Revolution 1989

by Victor Sebestyen

  Two weeks before Gorbachev’s UN speech, he faced a major clash with the military over the troop cuts he was planning to announce in New York. The Defence Minister, Yazov, and most of the generals were adamantly opposed. It would show weakness, they argued, and the troops were needed to protect the empire. Gorbachev harangued them:Why do we need such a big army? The truth is that we need quality, not quantity. Why do we spend two and a half times more on defence than the United States? No country in the world - except the underdeveloped ones, whom we flood with arms without ever being paid back - spends more per capita on the military . . . Do we want to continue to be like Angola? . . . [The military] still gets the scientific and technical talent, the best financial support, always provided without questions . . . Why do we need an army of six million people? What are we doing? Knocking our best young talent out of the intellectual pool. Who are we going to implement reforms with?

  He bludgeoned his will through and defence cuts were made, albeit slowly. But he faced growing resistance as it became clearer to many people that his domestic policies were not showing the intended results.8

  Consistently, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze battled with the chief spokesman for the Kremlin conservatives, Yegor Ligachev, a grey and uninspired apparatchik a decade older than Gorbachev, who was number two in the Soviet leadership. Initially Ligachev had supported the anti-corruption campaigns and helped to ease some of the incompetent Communist barons from the provinces. But within a couple of years he began complaining that Gorbachev wanted to ‘destroy’ the socialist order and began to manoeuvre against him. Ligachev was demoted from his position in early 1988, but he continued to be a powerful figure in the leadership. He warned Gorbachev that he risked ‘the demolition’ of the Soviet bloc. ‘Arguably, we will muddle through and will survive,’ he said. ‘But there are socialist countries, the world Communist movement, what do we do about them? Would we risk breaking up this powerful support that has existed side by side [with us] . . . We should think not only about the past but about the future.’ Gorbachev ridiculed him and others he saw as ‘panic-mongers who feared the destruction of what was built up by Stalin’. Shevardnadze made an outburst that appalled Ligachev and the rest of the Party old guard. ‘As far as the Communist and working class movement today is concerned, there isn’t much to rescue,’ he declared. ‘Take for instance Bulgaria, and the old leadership in Poland, take the current position in the GDR, and in Romania. Is this socialism?’9

  Gorbachev never thought through a consistent policy on the satellite states. He did not want the burden of empire, but it is clear that he never clearly calculated the consequences of retreating. He regarded Soviet relations with the bigger Western countries as much more important than the old ‘fraternal ties’ with the socialist commonwealth. It was clear when he met Helmut Kohl for the first time, in October 1988, that Gorbachev saw the summit as far more significant - and more congenial - than his frosty meetings with Honecker. West Germany counted substantially more in Soviet policy-making than East Germany. As domestic considerations began to overwhelm him, he left others to handle mundane matters to do with Eastern and Central Europe. He had long ago ruled out in his own mind using force to maintain Soviet control over the satellites. He had said it many times - not least to the dictators who relied on Soviet troops to keep them in power. Most of his advisers agreed with him. As one of his most knowledgeable experts on Eastern Europe, Georgi Shakhnazarov, told him, the best way of maintaining influence in the region was ‘to use the force of example, not the example of force’.10

