are not enough for efficient propaganda, even in a totalitarian society. Therefore, perhaps, the “harvest festival” did not reach the German scale in the USSR. Chieftains were too old to take an active part in it, and what is a festival without chieftains? In Germany it was celebrated with the participation of the Fuehrer near the Buckelberg hill (between Hannover and Hameln), where the number of guests reached a million of people in the middle 1930s. The “altar of harvest” was built on the hill from a big number of flowers, sheaves of wheat, and grapes. Peasants brought up the wreath of harvest to the Fuehrer as a symbol of land fertility. Generally, in Germany there was a powerful “movement for reviving people’s festivals,” which was supposed to unite people and gave the traditional Christian feasts the ideologically “right” direction. They also tried to do it in the USSR, but less successfully.

Obviously, that is why there were lots of jokes about “dear Leonid Brezhnev,” for he liked to talk about work or military victory, but didn’t show examples of it. However, the Nazi bosses were also the heroes of jokes, connected with their activities. “Jews were going to drink blood from the German people, but the Fuehrer outdid them.”

By the way: neither Stalin nor Brezhnev invented the sacramental unofficial-directive about the “admissible percentage” of persons of Jewish origin in different institutions. This was also borrowed from the practice of the Third Reich.

“The labor semester,” and “the summer labor semester” — all readers who studied in Soviet higher educational establishments remember these expressions. They are also from Germany originally: Nazis introduced these notions right after they got the power in 1933 (by the way, since the early 1930s over 50 percent of students voted for Nazis in all elections). First it concerned only university entrants — the labor semester took half a year. But from 1939 onwards (beginning before the World War II), the summer labor semester became mandatory for all students.

Regarding the entourage of the party congresses and different solemnities, storm troopers in full dress with numerous flags entered and stood in straight rows in passages. This didn’t happen before Brezhnev’s time. It was copied as well.

They also copied many other things. Mass building of cooperative dwelling for laborers (although the Nazis didn’t have time to develop it as much as the Soviets did), mass tourism with visits to “brotherly countries,” the “people’s” automobile Volkwagen/ Zhiguli, a demonstrative honor to veterans of the war and privileges for them (May 9 was not a national holiday in the USSR from 1946 till 1965), different programs on production for improving labor quality, a very broad system of artistic amateur activity and circles for teenagers (before the war in the USSR they were solely military-applied ones), and after all, golden badges for veterans of the party. In other words, the efficient social policy and propagandistic work in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Brezhnev’s time had nothing to do with Marx or Lenin, though neither ordinary party members nor most members of the central committee knew it. Not accidentally, perhaps, a high-ranking lady asked Mikhail Romm, after viewing the second part of his Ordinary Fascism: “Why do you hate us so much?”

This rather efficient social policy and propaganda under Hitler and Brezhnev was combined with an arms race and military opposition against the world democracy. The Nazi economy was exhausted because of it, and Germany was doomed for an offensive war, otherwise in the early 1940s it would face economic collapse, as both German leading experts and American finance specialists foresaw. Seizing resources of other countries enabled combining inconsistencies for some time — the military insanity with rather high social standards. The final result was well known to everyone. The USSR followed the same path under Brezhnev: it waged local wars, the biggest of them was the war in Afghanistan, but they did not give any benefits for the economy, only strained the economy even more, and the collapse of the system came. In December 1991 one more totalitarian red-flag empire ceased to exist.

…So, when on November 7 in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine gray-haired veterans and young activists of the left movement go out in the streets, when they proclaim loud speeches about how good life in the USSR was, what high level of social protection and care for working people there was, it would be good to remind them where this all came from…