Back in the USSR
Plus, the Christmas Truce(s)
Note: Next week’s year-in-review newsletter will be released on Tuesday, Dec. 31. The usual Friday distribution will resume on Jan. 10.
I’m keeping today’s missive relatively short to respect your time this holiday week. We all need a break from serious stuff, yes?
I didn’t notice what the president said on Christmas Day, 1991. I was sixteen and probably preoccupied with presents and family while looking forward to the New York Jets playoff game a few days later (they would lose to the Houston Oilers 17-10).
In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office, President George Bush marked a historic moment. Mikhail Gorbachev had just resigned as president of the Soviet Union, which had already ceased to exist. An era-defining conflict was over. The United States was the victor.
“For over 40 years, the United States led the West in the struggle against Communism and the threat it posed to our most precious values. This struggle shaped the lives of all Americans. It forced all nations to live under the specter of nuclear destruction,” Bush said.
“That confrontation is now over. The nuclear threat -- while far from gone -- is receding. Eastern Europe is free. The Soviet Union itself is no more. This is a victory for democracy and freedom. It's a victory for the moral force of our values. Every American can take pride in this victory, from the millions of men and women who have served our country in uniform, to millions of Americans who supported their country and a strong defense under nine presidents.”
Grab the eggnog and toast the end of history! As Fukuyama has explained many times since, in the contest between competing ideologies – the two irreconcilable systems for ordering society – democratic capitalism prevailed over Soviet communism with its one-party autocratic rule and command economy. This was the end of history – as in means to an end. In Fukuyama’s application of Hegel, history meant development.
What the West celebrated (and still celebrates) as a great triumph is seen today as a catastrophe from the vantage of ordinary Russians as well as Putin’s Kremlin. The 1990s brought disaster and disillusionment to the new Russian Federation. Economic crises, impoverishment, political violence, the criminalization of the economy, oligarchy, and national humiliation left deep scars. The former Soviet republics experienced economic shocks, too, but they had at least achieved long-sought independence from Moscow. Russians not only lost their life savings. The collapse of the USSR also sapped their pride as citizens of what had been a superpower, after all.
In Friday’s episode of History As It Happens, the Russian émigré, journalist, and political scientist Maria Lipman discusses what the West got wrong about the Soviet Union’s demise and why most Russians today miss some things about their former nation-state. Few may want to restore communism as defined by one-party authoritarianism and chronic shortages. Yet the failed promise of the early Yeltsin years – that Russia might integrate with Europe while establishing a thriving economy and democracy at home – embittered millions of people. Rather than hailing Gorbachev as a hero, many consider the late reformer a fool.
“The very reason that made the West celebrate was arguably a reason for Russia to despair. The Cold War enemy was dramatically weakened. Its military might was diminished substantially. Its economic might as well. This gave a reason for those in the Western world, first and foremost in the United States, to rejoice,” said Lipman, who departed her Moscow home after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She now works at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. She is the editor of Russia.Post.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast lately, a frequent subject of discussion has been the gap between post-Cold War dreams of democracy and capitalism, on the one hand, and the reality of the past 30 years, on the other. This is not to say that “the end of history” was a bad deal. On the contrary, the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe are, on balance, success stories (Hungary is one notable exception to the advance of democracy). Moreover, Russia’s economy recovered from its late-90s nadir in large part because of high oil prices. The middle class grew as Putin cemented his autocracy.
Yet, looking back on that refreshingly optimistic time – “The day of the dictator is over,” declared Bush in 1989 – few U.S. elites foresaw the coming backlash to globalization, deindustrialization, and massive migration. Few would have predicted the rise of a clownish demagogue in the world’s “greatest democracy.” The unipolar moment, too, proved short-lived. A terrible war ravages Ukraine – Europe’s worst interstate conflict since 1945.
Among the subjects Maria Lipman and I discuss in the podcast are: her childhood after the death of Stalin; memories of the Prague Spring; day-to-day life in Brezhnev’s Russia; Reagan’s “evil empire”; hopes raised by Gorbachev; Svetlana Alexievich; the losses of the 1990s; Putin’s rule compared to the late-Soviet period; and much more.
The Christmas Truce
In Tuesday’s episode of History As It Happens, historian Terri Blom Crocker brought us back to the remarkable events that took place on some very cold nights in 1914. As British, French, and German soldiers shivered in their trenches on the Western Front, some men began singing carols or calling out to the enemy lines. Several spontaneous truces happened along a 20-mile-long stretch of the front.
Dr. Crocker is the author of The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, and the First World War. On the podcast, we talked about what really happened on Christmas Eve in 1914; how future generations used truce memory for political purposes in, for example, the Vietnam era; expectations of a short war; the horrors of combat vs. visions of heroism; Germany’s war guilt vs. theories of collective responsibility; John Keegan; Paul Fussell; Wilfred Owen’s poetry; and comparisons to the war in Ukraine.
What’s next?
Next Tuesday is New Year’s Eve. Historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel will return for my year-in-review episode reflecting on the fall of Assad; accused murderer Luigi Mangione as folk hero; the triumph of Trump; endless wars in Ukraine and Gaza; and other top stories and favorite moments of 2024. We will also share our favorite books of the year.
And, as mentioned, my final newsletter of 2024 will be published straight to your inbox on Tuesday. I will share some of my favorite podcast episodes this year.
I hope the holiday brought you much peace and happiness.