1) recapitulation - everyday life under communism

Today the communism of the Soviet empire may seem to many of you like ancient history. Yet it was a force in the Western world until only a decade ago. Even in its inadequacies, the communist model provided the basis for a critique of Western society that has now vanished. It also, even in its failure, addressed problems about the just society with which we must continue to wrestle, especially as the problems of the limits of economic growth, the vanishing of the fuel resources of the earth, the contamination of the biosphere, and the growth of the human population increasingly demand our attention.

From an historical perspective, communism is important too as the setting for the last act of the great revolutionary movement that had shaped the modern era. I am referring here to the revolutionary movement against the communist regimes. With its victories in 1989-90, the modern era of revolution, launched in the American and French Revolutions of the late 18th century, came to a close in the struggle to at last make the countries of eastern Europe free (liberal) societies.

We are left with an ambiguous legacy from the communist experience: with fewer expectations for the future of the good society and an inability to address the dire problems facing humankind; with the despair of terrorism that has become so prominent over the last decade.

Last time we were discussing long-range factors in the failure of communism:

-insidious comparisons with the West, and its glittering consumer society

-the mediocre quality of life under communism, with its want of creature comforts. Particularly insightful are the collected essays of Slavenka Draculic, a Croatian journalist who has written about life under communism in eastern Europe. I would note especially these among her observations:

Given these long-range problems with the Communist system, why did it fail in the late 20th century? Why now? Here short-run factors present themselves.

-the profound hatred of the Soviet empire bred by the military intervention of the Red Army to suppress reform;

-the court of world opinion, which criticized the communist regimes more openly;

-the global economy, with its array of vastly superior Western produced consumer goods;

-the electronic revolution, in which ordinary people in communist societies could not hope to participate;

-the inability of communist leaders to get beyond Stalinist conceptions of party organization or to democratize the party;

-the odyssey of the revolutionary movement against communism from the 1950s to the 1980s. As the revolutions of the early nineteenth century had been against conservative monarchies, those of the late twentieth century would be against conservative communist governments.

II The Revolutionary Movement against the communist regimes of eastern Europe

We note these general characteristics:

It exemplified the old model, the classic alliance of revolutionary leaders (often intellectuals) and popular following that dated from the time of the French Revolution;

This popular movement would topple communist authority by 1989;

The movement was conceived as one of national liberation from oppressive communist authority, which had proved to be as tyrannical as the worst of the monarchs of old Europe;

The movement was not coordinated by groups across national lines, but only shared sympathies;

For study purposes, I note two phases to the growth of the revolutionary movement:

The Failed Reform from within: Hungary 1956

The Hungarian defiance of communist orthodoxy was the first serious challenge to the Soviet Union. The Hungarian Communists moved from national communism toward Yugoslav-style revisionism. In 1956 they attempted to sever close ties with the Soviet Union in what amounted to a popular insurrection on the model of the 19th-century revolutionary tradition.

The Hungarian revolution was inspired by the leadership of Imre Nagy. He was appointed premier in 1953 and tried for two years to restore economic stability and confidence in the Communist regime in Hungary. His rival, Matyas Rakosi, a hard-line Stalinist, retained his position as Communist party 1st secretary

premier 1st secretary

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revisionist Stalinist

Nagy's reforms, 1953-55, included:

To deepen that protest, the Petofi Circle of intellectuals demand an investigation of Rakosi's role in the execution of Laslo Rajk, a national communist liquidated under Stalin's orders in 1949. He had been convicted of "Titoist deviationism" in a show trial. Rakosi now admitted Rajk's innocence of such a charge.

In 1955 Rajk was given a belated state funeral, which became a rallying point for popular protest. The Petofi intellectuals called for Rakosi's removal. When Rakosi arrested Nagy and a number of his supporters, Soviet leaders recognized the profound popular unrest that he was arousing in Hungary. They were reluctant to back him and used their influence to replace him with Erno Gero, whose views were in fact not much different from those of Rakosi. The intellectuals opposed him as well.

Gero's appointment led to mass demonstrations in October (also in support of the Polish protesters of the "Polish October" movement). The Petofi circle coordinated several of these demonstrations. On one occasion, 200,000 protesters march in the streets of Budapest.

