1) Historical reasons. After the Eastern European countries came to power, they all copied the Soviet model and were largely controlled by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union forced the eastern European countries to be consistent with it in their domestic and foreign policies. In fact, Eastern European countries have no independent rights.
(2) Internal reasons. Economically, most countries have developed slowly, the reform has not achieved much, and the gap with western European countries has widened. Economic difficulties lead to economic crisis, which leads to political crisis and ethnic conflicts. Politically, due to the serious destruction of democracy and legal system, the political parties and governments in eastern European countries are divorced from the masses.
(3) Soviet factor. Gorbachev's reform loosened the eastern European countries, and his program of building "humane and democratic socialism" and "new thinking" of foreign policy promoted the reorganization, differentiation and transformation of various parties in eastern Europe.
(4) Western factors. Western countries have lured and pressured Eastern European countries through various means such as loans, trade, technology and ideological infiltration, urging them to move closer to the West and "peacefully evolve" towards capitalism.
There are many reasons for the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but there can only be one fundamental reason. There are countless books about the causes of the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but almost all of them look for problems from its superstructure, and rarely look for reasons from the economic base. The root cause of the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe lies in the irregularity of the economic system, and the problems existing in the superstructure are only phenomena, not the root cause.
First of all, it must be clear that the economic system of a society is the material basis for the existence, development and change of a society, and the superstructure is determined by and serves the economic basis, not the other way around. As long as the economic foundation of a society is established and operated according to law, even if there is dynasty change and regime change, the original economic system will continue and will not change with regime change. Take China as an example. Although the feudal society that lasted for more than 2,000 years experienced many dynasty changes, it did not fundamentally shake the natural economic foundation of self-sufficiency. That is to say, from Qin and Han dynasties to Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, it has changed more than ten times, but the self-sufficient natural economy remains unchanged in essence. This is because the self-sufficient natural economy was still an advanced economic form at that time, and there was no more advanced economic form than it, which could only continue the existing economy as the material basis of society. It was only at the end of the Qing Dynasty that the capitalist mode of production appeared and a new bourgeoisie emerged. After overthrowing the feudal rule, it provided political guarantee for the great development of the new economic form, and China society gradually changed from a feudal society to a new social system. The Revolution of 1911 is different from previous dynasties. It no longer regards the continuation of self-sufficient natural economy as the material basis for the existence and development of the new regime, but regards the development of capitalism as the economic basis for the existence and development of the new regime. This is a fundamental change, bringing China society into a new era and opening a new era. From then on, it drifted away from the feudal society and became closer and closer to the new society.
How to establish and operate the economic foundation of a society is in line with the law?
That is, it must be built on a certain level of productivity development. Productivity is the most fundamental material basis for the existence and development of any society. Human beings depend on nature to survive, but they are not satisfied with the gift of nature, and nature cannot fully meet human needs. In the process of contact with nature, human beings gradually understand the nature, essence and law of natural things from shallow to deep, and find out what kind of existence it is. On the basis of understanding, I study the ways and means of transforming into something useful to people, and then actually transform into something useful to people through production practice, and transform things from things themselves into things useful to me. With the continuous progress of natural science and technology, productivity will rise to a new height, and every high productivity will naturally produce corresponding production relations and become its own form of existence. When productivity is improved to qualitative change, new and higher relations of production will follow. This is a natural development process. Only when the new economic elements touch the interests of the authorities, the authorities will suppress them, and the owners representing the new economic elements will rise up and resist, forming a struggle between old and new political forces. This kind of struggle always ends with the final victory represented by the new economic elements in history. After the establishment of the new political power, it will protect the new economic components, make them develop greatly, gradually replace the old economic components as the leading economic force, and the social form (system) will also undergo qualitative changes, and the new society will replace the old society. This is the legal development process of human society.
What about the "new era" initiated by the October Revolution?
The economic foundation of Soviet-style socialism was not established in accordance with the above laws, but was re-established on the basis of Marx and Engels' "assumption" of a new society in the future by using reverse thinking and abolishing private ownership through the violence of proletarian dictatorship. In Marx's vivid view, the economic foundation of Soviet-style socialism was not conceived by capitalist society, but pieced together by the violence of proletarian dictatorship. Capitalist society should be the matrix of socialist society, and proletarian revolutionary violence can only play the role of "midwife". Its task is not to destroy capitalist society, but to help capitalism bring socialism out of the womb. The old and new society should be a mother-child relationship, not an enemy-enemy relationship. Soviet socialism is not like this. It regards capitalist society not as its mother, but as its enemy. After dismembering it, it was regrouped to form a highly centralized planned economy on the basis of unified public ownership. Obviously, this is not a natural process of social development, but a product of people's subjective creation and an artificial society. In other words, the economic foundation of Soviet-style socialism has deviated from the universal law of social development since its birth, and it is a strange and deformed society, which determines that its life span cannot be very long.
