Better Off Red?

Frequently in the course of my travels around the old "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, I find myself reflexively rooting for the Commies. It isn't out of some kind of latent Marxist-Leninist sentiment, although it might be what Karl Marx would have labeled a dialectical contradiction. I pull for the godless Communists because they actually seem closer to God than the diabolical, Western-approved "ex-Communist" politicians.

President Alexander Lukashenko of the ex-Soviet Republic of Belarus?a country of 10 million wedged between NATO member Poland and Russia?is a conspicuous exception to the West's preferred norm. On April 6, the now-demonized Lukashenko accused the West of planning to dump $500 million into his country's upcoming presidential election in order to unseat him. It probably wouldn't take a fifth of that for America to put every election official in Belarus in its pocket forever, but Lukashenko is certainly going to be on the receiving end of something sinister from the West. Maybe a little covertly fomented "revolution" a la Belgrade, October 2000, is in the wings.

Lukashenko never renounced his allegiance to the Soviet Union, and he didn't pursue the Western-prescribed path of "reform" after winning the election overwhelmingly (and fairly) in 1994 at the age of 39. Instead, he expanded his powers by referendum in 1996 and pushed for reintegration with Mother Russia to avoid the total collapse witnessed in the rest of the ex-USSR. In other words, he acted like a patriot. The West branded him a Hitler-Stalin reincarnation, but the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church awarded him the prestigious Cross of Efrossina Polotskaya, patron saint of Belarus.

Belarus evaded the full extent of the social tragedy that befell most other states of the old Union, largely because Lukashenko kept Belarus' economy out of the hands of the mafia. So the place actually hums along, albeit at a fairly low pitch. It doesn't look like an American's idea of a vacation paradise, but it's clean, orderly and peaceful by the standards of the rest of the former Soviet Union, where old-age pensioners pick scraps out of dumpsters to survive and mafiosi (the new entrepreneurial class) control not only the streets but, in many cases, the government.

Lukashenko is among the last of a dying breed: a leader and man of the people, swimming against the tide of Western corruption. The new breed is the lifelong Soviet Communist Party member?former watchdog, informer, secret police functionary and death-warrant signatory?born again as patriot, democrat and devout Christian. Instead of retiring from politics and devoting his life to humanity's salvation, he undergoes a "conversion rite" amid swirling incense, takes down his little portrait of Stalin and replaces it with an icon, claims he was secretly a Jeffersonian democrat all along, and collects dollops of financial aid and a pat on the back from pious Uncle Sam for his commitment to "reform." Sometimes it's a younger-generation "reformer," who only made it to the top of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) before discovering his Jeffersonian roots. "Reform," incidentally, means putting all the country's valuable assets up for sale to foreigners at bargain-basement prices and rigging elections so that the people who still call themselves Commies don't take power democratically and undo democracy.

This is the archetype of the political leader almost everywhere in the ex-USSR, and this is what the West wants?countries that go to hell in a handbasket and become ripe for the picking because no one is really "in charge." The argument that "the people" are sovereign is a sick joke. If the completely degraded and destitute citizenry were in charge in these places, the bums in power would have been thrown out two elections ago. That's what's supposed to happen in real democracies.

So in almost all the ex-Soviet states, already bereft of leaders or popular government and languishing under total corruption, I often pull for the Communist Party. Other parties are really just "business cabals" set up around one or two individuals who've made fortunes asset-stripping and resource-stealing. Maybe the ex-Soviet Commies' enduring popularity can be chalked up, at least partly, to a public that trusts those who show some courage of their convictions more than those who are simply corrupt Clintonesque nihilists through and through. A friend of mine in Kiev told me he hated the old one-party state, but that he had no greater sympathy for the turncoat Commies in power. "I don't like traitors," he said.

The West's attitude of blaming all the current ills on the old system while proclaiming that things must get worse before they get better is reminiscent of Lenin's "the worse the better" slogan. Sadly, if Lenin's idea of "better" is any guide, the downtrodden ex-Soviet people have little to look forward to.

Having seen this social catastrophe up close, I can't casually dismiss the common man's longing for the old days. The near-total breakdown of the rule of law in the ex-USSR makes Western-driven, free market "reform" of the ex-Socialist bloc look doomed to fail as a constructive force. If the Commie loyalists were to return, at worst these states would go from muddling through under crime-ridden, chaotic, corrupt capitalism to muddling through under dreary, inefficient, relatively orderly socialism?much as before, only without the armored divisions in Eastern Germany. The Reds form the only parties large and organized enough to form national governments with a chance of returning a semblance of order and dignity to people's lives. We surely have reason to hope they succeed.