Communism

"The iron curtain dropped over Europe"
--Winston Churchill

Through this metaphorical statement, Churchill wants to exemplify what really happened after the Second World War in Europe, when communism conquered more and more territory. The "iron curtain" symbolizes the barrier settled between the Eastern Communist Europe and the Western Democratic Europe. This imaginary barrier became materialized when the Berlin wall (Berliner Mauer) was built up, in August 13th 1961, separating Democratic Germany from the Communist one.

Therefore, communism is a term that can refer to one or several concepts: a certain social system, an ideology that promotes this social system, or a political movement desiring to implement this system.

Being a social system, communism is a type of equable society in which any social classes or private property cannot exist as it is based on the common ownership of the means of production. Maybe, the most well known principle of the communist society is: "Everyone by its power, to everyone by its needs." Making things clearer, we can say that every individual enjoys the same social and economic status.

After the Bolshevik revolution, in Russia, communism became synonym with the concept of Marxism and varied derived ideologies, such as the Marxism- Leninism.

The latter proposes the concept of the history progress, to which correspond four stages of economical development: slavery, feudalism, capitalism and communism. This materialistic conception shows that from the economical system derive all the other systems (the social, the juristic and the cultural one).

This concept also develops another one (the determinism) according to which every individual from a class has an inducted behavior by the class he belongs to, and not by his own way of thinking. That is why he has to be re-educated in the light of the new communist society. Owing to this ideology, millions of people died in the re-education camps, during the XX century in the soviet Russia, China, Romania, etc.

Some other features of communism:

-the oppression of any democratic rights

-the suppression of the opponents (the saying: who is not with us, is against us)

-the supervision of mass-media (there were only soviet, communist channels, which had the role to implement the ideology deeper and deeper the nation’s mind)

-the cult of personality (the rulers of the system promoted their imagine, in an exaggerated way, using mass-media, literature, and in every public occasion. Ex: Mao, Stalin, Ceausescu, Lenin, Poll Pot, Mussolini)

-the obstruction of the free will, of the free manifestation

-the existence of the secret police (KGB, SRI, etc)

-violence

-atheism (Christians were persecuted, churches were demolished, Christian holidays were abolished and it were forbidden to be celebrated)

-brain drain ( intellectual individualities had to emigrate( illegal) in order to have the opportunity to continue their studies and to put into practice their jobs; this thing was impossible on the communist territories; they were persecuted and even murdered )

In the beginning of communism, people were pleased with their life quality, and the idea of equality was appealing for some. Everyone had a workplace, soon after they graduated, a home, guaranteed by the state, and this occurrences offered security… in the beginning.

After years, the population started to feel the pressure, they started to make connections with the "outside world", through radio and relatives who lived in the Western Europe and they realized they were deprived of a series of rights. It became impossible to live in such hard conditions, having the feeling that always someone, besides God, was watching over them.

All these lead to revolutions, all over the Soviet Union, and in 1989 European communism collapsed.

Even though almost two decades have fade away from the breakdown of communism, the effects of this system are visible: communist countries are ten to fifty years less developed then the rest, from the economical point of view, there are still people deeply indoctrinated with the communist ideology, there are still people who suffer from the loss of the loved ones, there are still people who haven’t been returned their properties that were nationalized in the communist years.

All these, stated above, clearly show that communism was a wrong move and that people are meant to be free in order to have high efficiency and to feel secured and happy.