Reinventing Politics
Page 31
On December 3, under the impact of those traumatic revelations, Krenz and the whole SED Politburo resigned. Two weeks later the SED’s moral and political crises were recognized during an extraordinary Congress at which delegates engaged in recriminations and devastating criticism of the deposed leadership. On that occasion a report was presented by professor Michael Schumann, a proponent of reform and a member of the Academy of Science, who accused the former leaders of having betrayed the confidence of the party: “The Politbureaucrats denounced the uprising of the people as a counterrevolution and wanted to repress it with violence, but in reality they were the counterrevolutionaries.”47 As the general mood in the GDR increasingly favored reunification, the communists found themselves at a loss. Even if they had championed the most dramatic reforms, they had no constituency for their strategies. With its corruption and despotism, the previous leadership had dramatically compromised the ideal of socialism even in the eyes of those who had believed in Marxism-Leninism and had fought for the preservation of the GDR. The only solution for the party was to rename itself and to undertake a complete cleansing of its apparatus. The party’s new name was the Socialist Unity Party of Germany—Party of Democratic Socialism, a clear indication that the values of socialism with a human face had finally been embraced by the East German communists. The new name was the late and spasmodic triumph of revisionism within a political formation that had most consistently opposed any form of democratization. Its Congress elected Gregor Gysi, a forty-one-year-old lawyer, as the party’s new chairman. Gysi had started his political career in early December, when he was chosen to head the commission set up by SED reformers to investigate the abuses perpetrated by the former leaders. His background, however, would have recommended him for a leading position in the country’s emerging democratic parties. During the Honecker regime Gysi, the son of a party veteran who had served in the 1960s as Minister of Culture, was well known for his long-standing support for the opposition. Indeed, he had been involved in the defense in court of dissidents and conscientious objectors and had represented the opposition group New Forum when the group was seeking official recognition in September and October. At that time the authorities had labeled the New Forum “an enemy of the state.” Gysi brought all his prestige as an advocate of pluralism and human rights to bear in an effort to refurbish the party’s battered image. Why Gysi accepted the suicidal mission as the captain of the sinking ship of East German socialism remains a mystery. The only explanation is that he himself was a leftist idealist who hoped against hope that something could be rescued from the moral rubble associated with the SED rule.
In the month that followed the breach of the Berlin Wall, the SED membership decreased from 2,300,000 to 1,800,000, and the overall trend was definitely toward dissolution. Gysi’s position was that the SED had to be actually refounded by breaking with the Stalinist legacy and committing itself to the values of pluralism and democracy. Gysi called for a genuine change in the party’s identity so that it could become “the natural home of democratic socialists and not a class party or a party of the masses.” That new philosophy was the exact opposite of the Bolshevik conception of the communist party as an enlightened vanguard that dictates to the masses its own ideological choices without any concern for their real needs and grievances. Gysi also accepted the principle of competition with other political parties as a natural component of an open society.48 As a result of those fundamental concessions, the SED hoped to burnish its image and to remain a significant political force even in the aftermath of free elections.
The discontent of the population however, was so powerful that in a matter of months the calls for reunification became national, and the opposition parties advocated acceleration of the process. With his half-hearted reforms and lack of inspiring political vision, Hans Modrow, the communist Prime Minister, could not convince the East Germans that a separate socialist state had any reason to exist. Even alternative groups like the New Forum, which preferred a gradual rapprochement between the two German states to a rapid reunification, lost their political appeal. The anger of the masses grew in direct proportion to the procrastinations of the Modrow government in purging the secret police. There were explosions of popular wrath that led to the storming of Stasi headquarters. Communism in East Germany collapsed ingloriously and unlamented. As for Erich Honecker, he and most of his acolytes were placed under house arrest to await trial for their involvement in political and economic crimes.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA’S VELVET REVOLUTION
The breakdown of the East German police state exhilarated the unofficial groups and movements in neighboring Czechoslovakia. The radicalization of the opposition had been visible since January 1989, when demonstrations were organized to commemorate the self-immolation twenty years earlier of the student leader Jan Palach. The playwright Vaclav Havel and dozens of other civil rights activists were imprisoned in the regime’s attempt to stifle the growing dissent. In June 1989 Havel and other opposition figures issued a petition entitled “Just a Few Sentences,” which called for the country’s immediate democratization. Increasingly alienated from the population, the Husak—Jakes regime promised limited economic reforms but refused to enter a dialogue with the mushrooming opposition groups. The uniqueness of the Czechoslovak situation was that there was no reformist group in the leadership to engage in immediate negotiations with the opposition. Because the authority of the ruling party had fallen apart, the prospects for further social unrest were high. On November 17 the government used police violence to quell a student demonstration. That brutal response to an absolutely nonviolent form of civic protest was the spark that ignited a public explosion. Strikes and protest meetings spread across the country.
