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There is an attempt not on Quora but also on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, to malign Nehru via misleading facts. BJP blaming today Nehru for everything wrong going on in our Country. BJP believes that if Sardar Patel was PM instead of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru then India will be more progressive and in the memory of him, Statue worth Rs 3000 crore unveiled in Gujarat but Party is hiding one fact that Sardar Patel banned RSS when Nathuram Godse killed Gandhi.Blaming Nehru for today's problem in India is like a person went to Airport to board a flight from Delhi to Mumbai to attend an important meeting unfortunately he missed the flight by few minutes and his Manager asked that person how you missed the flight as meeting is quite important. A person replied - Rajdhani Express derailed near Delhi. The same thing BJP doing today, the party is just deceiving billions of Indians in the name of Nehru, Congress etc.Let me answer in detail-November 14, 1889 - Jawahar Lal Nehru is born, first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics- before and after Independence. Nehru remains the longest serving Prime Minister of India and his Public Sector led Economic model is fiercely debatable today. He sensibly dealt with challenge of transforming an old Civilization to a modern Nation state. If Nehru had been a different man, India would have been a different Country.What shaped Nehru’s youth?Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of the eminent lawyer-politician Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani, was born in the midst of wealth on November 14, 1889 in the city of Allahabad, situated along the banks of the Ganges River (now in the state of Uttar Pradesh).Jawaharlal's childhood was secluded. He was the only child of his parents for eleven years, and spent his time mostly in the company of adults. The solitary life compelled him to develop a passion for reading which stayed with him till the end of his life.Training as a lawyer, Motilal had moved to Allahabad and developed a successful practice and had become active in India's largest political party, the Indian National Congress. Nehru and his sisters — Vijaya Lakshmi and Krishna — lived in a large mansion called "Anand Bhavan" and were raised with English customs, manners and dress. Theirs was a ‘typical Indian Victorian family’.After being tutored at home and attending some of the most modern schools in India, Nehru would travel to England at the age of 15 to attend the Harrow School. He would proceed to study natural sciences at the Trinity College before choosing to train as a barrister at the Middle Temple in London. Frequenting the theatres, museums and opera houses of London, he would spend his vacations travelling across Europe. Observers would later describe him as an elegant, charming young intellectual and socialite. Nehru would also participate actively in the political activities of the Indian student community, growing increasingly attracted to socialism and liberalism, which were beginning to influence the politics and economies of Europe.Upon his return to India, Nehru's marriage was arranged with Kamala Kaul. Married on February 8, 1916, Nehru age was 27 and his bride was 16 years old. The first few years of their marriage were hampered by the cultural gulf between the anglicized Nehru and Kamala, who observed Hindu traditions and focused on family affairs. The following year Kamala would give birth to their only child, their daughter Indira Priyadarshini.Having made few attempts to establish himself in a legal practice, Nehru was immediately attracted to Indian political life, which at the time was emerging from divisions over World War I. The moderate and extremist factions of the Congress had reunited in its 1916 session in Lucknow, and Indian politicians had demanded Home Rule and dominion status for India.Joining the Congress under the patronage of his father, Nehru grew increasingly disillusioned with the liberal and anglicized nature of Congress politicians, which included his father.Why did Nehru rise up the political ranks?Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as one of the key figures of the twentieth century. He dominated the Indian political scene as a relentless front rank freedom fighter till independence and as the first Prime Minister of free India left behind him not only certain achievements but also a legacy that continues to be celebrated and debated.Before Nehru became the master of India’s destiny, he was the disciple of the Great Soul of India.Nehru was very strongly attracted to Gandhi's philosophy and leadership. Gandhi had led a successful rebellion on behalf of indentured Indian workers while a lawyer in South Africa. Upon his return to India, Gandhi organized the peasants and farmers of Champaran and Kheda in successful rebellions against oppressive tax policies levied by the British.Gandhi espoused what he termed as satyagraha — mass civil disobedience governed by ahimsa, or complete non-violence. A forceful exponent of Indian self-reliance, Gandhi's success electrified Indians, who had been divided in their approach to contesting British rule. Having met Gandhi and learning of his ideas, Nehru would assist him during the Champaran agitation.Following Gandhi's example, Nehru and his family abandoned their Western-style clothes, possessions and wealthy lifestyle. Wearing clothes spun out of khadi, Nehru would emerge as one of the most energetic supporters of Gandhi. Under Gandhi's influence, Nehru began studying the Bhagavad Gita and would practice yoga throughout his life. He would increasingly look to Gandhi for advice and guidance in his personal life, and would spend a lot of time travelling and living with Gandhi.Nehru travelled across India delivering political speeches aimed at recruiting India's masses, especially its youth into the agitation launched in 1919 against the Rowlatt Acts and the Khilafat struggle. He spoke passionately and forcefully to encourage Hindu-Muslim unity, spread education and self-reliance and the need to eradicate social evils such as untouchability, poverty, ignorance, and unemployment.Emerging as a powerful orator and prominent organizer, Nehru became one of the most popular political leaders in northern India, especially with the people of the United Provinces, Bihar and the Central Provinces. His youth and passion for social justice and equality attracted India's Muslims, women and other minorities. Nehru's role grew especially important following the arrest of senior leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru's father, and he would also be imprisoned along with his mother and sisters for many months. Alarmed by growing violence in the conduct of mass agitations, Gandhi suspended the struggle after the killing of 22 state policemen by a mob at Chauri Chaura on February 4, 1922. This sudden move disillusioned some, including Nehru's father, Motilal, who would join the newly formed Swaraj Party in 1923.However, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and publicly supported him.A lull in nationalist activities enabled Nehru to turn his attention to social causes and local government. In 1924, he was elected president of the municipal corporation of Allahabad, serving as the city's chief executive for two years.Nehru would launch ambitious schemes to promote education, sanitation, expand water and electricity supply and reduce unemployment — his ideas and experience would prove valuable to him when he assumed charge of India's government in 1947. Achieving some success, Nehru was dissatisfied and angered by the obstruction of British officials and corruption amongst civil servants.He would resign from his position within two years. He would then spend the next two decades fighting for India’s independence so that he could one day get to do for the entire nation that he couldn’t do for Allahabad.When did Nehru become the first choice of Gandhi?Nehru attended not only the Socialist Congress at Brussels but also journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1927. It was in this period that he moved very close to socialism and even to Marxism and communism.He openly expressed in his speeches that evolution of communism was an inevitability. This view-point of Nehru was carried into the Congress fold. The first part of the thirties was a period of intense anxiety within the Congress organization. A large number of leaders thought that Nehru had become a communist and some of the industrialists openly challenged him.He and Subhash Chandra Bose had become the most prominent youth leaders, and both demanded the outright political independence of India. Nehru criticized the Nehru Report prepared by his father in 1928, which called for dominion status for India within the British Empire.The radicalism of Nehru and Bose would provoke intense debates during the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati. Arguing that India would deliver an ultimatum to the British and prepare for mass struggle, Nehru and Bose won the hearts of many young Indians. To resolve the issue, Gandhi said that the British would be given two years to grant India dominion status. If they did not, the Congress would launch a national struggle for full political independence. Nehru and Bose succeeded in reducing the statutory deadline to one year.The failure of talks with the British caused the December 1929 session in Lahore to be held in an atmosphere charged with anti-Empire sentiment. Preparing for the declaration of independence, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) elected Jawaharlal Nehru as Congress President at the encouragement of Gandhi. Favored by Gandhi for his charismatic appeal to India's masses, minorities, women and youth, the move nevertheless surprised many Congressmen and political observers. Many had demanded that Gandhi or the leader of the Bardoli Satyagraha, Vallabhbhai Patel, assume the presidency, especially as the leader of the Congress would the inaugurator of India's struggle for complete freedom. Nehru was seen by many as too inexperienced for the job of leading India's largest political organization.And then one of the defining moments of India’s freedom struggle arrived. On December 31, 1929 Nehru hoisted the flag of independence before a massive public gathering along the banks of the Ravi River. The Congress would promulgate the Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence) declaration on January 26, 1930. With the launching of Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Nehru travelled across Gujarat and other parts of the country participating and encouraging in the mass rebellion against the salt tax. Despite his father's death in 1931, Nehru and his family remained at the forefront of the struggle. Arrested with his wife and sisters, Nehru would be imprisoned for all but four months between 1931 and 1935.Nehru was re-elected Congress President in 1936, and he presided over its session in Lucknow. Here he participated in a fierce debate with Gandhi, Patel and other Congress leaders over the adoption of socialism as the official goal of the party. Younger socialists such as Jaya Prakash Narayan, Mridula Sarabhai, Narendra Dev and Asoka Mehta began to see Nehru as leader of Congress socialists. Under their pressure, the Congress passed the Avadi Resolution proclaiming socialism as the model for India's future government.Meanwhile, Gandhi himself wrote a letter to Nehru expressing his fear that he was moving away from him on a different path – towards communism. But it wasn’t because of Gandhi that Nehru could resist the charm of communism. Hitler and Stalin took care of that.The socialist enthusiasm of Nehru wilted away because of certain developments, both world-wide and internal. In Europe the forces of fascism, embodied by German’s Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, grew more and more ominous. The socialist utopia of Karl Marx was clouded by the purges in the USSR and Stalin's inscrutable policies.Nehru was re-elected as President in 1937, and oversaw the Congress national campaign for the 1937 elections. Largely leaving political organization work to others, Nehru travelled the length and breadth of the country, exhorting the masses on behalf of the Congress, which would win an outright majority in the central and most of the provincial legislatures. Although he did not contest elections himself, Nehru was seen by the national media as the leader of the Congress.Torn between the freedom struggle and tending to his sick wife, Nehru would travel back and forth between India and Europe. Kamala Nehru died in 1938. Deeply saddened, Nehru nevertheless continued to maintain a hectic schedule. He would always wear a fresh rose in his coat for the remainder of his life to remember Kamala, who had also become a national heroine.By now India’s freedom seemed inevitableAt the outbreak of World War II, the Assemblies were informed that the Viceroy had unilaterally declared war on the Axis on behalf of India, without consulting the people's representatives. Outraged at the viceroy's arbitrary decision, all elected Congressmen resigned from their offices at the instigation of Subhash Bose and Nehru.But even as Bose would call for an outright revolt and would proceed to seek the aid of Nazi Germany and Japan, Nehru remained sympathetic to the British cause. He joined Maulana Azad, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari and Patel in offering Congress support for the war effort in return for a commitment from the British to grant independence after the war. In doing so, Nehru broke ranks with Gandhi, who had resisted supporting war and remained suspicious of the British.The failure of negotiations and Britain's refusal to concede independence outraged the nationalist movement. Gandhi and Patel called for an all-out rebellion, a demand that was opposed by Rajagopalachari and resisted by Nehru and Azad. After intensive debates and heated discussions, the Congress leaders called for the British to Quit India — to transfer power to Indian hands immediately or face a mass rebellion.Despite his skepticism and for his unflinching dedication to the Mahatma, Nehru travelled the country to exhort India's masses into rebellion. He was arrested with the entire Congress Working Committee on 9 August, 1942 and transported to a maximum security prison at a fort in Ahmednagar. Here he would remain incarcerated with his colleagues till June 1945.India's first prime ministerNehru and his colleagues had been released as the British Cabinet Mission arrived to propose plans for transfer of power. The Congress held a presidential election in the knowledge that its chosen leader would become India's head of government. Eleven Congress state units nominated Vallabhbhai Patel, while only the Working Committee suggested Nehru. Sensing that Nehru would not accept second place to Patel, Gandhi supported Nehru and asked Patel to withdraw, which he immediately did.Nehru's election surprised many Congressmen and continues to be a source of controversy in modern times. Nehru headed an interim government, which was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India as per a plan released by the British on June 3, 1947.He would take office as the Prime Minister of India on August 15, and delivered his inaugural address titled "A Tryst With Destiny." With that Nehru would take charge of India’s destiny for the next 17 years. Rabindranath Tagore in 1941 had asked, “The wheels of fate will someday compel the English to give up their Indian Empire. What kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries’ administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth will they leave behind them?”It was now a matter of what kind of India did Nehru want to create.Where did Nehru take India towards?“Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, is dead. At 2 p.m. local time today 460,000,000 people in this country that has been forged on the anvil of this one man's dreams and conflicts were plunged into the nightmare world which they have, in the last decade, come to dread as the "after Nehru" era.” ~ The Guardian, 28 May 1964A major event such as this inevitably gives rise to “where were you?” questions. Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? Where were you when Indira Gandhi was killed? Where were you when the World Trade Centre was brought down? The shock of the event magnifies the immediate around you and imprints it in your mind. But where was India when Nehru died?First, some context to the challenges Nehru faced in 1947.After independence in 1947, India was among the poorest countries in the world. Two centuries of plunder, neglect, and exploitation by the British, had left a country of over 300 million people destitute and lost. India’s entire infrastructure, it’s economy, it’s bureaucracy, it was all designed and built solely to serve the needs of British industry and further Britain’s interests.India had been drained of its resources and manpower, so that Britain could win wars on the European continent; the Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 3 million Indians during WW II because Winston Churchill did not wish to ‘waste’ grain on his Indian subjects when there were many Englishmen to feed. And as a final parting gift, the British co-engineered the Partition in 1947, leading to around 14 million refugees and mass killings all over the subcontinent.Half the population of India now lived below the poverty line, and over 80 percent of the people were illiterate. The country was famine-ridden and life expectancy was around 30 years. The per capita income, the agricultural output, and the food grains output had all been continuously shrinking for the previous three decades. Around 1700, the Mughal Empire produced one-third of the global GDP. For the Indian republic in 1947, this was less than 1 percent.Many Western pundits and leaders expected India to collapse. But India progressed. Nehru took care of that, one socialist policy at a time.There was every possibility that India would end up as just another post-independence basket case. However, as the world watched India, expecting it to fail, quite the opposite happened. When the 1950s rolled by, and consecutive 5-year plans were drawn up and executed, it came to the world’s attention that India was doing remarkably well.Percival Griffith, a former colonial administrator who was highly sceptical of India’s capabilities, wrote in 1957 that post-independence foodgrain production had been ‘spectacular,’ and that India was succeeding in doing what he himself had thought impossible. He noted that it was “impossible to travel round India without feeling that the country has entered a new, dynamic phase,” and that “the signs of a rise in the standard of living are unmistakable.”British economist Barbara Ward remarked in 1961 how in India a “process of continuous growth covers everything from Tata’s works at Jamshedpur, producing over half a million tons of steel a year, down to the villager selling his first mound of rice in the market.” Ward further wrote that “investment in all sectors, including agriculture, almost double between the first and second plans,” and that “the Indian record in both infrastructure and industry is one of substantial advance on a broad front, like the big push needed to achieve sustained growth.”From over 40 years of zero-percent growth between 1900 and 1947, India saw the economy grow to 4 percent annually until 1962, putting it ahead of China, Japan, and the UK.American political scientist Michael Brecher was quite clear in who the credit must go to: “Whatever progress has been achieved is primarily due to the efforts of the prime minister. Indeed he is the heart and soul and mind of India’s heroic struggle to raise the living standards of its 390 million people.”On gaining independence in 1947, rumor has it that Lord Mountbatten and the colonialists assured Nehru – in good zest - that he wouldn’t have to worry about uniting a heterogeneous nation like India under a single Republic because the nation would break into many states anyway. While credit has to be given to Sardar Patel in uniting India’s princely states, few at the time philosophically fathomed the challenges of binding a nation like India: how does a nation of over a billion people — or 17.5 percent of the world’s population, — home to every religion known to mankind, 4,600 castes and sub-castes, 22 major languages, 13 different scripts, and hundreds of dialects, continue to remain united?Of course it had to be NehruAs India lost the Mahatma in 1948, Nehru became responsible for continuing his legacy and creating the India they together had dreamed of. He ended up creating an India which he alone had dreamt of – but it was still a good version of the many possibilities that India offered in 1947.Nehru’s idea of India’s modern nationhood consisted of four key dimensions: democracy, secularism, socialism, and non-alignment. These dimensions came about through long discussions between Nehru and Gandhi, Nehru’s own experience in the independence movement, and his observations as he saw the world change and move into new, unknown territory. The British leaving him no tradition of good governance to fall back on, Nehru had to reinvent the art of Indian statesmanship in a new world order.Overnight, India had become the largest democracy in the world; the sheer size of its population gave it a voter-base larger than the entire populace of most other democracies. India’s democracy took ideas from both UK and US; India became a union of states with strong local government like the US, but with a parliamentary system like the UK.For Nehru, democracy was not just about the right to vote, but also having the economic means to leverage your democratic rights. Political democracy would be meaningless without economic democracy. Nehru was also a strong advocate for Panchayati Raj, the idea of self-governance for villages.Nehru’s idea of secularism was to be often tested during his premiership; with Partition and the creation of Pakistan, the idea of Muslim-Hindu cohabitation came under fire by both Muslims and Hindus. Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, believed that Muslims would never be safe as a minority in a Hindu-dominated India. On the other side, there were those who believed in Hindutva, the idea that India is first and foremost a Hindu nation and should be guided by Hindu principles. The creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan gave Hindutva new boon as its adherents now argued that, with the Muslims having their own state, Hindus were entitled to having India as their country. Nehru would have none of this and till his lasts days he fought for a secular India. When the Islamic minority had to be reassured that India would continue to be their home as well, Nehru stated in 1951: “If anyone raises his hand against another in the name of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, whether from inside the government or outside.”Nehru’s foreign policy for India was to be shaped by the idea of non-alignment. Over a hundred new countries would emerge from the ruins of European colonialism after WW II, and the two competing super powers — the US and the USSR — were both looking to expand their influence over these maiden nations. India was also courted, but Nehru rejected the false dichotomy of American capitalism and Russian communism. Instead, he chose the third path of non-alignment. Non-alignment was also a way for India to maintain its national sovereignty; having just thrown out the British, it seemed foolish to immediately become a vassal of a new foreign master. Furthermore, India’s choice to not align itself with either great power, but to always remain an advocate for non-violence and peaceful cooperation among nations, gave it a much larger voice in international politics than its economy or military strength really justified.India would become one of the leading nations of the Movement of Non-aligned Countries, a power bloc and a spiritual force in the United Nations of many newly-liberated countries.Who benefitted in the Nehruvian era?The mixed model was built on public sector-led growth with private participationNehru implemented his socialist vision by introducing a modified, "Indian" version of state planning and control over the economy. Creating the Planning Commission of India, Nehru drew up the first Five-Year Plan in 1951, which charted the government's investments in industries and agriculture.Increasing business and income taxes, Nehru envisaged a mixed economy in which the government would manage strategic industries such as mining, electricity and heavy industries, serving public interest and a check to private enterprise. Nehru pursued land redistribution and launched programs to build irrigation canals, dams and spread the use of fertilizers to increase agricultural production. He also pioneered a series of community development programs aimed at spreading diverse cottage industries and increasing efficiency into rural India. While encouraging the construction of large dams, irrigation works and the generation of hydroelectricity, Nehru also launched India's program to harness nuclear energy.For most of Nehru's term as prime minister, India would continue to face serious food shortages despite progress and increases in agricultural production. Nehru's industrial policies encouraged the growth of diverse manufacturing and heavy industries, yet state planning, controls and regulations impaired productivity, quality and profitability. Although the Indian economy enjoyed a steady rate of growth, chronic unemployment amidst entrenched poverty continued to plague the population.Investment in India’s futureJawaharlal Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India's children and youth, believing it essential for India's future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management.Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrollment programs and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children in order to fight malnutrition. Adult education centres, vocational and technical schools were also organized for adults, especially in the rural areas.Under Nehru, the Indian Parliament enacted many changes to Hindu law to criminalize caste discrimination and increase the legal rights and social freedoms of women. A system of reservations in government services and educational institutions was created to eradicate the social inequalities and disadvantages faced by peoples of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.The big Chinese miscalculationIn the 1962 elections, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Opposition parties ranging from the right-wing Bharatiya Jana Sangh (which evolved into the Bharatiya Janta Party that leads India today) and Swatantra Party, socialists and the Communist Party of India performed well. In a matter of months, a Chinese invasion of northeastern India exposed the weaknesses of India's military as Chinese forces came as far as Assam.Nehru assumed that as former colonies India and China shared a sense of solidarity, as expressed in the phrase "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers). He was dedicated to the ideals of brotherhood and solidarity among developing nations, while China was dedicated to a realist vision of itself as the hegemon of Asia. Nehru did not believe that one fellow socialist country would attack another; and in any event, he felt secure behind the impregnable wall of ice that is the Himalayas.Both proved to be tragic miscalculations of China's determination and military capabilities. Nehru decided to adopt the policy of moving his territory forward, and refused to consider any negotiations China had to offer. As Nehru declared the intention to throw every Chinese out of the disputed areas, China made a preemptive attack on the Indian front. India was vanquished by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in a bitter and cold battle in the Northeast.Nehru was forced to sack the defence minister Krishna Menon and accept U.S. military aid. Nehru's health began declining steadily, and he was forced to spend months recuperating in Kashmir through 1963. Upon his return from Kashmir in May 1964, Nehru suffered a stroke and later a heart attack. He died on May 27, 1964. As per his wishes, Nehru was cremated as per Hindu rites at the Shantivana on the banks of the Yamuna River, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds.How contested is Nehru’s legacy today?When a great man dies in office, there is often a tendency to measure his greatness by the scale of the ensuing alarm and uncertainty. This is a fallacious measure. Indeed, it is a mark of weakness, not of strength, if a national leader fails to bequeath a smoothly working structure of leadership to a clearly designated successor.Nehru failed to do this. If he had succeeded in doing it, both India and the rest of the world could have received the news of his death with calmer grief; and his greatness would have been not diminished but enhanced. As it is, the hasty induction of Gulzarilal Nanda, the home minister, as head of a caretaker government, was taken as signifying the beginning, not the outcome, of the battle of the succession.With the bountiful benefit of hindsight, Nehru is today criticized for establishing an era of socialist policies that created a burgeoning, inefficient bureaucracy (which inhibits India to this day) and curbed free enterprise and productivity while failing to significantly eliminate poverty, shortages and poor living conditions.Historians and Hindu nationalists also criticize Nehru for allegedly appeasing the Indian Muslim community at the expense of his own conviction in secularism. Nehru's declaratory ‘neutral’ foreign policy is criticized as hypocritical due to his affinity for the Soviet Union and other socialist states.He is also blamed for ignoring the needs of India's military services and failing to acknowledge the threat posed by the People's Republic of China and Pakistan. Many believe India would not have had as difficult a time in facing the challenges of the twenty-first century had Vallabhbhai Patel been Prime Minister and Nehru worked as External Affairs Minister, which was his forte.But, going back to 1947…There is no single explanation for what kept and still keeps India united, but much of modern India’s unity is indebted to Nehru. Most importantly, many colonized countries that attained freedom at the same time — none as vast and as complex as India — promptly became dictatorships, including Pakistan which soon passed into military hands. India defied its many western critics, proving under Nehru that it was not going to implode under the many pressures it faced at the time.Perhaps his shortcomings are compensated by his strong democratic principles, which set down such firm roots in post-1947 India that India's democracy has proved to be robust and solid in the face of emergencies, wars and other crises. Nehru laid the foundations of a vibrant democracy that India continues to celebrate today — the same democracy that made the electoral victory of Narendra Modi – a fierce Nehru critic - possible in 2014. While every general election in India can be regarded as the largest voting exercise in democracy, the 1951-52 elections saw universal suffrage at time when there were still nations in the “developed” west that hadn’t established voting rights for their women – Switzerland enacted universal suffrage at the national level in 1971.In practical terms, Nehru’s legacy extends to other features of India’s modern identity. English’s status as a national lingua-franca across the academic and the professional spheres in India is thanks to Nehru’s vision. Additionally, India’s world-class higher-educational institutes and the foundations of New Delhi’s space program were put in place due to his visionary foresight.Whatever his shortcomings may have been on foreign and economic affairs, India as it exists today could not have come about without Nehru. One cannot be simultaneously proud of India’s achievements after independence and ashamed of what Nehru did to the country in the most challenging years. They say if Nehru had been a different man, India would have been a different country. India, therefore, could have been Singapore. But Singapore isn’t the best example of a democratic state.“Pandit Nehru is invincible”.Footnotes :-https://www.history.com/topics/india/jawaharlal-nehruJawaharlal Nehru: a legacy revisited Jawaharlal Nehru: a legacy revisitedJawaharlal NehruWorld without NehruNehru’s Legacy, 51 Years After his DeathTryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru: Tryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru

Conrad of Hohenstaufen legally became King of Jerusalem at his mother’s death, ten days after he was born, but his overbearing father wasn’t the least interested in “legalities” and blissfully usurped his son’s throne from the day he was born. Conrad therefore neither ever set foot in his kingdom nor ruled it in any meaningful way.Henry I of Cyprus, on the other hand, a contemporary of Conrad, was nine months old when his father died and he ruled for thirty-five years a good, albeit under-estimated king. During his reign that Cyprus came to replace the Kingdom of Jerusalem as the center of Western culture in the Near East. Furthermore, he threw off the yoke of the Holy Roman Emperor, establishing Cyprus as an independent kingdom. He undertook significant legal reforms, was a staunch supporter of his Greek subjects against encroachments by the Latin clergy, and maintained excellent relations with his own barons. Below is a short biography.Henry was born May 3, 1217, the third child but the first son of King Hugh I of Cyprus and his queen Alice de Champagne. (Alice was the daughter of Isabella I of Jerusalem and her third husband Henri de Champagne.) When Henry was just nine months old, his father died suddenly, while absent from the kingdom on the Fifth Crusade.According to the constitution of the kingdom, a minor king’s regent was his nearest relative resident in the Latin East, in this case, Henry’s mother Alice de Champagne. However, Alice showed remarkably little interest in wielding political power. Instead, she willingly ceded the power of government to a “Baillie” (a deputy) elected by the High Court of Cyprus, while retaining for herself the revenues of the kingdom. The High Court, allegedly unanimously, elected in accordance with the dying wishes of King Hugh Philip d’Ibelin.Philip was the younger son of Balian d’Ibelin and his wife the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem, Maria Comnena. He was, therefore, the maternal uncle of the ruling Queen of Jerusalem Maria, and also the brother of the Lord of Beirut, John d’Ibelin. The new baillie’s first task was to ward off an attempt by the Duke of Austria to disinherit his young king altogether. The Duke of Austria presumably claimed Cyprus as spoils of the Third Crusade that his erstwhile prisoner Richard the Lionheart owed him in some way. The challenge was rebuffed by the barons of Cyprus led by Ibelin.The next challenge was no less dangerous. In an effort to reduce the pressure on Egypt posed by the Fifth Crusade, the Ayyubids mounted a raid on Cyprus’ principal southern port, Limassol. Ships were burnt in the harbor and allegedly 13,000 Cypriots were killed or captured. This was the first Arab attack on Cyprus in roughly two hundred years and must have terrified the population and shaken the government under Ibelin, who very likely pulled troops out of the crusade to defend Cyprus.Two years later, Cyprus was devastated by a severe earthquake which did damage to all three major cities, Nicosia, Limassol and Paphos. The latter was particularly impacted, with the castle and much of the city leveled. The extent to which Henry, a child of less than five, was aware of any of these events is questionable, but it is likely that he was aware of unease among his household.The next crisis, however, impacted him directly. In 1223, Henry’s mother and his regent clashed so severely that his mother left Cyprus altogether, abandoning Henry and his two sisters to go to Antioch. From 1224 onwards, Henry was no longer in his mother’s care, but that of his baillie, Philip d’Ibelin. Henry was, however, by now seven years old. In the 13th century, this was the age at which boys often went to live with more distant relatives to begin their education and training as future knights and nobles. Henry, therefore, may not have found the transfer of guardianship and control particularly alarming. After all, he remained in the royal palace in Nicosia with his sisters, and his education and tutelage were in the hands of a man he already knew, his great-uncle, Philip.Tellingly, the trigger for the dispute between Philip d’Ibelin and Alice of Champagne were tithes that had up to that time been paid to the Greek Church. Alice wanted these transferred to the Latin Church. Ibelin (the son of a Byzantine princess) argued before the High Court of Cyprus that “Greek priests should not be fleeced to satisfy the greed of Latin priests.” He further claimed that the Latin clergy was detested by the population, seditious and corrupt. To the day he died, King Henry was to be a champion of the Greek Orthodox Church against encroachments by the Latin clergy. Indeed, he died in the midst of a dispute with the Latin Archbishop of Nicosia related to this issue.In 1224, however, Henry is more likely to have focused on the fact that his mother re-married, taking as her husband the eldest son of the Prince of Antioch. She then tried to convince the High Court of Cyprus to recognize her new husband as her regent. She ran into stiff and unanimous opposition. The barons of Cyprus suspected Bohemond of Antioch of wanting to establish his own dynasty on the island of Cyprus, something that would require eliminating young King Henry and replacing him with a child he sired.It is before this threat, perhaps, that one should see the surprise decision taken by the Cypriot High Court to crown Henry king in 1225 when Henry was only eight years old. There are other precedents of children being crowned at this age or younger (e.g. Baldwin V), but the circumstances differed. While most historians — with the benefit of hindsight — suspect Philip d’Ibelin of trying to check-mate expected attempts by the Holy Roman Emperor to take control of the island kingdom, it is just as possible he countering continued maneuvering from Alice of Champagne.In 1227, Alice of Champagne made a second attempt to replace Philip d’Ibelin with a man of her choosing. This time she nominated a certain Amaury Barlais, one of the barons of Cyprus. Although Barlais had opposed Bohemond of Antioch, he readily accepted the Dowager Queen’s offer to take the reins of government himself. However, the majority of the High Court of Cyprus again balked and refused to recognize Barlais’ claim to rule for Queen Alice. Although King Henry at age ten had nothing to say in these affairs, Philip d’Ibelin was the closest thing to a father that he had ever known. It is therefore unlikely that he wanted to see him replaced by a stranger.Yet in December 1227, Henry had no choice but to accept a change of regent: Philip d’Ibelin died after a long and debilitating (but undefined) illness. The High Court of Cyprus turned Henry’s fate and government over to Philip’s elder brother John. The reasons for choosing him are not recorded, but they were probably two-fold. On the one hand, Beirut was the closest male relative of the young king resident in Outremer, and on the other hand, he had experience in ruling a kingdom. From 1205 to 1210, he had been regent of Jerusalem for the then immature Marie de Champagne, the sister of Alice of Champagne. His rule was widely viewed as prudent and wise.To what extent Henry knew John d’Ibelin before he assumed the role of Baillie in Cyprus is uncertain. Even after surrendering the regency to Marie de Champagne’s husband John de Brienne at her marriage, John held the rich and important Syrian barony of Beirut that he had built from ruins. This would have demanded the bulk of his time, and probably precluded him from spending much time in Cyprus prior to assuming the role of Baillie.Nor did the Lord of Beirut have much time to develop a strong rapport with King Henry before a political whirlwind descended on the island in the form of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Henry’s grandfather, Aimery de Lusignan, had done homage to the Frederick II’s father for the island of Cyprus in exchange for a crown. As a result, Henry I was technically a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor — and he was about to learn what that meant.No sooner had the Emperor arrived than he sent a letter John d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut and the successor to his brother as baillie of Cyprus. Addressing Beirut as his “honored uncle” (he was an uncle of the Emperor’s deceased wife, the Queen of Jerusalem), he begged Beirut to come and bring King Henry along with “your children, all our dear and well-beloved cousins” to Limassol “that we [the Emperor] might have the pleasure of embracing you and knowing you personally.”[1]Beirut dutifully took King Henry and his sons to meet the Emperor and was persuaded to attend a great banquet hosted by Frederick II. The guests went in court attire without weapons; Frederick II, however, smuggled some three-thousand armed men into the palace during the night. After all the guests were well into the meal, the Emperor's men sealed off the hall, the hands on their hilts and the Emperor demanded that Beirut surrender his fiefdom of Beirut and all the revenues of Cyprus since his brother had become baillie (e.g. the past eleven years).Beirut answered that he would account for the revenues before the High Court of Cyprus and would only surrender his lordship after a judgment of the High Court of Jerusalem. When he did not back down even under threats of arrest and hints of worse, hostages were given for his appearance before the respective courts and Beirut — with nearly all the knights and barons of Cyprus — withdrew. (The details of the banquet are described in The Emperor’s Banquet.)For Henry, the consequences were dire. Henry found himself a prisoner of a man who openly threatened force rather than respecting the rule of law, who allowed noble hostages (not accused of any crime whatsoever) to be tortured and humiliated, and who forced Henry to do homage to him. Henry can have been in no doubt that he was a pawn, completely in the hands of the Emperor, while the barons who had up to this point defended him and his rights against the Duke of Austria, the Prince of Antioch and his mother’s ambitions had been dismissed. To underline this point, the eleven-year-old was forced to leave his kingdom, sisters, home, and household to accompany the Emperor on his crusade to Syria.In the event, there was no fighting and Henry was not personally in danger at any time, but his status as an “object” to the Emperor was made dramatically clear when Frederick II sold — for 10,000 silver marks —Henry’s guardianship to five men who have gone down in history as “the five ballies.” (See: The Emperor’s Men). If that weren’t indignity enough, Henry (now only twelve) was forced to marry by proxy a woman of the Emperor’s choosing whom he had never met.While royal marriages were always made for reasons of state and the young people involved rarely had anything to say about them, it was not common to rush through a marriage in a matter of months. Notably, this marriage was also in violation of the constitution of Henry’s kingdom, since the marriage of minor heirs to the throne (much less ruling minors) required the approval of the Cypriot High Court. In his haste to dispose of Henry’s marriage in a way to benefit himself, the Emperor conveniently ignored the High Court of Cyprus.The next thing Henry knew his new guardians were making themselves heartily unpopular by imposing new taxes and harassing anyone opposed to them or the Emperor with the liberal use of foreign mercenaries. An eye witness account of the King’s behavior during the rapacious reign of the five baillies notes: “The king was in their power and was much afraid, and the king spoke very low and looked often towards Philip [de Novare].”