  Yakovlev and Shevardnadze now managed to persuade a reluctant bureaucracy to set non-intervention down as an absolute principle of Soviet foreign policy. For more than forty years, maintaining its European empire had been a Soviet priority. Now a highly secret Soviet Foreign Ministry policy declaration on the future of Eastern Europe said that the satellite states were not worth keeping:The allies are displaying an attempt to get more from the Warsaw Pact, mainly from the Soviet Union, than they contribute to it and showing independence to the detriment of common interests. At the same time it seems improbable that in the foreseeable future any of the allied countries will raise the question of leaving the Warsaw Pact. The Western powers do not wish confrontation with us on account of Eastern Europe. In the event of worsening crises . . . in individual countries they will most likely deploy restraint and not intervene in [their] internal affairs, least of all militarily, counting on their patience being rewarded in time. We ought to keep in mind that our friends have recently received the impression that, in conditions of intensive dialogue between the USSR and the US, our relations with the socialist countries have become secondary for us . . . We should proceed from the fact that the use of military force on our part in relations with the socialist countries . . . is completely excluded even in the most extreme situation (except in cases of external aggression against our allies). Military intervention would not prevent but worsen the social and political crises, cause mass outbreaks of protest even as far as armed resistance and lead in the final account to the opposite effect, the reinforcement of anti-Sovietism. It would seriously undermine the authority of the Soviet Union, would worsen our relations with the Western powers . . . and would lead to the isolation of the Soviet Union. If the situation worsens in one or other of the socialist countries, we should refrain . . . from giving public support to repressive actions of the authorities.11

  Gorbachev did not believe that the satellite states would rush to independence. It was his greatest miscalculation. He thought that when he visited Berlin or Prague, greeted by large crowds cheering ‘Gorby, Gorby’ and waving placards reading ‘Perestroika’, that the people supported his style of reform communism. He was convinced they would choose to stay allied to the Soviet Union. He did not realise that he had been wrong until after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Gorbachev failed to see that the demonstrators were hiding behind him as a way of protesting against their own rulers. But occasionally the thought that they might want their freedom had occurred to him. As he told aides at the end of 1988: ‘The people of these countries will ask “what about the Soviet Union . . . what kind of leash will it use to keep our countries in?” They simply do not know that if they pulled this leash harder, it would break.’12

  PART THREE

  REVOLUTION

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE WAR OF WORDS

  Budapest, Sunday 1 January 1989

  MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS in both the superpowers were growing increasingly worried about unprecedented troop movements along the 100-kilometre border between Hungary and Romania. It seemed barely conceivable that there could be a war between two countries allied together in the Warsaw Pact. Yet the signs were ominous. The Romanians had for many weeks been building a fortified wire fence on their side of the frontier. This was a second Iron Curtain, mainly to keep people imprisoned inside Romania. But when newly mobilised and heavily armed divisions of soldiers began appearing in the area, tension mounted. The Hungarians responded. The new Communist Party leader in Budapest, Károly Grósz, who had been in power for little more than six months, moved a crack regiment that had been deployed on the Austrian border to confront the Romanians. It was more than a symbolic gesture to indicate that Hungary now saw itself facing westwards. It was a response to genuine fear that Romania’s dictator might launch an invasion.

  The Russians were worried. Within their empire it was theoretically impossible that ‘fraternal allies in the socialist commonwealth’ should be in conflict. In former days even minor disagreements between the satellite states were not supposed to be aired in public, while comrades displayed a traditional show of unity under the benign ‘leading role’ of the Soviet Union. Communists, so the theorists said, had progressed beyond the stage of ‘bourgeois nationalism’ which had led to two world wars. But the Soviets had lost their sense of imperial mission. They no longer possessed the power to control all events in their domains, particularly events in Romania.
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br />   The Hungarians and Romanians were historic enemies. The main dispute between them was over the beautiful, mountainous, wooded region of Transylvania, with some of the most fertile farming land in Europe. Transylvania had been part of Hungary for centuries, until the end of World War One when it was awarded to Romania under the Trianon Treaty. The loss was grievously felt by a defeated Hungary, where there remained small groups of nationalists who believed they had a natural right to the region. About a million and a half Hungarian speakers, who culturally looked towards Budapest, formed a substantial minority inside Romania. Ceauescu had been mistreating them for a decade and a half. He banned the teaching of Hungarian in Transylvanian schools. He tried to suppress the Hungarian Reformed Church. He closed down Hungarian cultural centres in Transylvanian towns, and the Hungarian consulate in the main city in the region, Cluj. Ultimately, his vision was to destroy the Hungarians as an identifiable community within Romania.