Stripped of Soviet support and even sympathy, the communist leaders in Czechoslovakia backed down and renounced the only option—taking up the military high command’s offer to intervene—they had for remaining in power. Short-sighted and arrogant as they were, the bureaucrats realized nonetheless that such a solution would have resulted in immense bloodshed that would have horrified the world. They lacked the Ceausescu-like fanaticism that operated one month later in Romania, when the army and the police were used against unarmed demonstrators in Timisoara and Bucharest. It was not, of course, because of humanism that the Czechoslovak leaders renounced the use of violence, but because they knew that such a course would have contradicted Soviet interests.
Brought to power in the name of the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Husak—Jakes team of collaborationists lost power as an effect of the “Sinatra Doctrine,” the Soviet decision to allow each East European country to pursue its own variety of reform. Battered and humiliated, the communist leadership resigned en masse on November 25. The hard-liner Milos Jakes was replaced by Karel Urbanek, a forty-eight-year-old former party boss in Bohemia. Immediately thereafter Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, who had engaged in negotiations with representatives of the opposition, announced his intention to resign as well. The cosmetic changes in the party elite convinced no one, and hundreds of thousands gathered again in Wenceslas Square, a long pedestrian plaza, to listen to Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek denounce the attempts of the neo-Stalinists to preserve power: “The new leadership is a trick that was meant to confuse.”49 As a further expression of the maturation of the civil society, in the days that followed the ruthless suppression of the student demonstration the opposition formed two alliances: the Civic Forum in Prague and the Slovakian Public Against Violence in Bratislava. A prominent role in the formation of the Civic Forum was played not only be such celebrated leaders of Charter 77 as Vaclav Havel and Jiri Dienstbier but also by intellectuals belonging to the official culture. In its programmatic document issued on November 26, the Civic Forum called for the reconstruction of the Czechoslovak political and economic system, a separation of powers, the development of a market economy free of bureaucratic intervention, environmental protection, and a foreign policy that would allow Czechoslovakia to resume its honor
able position within Europe and the world:
We demand fundamental and permanent changes in the political system in our society. We must establish or renew democratic institutions and mechanisms which will allow the real participation of all citizens in public affairs and at the same time become effective barriers against the abuse of political and economic power. All existing and newly founded political parties and other political and social associations should have the right of equal participation in free elections for all levels of government. This assumes however that the Communist Party abandons its constitutionally guaranteed leading role within our society, as well as its monopoly control of the media. There is nothing to prevent it from doing so tomorrow.50
A general strike on November 27 paralyzed the whole country and showed that the government had no choice but to accept the demands of the opposition. The pressure from below had become unbearable for the increasingly beleaguered Czechoslovak communist leaders. As an indication of the disintegration of the ruling group’s cohesion, the official daily Rude Pravo deplored the paralysis of the Central Committee and of the “political mummies” who were preventing the opening of the political system. The newspaper struck a Gorbachevite note when it urged the party to recognize the principle of pluralism and to prepare for “free democratic elections.” On November 29 the Federal Assembly abolished the constitutional clause guaranteeing the communist party’s leading role. The way was thus open for the complete disbandment of the artificial power structure imposed by Soviet tanks in August 1968. With his remarkable self-control and strategic acumen, Havel emerged as a national leader. The nation recognized itself in the idealistic, self-effacing playwright and ex-prisoner whom the tide of history had brought to the forefront of a revolutionary upheaval. The same man who had served jail sentences for having advocated respect for human rights and had defended those unjustly persecuted was now a leading partner in negotiations with those who had sent him to prison. After two reshuffles, on December 10 a coalition government was formed that included a noncommunist majority. On December 29 Vaclav Havel, the founder of the Civic Forum and the architect of the “velvet revolution,” was elected Czechoslovakia’s President.
