Freedom Restriction
Communism: Features of Comunist States Restrictions on Individual Freedom
Another hallmark of communist states was the mandatory involvement of the mass of the population in political life. Most young people enrolled in party-controlled youth organizations, the entire labor force had to sign up in official trade unions, and the professionally ambitious were obliged to join the communist party and to submit to its discipline. Participation in state elections was all but impossible to escape, with turnout approaching 100 percent. Political education was also omnipresent. Political classes were organized in all schools (and textbooks in most subjects contained ideological content), and the program was continued in the universities and the armed services.
Complementing this compulsory participation was an extensive web of negative controls on personal liberties. For communist leaders, it was an article of faith that collective needs, as interpreted by the state, ought to override individual rights. Not without justification, they were wary that relaxation of controls might encourage individuals to seek wider freedoms and thereby to challenge the single-party system. Public assembly and voluntary association were prohibited; only meetings and organizations authorized by the state were tolerated. Communist states also limited, to one extent or another, individuals’ ability to worship, work, and travel as they pleased. The most intense restrictions were those clamped on the mass media, intellectuals, and artists, all of whom had to comply with party directives. Books, magazines, and newspapers were subject to pre-publication censorship in all communist countries before the Gorbachev reforms, and radio and television stations were owned outright by the state. (1)
In this Section about Features of Comunist States: Comunist States, Marxist-Leninist States, Centrally Planned Economy, Single-Party and Freedom Restriction.
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