Posted by Tim Cratchit on August 11, 2002 at 23:36:20:
In Reply to: Re: 1984- social issues in need of reform posted by Milena on August 11, 2002 at 16:27:46:
Dear Milena,
I don't think that W. Smith was a man with very high morale - by our's standarts - at least not at the beginning of the novel: his motives were primarily selfish. He wanted to be able think for himselves, he wanted love and peaceful existence. And he was very scared of the likely consequence of his crimethink being recognised. Only later, as he emancipated more, he started to be idealistic in his actions.
Also, it is interesting that you have mentioned Tito (I suppose you were born in that part of world). Comunists used to come in a number of varieties, and I would completely agree that Jugoslavia's regime was much more modern and liberal by comparison with, say, Hoxa's Albania.
Yet the totalitarian, church-like dogmatic streak and the effort to control people's thinking was there, if in much milder form.
But isn't it strange, that even though the unity of the Stalinist communism disintegrated, into many different local flavours - and many comummunist leaders were at odds with each other (and Stalinist Russia), the frequency with which these regimes developed into awfull nightmarish dictatorships was rather high. It was not only Stalinist Russia (and stalinist Albania): Ciausesku's Romania was independent on Moscow, so was China, North Korea and Kambodia.