History of the Present

by Timothy Garton Ash

  But Jerzy Urban could quote in Nie, his satirical weekly, all the devastatingly critical things Wałȩsa’s former colleagues had said about him over the last five years, giving this mini-anthology the characteristically sarcastic headline WAłȩSA’S A MONSTER SO VOTE FOR HIM. And many voted for him only as the “lesser evil,” with a heavy heart. “I don’t want to, but I must,” said one voter interviewed on television, ironically using Wałȩsa’s own words when he announced that he would stand for president in 1990. “For Wałȩsa?” asked the interviewer. “Unfortunately!” A friend of mine told me, “All right, I’ll drink half a liter and then go and vote for him.” Half a liter of vodka, that is. In the event, we got him there on slightly less.

  It was very close. When voting ended at 8 P.M., Polish television’s exit polls put Wałȩsa ahead at 51.1 percent to Kwasniewski’s 48.9 percent. Jubilation and the old street chant of “Lech Wałȩsa! Lech Wałȩsa!” from the president’s campaign headquarters; defiant chants of “Olek! Olek!” from Kwasniewski’s. Every half hour, television gave a later exit-poll result. At 10:30 P.M. the final, cumulative exit poll, up to the close of voting, still put Wałȩsa ahead, but now by just 50.2 percent to 49.8. Then, at nine minutes past eleven, came the first unofficial result from slightly more than a thousand polling stations: 51.3 percent for Kwasniewski, 48.7 for Wałȩsa. The final, official result was 51.7 percent to 48.3, with an impressive turnout of 68 percent.

  Opinion polls between the two rounds of voting had shown that Wałȩsa lost quite heavily from a rude, unstatesmanlike, and incoherent performance in the first of two television debates between the candidates. It is therefore quite possible that, if he had done better and Kwasniewski worse in that one television debate, the result might have been the other way around. And then, of course, we would all have knowingly explained Wałȩsa’s triumph, sagely identifying the deeper forces, structures, and patterns.

  4

  So there they are, back on top, the men and women who lied to us for so many years, the cynics, opportunists, and careerists, still with their apparatchik’s jowls and their lavatory-brush haircuts. Yes, often the very same people. That professor of sociology who went around the world selling martial law while his colleagues were thrown into camps. That “expert” on international relations who traveled abroad to talk about peace and the environment while Professor Geremek had to sleep in the crypt of a church to avoid arrest by the secret police. And lower down, in the provinces and local government, hundreds of much cruder specimens. What’s more, many of them have become privately rich as well as again being publicly powerful. Look at the millionaire Jerzy Urban, for heaven’s sake!

  A memoir written a few years ago by the now outgoing foreign minister, Władysław Bartoszewski—one of three so-called presidential ministers to resign following Wałȩsa’s defeat—was entitled It’s Worth Being Decent. This from a man who was a political prisoner both in Auschwitz and in Stalinist jails. But, fifty years on, the message for a young Pole would appear to be, It’s Worth Being an Opportunist.

  Aesthetically and morally, the triumph of the postcommunists in Poland is profoundly distasteful. But is it dangerous? Not, I believe, so far as their aims and policies are concerned. The leader of Russia’s communist party, Gennady Zhuganov, congratulated “the Polish working masses” on their victory. But you won’t catch Mr. Kwasniewski talking about “working masses.” On the contrary, Poland’s postcommunists will do everything in their power to live up to the congratulations Kwasniewski received from Poland’s other big neighbor, Germany, and especially those from the new leader of Germany’s Social Democrats, Oskar Lafontaine. Kwasniewski and his friends want desperately to be seen not as eastern postcommunists but as regular Western social democrats. The president-elect immediately reaffirmed his commitment to Poland seeking membership in the European Union and NATO. Within days, the government was going ahead with the distribution of coupons for the long-delayed mass privatization.

