[Political Interest]

There is a lot of discussion these days about whether or not Soviet citizens were actual communists. This is because many Russian nationalists have favourable memories of the USSR and view the Soviet period as one in which Russia was strong. There are all sorts of arguments that the Soviet Union was the true and authentic embodiment of Russian civilisation and a natural progression of Russian history. It would appear that many of the communists in today's Russia are not so much believers in communism as much as they are Soviet patriots. I have a hard time understanding this sort of "communism" which is not based on actual belief in Marxism-Leninism but instead on a sort of red patriotism. One could describe it as Sovietism as opposed to Marxism-Leninism. It is almost impossible to distinguish or separate it from Russian nationalism.

From what I understand nationalism and patriotism were very much a part of the Soviet consciousness. Citizens of the USSR loved their motherland and did not just do so because it was the homeland of workers and peasants but also because it was their country, land of their ancestors.

Therefore I have three questions:

1. How much of the communists in today's Russia are actual Marxist-Leninists and how many are really just Soviet nostalgics, Russian nationalists and "Sovietists"?

2. During the Soviet period how much of the population were actual orthodox communists, in other words, how many of them really believed in Marxism-Leninism as an ideology and how many of them were simply "communists" in the sense of being Soviet patriots?

3. What was the feeling of citizens of Warsaw Pact countries towards communism? Was it more of an actual belief in communism or again a sort of Sovietist patriotic sentiment?

This is a very important question because we often seem to forget that while communism was ostensibly internationalist, ("the workers have no country"), the socialist countries were nearly all very patriotic and in some cases even outright nationalist. It leads us to wonder if this patriotism was a "socialism in one country" doctrinaire Marxist loyalty to the workers state or if it was something more, the continuation of an old pre-communist nationalism yet combined with socialist themes and draped under the red flag.

[The Immortal Goon]

I don't have time to get into detail as I'm about to go to work, but a quick note:

Marxist-Leninist means Stalinist. Stalin very much did push for a nationalism that Lenin tried to warn everybody to stop.

But it happened. The church was brought back in, the art stopped, the national anthem was changed from the Internationale to a church song, the "socialism in one country" was created to foster nationalism...

Bolshevik-Leninism is Trotskyism.

Leninism by itself is strict Leninism.

[Potemkin]

As part of his "revolution from above" in the early 1930s, Stalin rehabilitated many of the Russian Tsars (including Ivan the Terrible) and encouraged Russian nationalism (though not, it must be said, 'Great Russian chauvinism', which was always strictly forbidden), and in fact made some attempt to foster a specifically 'Soviet nationalism' which would unify the disparate nationalities of the Soviet Union into a single nation (rather as the English elite have tried to foster a 'British nationalism'). This was only partially successful, of course, but this policy became known as 'national Bolshevism', and was consciously revived in the 1990s by the so-called 'National Bolshevik Party' of Eduard Limonov and others.

[Atlantis]

In most communist countries only a small minority of the populace consisted of true believers. The great majority was opportunistic. People joined the communist party or communist youth organisations because it facilitated job promotion or university education. Having said that, most would probably not question whether their faith in Marxism was real or opportunistic because Marxist propaganda was omnipresent in education, at the work place and even during leisure activities. When the communist regimes fell, most just left Marxism behind as if it had never happened or like something to lecture Westerner about of how not do to things.

Internationalism and the friendship between people were the official line; however, the regime didn't encourage private contacts with foreigners. The current wave of nationalism and xenophobia in most of former communist Eastern Europe is the result of this lack of exposure to foreign cultures.