In the meantime, a Warsaw Pact summit had taken place in Moscow on December 4. The Kremlin and its allies had formally acknowledged that the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 had been illegal. The joint statement published at the end of the summit meant the final solemn repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine and constituted a green light for the revolutionary forces in the former satellite countries. The issue for Czechoslovakia and the other Sovietized societies was to get rid of the vestiges of a political and economic system that had imposed an immense toll on the individual. In his New Year’s Day address, Havel poignantly emphasized that democracy had to be rebuilt on a social ground devastated by corruption, incompetence, and cynicism. It was not only the economic decay that Havel deplored, but first and foremost the destruction of the sense of human trust and solidarity and the debasement of society’s moral fabric. Those ailments were seen as communism’s most unfortunate legacy:
We have become morally sick because we have become accustomed to saying one thing and thinking something else. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility and forgiveness have lost their depth and their dimensions. For many of us, these qualities are now little more than mere psychological peculiarities or lost greetings from times long past, somewhat laughable in an age of spaceships and computers. Only a handful of us were strong enough to cry loud that those in power should not be all-powerful, that the special farms growing ecologically pure quality food for the rulers should send their produce to the schools, childrens’ homes and hospitals, since thus far, our agriculture was unable to offer this kind of produce to everyone. The previous regime—armed with an arrogant and intolerant ideology—reduced Man to a force of production and the natural world to an implement of production. In so doing, it assaulted their very essence as well as their relationship. The regime reduced a gifted and self-determining people, capable of skillfully managing their country, to cogs in some monstruously large, noisy and evil-smelling machine of whose purpose nobody could be quite sure. The machine was capable of little more than slowly and inexorably winding down, wearing itself and all its cogs out in the process.51
Drawing upon the theoretical and political legacy of Czechoslovakia’s precommunist experiment in democracy, Havel suggested that his country could become the ideal place for trying out a new type of politics. He referred to Tomas Masaryk’s ideas about a political life based on mutual respect and even love rather than on petty squabbles and endless bickering:
Masaryk based his politics on morality. Let us attempt in this new era to reaffirm this concept of politics within us. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of the desire to contribute to the well-being of the community rather than of the urge to create or violate the community. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can be more than the mere art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals and expediency. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can even be the art of the impossible, namely the art of improving ourselves and the world.52
This uplifting counsel from the philosopher-playwright-turned-president mapped the course for the reinvention of politics in Eastern Europe. From the economic and moral debris of the old regime, the people were advised to reconstruct human nature in accordance with the commandments of solidarity, trust, and hope. It was important to overcome the legacy of suspicion and the widespead mistrust of politics and to recognize that the social space could and should be impregnated with moral values.
The revolution against Sovietism had been waged in the name of a universal conception of human rights, and it was perfectly normal for Havel to assume that the new politics in Czechoslovakia would be different from the schemings and rivalries characteristic of traditional politics. The ethicization of politics sounds a bit idealistic, but it is important to remember that the whole East European upheaval had started in the name of transpolitical and sacred human rights. Decades earlier, hoping against hope that the Stalinist glacier would melt down one day, Czeslaw Milosz presciently wrote that
… these countries seem to be the most important part not only of Europe, but of the whole world: if we assume that the New Faith [Marxism-Leninism] will spread throughout the earth, then these are the first and the most interesting areas of the experiment outside Russia itself. If we assume that the Center will lose, then the economic and culture patterns that will arise subsequently in these countries will certainly be new, for there is no such thing in history as a return to the status quo.53
Indeed, as will be discussed in Chapter 7, the break with communism and the restoration of a free public space did not result in the mere revival of the precommunist traditions. The new forms were actually syncretic combinations of nostalgia for the past and bold experiments in society-building. One could not simply write off more than four decades of communist domination, including the indoctrination of the population, the instilling of a sense of fear and insecurity in the individual, and the suppression of personal autonomy. It is difficult but necessary to embark on the construction of a state based on the rule of law in a place where the inhabitants have spent most of their lives under lawless regimes. The new politics therefore meant not a continuous and ineffective settling of accounts, but a regeneration of the social space through a rehabilitation of the moral fiber within the individual citizen. That could be achieved within the newly created associations, groups, and parties, which would ensure the limitation of government power and would create an environment conducive to the affirmation of the citizens’ rights. Havel gave expression to the ultimate dream of moral and political emancipation of the long-subjugated East European nations: “You may ask what kind of republic I dream of. And I reply: I dream of a republic independent, free and democratic, of a republic economically pros
perous, yet socially just, in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it.” And to conclude this masterful lesson in civic consciousness, the Czechoslovak President solemnly announced: “People, your Government has returned to you!”54
While Havel was speaking in January 1989 of the return of legitimate government in Czechoslovakia, in Bulgaria three leaders of the emerging human rights movement were arrested while the regime pretended to pay lip service to Soviet-style reforms. The opposition exploited the regime’s official support for perestroika to organize informal associations dedicated to promoting glasnost in Bulgaria. But it was in Romania, more than in any other Warsaw Pact country, that repression reached its most appalling and grotesque level. Whether in Bulgaria or Romania or outside the Warsaw Pact in Albania or Yugoslavia, in the long run the efforts of the hard-liners to coordinate their resistance to change could not succeed. They were all exponents of a different political age, Stalinist dinosaurs who could not prevent the development of critical currents within their own societies. The more they refused to accept the need for change, the stronger the reaction of the oppressed population and the weaker the capability of the communist elites to preserve a minimal credibility at the moment of revolutionary explosion.