  Around a third of Hungarians possessed relations in Transylvania. Ceauescu tried to sever the links between them. Romanians were not allowed to visit Hungary, and he tried to stop Hungarians crossing into Transylvania. As conditions worsened in Romania throughout the 1980s, Hungarians were barred from sending food parcels to ease the plight of their relatives and friends in Transylvania. Ceauescu thought most of the reform ideas that came from Budapest were subversive. He banned the Hungarian newspapers from Romania, even the principal Communist Party organs. He had already banned the Soviet press, after his aides had shown him flattering references in some Russian papers to perestroika and glasnost.

  In Transylvania, Ceauescu’s latest idea to reorder civilisation was perceived as the most dangerous threat yet to the Hungarian minority’s way of life. The dictator called his grand vision for the Romanian countryside ‘systemisation’. He planned to raze to the ground 8,000 of Romania’s 13,000 villages and replace them with 500 vast agroindustrial centres. The agricultural workers - nobody was to be called a peasant any longer - would live in the same kind of vast concrete blocks in which the urban proletariat were housed. Ceauescu imagined this was a progressive step to bring the benefits of Communist planning to ramshackle and poverty-ridden parts of the countryside without roads, electricity in some places, and plumbing. But no doubt he thought it would also be easier to keep an eye on the ‘agricultural workers’ in vast apartment blocks than in traditional villages dotted throughout Romania. By 1988 only three villages were destroyed, all close to Bucharest and near to already existing big collective farms. But the rumour was that the systemisation programme was to start - in Transylvania - soon and would be directed at Hungarian villages. The rumour alone caused an exodus of people to risk their lives and livelihoods in an effort to leave Romania. Over the years a trickle of Transylvanians had managed to cross into Hungary to begin new lives. Now, more than 25,000 went within a few weeks. Scores died in the attempt and thousands were arrested on their way to the border.

  The refugees sparked a crisis in Hungary. In the past, the Kádár regime had frequently complained to the Romanians about their treatment of the Hungarian minority. Although an agreement between the two countries signed twenty years earlier stated that ‘illegal’ refugees should be returned to Romania, the Hungarians in fact had sent none back to the tender mercies of the Securitate. The few refugees who managed to reach Hungary were made welcome and provided with accommodation by the authorities. Now the larger numbers created a dilemma. They were looked after by relatives, friends, churches and charitable groups. The Hungarian people were generous. But the public was outraged that the government appeared to be doing little to help the new arrivals and had approved only small amounts of money to provide for them. Legally their status was unclear. They seemed to be in limbo, while Ceauescu was demanding that they should be handed back to Romania. The Hungarians suggested that independent intermediaries go to Transylvania to look at conditions there, but Ceauescu said he would refuse to let them enter the country.

  This was another issue, like the Danube dam, that galvanised Hungarians. It was even more powerfully emotional than an environmental cause, as it touched a still-raw nationalist nerve. At first the government did not sense danger. The Communists thought that anti-Romanian protests could turn out to be a release valve that might reduce some of the pressure against them. One of the most prominent of the Communist reformers, Imre Pozsgay, placed himself at the forefront of the campaign against Ceausescu, whose ‘incomprehensible and idiotic political posturing is an injury to European civilisation and a crime against humanity’.1

  In the spring and summer of 1988, a series of huge demonstrations were held in Budapest and other big towns. They began with demands that the government should provide assistance for the Transylvanian refugees but they quickly turned into anti-Communist rallies. ‘Of course we went because we cared about the Hungarians in Transylvania, but mainly we went because we hated the Communists,’ Sándor Zsindely, whose family looked after several of the refugees, said. ‘These demonstrations were the only way to show it.’2

