The Ghost Has Returned: A Kazakh Warning to America

As someone who was educated and started my career in Kazakhstan during the era of Soviet communism, I know what this regime means. For many Americans, communism might merely be a theoretical policy debate or a historical concept. But for us, it is a bitter reality that has left deep scars in our family memory; famine, property confiscation, oppression, labor camps, and constant fear were all legitimized under the guise of equality and justice. Therefore, whenever the concept of communism enters the American political agenda, we, the people of Kazakhstan, follow the events with great attention. The sentence "A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism," which are the opening words of the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, still retains its relevance today. Even after almost two centuries, this ghost has not vanished; it has only changed its vocabulary, its political costumes, and its geographical location. Its former seductiveness has lost nothing, and it still tries to consolidate power in a single hand under an understanding that promises justice today.

In June, US President Donald Trump made a warning stating that communism is the greatest threat to the United States and that this danger is even greater than World War I, World War II, the Pearl Harbor attack, or the September 11 events. Trump's language, as always, was extremely clear and direct. In response, critics made an important point by noting that democratic socialism and Soviet communism are not the same thing, and that the word "communist" should not be carelessly used in ordinary party debates. Despite all these discussions and criticisms, it is clear that the historical anxiety behind this political warning should not be entirely ignored. Every welfare program is, of course, not communism, and every democratic socialist is definitely not a Bolshevik. It is entirely natural for modern states to help their citizens in various ways; the real issue here is when this help turns into a mechanism of control. When does compassion turn into a tyrant, into the state demanding the right to dictate prices, property, production, freedom of expression, and moral legitimacy on behalf of the "people"? People who have lived under communism know the magnitude of this danger firsthand.

For an outside observer, the fact that the concepts of socialism and communism are being debated again in the United States—a country once defined by Soviet theorists as the citadel of advanced capitalism—may seem extremely bizarre. However, the explanation behind this situation is not mysterious at all. The approaching Congressional elections directly affect the political atmosphere. The recent primary victories of candidates who identify with democratic socialism brought these debates back into mainstream American politics. Of course, this does not mean that America is on the eve of a Bolshevik revolution. Because while America has elections, independent courts, private property rights, constitutional limitations, and a free press; the Soviet Union meaningfully had none of these institutions. This fundamental difference must always be kept in mind. However, the words and promises offered by every political movement when it first emerges must still be listened to very carefully. Initial promises are usually humane; they speak of justice, dignity, affordable prices, workers, tenants, food, and peace. But society usually realizes much later, when it is too late, how much power must be surrendered to the state to turn these promises into reality.

The Democratic Socialists of America describes itself as the country's largest socialist organization and argues that working people should democratically run the economy and society so that human needs come before profit. For many Americans, these ideas may seem extremely compassionate and humane. But for those of us educated under Marxist-Leninist doctrine, this rhetoric sounds strikingly familiar and dangerously recognizable. I am not a political scientist or an expert in party building; I am simply someone who, due to my age, was educated during the communists' era and was even involved enough in this system to work for the newspaper of the Communist Youth League of Kazakhstan. In those years, the name of our newspaper was Leninskaya Smena, which literally means "Lenin's Successors." During our university years, for exactly five years, we took various courses shaped around the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and the principle of party leadership. The principle of party leadership was not a simple idea; it demanded that a scientist, journalist, artist, or public opinion defend the interests of a particular class or social group as defined by the party, and subordinate all personal views to the goals of the ruling party. This was a system that completely sacrificed individual thought.

Communist systems, when they first started, did not openly announce that they would establish labor camps or exterminate people. Initially, they accumulated all legitimacy by claiming to represent the workers, the poor, the exploited, and the future. From the moment a party claimed to be the sole and exclusive moral representative of the "people," having different views began to be seen as selfishness, privilege, sabotage, or treason. In Kazakhstan, terms like "kulak," "bay," "enemy of the people," and "nationalist" were not mere insults. These labels had become official tools used for property confiscation, arrest, and most often, the death penalty. According to Marxist-Leninist theory, the communist socio-economic system consisted of three stages: the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialism, and finally, full communism where all state institutions disappeared. In theory, it was predicted that the state itself would dissolve and disappear over time. This was a dream that remained in theory, and the power of the communist idea lay exactly here; because this system deceived people not by appearing ruthless, but by appearing moral and just. Therefore, I believe that one must always be vigilant against the tendency to amass power behind every magnifying promise made in the name of justice and equality.