Secret Ingredient of Communism

When I was writing the comparison between Soviet and Western propaganda in one of the previous articles, I outlined reasons that made people support Soviet system. However, I forgot one and the final reason that made it all work: The Building (Establishing) of Communism.

People say communism means free stuff for everyone and that is true. However, there was little of free stuff in actual USSR, which is also true. So how that all worked then.

That worked as follows. Government told people that the system they currently had is Socialism, however a system they want to establish is Communism. 

Under Communism everything (all goods and services) will be free, and people will not even need any money to get anything. That would be a truly utopian society, that is worth aspiring to. Government works really hard to get the country towards Communism as fast as possible.

However, government claimed that Communism cannot be established right away. An intermediate transitional period is needed before Communism can be achieved. This intermediate period is what government called Socialism (it is different from Socialism, European central-left parties name themselves after). 

Under Socialism stuff is not free yet but stuff will finally be free, once all the conditions for Communism can be achieved. 

That promise of free stuff at a later date is what kept people engaged. That is somewhat akin to American Dream thing, but for everyone involved and not just for the successful individual.

Government of course kept people updated on the whole process, never failing to release another news flash about how here or there someone made Communism closer by some unspecified amount. 

Khruschev claimed that full Communism will be achieved by 1970. Brezhnev later revised that date to 1980. In 1970 they instead celebrated achievement of 'Developed Socialism', that is an intermediate stage between Socialism (their previous intermediate state) and Communism when stuff will finally be free. 

Then in 1980 there were Olympics to distract people. Then Brezhnev just died in office to avoid explaining why free stuff have not begun yet. His two immediate successors did exactly the same thing and also died in office.

Finally, under Gorbachev they postponed the date of achieving Communism even further, this time to 2000. 

At this stage people began to get disillusioned with the whole thing. They started to think the whole thing is just a fraud, government will postpone date of achieving Communism to a later date again and stuff will never get free.

Once disillusionment started to get hold over people in early 1980s, government had to get creative in keeping people engaged. Gorbachev announced Perestroika, but that was not enough, and USSR have collapsed anyway.

That of course left people cynical and mistrustful of governments, institutions and people in general. After all no one wants to spend decades working on something only to realize that they will never get rewarded for that.

That disillusionment still lingers heavily over the post-Soviet states. European Union was managed to convince some of them (Baltics, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) that EU is the next best thing. The others remain in that disillusionment state as they seek things that will actually make them more prosperous.

Establishment of Communism myth/ideology/policy was also a reason why government could easily repress the dissidents with wide popular support for their actions. In communism heyday, opposing communism meant being against free stuff, as if claiming that things should not be free, and people have to pay of them instead. Government could reasonably call such people insane and confine them to psychiatric institutions.