  5

  It is now commonplace to observe that Poland has become a “normal country.” But what does this mean? Certainly, to arrive in Warsaw these days is more like arriving in Lisbon or Naples than it is like arriving in Warsaw before 1989. A smart modern airport. No need for a visa. When the passport officers call Polish passport—holders to a separate gate, you simply can’t tell the difference—in dress, accoutrements, hairstyles, and so on—between the two lines, Polish and Western. A relatively clean taxi, and you are actually charged the local-currency price on the taxi meter. Familiar shops, goods, cars. The same TV commercials. Smart offices. Mobile phones. Professional friends who are now overworked and defend themselves with answering machines. More and real money, but also more money worries: “Half our income goes in tax, the other half on school fees!” Great contrasts between rich and poor.

  Of course, if you dig just a little deeper you find extraordinary things. The man in the Mercedes is a former politburo member. Your mobile-phone salesman is a former secret policeman. In the countryside, you still see peasant houses out of Brueghel. Priests chunter on about “neopaganism.” But Europe—our “normal,” “Western,” Europe—is also full of extraordinary things. Between observing the Polish elections and writing this essay I had to drop in to Naples for the Premio Napoli awards. The Grand Hotel Vesuvio was even better than the Hotel Bristol in Warsaw, but driving through the city I could see the dreadful slums—far worse than anything in Warsaw— where people still go in fear of the Camorra. Among the Premio Napoli prizewinners was a Jesuit priest, who was being honored for his fight against usury. (“Why don’t you in Britain have a law against usury?” he quizzed me.) The popular postcommunist mayor was asked at the televised prize-giving ceremony what he thought of his rival, the postfascist Signora Alessandra Mussolini (daughter of you-know-who). And, incidentally, was it true that they have been romantically involved? While denying romance, the mayor said that Signora Mussolini had made a very positive contribution to solving some problems in the city. All normal?

  So the spectrum of contemporary European “normality” is very wide, and Poland is now definitely within it. But there is another measure of “normality”: diachronic rather than synchronic. What has been normal for a country historically over, say, the last two hundred years? By this criterion, Poland today is quite spectacularly abnormal. This country is free, sovereign, prospering? Germany is its best ally in the West? It is not immediately threatened even by Russia? Surely we’ve got our countries mixed up. I asked the Polish historian Jerzy Jedlicki when before in its history Poland had been so well placed. Scarcely hesitating, he replied, “Probably the second half of the sixteenth century.”

  Poland’s transition from normal abnormality to abnormal normality is already a fantastic achievement. The challenge for the next five years is to secure it, internally and externally—which means in the EU and in NATO. Only then will we, and the Poles themselves, begin to see what the Polish version of European “normality” really looks like. This Polish normality may well not be as interesting as the old abnormality. Indeed, it may at first look like a cheap copy of the West. But, if that is freedom’s price, it is surely worth paying. And, anyway, who knows? As the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper once wryly observed: History is full of surprises, and no one is more surprised by them than historians.

  CHRONOLOGY

  1995

  14 NOVEMBER. The European Monetary Institute publishes a timetable for monetary union.

  21 NOVEMBER. Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic, Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, and Croatian president Franjo Tudjman initial the Dayton peace agreement. This provides for the formal maintenance of a unitary state but far-reaching de facto division into the Bosniak-Croat Federation, having 51 percent of the territory, and the Serb Republic, having 49 percent. The Bosniaks get suburbs of Sarajevo and a corridor to Goražde; the Serbs retain Srebrenica and Žepa. A NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) is to police the agreement.

  30 NOVEMBER. President Clinton visi
ts Northern Ireland, encouraging the “peace process” there.

  6 DECEMBER. The German Bundestag votes for German forces to participate in IFOR in Bosnia.

  14 DECEMBER. The Bosnian, Serb, and Croat presidents formally sign the Dayton agreement.

  15-16 DECEMBER. An E U summit in Madrid agrees that the single European currency should be called the “euro.” Another intergovernmental conference, to review the implementation of Maastricht, will open at the end of March.

  17 DECEMBER. Communists win Russian parliamentary elections, with right-wing nationalists in second place.

  20 DECEMBER. In Bosnia, UNPROFOR hands over to IFOR, which divides the country into American, British, and French sectors.

