The Arab Spring and the Fall of Communism

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

It’s been five years from the time when the series of uprisings known as the “Arab Spring” began in the Middle East, while a full 27 years have gone by since the regimes in the Soviet-bloc states in eastern Europe began to crumble.

Why was one set of revolutions largely a failure, while the other, despite occasional setbacks, largely succeeded?

The similarities between them are clear. The degree of corruption and political sclerosis in both sets of countries meant their regimes all lacked legitimacy, so change was indeed “over-determined.”

Their respective ideologies -- in the one case, Marxism-Leninism, in the other, pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism -- had become empty shells.

When such hollow regimes are revealed for what they truly are, any event in any one of them might begin a succession of revolutions across all those countries that shared the same pattern of political erosion.

The uprisings were, nonetheless, largely spontaneous and without prior planning, with little organized leadership at first.

Both were triggered by a specific event: in one, the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Ben Arous, Tunisia who set himself on fire in protest of the corruption and harassment from the authorities Dec. 17, 2010.

In the other, the mistaken rumor that a student demonstrator, Martin Smid, had been beaten to death by riot police during a demonstration in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Nov. 17, 1989.

In eastern Europe, liberal capitalist systems replaced the totalitarian regimes and power structures in almost all of the states quickly and peacefully. They almost literally evaporated within weeks.

The exceptions were Romania, where a “strongman” refused to give up power, and Yugoslavia, a multi-national state that fell victim to ethnic war.

Not so in North Africa and the Middle East. There, states had differing organizations of power, so their adaptability, resistance to change and willingness to use force caused them to have different outcomes.

In Egypt, the fall of the dictator initially brought to power a Muslim Brotherhood government, soon overthrown by the military.

In Libya, an autocratic regime led by a psychopath and based on fear was only dispatched after much bloodshed, and has left a power vacuum.

Syria has been engulfed in a horrific many-sided ideological and ethno-religious civil war, with hundreds of thousands dead. A smaller version of the same sectarian strife has also affected Yemen.

Finally, Tunisia, where it all began, did escape the terrible outcomes in the other countries, but its democracy remains shaky at best.

Outside interference in the case of eastern Europe was minimal. The Soviet Union stepped aside and signaled it would not use force to retain control, and the United States also kept its distance.

In the Middle East, though, the implosion led to a power struggle between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with each providing arms and money to the warring factions.

Another major difference was the role of religion. Other than in Poland, where the Roman Catholic Church was a major factor in the demise of the Communist system, religion played a minor role in the fall of Communism in eastern Europe, and continues to be relatively marginal in the post-Communist era.

As well, the newly emancipated eastern European states sought, and received, guidance from their western European neighbours as they transitioned away from totalitarianism.

With the Arab states the reverse has been the case. Islam in this region is a strong ideological alternative to liberal capitalism, with aspirations to become a dominant political force.

Islamist groups have taken advantage of the uncertainty and insecurity that followed the collapse of the old order, and have proposed theocratic alternatives to the people.

They are now a power to be reckoned with throughout the region and a counterweight to those advocating liberal democracy.