The society created by violence can only be maintained by violence. Therefore, as the main body of superstructure, state power replaces the function of economic foundation and directly engages in economic activities, and state-owned state-owned enterprises are popular. However, the economic foundation and superstructure of society are two levels of problems, each of which has its own role and cannot be confused or replaced. Only by mutual cooperation and coordinated action can society develop in an orderly manner. The results of state power directly engaging in economic activities are as follows: first, forced labor is popular, which greatly suppresses the intellectual and enthusiasm of workers; Secondly, subjective planning can not be consistent with ever-changing economic activities, and the national economy is seriously unbalanced, resulting in frequent shortage-type economic crises. Under the threat of violence, forced labor can also achieve certain economic effects in a certain period of time; In the case of a serious imbalance in the national economy, individual economic sectors will also get great development, such as heavy industry and military industry. However, this situation will not last long, and once forced labor is relaxed, the output will decline; The unbalanced national economy is like a cripple. Even if you are energetic and fast in a short time, you can't persist for a long time, and you will soon be exhausted and stagnant. This was the case in the Soviet Union under Stalin. After his death, its shortcomings were soon exposed. After ten years of turmoil in China, the establishment was overthrown, forced labor was relaxed, and the national economy was on the verge of collapse. All these fully show that political power, as a concentrated and organized violence in the superstructure, can only serve the economic base and can never replace its function. Otherwise, it will inevitably disrupt the normal operation of the economy. Soviet-style socialism belongs to this type and is a deformed social form.
As a deformed social form, Soviet-style socialism also shows contempt and exploitation of agriculture. Agriculture is an industry that produces human means of subsistence and belongs to the basic industry of the national economy. The demand for means of subsistence is the first demand of human beings. Although other industries other than agriculture are also needed by human society and indispensable for improving people's living standards, their development is based on how much surplus labor can be provided by agriculture. Only the means of subsistence created by agricultural labor are surplus except the agricultural population, can other industries exist, and the more surplus products provided by agriculture, the more other industries can develop. This truth is discussed in detail by Marx in the third volume of Das Kapital. Therefore, only by consolidating the agricultural economy can a country have a solid foundation for developing other industries. If economy is the material foundation of social existence and development, agriculture is the foundation and the first cornerstone of social existence and development. This cornerstone is not solid, and other undertakings will collapse sooner or later. Soviet-style socialism adopted a very wrong policy on this issue. First of all, the traditional agricultural operators, landlords and emerging agricultural operators, rich peasants, have all been deprived and suppressed, forming a situation in which individual workers dominate the world; Then all the peasants were deprived of the means of production and became "people who have no other property except their own labor". The emergence of this situation has made the vast number of agricultural laborers, as Marx said, "in any social and cultural state, they have to be slaves for others who possess the material conditions of labor", and farmers have become slaves of the state, thus forming this modern state slavery. Compared with slavery in history, the situation of farmers is even more miserable-because serfs still have personal freedom, slaves in slave society can also be owned by different slave owners, while slavery in Soviet socialist countries makes farmers the only slave owners, losing any personal freedom and being only "gears and screws" and "taming tools". This is a great retrogression in history, which has greatly hurt the production enthusiasm of agricultural workers. In addition, the implementation of the policy of subsidizing agriculture with industry and realizing industrialization on the basis of damaging agriculture has led to the extreme backwardness of agriculture, and the grain output cannot meet the normal needs of the people. Famine has repeatedly occurred, tens of millions of people have starved to death, and even the tragedy of "cannibalism" has occurred. It is precisely because the first cornerstone of society is so fragile, and it is precisely because people's basic means of subsistence are so scarce, so although the satellite is in the sky, the red flag has landed. When the most basic means of survival of a regime in Lian Guomin can't guarantee the supply, what is the need for this regime and this society? It is inevitable to be abandoned by the people. On this point, Gaidar's book Death of the Empire has a detailed disclosure, so I won't repeat it here.
From the above three aspects, the economic foundation of Soviet-style socialism, whether from its production process, operation mode or the condition of the first cornerstone, is contrary to the universal law of human social development, and its superstructure cannot be normal. This is the root cause of the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as other reasons.
In the long Middle Ages, dynasty alternation failed to get out of the maze of autocracy, and it lasted for more than two thousand years, either because the economic base at that time did not change qualitatively or because no new economic components appeared. The fundamental reason why the Soviet-East * * Production Party lost its political power in the drastic changes is that the long-formed vested interest groups stubbornly adhered to the subjectively created economic system, and the economic system reform failed to establish a new economic system, and its political power and economic foundation were abandoned by the people. Contrary to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the older generation of revolutionaries, represented by the chief designer of China's * * * production party, were generally affected by the ten-year turmoil, so they came out again and deeply reflected, and resolutely decided not to "take the Russian road" but to "take their own road" and implement the new policy of reform and opening up. At the same time, they let the founding fathers "retire" with generous treatment, further removing the ideological and political obstacles to reform and opening up. Gradually abolish the highly centralized planned economy system and establish and constantly improve the new market economy system, not only the private economy has made rapid progress, but also the state-owned economy has changed its original social nature through restructuring and listing. In this way, China's * * * production party has a new economic foundation and naturally retains its ruling position. As long as we persist in the great cause of reform and opening up and break through the obstacles set by new vested interests (new bureaucratic bourgeoisie and powerful bourgeoisie), the ruling position of China's * * * production party will continue, and it will not repeat the mistakes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the foreseeable future.