  31 DECEMBER. A customs union between the E U and Turkey comes into force.

  1996

  8 JANUARY. Death of François Mitterrand.

  11-13 JANUARY. Hanbury Manor, England. At a high-level Franco-British meeting, a senior French businessman gives me his view of the eastward enlargement of the European Union to include former communist countries. “Il faut toujours en parler” he says, “et jamais y penser.” “One should always talk about it and never think about it.” I had always suspected that this was the attitude of much of the French elite to enlargement. But to have it expressed so clearly and elegantly is a kind of bitter delight. A wonderful thing, French clarté.

  24 JANUARY. Józef Oleksy resigns as Polish prime minister following allegations about his collaboration with the KGB and its successors. He will be succeeded by Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, former campaign manager for President Kwasniewski.

  9 FEBRUARY. An IRA bomb explodes in London’s docklands.

  3 MARCH. Spanish parliamentary elections end thirteen years of socialist rule and bring the center-right Popular Party to power. The prime minister will be José Maria Aznar.

  29 MARCH. An EU intergovernmental conference opens in Turin.

  5 APRIL. Berkeley, California. We tell our Californian host that we are going to visit Czeslaw Milosz, the great contemporary Polish poet, who lives near Berkeley. Later, our kind host collects us and asks, “Well, how is Milosevic?” O happy California, where no one needs to know the difference between a Milosz and a Milošević!

  21 APRIL. Italian parliamentary elections result in victory for the center-left “Olive Tree” alliance.

  25 APRIL. The German government announces cuts in public expenditure, to meet “Maastricht criteria” for monetary union.

  MAY. Financial crisis in Bulgaria.

  1 JUNE. In Czech parliamentary elections, the Civic Democratic Party of Prime Minister Václav Klaus loses its overall majority.

  10 JUNE. All-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland open at Stormont Castle in Belfast.

  23 JUNE. Death of the veteran Greek socialist leader Andreas Papandreou.

  JUNE. Controversy in Poland over the postcommunist government’s decision not to save the Gdansk shipyard, birthplace of Solidarity, from bankruptcy

  3 JULY. Boris Yeltsin is reelected president of Russia, defeating the communist leader Gennady Zhuganov.

  14 SEPTEMBER. Elections in Bosnia.

  15 SEPTEMBER. In Italy, Umberto Bossi, leader of the Northern League, declares the independence of the state of “Padania.”

  24 SEPTEMBER. The United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

  SEPTEMBER. Growing controversy about “Nazi gold” held by Swiss banks.

  15 OCTOBER. The Council of Europe admits Croatia.

  17 OCTOBER. President Yeltsin dismisses his national-security adviser, General Aleksandr Lebed.

  29 OCTOBER. London. I chair a meeting of more than 2,400 people with Mikhail Gorbachev in Westminster Central Hall, jointly arranged by The Times and Dillons bookshops to present his memoirs. Only in the central European revolutions of 1989 have I experienced such an explosion of spontaneous emotion as greets him the moment he steps onto the platform. At first, he is brief and sharp. What does he consider his three greatest achievements? I ask him. “Freedom, openness among nations, and an end to the arms race.” He earns wave after wave of applause. But, as the evening progresses, his answers get longer and longer. After a twenty-minute tirade against Boris Yeltsin, he has almost lost the audience; but then he wins them back again.

  At dinner afterward, Gorbachev proposes round after round of toasts, tapping his glass and crying, incongruously, “Achtung! Achtung!” (He has told a story about a Lufthansa pilot who kept saying that over the loudspeakers, so this is a kind of joke.) Close impressions: immense strength and warmth of personality. Above all, warmth—human, all-embracing warmth. A man settled in himself: happy to be Russian, happy to have been Soviet. A slightly surprising and very engaging simplicity, for all his experience of the world. His touching, obvious affection toward his wife, Raisa. And the sheer surreality of sitting here, in a London club, as this man who changed the course of the twentieth century proposes toasts with a jovial “Achtung! Achtung!”