[2]On the other hand, Philip de Novare noted in a poem he wrote shortly after escaping an assassination attempt by the baillies that he was warned of the baillies intended actions by “one who cared not whom it might displease.” [3] It is hard to imagine who would have been privy to the assassination plans by the baillies yet willing to help Novare other than the frightened young king himself. The very fact that the baillies appear to have accorded Henry so little respect would make it plausible that they talked about their plans to murder Novare in his presence, dismissing him as a stupid puppet. That Henry would dare cross them is also plausible because he was the only person in the entire kingdom that the baillies could not arrest. If he was Novare’s mysterious informant, he deserves credit for saving a man’s life and ultimately triggering a response from his former regent, John d'Ibelin, which has been completely overlooked by historians to date.Within weeks of Novare’s escape and appeal to Beirut for aid, an Ibelin-led army landed at Gastria. It overpowered the baillies’ forces there and marched on Nicosia. The baillies called up the feudal levies and mustered the mercenaries left them by the Emperor. On June 14, 1229, the forces of the Ibelins met the forces of the five baillies on a plowed field south of Nicosia at the Battle of Nicosia. It was a decisive Ibelin victory, which enabled them to re-establish constitutional government on the island of Cyprus.But there was one problem: John d’Ibelin might control the island but he did not control the king. Henry was still a prisoner of the Emperor’s baillies. As soon as news of the Beirut’s landing at Gastria reached Nicosia, the baillies had sent Henry under tight guard to the mountain castle of St. Hilarion. After losing the Battle of Nicosia, three of the baillies fled with their surviving supporters there. The castle was impregnable and well-stocked to withstand a siege. The baillies hoped the Emperor would send troops to relieve them and defeat Beirut.Critics of Beirut and his supporters rightly point out that by besieging a castle containing their king (they held fiefs on Cyprus and so were vassals of King Henry) they were technically committing treason. Beirut, however, claimed Henry was a prisoner, held against his will, and they were fighting for the release of their king — a fundamental feudal duty. In short, who the “traitors” were depended on whether Henry viewed himself as a prisoner. Unfortunately, we cannot know for sure what King Henry thought.The siege lasted nearly a year. By the end of that time, those trapped inside St. Hilarion were forced to eat their horses. While it is unlikely that Henry suffered the same levels of deprivation as the lower ranking troops, he would have been a witness to it. As he passed his 13th birthday besieged in his own castle, he must have felt helpless and angry.Shortly after Easter 1230, a Hospitaller officer managed to broker the surrender of the castle. The terms included a full pardon for the surviving three ballies, who were to retain all their fiefs in Cyprus, in exchange for surrendering the person of the King, his sisters, and swearing never to take up arms against the Ibelins again. Not all in the Ibelin party were content with these terms, and some refused to celebrate. Henry’s attitude is strangely missing from the accounts. He was now 13, still two years away from his majority, and he was therefore still technically under the tutelage of the Lord of Beirut. Yet significantly, in the next incident recorded about King Henry, he no longer seems like quite such a pawn.When in late 1231 Emperor Frederick sent a large force under his marshal Richard Filangieri to reassert his authority in Cyprus and Syria, Beirut was in Acre. Tipped off that the Emperor’s fleet was making to Cyprus, Beirut collected as many of his men as possible and crossed to Cyprus to join up with King Henry. They then rode together to meet the Emperor’s representatives. This suggests that while Beirut retained the nominal control of Cyprus as Baillie, he had deputized the actual governing of the island to others.With the ports occupied by troops loyal to the Ibelins, the Imperialists did not risk a landing, instead, the Bishop of Melfi went ashore with a small escort to deliver a message to King Henry directly from Emperor Frederick. According to 13th-century chronicle known as the Eracles, the message was a blunt order to Henry to expel John d’Ibelin and all his kinsmen from Cyprus citing in quotation marks the following phrase:“Our lord the emperor sends you word, as one who is his vassal, that you dismiss and require to leave your land John d’Ibelin, his children, his nephews, and his relatives, for they have done wrong. Wherefore he sends you his orders and forbids you as his vassal to harbor or shelter him [John of Beirut] in your land.”[4]The Eracles notes that Henry, being underage, took counsel and then delivered his answer through a knight, Sir William Viscount. The answer as recorded in the Eracles was:The king … greatly marvels that your lord the emperor made such a command to him, for the lord of Beirut is his own uncle by his mother, and it is well known that he [and his kinsmen] are vassals, wherefore he cannot fail them…” [5]After the king had delivered his answer, Beirut stood and formally addressed King Henry in the presence of the Emperor’s envoys requesting the King’s support and offering to defend himself against any accusations of wrong-doing before the High Court of Cyprus. The Emperor’s envoys took note of both these statements and withdrew.It is hard to escape the impression that King Henry’s answer was crafted by Beirut himself and delivered by Viscount in order to make it possible for Beirut to stand and make his appeal for due process. Yet the substance was correct: King Henry was himself a nephew of John of Beirut. The Emperor’s demand that Henry expel all of Beirut’s kinsmen was tactless — not to say a calculated insult to Henry himself. It is highly unlikely that the 14-year-old king liked being ordered to do anything by a distant emperor — much less being told to expel himself from his kingdom.Critics of the Ibelins are apt to argue that they were manipulating Henry. Certainly. Both parties were trying to use Henry. Yet the Ibelins appear to have been significantly more adept at doing it a way that did not offend the young king. After all, if Beirut — as we must assume — was technically Henry’s baillie, he could have made answer for Henry without consulting him; instead, he allowed the king to act the part of king. In contrast, Emperor Frederick rode roughshod over Henry’s wishes and appears to have accorded him none of the courtesies due to a monarch. In short, Beirut (not being an Emperor) treated Henry with more respect, deferring to him, treating him like a king, and so winning his support rather than demanding it.This is demonstrated even more clearly in the next episode. Rebuffed by King Henry and facing the full force of Ibelin troops at the ports, the Imperial forces hoisted sail and crossed to Syria where they captured without resistance Beirut’s seat of power and revenue: Beirut itself. With almost all of Beirut’s men on Cyprus, the capture of Beirut was easy and bloodless. This has led some historians to speculate that the halt in Cyprus was a ruse all along, intended to lure Ibelin forces across the water and leave the real prize ripe for seizure. The only blemish to the plan was that the garrison of Beirut, small as it was, refused to cave-in and held out for Ibelin.Beirut, however, was caught flat-footed. He could have taken all his men back to Syria to try to lift the siege, but he rightly estimated that the forces he had were inadequate. He, therefore, made a dramatic appeal to King Henry before the High Court of Cyprus, which — according to Novare — was assembled in full force.Novare, who was an eye-witness, describes what happened next.[Beirut] arose and stood — he had a habit of crossing his legs when he was standing — and, as he knew so well to do, he spoke loudly and to the point. He said: ‘Sire, … by me and by my family was your father lord and held the land; and if we had not supported him he would have been disinherited or dead. When God made his commandment of him you were but nine months old and we nourished you, you and your land, thank God, until this day; for had we not given you freely of our own, the duke of Austria would have disinherited you, and twice you have been in a bad state or worse… Now it has happened that the Longobards have taken my city and besieged my castle so closely that it is in danger of being lost, and ourselves and all our Syrian men disinherited. Wherefore I pray you, by God and by your honor, for our great services and because we are of one blood…that you come in person in all your power with me to succor my castle. [6]Significantly, what the Lord of Beirut did next was kneel “as if to kiss the foot of the king.” Equally significant, Henry did not let him, but rather rose to his own feet (causing the rest of his vassals to kneel) and declare his full support — i.e. the feudal army of Cyprus in its entirety — for Beirut. Was Henry still a puppet? Was the entire scene carefully staged? We can’t know for sure, but we have no indications that Henry dragged his feet or showed reluctance.Henry crossed to Syria with his army in bad weather, arriving after what is described as a terrible crossing, making landfall at Puy du Constable in the County of Tripoli. Here the three former baillies (who had held the King in St. Hilarion but received full pardons at surrender) deserted the Cypriot army. They eventually joined the Imperial forces besieging Beirut. They justified their actions in terms of loyalty to the Hohenstaufen emperor, who was the overlord of Cyprus and by claiming that King Henry was a “captive” of the Ibelins and not acting of his free will.Their desertion weakened the Cypriot army sufficiently to make it impossible for Beirut to effectively relieve his castle. Although he was able to slip roughly 100 fighting men through the Emperor’s blockade of galleys to reinforce the garrison, he was forced to withdraw to Acre to try to recruit more supporters. King Henry remained with Beirut, whether voluntarily or not remains the question.As soon as Beirut withdrew to Acre, the three former baillies took advantage of the fact that the Cypriot transport ships had been wrecked on the coast in a gale and returned to Cyprus. Here they dropped all pretense of serving King Henry and in the name of the emperor took control of the ports, preparing the way for a full-scale invasion by imperial troops to follow.Neither they nor the Emperor’s marshal had reckoned with Beirut successfully luring increasing numbers of Syrian knights to his cause and, more important, gaining the support of the Genoese with their fleet. In late April, Beirut started north with a large land force supported by a Genoese flotilla. He announced his intention to capture the city of Tyre, which the Emperor's marshal and deputy Riccardo Filangieri had made his base of operations and government in the face of persistent and vehement hostility at Acre. (Acre was the city whose citizens had thrown offal after at the Holy Roman Emperor on his departure; it was to prove a staunch opponent of Hohenstaufen ambitions throughout the century.)Filangieri felt sufficiently threatened to recall the troops besieging Beirut (effectively handing it back to Beirut), but he also pulled off a surprise night attack on the Ibelin army while it was camped at Casal Imbert. The Lord of Beirut and his heir were both absent at the time, but three of his younger sons and many of his most important knights and vassals failed to take elementary precautions against an attack and were caught sleeping. The camp was overrun, the Ibelins lost nearly all their horses and equipment, the Genoese lost their ships, and twenty-five knights were taken captive.And King Henry? King Henry was put “almost naked” (one presumes in his nightshirt) on another man’s horse (the closest at hand? The fastest?) and told to ride to Acre to get help from the Lord of Beirut. Without an escort or companions, Henry galloped the roughly 8 miles to arrive at the gates of Acre causing a sensation. His feelings can only be imagined: he must have feared for his entire army and indeed his own life, not to speak of his crown and his dignity. To add a particular poignancy to the event, it was his fifteenth birthday, May 4, 1232 — the day on which he came of age.On his arrival in Acre as dawn broke, Henry might have been humiliated and frightened by the events of the night before, but he was now, at last, his own man. At fifteen, he was recognized as an adult, no longer tied to guardians, regents, and baillies. This meant that the Lord of Beirut was no longer his guardian and Baillie — he was his subject and vassal. Henry was free to show his loyalties and make his own policies. He also had a very clear choice between the nearly destroyed Ibelins or the ascendant Imperial faction.Henry had the option of returning to Cyprus, abandoning the Ibelins and blaming the Lord of Beirut for squandering his army, his resources, and his trust. In Cyprus, he could have embraced the former baillies. With Beirut and all his men in Syria, he could have — without risk — declared Beirut and the rest of his family traitors and confiscated their fiefs. Furthermore, he could have requested support from Marshal Filangieri in destroying the rebellious and traitorous Ibelins. Since Filangieri was already under orders from the Emperor to destroy the Ibelins, Henry would have secured the aid of Imperial mercenaries.Instead, King Henry stayed with Beirut and started offering fiefs in Cyprus to any Syrian knights who would fight with him to regain his kingdom from the Imperialists. He also made substantial concessions to the Genoese, granting the wide-ranging trading privileges and immunities to secure a new fleet. He indebted himself to some of the Syrian lords to raise money to finance an expedition to regain his kingdom. Last but not least, he appealed (through Beirut) to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, complaining that the traitors (former baillies) had taken his ships, occupied his kingdom and were besieging his sisters. King Henry appealed to the Patriarch, who was also the Papal Legate in the Holy Land, to confiscate the Imperial ships in the harbor of Acre on the grounds that Imperial forces had deprived a crowned and anointed king of his navy and his kingdom.The patriarch was reluctant to excommunicate the Emperor’s men, but he encouraged the seizure of the Imperial ships, which Henry’s supporters promptly did. King Henry returned in these imperial vessels to Cyprus, took Famagusta by surprise and advanced cautiously toward Nicosia. His army advanced through land which the Imperial forces had burned and wrecked. The sight of the harvest burnt in granges and broken mills, actions that impoverished both himself and his subjects, can only have increased King Henry’s hatred of the traitors and their Imperial puppet-masters. His feelings for his queen must equally have been soured further by the fact that she chose to retreat with the Imperial forces rather than welcome the return of her husband.At Beirut’s command, the royal army camped outside of Nicosia to avoid a second Casal Imbert. The situation remained very precarious. Filangieri and the traitorous lords of Cyprus together fielded a force of more than 2,000 knights supported by a substantial force of sergeants and archers. The Cypriot army was had just 233 knights, still desperately short of horses (some knights had only one), and an unnamed number of sergeants. Furthermore, the castle of St. Hilarion where King Henry’s sisters were besieged was running out of supplies; there was a serious risk that the castle would surrender to the Imperial forces giving them valuable hostages. Under the circumstances, Beirut (who remained in command) opted to take the Cypriot army to the relief of St. Hilarion.This entailed passing before the front of the Imperial army, that had taken up strong positions on the southern slope of the mountain range that runs east-west north of Nicosia. They sat across the road connecting Nicosia to the north-coast port of Kyrenia. This position was unassailable given the weakness of the Cypriot forces.When the Cypriot army was strung along the east-west road leading to St. Hilarion below the Imperial forces, the pathetic size of the Cypriot forces was exposed to the enemy. This very weakness proved too tempting to the proud Italian leaders of the Imperial host. They charged down the slope to demolish the Cypriots. As soon as they abandoned their positions, Novare tells us, the Lord of Beirut fell on his knees to thank God. Then he remounted to defend his King. The King was kept in the rear of the army with Beirut, his youngest