  The coup against Kádár was intended to buy time for the reformers in the Party. They believed that if the old man went, the public would think the ancien regime had gone and would warm to his successors. They were mistaken. The biggest of the demonstrations, on 28 June, was held six weeks after Kádár was ousted. More than 90,000 people marched on the streets of Budapest, a city of around one and a half million people. Pressure increased on Grósz, from outside and inside the country. Ceauescu summoned the new Hungarian leader to a conference at Arad, a small town just inside Romania, to discuss the refugees. Grósz accepted, against the advice of his close aides, leading Communist Party officials and most voices in the growing opposition, who wondered what the Hungarians could possibly gain from the encounter. They met at the end of August and Ceauescu seemed on his best behaviour. He was affable, and though he made none of the firm commitments Grósz wanted, on reopening the Cluj consulate for example, Ceauescu assured him he would guarantee civil rights to the Hungarian minority and ensure that Hungarian was taught in Transylvanian schools. Grósz went back to Budapest convinced that he had a deal with the Romanian dictator. But he had been ambushed. As soon as Ceauescu returned from Arad he bitterly denounced ‘Hungary’s intolerable interference in Romanian affairs’. The Romanian Party newspaper, Scînteia, declared that Hungary ‘was now making demands that not even the fascist Admiral Horthy dared to make in the 1930s’.3

  Leading figures in his own party accused Grósz of naïvety for accepting Ceauescu’s assurances and showing weakness. He never recovered his authority and was forced into making excessive concessions he had not intended to make. A new company law was announced that had far-reaching implications for communism, though the financial consequences were not seen for some time. In effect, central planning was abolished. Private share ownership was allowed for the first time; no limits were placed on the size of private firms; joint stock companies could be formed; foreign firms were allowed to buy entire Hungarian companies. A whole range of new tax incentives were introduced. ‘We have entered uncharted waters,’ Reszö Nyers, one of the economists who produced the plan, declared.4

  The war of words with Romania grew increasingly bitter. In November diplomats were withdrawn from both sides. Ceauescu demanded the return of the refugees. Hungary responded by granting the refugees asylum and signing the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. It was a first - none of the Soviet bloc countries had signed the document before. It was intended to give the Hungarians a legal cover for refusing to send the Transylvanians back, as the agreement between the two countries stipulated. The Party’s lawyers advised the government that the UN treaty superseded any agreement signed by countries within the Warsaw Pact. Ceauescu warned that if it came to an armed conflict, ‘Romania has the capability to build nuclear weapons’. It was a dubious claim, but Grósz could not be entirely certain it was a bluff. He had been surprised a few months earlier to discover that the Soviets had based nuclear weapons in his
own country. Even as Prime Minister nobody had told him that. In Hungary it was a secret known only by the Communist Party chief, the Defence Minister and two army generals.

  As the new year started, Ceauscu was reinforcing the border fence yet further and sounding more bellicose. The Romanian army was three times the size of Hungary’s. If it came to an armed conflict the outcome was unclear. The latest reports from Moscow were calmer and suggested that the Romanian Conductor was merely sabre-rattling and the row between the neighbouring states would blow over, but Grósz was not celebrating. He had been a Communist loyalist all his life and he was beginning to realise how quickly changes were about to take place. That day the Party paper, Népszabadság, had removed its ‘Workers of the World Unite’ emblem from its front page. In ten days’ time, on 11 January, under his leadership and against all his instincts, Hungary would become the first country in the socialist bloc to allow the formation of rival parties to the Communists.

  It was a historic moment, as faithful old comrades were telling Grósz this new year, that made him the gravedigger of communism. For a brief moment he considered taking drastic action. He ordered his most trusted aides to make a contingency plan to declare martial law in Hungary, in case of war with Romania or total economic collapse. It could also be the only way to keep the Party in power. He discussed the idea with few people in Hungary, but according to his foreign policy adviser, Gyula Thürmer, Grósz sought the advice of General Jaruzelski, who firmly warned him against the plan. It had done little good in Poland. ‘We won that battle, but the war was lost,’ the General said. He advised Grósz to stick to the route of making a deal with the opposition. Grósz resigned himself to his likely fate of being one of the shortest-lived leaders in Communist history.5