Animal Farm

I must admit that for the majority of my educated life I have not known much about Communism outside of what I learned from Orwell's Animal Farm in the ninth grade. What I did know about Communism revolved around the USSR. Really I have never known much about the form of government which now rules the country in which I reside. I have simply known it was a government that I did not agree with. What I have known of Communism was that its leaders have been brutally vicious and callous. The government is made to control the people and not vice versa. Stalin let his people starve and held mass murders mercilessly throughout the country. I pictured Communist countries as scary, unwelcoming, desolate places where no people could ever be happy. How could one live happily when they are controlled and watched over so heavily? Was this not Big Brother at its finest?

I am learning now that the type of Communism that runs a country is largely dependent on the person who is named leader. Lenin and Stalin were barbarous and unrelenting. They truly ruled with an iron fist. It wasn't until Stalin's death and the start of the Khrushchev Era that Communism began to seem a little relenting and less harsh. A period of détente helped ease the tension between the USSR and its allies. The Soviet Union began to open its borders and allow people access to information and held less restraints on its people. Communism was still the ruling, government party but it was far less coarse and more open to its people. During perestroika, under Gorbachev, the USSR was still under Communist rule but almost completely without the terror that came with the title. Censorship of materials was limited, the Cold War was ended, the Berlin Wall brought down. Under the more lax leadership and the fall of the Iron Curtain, Communism in the USSR was resolved and Russia was left under the rule of an elected president for the first time.

This is a story basically about the rise and the fall of Communism in a country that is currently my neighbor. Is that what happens when Communism is not an almighty force which casts stones at its disbelievers? Will the government not work if it is not executed ruthlessly?

I am ashamed to admit that I know so little about China's history. I do not know how Communism came to be in this country or what forms of governments previously held control. I know there were many dynasties but I do not know what exactly they did or how they chose to control their countrymen. I had a conversation with Bella today about how different our governments are but really I could not make many comparisons since I believe most of what I have always thought about China and its government is false. We talked about health care, freedoms, gun-control. Bella explained that she was taught in school and by her family that you must always respect those in charge whether you believe what they are doing is right or not. She was told never to question authority and always to obey it. I asked her what would happen if she questioned it and all she said was, "It would not be a good idea and I believe it would end very badly." Bella told me that she knew very little about China's government and its president. She said she is certain that other countries know more about China than China knows about itself. I talked to her about how the government in America is supposed to be controlled by the people (not that that is always the case). I told her about how we are taught to question it and to speak up for what we believe in. We told each other the different things we thought were unfair in the world and Bella, in her wisdom beyond my years, informed me that, "Nowhere in the world is perfect, no matter what some may believe is right or wrong. There is nowhere that is perfect." She teaches me so much every day. I see that my beliefs are so different from her's but that it doesn't matter and that I can do nothing but learn from everything she knows.

Mandarin lesson:
Zhèngfǔ 政府 (government)