sons (roughly 15 and 16 years old) and his young nephew (later the famed jurist and Count of Jaffa). The battle was won by the Ibelin’s leading divisions. These mauled the Imperial forces so soundly that they broke and fled — to be pursued all the way to Kyrenia. Beirut and the King, meanwhile, continued to St. Hilarion, scattered the besieging force and rescued the King’s sisters.Although the siege of the fortress at Kyrenia was to continue for ten months, Henry had regained control of his kingdom. Frederick II never again attempted to interfere in Henry’s realm or his affairs. Meanwhile, one of Henry’s first acts was to summon the High Court of Cyprus and charge the former Imperial baillies with treason. After a unanimous judgment against them, they were sentenced to death in absentia (they were safely in the fortress of Kyrenia at the time) and their fiefs were forfeit to the crown. Henry bestowed them on those who had supported him in his hour of need.Yet while Henry was finally master of his own house, his treasury was depleted by the year-long campaign and further drained by the ongoing siege of Kyrenia. In fact, many of his vassals who held money-fiefs had seen no income in years. Strikingly, they remained loyal to him despite this. To try to spur the economy and recover financially,Henry not only expanded the privileges of the Genoese but extended trading privileges to Marseilles and Montpellier. He also fostered trading ties with the Sultan of Iconium and with Armenia. These actions show foresight and an appreciation of the economic advantages of trade to an island kingdom. Ironically, while the maligned King Henry was encouraging trade, Frederick II — usually depicted as “ahead of his time” — was introducing trade restrictions.In 1236, at 19, Henry negotiated a marriage for himself to replace Alix de Montferrat, who had died during the siege of Kyrenia. He chose the sister of the King of Armenia, Stephanie, and the couple was married in 1237. This was the same year in which the pope suggested creating a joint kingdom of Jerusalem and Cyprus to be reigned by Henry King. The pope’s suggestion was driven by his hatred of Frederick II Hohenstaufen and was designed to disinherit his heirs, yet it was almost certainly made without the slightest consultation with King Henry.Henry was not interested in the crusader states on the mainland. He refused to come to the aid of Jerusalem when the city fell in 1244 to the Khwarizmians, and he provided only reluctant and inadequate forces to relieve the siege of Ascalon three years later. Even when his mother died in 1246 and the High Court of Jerusalem recognized him as the rightful regent for the still absent Hohenstaufen king, Henry showed no interest in Syrian affairs. Instead of taking up the role of ruler, he appointed Balian of Beirut (John of Beirut’s eldest son and success after his death in 1236) Baillie of Jerusalem.King Henry appears to have far more pleased by the fact that in the same year (1246) the pope absolved him of all oaths of fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor. This act recognized legally what had been a fact since the complete expulsion of the Imperial forces from Cyprus thirteen years earlier. Cyprus was an independent kingdom and its king vassal to none.When the vast crusading army of King Louis IX descended on Cyprus, King Henry remained notably aloof from crusading fever. He welcomed King Louis and his queen. Cyprus hosted the crusaders throughout the winter, and the flower of Cypriot chivalry was allowed to participate in the crusade — notably under the command of the Constable of Cyprus, Guy d’Ibelin, the youngest son of the Old Lord of Beirut. Indeed, the Ibelins were well represented in the crusade with John d’Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, Baldwin the Seneschal of Cyprus and Guy the Constable all impressing the Seneschal of France, Jean de Joinville, by their prowess, extravagance, wisdom, command of Arabic and concern for their men. Yet King Henry, after entering Damietta with King Louis in June 1249, retired to Cyprus.Henry was only thirty-two at this time, an age at which most medieval noblemen were keen to demonstrate their prowess at arms, but Henry was no warrior king — and he had the sense to recognize that. Indeed, Henry had earned the nickname “the fat.” It appears that his near escape from disaster at Casal Imbert had left a lasting scar upon his psyche. At a minimum, he had learned the vital lesson that battles could be lost, and lost battles could lead to lost kingdoms.Henry had turned his attention to fostering the economy and to administrative reforms instead. One of the latter was the first recorded introduction of written court records. This practice that was not adopted in France until after King Louis returned from his crusade, i.e. after his contact with King Henry.Henry also defended the majority of his subjects who still adhered to the Greek Orthodox faith against attempts by the Latin church to interfere with their clergy. This conflict escalated to the point that the Archbishop of Nicosia placed the entire kingdom under interdict — and Henry withheld revenues due to the Archbishop and the church.In 1250, in the midst of King Louis’ disastrous crusade, Henry’s Armenian queen died childless. A king did not have the luxury to mourn for long; he needed heirs. In 1251, Henry took as his third wife, Plaisance of Antioch. She, at last, gave him the son he needed. He was christened Hugh after the father Henry had never known. Less than two years later, on January 18, 1254 [7] Henry I of Cyprus died. He was not yet 47. The cause of death went unrecorded.In looking back and assessing his reign, it is easy to dismiss Henry as a colorless, fat, puppet, yet this ignores the fact that he inherited a bankrupt kingdom subordinate to the Holy Roman Emperor and bequeathed a prosperous and independent kingdom to his son. It also ignores the fact that Henry retained the respect and loyalty of his vassals throughout his reign — despite his conspicuous lack of revenues in the early years and military accomplishments.The trade treaties, the administrative reforms, and his steadfastness in the face of clerical sanctions suggest a man who was not so much weak as diligent — yet focused on the unglamorous aspects of good-governance: the economy, the legal system and the spiritual well-being of his subjects. It is notable too that throughout his reign Henry relied heavily on various members of the Ibelin family, a clear indication of where his affections lay in the long struggle that dominated his childhood.Henry I could be viewed as a mirror image of Richard the Lionheart. The latter is accused of being a bad king because he was focused on warfare and crusading with the result that he was absent from his kingdom most of his reign. Henry I left his kingdom only under duress and for never more than a few months. He avoided wars and left his kingdom richer than he found it. Henry I of Cyprus deserves more respect.Henry is an important character in my novels Rebels against Tyranny and The Emperor Strikes Back.[1] Text of Frederick II’s letter to John of Beirut, contained in La Monte’s notes to Philip de Novare, Frederick II’s Wars against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus, 74.[2] Novare, Philip, The Wars of Frederick II against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus, trans John La Monte (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1936), 94-95.[3] Novare, 98.[4] French Continuation of William of Tyre (Eracles), quoted in La Monte (trans), The Wars of Frederick II against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1936) 119f.[5] Eracles, 120f.[6] Novare, Philip, The Wars of Frederick II against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus, trans. John La Monte (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1936) 123-124.[7] The date is often given as Jan. 1253, but Peter Edbury had brought evidence that in the Kingdom of Cyprus at this time the year began March 25 and that according to our practice the correct date of his death was 1254. See: Peter Edbury, “Redating the Death of King Henry I of Cyprus?” Law and History in the Latin East (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) 339-348.

I wasn’t born in Russia. My family comes from another part of Europe. But I have great love for the people of the former USSR. In studying the history of the Soviet Union, I have seen a great and beautiful people who have suffered much.In this video an Englishman who speaks fluent Russian travels to places that tourists often don’t go. Some areas were left to wither after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In some it was as if time itself stopped. In this village there is a monument to those who died during the Great Patriotic War. A small town lost so many people at the hands of the German invaders. Walking through the very thick mud, his feet getting stuck, the narrator is reminded of how that same mud slowed down the Germans, and inevitably would assist in defeating them.This village was nearly abandoned after secondary radiation contamination after Chernobyl. He is warned not to walk alone on the streets at night because of the wolves. Despite being destitute, the people invest in the gravestones of their deceased loved ones. Some of them have photos engraved on them. There is a little bench with a table, so those visiting on a birthday can sit down and have a toast to their deceased loved one. Some leave a shot glass on the headstone, as if their loved ones had a drink too.Throughout history these people have had to be strong to survive the brutal winters, foreign invaders, corrupt governments, famines, and outbreaks. At the beginning of the Soviet Union the revolutionary spirit invigorated the nation. The Soviets brought electrification, jobs, healthcare, education, and hope. But it wasn’t long before there was the bloody war with the White Army, a famine, then WWII, and the long haul of rebuilding once again. But there was hope. Things had improved. During the 1960’s it seemed that maybe the Soviet Union might even prevail over Western imperialism. The space program with Yuri Gargarin united the nation. “We are a people that are so strong we are going to explore the stars!”And then the Party grew more corrupt. The elites were more concerned with themselves and their own power, they grew entitled. Not even pulling the levers of power was enough for them anymore—they wanted to own the factories too. The average person had no say in any of this. As Gorbachev’s “reforms” set in, long lines, shortages of basic goods like toilet paper, the people became demoralized. And to make matters worse dissidents funded by the U.S. and others began a full on assault on the Soviet system. Every day there was a new expose about “Stalin’s atrocities,” “The horrors of the gulag system,” “Solzhenitsyn’s fictional portrayal dressed up as fact,” followed by the Soviet version of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” telling people that if only they surrendered socialism could they live like Western Europeans and Americans. They were told they would be welcomed into NATO and the international community. Any why would they not believe it? Things couldn’t get worse, could they? Not only could they get worse—they did.There are no words to describe the hell that these poor people were tossed into as the oligarchs plundered the public assets and the people were subject to the “Shock Doctrine,” which meant the most vile forms of austerity. The death toll from the collapse of the USSR was in the millions.No wonder 60% of members of the former USSR say they miss it. No wonder 70% of the people regard Stalin as a strong leader, even more than Putin. These people have suffered through unspeakable horrors.Inside Russia’s poorest townThe capital of Moldova is in decay. It was once an important place for people to visit. A huge hotel was built for visiting Soviets. It is now boarded up. When he speaks with older people, they talk about how much they miss the Soviet Union, because things were better then.Forget about wealthy Russians living in Moscow. That might as well be another planet for many of these people. Their lives are objectively worse, and no amount of rubbish about the wonders of “free markets” and capitalism can change that.We Lived Better ThenOver two decades ago Vaclav Havel, the pampered scion of a wealthy Prague family, helped usher in a period of reaction, in which the holdings and estates of former landowners and captains of industry were restored to their previous owners, while unemployment, homelessness, and insecurity—abolished by the Reds– were put back on the agenda. Havel is eulogized by the usual suspects, but not by his numberless victims, who were pushed back into an abyss of exploitation by the Velvet revolution and other retrograde eruptions. With the fall of Communism allowing Havel and his brother to recover their family’s vast holdings, Havel’s life—he worked in a brewery under Communism—became much richer. The same can’t be said for countless others, whose better lives under Communism were swept away by a swindle that will, in the coming days, be lionized in the mass media on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s demolition. The anniversary is no time for celebration, except for the minority that has profited from it. For the bulk of us it ought to be an occasion to reflect on what the bottom 99 percent of humanity was able to achieve for ourselves outside the strictures, instabilities and unnecessary cruelties of capitalism.Over the seven decades of its existence, and despite having to spend so much time preparing, fighting, and recovering from wars, Soviet socialism managed to create one of the great achievements of human history: a mass industrial society that eliminated most of the inequalities of wealth, income, education and opportunity that plagued what preceded it, what came after it, and what competed with it; a society in which health care and education through university were free (and university students received living stipends); where rent, utilities and public transportation were subsidized, along with books, periodicals and cultural events; where inflation was eliminated, pensions were generous, and child care was subsidized. By 1933, with the capitalist world deeply mired in a devastating economic crisis, unemployment was declared abolished, and remained so for the next five and a half decades, until socialism, itself was abolished. Excluding the war years, from 1928, when socialism was introduced, until Mikhail Gorbachev began to take it apart in the late 1980s, the Soviet system of central planning and public ownership produced unfailing economic growth, without the recessions and downturns that plagued the capitalist economies of North America, Japan and Western Europe. And in most of those years, the Soviet and Eastern European economies grew faster.The Communists produced economic security as robust (and often more so) than that of the richest countries, but with fewer resources and a lower level of development and in spite of the unflagging efforts of the capitalist world to sabotage socialism. Soviet socialism was, and remains, a model for humanity — of what can be achieved outside the confines and contradictions of capitalism. But by the end of the 