  Raisa seems to feel this surreality, too. At one point she feels it necessary to remind us, in her slightly schoolmarmish way, that no previous Soviet leader would have sat with us so informally. “No, Lenin would not have,” she says. “Stalin would not have.” Something between a giggle and a shiver goes around the table. “Not Khrushchev. Or Andropov. Or Chernenko.” “Well, Andropov might have, you know,” says Gorbachev, indulgently.

  31 OCTOBER. The European Commission accepts the legitimacy of a onetime payment by France Telecom to the French government to help France meet the Maastricht criteria for monetary union.

  FORTY YEARS ON

  WHAT HAPPENED IN HUNGARY IN 1956? HERE IS A FAIRLY TYPICAL brief Western summary, from the Columbia Encyclopedia:

  On Oct. 23, 1956, a popular anti-Communist revolution, centered in Budapest, broke out in Hungary. A new coalition government under Imre Nagy declared Hungary neutral, withdrew it from the Warsaw Treaty, and appealed to the UN for aid. However, János Kádár, one of Nagy’s ministers, formed a counter-government and asked the USSR for military support. In severe and brutal fighting, Soviet forces suppressed the revolution. Nagy and some of his ministers were abducted and were later executed. Some 190,000 refugees fled the country. Kádár became premier and sought to win popular support for Communist rule.

  In Hungary itself, the history of the 1956 revolution was obliterated or traduced for more than thirty years, while János Kádár progressed from Soviet quisling to domestic father figure and the West’s favorite “liberal” communist. Yet through all those years, Kádár himself seems to have been haunted and driven by the memory of the comrades he had betrayed and, finally, condemned to death. Imre Nagy was his Banquo—and he was always Macbeth.

  A part of the true history was written abroad. Another part was gradually rediscovered by independent historians and oppositional writers inside Hungary in the 1980s, interviewing survivors, publishing suppressed writings, and drawing their own conclusions. Then, in June 1989, Imre Nagy and his closest associates were ceremonially reburied. Beside the coffins of the leaders lying in state on Heroes’ Square, there lay a symbolic sixth coffin of the Unknown Insurgent. This was the great symbolic turning point in Hungary’s transition from communism to democracy. Banquo’s ghost was enthroned.

  In a free Hungary, the true history of 1956 could surely at last be revealed. A whole institute was established for this single purpose: the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Archives were opened. Survivors could now talk freely. Young historians set to work. The 1956 Institute produced a new short history of the revolution, which became the Hungarian school textbook.1

  With the end of communism elsewhere, more evidence also emerged from the Soviet Union, from Yugoslavia, even from China. Not all the evidence, of course, but more. Meanwhile, American, British, French, and other Western official documents became available under the “thirty-year rule.” Some, perhaps the most interesting, remained classified, but scholars pr
essed for further access and, in the United States, used the Freedom of Information Act to demand it.

  1

  Now, forty years on, scholars and survivors assemble in the handsome rooms of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, its high windows looking across the Danube from naughty Pest to haughty Buda. Inside, it looks like just another academic conference.2 We might be in London, at a conference about the Suez crisis that so fatefully coincided with the Hungarian revolution. This forty-year moment is an interesting one even in more normal countries: the first and generally the last occasion when reasonably digested findings from the archives can be confronted with the reasonably coherent memories of surviving participants. Thirty years after the event, most of the archives are still closed; fifty years on, most of the participants are no longer with us. Yet in Budapest, the witnesses have survived not just, say, too many good dinners at the Carlton Club in London but a death sentence commuted at the last minute to fourteen years in prison. So the occasion is not ordinary at all.

  Being tested here is the central proposition of modern historical writing since Ranke: that with the passage of time we know more about the past. This is supposed to be the case because we have greater distance from the past; because we are (supposedly) more impartial; because we can see the longer-term consequences and therefore the larger historical “meaning” of the events in question; and, above all, because the documents are now available. The subtitle of this conference is “The New Archival Evidence.” Following Ranke, we should now learn “how it really was.” But do we, can we?