1980s, counterrevolution was sweeping Eastern Europe and Mikhail Gorbachev was dismantling the pillars of Soviet socialism. Naively, blindly, stupidly, some expected Gorbachev’s demolition project to lead the way to a prosperous consumer society, in which Soviet citizens, their bank accounts bulging with incomes earned from new jobs landed in a robust market economy, would file into colorful, luxurious shopping malls, to pick clean store shelves bursting with consumer goods. Others imagined a new era of a flowering multiparty democracy and expanded civil liberties, coexisting with public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, a model that seemed to owe more to utopian blueprints than hard-headed reality.Of course, none of the great promises of the counterrevolution were kept. While at the time the demise of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was proclaimed as a great victory for humanity, not least by leftist intellectuals in the United States, two decades later there’s little to celebrate. The dismantling of socialism has, in a word, been a catastrophe, a great swindle that has not only delivered none of what it promised, but has wreaked irreparable harm, not only in the former socialist countries, but throughout the Western world, as well. Countless millions have been plunged deep into poverty, imperialism has been given a free hand, and wages and benefits in the West have bowed under the pressure of intensified competition for jobs and industry unleashed by a flood of jobless from the former socialist countries, where joblessness once, rightly, was considered an obscenity. Numberless voices in Russia, Romania, East Germany and elsewhere lament what has been stolen from them — and from humanity as a whole: “We lived better under communism. We had jobs. We had security.” And with the threat of jobs migrating to low-wage, high unemployment countries of Eastern Europe, workers in Western Europe have been forced to accept a longer working day, lower pay, and degraded benefits. Today, they fight a desperate rearguard action, where the victories are few, the defeats many. They too lived better — once.But that’s only part of the story. For others, for investors and corporations, who’ve found new markets and opportunities for profitable investment, and can reap the benefits of the lower labor costs that attend intensified competition for jobs, the overthrow of socialism has, indeed, been something to celebrate. Equally, it has been welcomed by the landowning and industrial elite of the pre-socialist regimes whose estates and industrial concerns have been recovered and privatized. But they’re a minority. Why should the rest of us celebrate our own mugging?Prior to the dismantling of socialism, most people in the world were protected from the vicissitudes of the global capitalist market by central planning and high tariff barriers. But once socialism fell in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and with China having marched resolutely down the capitalist road, the pool of unprotected labor available to transnational corporations expanded many times over. Today, a world labor force many times larger than the domestic pool of US workers — and willing to work dirt cheap — awaits the world’s corporations. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the implications are for North American workers and their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan: an intense competition of all against all for jobs and industry. Inevitably, incomes fall, benefits are eroded, and working hours extended. Predictably, with labor costs tumbling, profits grow fat, capital surpluses accumulate and create bubbles, financial crises erupt and predatory wars to secure investment opportunities break out.Growing competition for jobs and industry has forced workers in Western Europe to accept less. They work longer hours, and in some cases, for less pay and without increases in benefits, to keep jobs from moving to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other former socialist countries — which, under the rule of the Reds, once provided jobs for all. More work for less money is a pleasing outcome for the corporate class, and turns out to be exactly the outcome fascists engineered for their countries’ capitalists in the 1930s. The methods, to be sure, were different, but the anti-Communism of Mussolini and Hitler, in other hands, has proved just as useful in securing the same retrograde ends. Nobody who is subject to the vagaries of the labor market – almost all of us — should be glad Communism was abolished.Maybe some us don’t know we’ve been mugged. And maybe some of us haven’t been. Take the radical US historian Howard Zinn, for example, who, along with most other prominent Left intellectuals, greeted the overthrow of Communism with glee [1]. I, no less than others, admired Zinn’s books, articles and activism, though I came to expect his ardent anti-Communism as typical of left US intellectuals. To be sure, in a milieu hostile to Communism, it should come as no surprise that conspicuous displays of anti-Communism become a survival strategy for those seeking to establish a rapport, and safeguard their reputations, with a larger (and vehemently anti-Communist) audience.But there may be another reason for the anti-Communism of those whose political views leave them open to charges of being soft on Communism, and therefore of having horns. As dissidents in their own society, there was always a natural tendency for them to identify with dissidents elsewhere – and the pro-capitalist, anti-socialist propaganda of the West quite naturally elevated dissidents in socialist countries to the status of heroes, especially those who were jailed, muzzled and otherwise repressed by the state. For these people, the abridgement of civil liberties anywhere looms large, for the abridgement of their own civil liberties would be an event of great personal significance. By comparison, the Reds’ achievements in providing a comfortable frugality and economic security to all, while recognized intellectually as an achievement of some note, is less apt to stir the imagination of one who has a comfortable income, the respect of his peers, and plenty of people to read his books and attend his lectures. He doesn’t have to scavenge discarded coal in garbage dumps to eke out a bare, bleak, and unrewarding existence. Some do.Karol, 14, and his sister Alina, 12, everyday trudge to a dump, where mixed industrial waste is deposited, just outside Swietochlowice, in formerly socialist Poland. There, along with their father, they look for scrap metal and second grade coal, anything to fetch a few dollars to buy a meager supply of groceries. “There was better life in Communism,” says Karol’s father, 49, repeating a refrain heard over and over again, not only in Poland, but also throughout the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. “I was working 25 years for the same company and now I cannot find a job – any job. They only want young and skilled workers.” [2] According to Gustav Molnar, a political analyst with the Laszlo Teleki Institute, “the reality is that when foreign firms come here, they’re only interested in hiring people under 30. It means half the population is out of the game.” [3] That may suit the bottom lines of foreign corporations – and the overthrow of socialism may have been a pleasing intellectual outcome for well-fed, comfortable intellectuals from Boston – but it hardly suits that part of the Polish population that must scramble over mountains of industrial waste – or perish. Maciej Gdula, 34, a founding member of the group, Krytyka Polityczna, or Political Critique, complains that many Poles “are disillusioned with the unfulfilled promises of capitalism. They promised us a world of consumption, stability and freedom. Instead, we got an entire generation of Poles who emigrated to go wash dishes.” [4] Under socialism “there was always work for everybody” [5] – at home. And always a place to live, free schools to go to, and doctors to see, without charge. So why was Howard Zinn glad that Communism was overthrown?That the overthrow of socialism has failed to deliver anything of benefit to the majority is plain to see. One decade after counterrevolution skittered across Eastern Europe, 17 former socialist countries were immeasurably poorer. In Russia, poverty had tripled. One child in 10 – three million Russian children – lived like animals, ill-fed, dressed in rags, and living, if they were lucky, in dirty, squalid flats. In Moscow alone, 30,000 to 50,000 children slept in the streets. Life expectancy, education, adult-literacy and income declined. A report by the European Children’s Trust, written in 2000, revealed that 40 percent of the population of the former socialist countries – a number equal to one of every two US citizens – lived in poverty. Infant mortality and tuberculosis were on the rise, approaching Third World levels. The situation, according to the UN, was catastrophic. And everywhere the story was the same. [6, 7, 8, 9]Paul Cockshot points out that:The restoration of the market mechanism in Russia was a vast controlled experiment. Nation, national character and culture, natural resources and productive potential remained the same, only the economic mechanism changed. If Western economists were right, then we should have expected economic growth and living standards to have leapt forward after the Yeltsin shock therapy. Instead the country became an economic basket-case. Industrial production collapsed, technically advanced industries atrophied, and living standards fell so much that the death rate shot up by over a third leading to some 7.7 million extra deaths.For many Russians, life became immeasurably worse.If you were old, if you were a farmer, if you were a manual worker, the market was a great deal worse than even the relatively stagnant Soviet economy of Brezhnev. The recovery under Putin, such as it was, came almost entirely as a side effect of rising world oil prices, the very process that had operated under Brezhnev. [10]While the return of capitalism made life harsher for some, it proved lethal for others. From 1991 to 1994, life expectancy in Russia tumbled by five years. By 2008, it had slipped to less than 60 years for Russian men, a full seven years lower than in 1985 when Gorbachev came to power and began to dismantle Soviet socialism. Today “only a little over half of the ex-Communist countries have regained their pretransition life-expectancy levels,” according to a study published in the medical journal, The Lancet. [11]“Life was better under the Communists,” concludes Aleksandr. “The stores are full of things, but they’re very expensive.” Victor pines for the “stability of an earlier era of affordable health care, free higher education and housing, and the promise of a comfortable retirement – things now beyond his reach.” [12] A 2008 report in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, noted that “many Russians interviewed said they still grieve for their long, lost country.” Among the grievers is Zhanna Sribnaya, 37, a Moscow writer. Sribnaya remembers “Pioneer camps when everyone could go to the Black Sea for summer vacations. Now, only people with money can take those vacations.” [13]Ion Vancea, a Romanian who struggles to get by on a picayune $40 per month pension says, “It’s true there was not much to buy back then, but now prices are so high we can’t afford to buy food as well as pay for electricity.” Echoing the words of many Romanians, Vancea adds, “Life was 10 times better under (Romanian Communist Party leader Nicolae) Ceausescu.” [14] An opinion poll carried out last year found that Vancea isn’t in the minority. Conducted by the Romanian polling organisation CSOP, the survey found that almost one-half of Romanians thought life was better under Ceauşescu, compared to less than one-quarter who thought life is better today. And while Ceauşescu is remembered in the West as a Red devil, only seven percent said they suffered under Communism. Why do half of Romanians think life was better under the Reds? They point to full employment, decent living conditions for all, and guaranteed housing – advantages that disappeared with the fall of Communism. [15]Next door, in Bulgaria, 80 percent say they are worse off now that the country has transitioned to a market economy. Only five percent say their standard of living has improved. [16] Mimi Vitkova, briefly Bulgaria’s health minister for two years in the mid-90s, sums up life after the overthrow of socialism: “We were never a rich country, but when we had socialism our children were healthy and well-fed. They all got immunized. Retired people and the disabled were provided for and got free medicine. Our hospitals were free.” But things have changed, she says. “Today, if a person has no money, they have no right to be cured. And most people have no money. Our economy was ruined.” [17] A 2009 poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that a paltry one in nine Bulgarians believe ordinary people are better off as a result of the transition to capitalism. And few regard the state as representing their interests. Only 16 percent say it is run for the benefit of all people. [18]In the former East Germany a new phenomenon has arisen: Ostalgie, a nostalgia for the GDR. During the Cold War era, East Germany’s relative poverty was attributed to public ownership and central planning – sawdust in the gears of the economic engine, according to anti-socialist mythology. But the propaganda conveniently ignored the fact that the eastern part of Germany had always been less developed than the west, that it had been plundered of its key human assets at the end of World War II by US occupation forces, that the Soviet Union had carted off everything of value to indemnify itself for its war losses, and that East Germany bore the brunt of Germany’s war reparations to Moscow. [19] On top of that, those who fled East Germany were said to be escaping the repression of a brutal regime, and while some may indeed have been ardent anti-Communists fleeing repression by the state, most were economic refugees, seeking the embrace of a more prosperous West, whose riches depended in large measure on a history of slavery, colonialism, and ongoing imperialism—processes of capital accumulation the Communist countries eschewed and spent precious resources fighting against.Today, nobody of an unprejudiced mind would say that the riches promised East Germans have been realized. Unemployment, once unheard of, runs in the double digits and rents have skyrocketed. The region’s industrial infrastructure – weaker than West Germany’s during the Cold War, but expanding — has now all but disappeared. And the population is dwindling, as economic refugees, following in the footsteps of Cold War refugees before them, make their way westward in search of jobs and opportunity. [20] “We were taught that capitalism was cruel,” recalls Ralf Caemmerer, who works for Otis Elevator. “You know, it didn’t turn out to be nonsense.” [21] As to the claim that East Germans have “freedom” Heinz Kessler, a former East German defense minister replies tartly, “Millions of people in Eastern Europe are now free from employment, free from safe streets, free from health care, free from social security.” [22] Still, Howard Zinn was glad communism collapsed. But then, he didn’t live in East Germany.So, who’s doing better? Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright turned president, came from a prominent, vehemently anti-socialist Prague family, which had extensive holdings, “including construction companies, real estate and the Praque Barrandov film studios”. [23] The jewel in the crown of the Havel family holdings was the Lucerna Palace, “a pleasure palace…of arcades, theatres, cinemas, night-clubs, restaurants, and ballrooms,” according to Frommer’s. It became “a popular spot for the city’s nouveau riches to congregate,” including a young Havel, who, raised in the lap of luxury by a governess, doted on by servants, and chauffeured around town in expensive automobiles, “spent his earliest years on the Lucerna’s polished marble floors.” Then, tragedy struck – at least, from Havel’s point of view. The Reds expropriated Lucerna and the family’s other holdings, and put them to use for the common good, rather than for the purpose of providing the young Havel with more servants. Havel was sent to work in a brewery.“I was different from my schoolmates whose families did not have domestics, nurses or chauffeurs,” Havel once wrote. “But I experienced these differences as disadvantage. I felt excluded from the company of my peers.” [24] Yet the company of his peers must not have been to Havel’s tastes, for as president, he was quick to reclaim the silver spoon the Reds had taken from his mouth. Celebrated throughout the West as a hero of intellectual freedom, he was instead a hero of capitalist restoration, presiding over a mass return of nationalized property, including Lucerna and his family’s other holdings.The Roman Catholic Church is another winner. The pro-capitalist Hungarian government has returned to the Roman Catholic Church much of the property nationalized by the Reds, who placed the property under common ownership for the public good. With recovery of many of the Eastern and Central European properties it once owned, the Church is able to reclaim its pre-socialist role of parasite — raking in vast amounts of unearned wealth in rent, a privilege bestowed for no other reason than it owns title to the land. Hungary also pays the Vatican a US$9.2 million annuity for property it has been unable to return. [25] (Note that a 2008 survey of 1,000 Hungarians by the Hungarian polling firm Gif Piackutato found that 60 percent described the era of Communist rule under Red leader Janos Kadar as Hungary’s happiest while only 14 percent said the same about the post-Communist era. [26])The Church, former landowners, and CEOs aside, most people of the former socialist bloc aren’t pleased that the gains of the socialist revolutions have been reversed. Three-quarters of Russians, according to a 1999 poll [27] regret the demise of the Soviet Union. And their assessment of the status quo is refreshingly clear-sighted. Almost 80 percent recognize liberal democracy as a front for a government controlled by the rich. A majority (correctly) identifies the cause of its impoverishment as an unjust economic system (capitalism), which, according to 80 percent, produces “excessive and illegitimate inequalities.” [28] The solution, in the view of the majority, is to return to socialism, even if it means one-party rule. Russians, laments the anti-Communist historian Richard Pipes, haven’t Americans’ taste for multiparty democracy, and seem incapable of being cured of their fondness for Soviet leaders. In one poll, Russians were asked to list the 10 greatest people of all time, of all nations. Lenin came in second, Stalin fourth and Peter the Great came first. Pipes seems genuinely distressed they didn’t pick his old boss, Ronald Reagan, and is fed up that after years of anti-socialist, pro-capitalist propaganda, Russians remain committed to the idea that private economic activity should be restricted, and “the government [needs] to be more involved in the country’s economic life.” [29] An opinion poll which asked Russians which socio-economic system they favor, produced these results.• State planning and distribution, 58%;• Based on private property and distribution, 28%;• Hard to say, 14%. [30]So, if the impoverished peoples of the formerly socialist countries pine for the former attractions of socialism, why don’t they vote the Reds back in? Socialism can’t be turned on with the flick of a switch. The former socialist economies have been privatized and placed under the control of the market. Those who accept the goals and values of capitalism have been recruited to occupy pivotal offices of the state. And economic, legal and political structures have been altered to accommodate private production for profit. True, there are openings for Communist parties to operate within the new multiparty liberal democracies, but Communists now compete with far more generously funded parties in societies in which their enemies have restored their wealth and privileges and use them to tilt the playing field strongly in their favor. They own the media, and therefore are in a position to shape public opinion and give parties of private property critical backing during elections. They spend a king’s ransom on lobbying the state and politicians and running think-tanks which churn out policy recommendations and furnish the media with capitalist-friendly “expert” commentary. They set the agenda in universities through endowments, grants and the funding of special chairs to study questions of interest to their profits. They bring politicians under their sway by doling out generous campaign contributions and promises of lucrative post-political career employment opportunities. Is it any wonder the Reds aren’t simply voted back into power? Capitalist democracy means democracy for the few—the capitalists—not a level-playing field where wealth, private-property and privilege don’t matter.And anyone who thinks Reds can be elected to office should reacquaint themselves with US foreign policy vis-a-vis Chile circa 1973. The United States engineered a coup to overthrow the socialist Salvador Allende, on the grounds that Chileans couldn’t be allowed to make the ”irresponsible” choice of electing a man Cold Warriors regarded as a Communist. More recently, the United States, European Union and Israel, refused to accept the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, all the while hypocritically presenting themselves as champions and guardians of democracy.Of course, no forward step will be taken, can be taken, until a decisive part of the population becomes disgusted with and rejects what exists today, and is convinced something better is possible and is willing to tolerate the upheavals of transition. Something better than unceasing economic insecurity, private (and for many, unaffordable) health care and education, and vast inequality, is achievable. The Reds proved that. It was the reality in the Soviet Union, in China (for a time), in Eastern Europe, and today, hangs on in Cuba and North Korea, despite the incessant and far-ranging efforts of the United States to crush it.It should be no surprise that Vaclav Havel, as others whose economic and political supremacy was, for a time, ended by the Reds, was a tireless fighter against socialism, and that he, and others, who sought to reverse the gains of the revolution, were cracked down on, and sometimes muzzled and jailed by the new regimes. To expect otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the determined struggle that is carried on by the enemies of socialism, even after socialist forces have seized power. The forces of reaction retain their money, their movable property, the advantages of education, and above all, their international connections. To grant them complete freedom is to grant them a free hand to organize the downfall of socialism, to receive material assistance from abroad to reverse the revolution, and to elevate the market and private ownership once again to the regulating principles of the economy. Few champions of civil liberties argue that in the interests of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, that Germans ought to be allowed to hold pro-Nazi rallies, establish a pro-Nazi press, and organize fascist political parties, to return to the days of the Third Reich. To survive, any socialist government, must, of necessity, be repressive toward its enemies, who, like Havel, will seek their overthrow and the return of their privileged positions. This is demonized as totalitarianism by those who have an interest in seeing anti-socialist forces prevail, regard civil and political liberties (as against a world of plenty for all) as the pinnacle of human achievement, or have an unrealistically sanguine view of the possibilities for the survival of socialist islands in a sea of predatory capitalist states.Where Reds have prevailed, the outcome has been far-reaching material gain for the bulk of the population: full employment, free health care, free education through university, free and subsidized child care, cheap living accommodations and inexpensive public transportation. Life expectancy has soared, illiteracy has been wiped out, and homelessness, unemployment and economic insecurity have been abolished. Racial strife and ethnic tensions have been reduced to almost the vanishing point. And inequalities in wealth, income, opportunity, and education have been greatly reduced. Where Reds have been overthrown, mass unemployment, underdevelopment, hunger, disease, illiteracy, homelessness, and racial conflict have recrudesced, as the estates, holdings and privileges of former fat cats have been restored. Communists produced gains in the interest of all humanity, achieved in the face of very trying conditions, including the unceasing hostility of the West and the unremitting efforts of the former exploiters to restore the status quo ante.1. Howard Zinn, “Beyond the Soviet Union,” Znet Commentary, September 2, 1999.2. “Left behind by the luxury train,” The Globe and Mail, March 29, 2000.3. “Support dwindling in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,” The Chicago Tribune, May 27, 2001.4. Dan Bilefsky, “Polish left gets transfusion of young blood,” The New York Times, March 12, 2010.5. “Support dwindling in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,” The Chicago Tribune, May 27, 2001.6. “An epidemic of street kids overwhelms Russian cities,” The Globe and Mail, April 16, 2002.7. “UN report says one billion suffer extreme poverty,” World Socialist Web Site, July 28, 2003.8. Associated Press, October 11, 2000.9. “UN report….10. Paul Cockshott, “Book review: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford”, Marxism-Leninism Today, http://mltoday.com/en/subject-areas/books-arts-and-literature/book-review-red-plenty-986-2.html11. David Stuckler, Lawrence King and Martin McKee, “Mass Privatization and the Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: A Cross-National Analysis,” Judy Dempsey, “Study looks at mortality in post-Soviet era,” The New York Times, January 16, 2009.12. “In Post-U.S.S.R. Russia, Any Job Is a Good Job,” New York Times, January 11, 2004.13. Globe and Mail (Canada), June 9, 2008.14. “Disdain for Ceausescu passing as economy worsens,” The Globe and Mail, December 23, 1999.15. James Cross, “Romanians say communism was better than capitalism”, 21st Century Socialism, October 18, 2010. http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/romanians_say_communism_was_better_than_capitalism_02030.html “Opinion poll: 61% of Romanians consider communism a good idea”, ActMedia Romanian News Agency, September 27, 2010. http://www.actmedia.eu/top+story/opinion+poll%3A+61%25+of+romanians+consider+communism+a+good+idea/2972616. “Bulgarians feel swindled after 13 years of capitalism,” AFP, December 19, 2002.17. “Bulgaria tribunal examines NATO war crimes,” Workers World, November 9, 2000.18. Matthew Brunwasser, “Bulgaria still stuck in trauma of transition,” The New York Times, November 11, 2009.19. Jacques R. Pauwels, “The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War,” James Lorimer & Company, Toronto, 2002. p. 232-235.20. “Warm, Fuzzy Feeling for East Germany’s Grey Old Days,” New York Times, January 13, 2004.21. “Hard lessons in capitalism for Europe’s unions,” The Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2003.22. New York Times, July 20, 1996, cited in Michael Parenti, “Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism,” City Light Books, San Francisco, 1997, p. 118.23. Leos Rousek, “Czech playwright, dissident rose to become president”, The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2011.24. Dan Bilefsky and Jane Perlez, “Czechs’ dissident conscience, turned president”, The New York Times, December 18, 2011.25. U.S. Department of State, “Summary of Property Restitution in Central and Eastern Europe,” September 10, 2003. http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/2003/31415.htm26. “Poll shows majority of Hungarians feel life was better under communism,” May 21, 2008, http://www.politics.hu27. Cited in Richard Pipes, “Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004.28. Ibid.29. Ibid.30. “Russia Nw”, in The Washington Post, March 25, 2009.Source: We Lived Better ThenWhat the collapse looked likeStalin predicted perfectly what would happen if the USSR collapsed. The result was “The End of History,” as capitalist apologists would claim. Neoliberalism has overtaken the West, but has brought Russia with it.These people greatly miss the Soviet UnionQuorans on the USSR:Michael Buleev:It was monstrous. My parents were representatives of the working intelligentsia - qualified specialists who worked in the defense industry. At the time, we were roughly in the middle class. After the collapse of the Soviet Union was a terrible inflation, rampant crime, hunger, lack of work and lack of prospects for life. This lasted until the arrival of Putin in 1999. Only after this moment the situation in the country stabilized, and then there was a slow rise in living standards. By the way, the collapse of the USSR divided me and my relatives - my cousins and their parents suddenly turned out to be Ukrainians, and I and my parents - Russians. And now, for example, I am banned from entering Ukraine only because I have Russian citizenship. So I haven't seen my cousins in 27 years.Source: Mikhail Buleev's answer to How did the collapse of the Soviet Union affect you?Nick Levin's answer to What was everyday life like for people in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin?Cristian A. Rodriguez's answer to What were the good things done by the Soviet Union?Alexander Finnegan's answer to Is it true that a single mother with one job was able to live well in the Soviet Union?Sergey Bobyk's answer to Do you miss living in the USSR?Jimmy Brown's answer to What was life like in the Soviet Union?Nikolay Pavlov:I was born in 1973 and remember that period quite well. I would say that a lot of problem usually get exaggerated. Also, was the rest of the world totally free of any problems of any sort? Ye,there were things like - again depending on the place - a long queue, years to get you telephone installed (well, we and neighbours get ours easily). The hunting for clothe, goods and food items that people mentioned was mostly driven by the fact that it was rare for a moment. In society with roughly same monetary capabilities that was a way to show up which most people put a big effort to. The number of private cars were perhaps x2 less than Western Europe of that time which I guess again itself was x2 behind USA. Again, the way the life was organized most people lived within walking distance of their job or were provided company run buses. The motivation to have a car was often because of “dacha” (some private piece of land outside of the city, which was quite common).The individual’s future was quite secure, it was easy to find almost any kind job you want and with free education (well, it was not totally free till 1950s or so) . People who choose to just chase money (that was possible if going to Siberian construction sites, achieving good results in work paid not on hours but on quantity, ’ grey’ business) were rather looked at with suspicion. Also, even for low level workers and engineers there was a system set to get paid for inventions and process innovations. Some people could double their income that way. Overall attitude was relatively lay down but of course it does not mean people did not compete e.g. for promotion and such competition would involve some exercises in demagogy (surprisingly similar to modern corporate world). The fact that you would not be immediately terminated from your job if e.g. drunk or you can still easily find another job had obvious negative effect. There was some chance to build your carrier up to the very top starting anywhere - e.g. looking at Soviet leaders most of them were not even from Moscow.Regarding things like ‘freedom of speech’ I would say that certainly modern corporate world gives you way more narrow way (talking post-Stalin mostly). The bosses were rather limited in a way they can screw you up while there were more way for the opposite. Note that is not necessary good thing regarding overall efficiency of the company.And one has to say overall standards of living were not too bad. E.g. there was a lot of long distance flights for vacations,etc. Regarding food - yes the choices were smaller but in principle if you desperately want something there were ways to get almost anything if paying extra. And general obesity was an issue already back then.But let’s face the question - why this topic bring interest more than 25 years after?We obviously see inequality, unemployment, overall pessimism growing all over the world ( well , don’t know about China,etc). I guess people ask whether the alternative systems are possible. I think it was shown it is possible, and it is important to say that de-facto the current logistics (centrally-driven, thanks to Internet) and economy occupied by creating workplaces rather than products becoming more of the same type. However, the growing inequality in distribution of wealth, decline of mass culture, science and education give rather pessimistic view.Source: Nikolay Pavlov's answer to What was life like in the Soviet Union?N Kuncewicz:I see so many Westerners telling here how bad it was, so I feel like I have to share with you my Father’s experience ( as I was born during the collapse of the union).In general, both of my parents (born in 1970′s) sincerely miss the old soviet times. My grandparents came from random small villages across modern day Russia and Belarus. Eventually, they were offered jobs in the coastal town of Jurmala, Latvian SSR. A huge bonus to that was that the government would also give them flat with a walking distance to the new offered jobs ( Now imagine that the government is offering you a job and a flat within 10 min walking to the coast. Pretty neat, right?) Obviously it was a no brainer for most people. Going back to my dad. He was about like any average teenager in the 80’s. Riding moped, bleach-colouring his t-shirts, listening to Black Sabbath, Metallica and Iron Maiden (they were censored , but it was widely available anyway) on his boombox and styling his hair in a funny way. He travelled quite a lot within USSR for cheap. He went to Polytechnic for free and gained education which allowed him straight away to work in his field after competition. As he was sharing one bedroom flat with his mother, he was given 1 bedroom flat in the same apartment block (for free, from government) at the age of 18!!!He didn’t have to worry about money as there was always work available (it was illegal to be unemployed, you would be arrested). Which means there was no fear of becoming homeless.Most people I know had not just flats, but also a “dacha” ( summer house) where they were able to live outside the city’s life and grow their own crops.There was not lots of food available in the shops, but it was ENOUGH! Nobody starved in the 70’s or 80’s . There was no need to eat excess junk food, drink caramel lattes or many other things you cannot imagine your life without. If you cannot get something in the shop. Fine! You can go fishing, you can grow your vegetables or fruits or you can get your ass and go berry or mushroom harvest in the forest!The major drawback in USSR I can see is the border restriction. It really bummers me to think that those people were not able to see the world. However, it seems that it didn’t bother much people as they believed they have all they need in USSR. They have open borders in Latvia now, but what is the point if people are so poor they cannot afford to go abroad?I understand that life in the Soviet Union was not perfect and was not so culturally and technically advanced as in the west. But you have to realise that It is completely different culture, different people and environmental conditions. Why do you people have to compare quality of life using US as some kind of “gold standard”? It is just like any other country with its own advantages and disadvantages. Leave us be.Source: N Kuncewicz's answer to What was life like in the Soviet Union?Anna Hag:I am jewish and I was born in 1972 USSR in Leningrad and my life was prosperous there. I loved it very much, it was a rich peaceful country, so huge, diversious and most beautiful one. Since 1991 I live abroad. I wouldn't left my beautiful USSR if it wouldn't collapse. Since then I lived in Israel, Canada, Japan, now in Finland. However USSR is always the best. I am still a patriot of USSR despite that USSR doesn't exist anymore.I was living in USSR my first 18 years and I really enjoyed to grow up there. It was a peaceful beautiful prosperous country with kind and beautiful people around.I would never leave USSR if it wouldn't be collapsed. It was an unforgivable mistake of my generation to let it collapse. So sad. Obviously Russia is still beautiful and peaceful country as always but USSR was definitely much bigger, stronger and better in general.In USSR the education and a medicine was free. Every family owned a summer house outside of my city that government provided for free. Government provided apartments in the city for free as wellSummer houses had a sufficient amount of the land where we planted strawberries, apples, greens, carrots and other berries and vegetables. Those who lived in villages owned chickens, pigs and cows additionally to growing fruits and vegetables. So we enjoyed ecologically clean our own food all summer aroundUSSR was a dream come true for the average liberal in the modern EU, and as they are majority in EU now. So they work hard to re-enact USSR in EU. So far they are succeeding.I am a jewish and I am an Israeli citizen since 1991. In USSR jewish population was reach and prosperous. I never met any poor jews in USSR.In 1991 I left USSR.What I've seen in terms of poverty and deprivation in the West, I hadn't seen even in the most downtrodden Soviet village. Pravda was telling the truth! The problem is that when we were seeing the "pretty pictures" of the West, we thought everyone lives like that. Far from it.....I think the biggest mistake the USSR made was to stop people from travelling to the West. They should have said, go on, live there for 6 months, let's see how you get along. :)That said, at the time, the Western governments were spending shed-loads of money to attract and keep the "escapees from Communism". Funnily how that dried up exactly in the early 1990s. There was no need to spend that money any more.The other tragedy that bothers me if how many people actually died because of the USSR collapse: either from actual military conflicts (including thousands in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict), as well as from hunger (the Leningrad hunger 1991), poverty, and rampant banditism. How many children were never born, because people didn't know if they could survive another day. If that was not a genocide..... then there is no justice in the world.The loss of the Soviet Union was an enormous blow to the advancement of humankind. After its fall the U.S. had no one to stop it from its aggression, colonialism, and imperial power. Look what a distraction Obama did in the Middle East.Yeltzin was set up by Americans to destroy Russia to the end. Unfortunately he carried through its task and meet the expectations of the westerns. In 1917 Westerns destroyed the Russian empire and in 1991 they did the same with USSR.If only we knew then what we know now, we would probably have fought for the preservation of the USSR. I was stupid enough, as a student, to support the "freedom and democracy" movements. If I knew that we were going to be robbed blind, treated as "dumb natives" that gave their birthright away for the promise of shiny beads, and that everything that our parents and grandparents had worked and died for would be so blatantly abused..... It really breaks my heart to see what we have done...... And I, personally, am really sorry. We had it all, that's why we wanted more, and didn't realize what we had until we lost it. Oh well, I'll just have to live with it....Life in Russia in 1982:More about the life in USSR and the state of mind of homo sovieticus you can gather from here:I noticed many people who were never living in USSR think that they are qualified to give a description and the judgement about USSR. Their description of USSR is not credible because as a tourist you cannot understand the beautiful sides of the life in USSR. Tourist perception is very superficial therefore nonessential and only as a tourist perception the opinion can be valid, and that's why such opinion is deeply incorrect from the point of local SU citizen.The Western europeans cannot understand that it is basically wrong to compare USSR with small countries. Russia can be comparable with other big countries of the Russian size. To live in big countries is always better than in small countries. I tried both. There is something especially deep about the Russian psyche, the Russian soul, just the way the Russians are, their frankness, their simplicity. In Russia everything is very much. Large areas, large and diverse cities, large and severe frosts in winter. People in Russia, if they love it very much and if they have happiness, then it is great happiness, and if woe, then it is also big woe. Russians and Americans have the closest understanding of physical and metaphysical space. It has been said that Russians have “large souls” and it may be because they have a sense of space and time that is incompatible with either Western Europeans or Asians. The Russian sense of time is non linear.Any comparison of USSR or Russia with any of microscopic European countries is absolutely invalid and irrelevant. The size is the matterThe judgement of european tourists could be absolutely different and even opposite from the local SU people judgement. I can give two examples from my personal life experience :a) Israel. When tourists visit Israel they got excited about Tel Avivian paradise: beaches, sea, sunbathing, swimming all year around , tasty food, smiley half-naked happy people everywhere. However when they become citizens and live there permanently the reality turned on 180 degree and shows its ugly dark sides: everything is expensive, lack of parkings, no public transportation in the weekends, military conflicts etc. All those dark Israeli sides are absolutelyinvisible for tourists. Not everything that looks shiny is a gold .b) Canada. When I came to Canada, first few weeks it seemed to me absolutely worthless place on the earth. I didn't understood why people are so struggling to immigrate there. However after I settled down in Montreal I understood how prosperous rich life there with the highest living standard that I ever experienced. It took me a year to realistically value the canadian life. All those beautiful Canadian sides absolutely invisible for tourists. Canada is a huge low populated country always reminded me former USSR in the end of 1980′s.Conclusion:Not everything that look dirty is a trash . Not everything that looks shiny is a gold. Watch deeply.Source: Anna Hag's answer to What was life like in the Soviet Union?It is instructive to remember that only nine months before Yeltsin dissolved the USSR, an overwhelming majority of Soviet voters, in a referendum, were in favor of maintaining the union. For a surprising number of people today in the former Soviet Union, the terror does not wholly negate achievements such as universal literacy, one of the best technological-education systems in the world, the first man in space, free education and health care, and security in old age. Maybe these social gains, too, were an illusion, but we risk another kind of illusion by not including the few but important pluses with the mountains of minuses. The West need not be generous in its victory over communism, but we might be more balanced in our obituaries……Admittedly, besides its moral failure, communism failed in its crusade to convert the whole world and in the end succeeded in lastingly converting no significant part of it. But communism's impact was and still is enormous. In addition to provoking significant changes in capitalist economies, such as vastly increased military spending and the growth of a military-industrial complex, the USSR's existence changed Western social development in fundamental ways.Labor reform in the West in the past century came about under the threat of a radicalized international labor movement protected and supported by the USSR. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was in part meant to steal the thunder of radicals who looked to Moscow and therefore could not be ignored. Social goals that are commonplace today, including women's rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist Party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously. It was Communists who first went to the American South and began organizing African-Americans and poor whites around issues of social justice. The more politically acceptable young people who followed them in the sixties are heroes today. On the international scene the Soviet Union provided support for Nelson Mandela and other reformers. Communism made life difficult for Western establishments, and it is doubtful that reforms would have come when they did if the USSR had not existed. Communists always rejected reform in favor of revolution. Ironically, however, the existence of the Soviet Union helped the capitalist West reform itself and avoid the bloody revolutions of the East. Twentieth-century communism was no passing illusion; its legacies are everywhere.Source: Anonymous's answer to Why do Russians still miss the Soviet era?