Panicked, Gero called in the Soviet Army to quell these demonstrations and the riots they sometimes incited. This only heightened popular ire. Workers joined the students in these uprisings; even units of the Hungarian army threatened to participate in the "anti-soviets," that were emerging spontaneously throughout Hungary, i.e., workers councils that were set up to protest Soviet intervention.

In late October, Soviet troops were recalled from Budapest and Nagy was named premier; Janos Kadar was named 1st secretary

Rokosi

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Gero

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The Soviet Red Army intervened and crushed popular resistance. Nagy was arrested, tried and hanged. He became a martyr for the cause of the overthrow of Soviet tyranny, not only in Hungary but everywhere in the eastern bloc.

Although he acquiesced before Soviet intervention, Kadar would over the next decade steer Hungary toward its own form of national communism. Over the long run Kadar in Hungary succeeded better than party boss Gomulka in Poland in promoting economic development and in raising the standard of living in his country. Perhaps more than any other eastern bloc nation, Hungary would move toward a more consumer-oriented society. After the 1989 revolution, its transition to a model of liberal democracy and private enterprise would be easier than that of most eastern European nations.

The Failed Reform from within: Czechoslovakia and the "Prague Spring" 1968

The Czech defiance of the USSR began as a quieter revolution. The movement for change in Czechoslovakia built on a stronger liberal tradition. It was the only east European country that had succeeded after World War I in establishing a working democracy. After the war, its government in exile returned to take up its responsibilities. Czechoslovakia had a coalition government and free elections until 1948, when it was repressed by Stalin. Afterwards, the Communist Party prevailed.

The Czech communist party leader during the 1950s and 1960s was Antonin Novotny, a Stalinist protégé. Under his leadership, Czechoslovakia went far in the direction of collectivization of agriculture and industry. Compared to other eastern European countries, Czechoslovakia prospered. But Czech institutions under communism were rigidly centralized, and by the 1960s, the communist experiment there had grown stale. Economic problems began to present themselves

There were four principal problems:

a) an old and outmoded industrial plant. There was a pressing need for industrial modernization and for a new style of economic leadership

b) ethnic tensions. There was a considerable Slovak minority (31%) and they resented Czech domination of the communist party. They demanded economic de-centralization. In 1963 a young Slovak reformer, Alexander Dubcek, emerged as leader of the Slovak wing of the party.

c) dissident writers and intellectuals began to complain openly about censorship and the absence of cultural freedom. They, too had been encouraged by Soviet de-Stalinization. They were also influenced by the humanist Marxism that flourished in the West, where the writings of the young Marx, The Economic and philosophical Manuscripts (1844) had been rediscovered and popularized. Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse were widely discussed in intellectual circles.

Such problems generated a reform movement within the Communist Party, led by Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak communist leader.

In the Czech "revolution" of 1968 reformers did not oppose the communist party (as they had in Hungary); rather they gained control of it. The protest of students at Charles University in Prague in November 1967 over dormitory living conditions gave the Communist Party reformers an issue with which to force Novotny's ouster in december 1967. He was replaced with Dubcek.

By January 1968, Dubcek and his reform-minded colleagues managed to oust Novotny as first party secretary of the communist party. By March they replaced him as Czech president as well. Ludvik Svoboda, a reformer, was elected.

Antonin Novotny <--->Alexander Dubcek=Ludvik Svoboda

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1st secretary president

They then proceeded to undertake the most far-reaching experiment in communist revisionism to that date.

With reformers in control of both the party and the government, economic and political reforms were initiated. This reform period in early 1968 is known as the "Prague Spring."

The economist Ota Sik designed these reforms, which included:

The population replied with passive resistance.

The second phase of the revolutionary movement, during the 1970s and 1980s, tried to work around the Communist party, for which many intellectuals and labor leaders abandoned all hope of reforming.

the creation of a counter-society and the revolution against the communist regimes - the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia

Vaclav Havel was Czechoslovakia's revolutionary as public intellectual. He was to lead the revolution; then become the republic's president and a great statesman besides. Havel has since been accorded high acclaim in international political and intellectual circles. He writes for prominent Western journals of commentary.

As a young man, Havel was a playwright. His hopes for the making of a more democratic Czechoslovakia were roused by the Prague Spring of 1968, only to be dashed by its suppression. In the face of the reimposition of old-style communist rule, Havel went into internal exile, spending much of his time in a mountain retreat writing plays. He remembers it as a lonely time. In the mid-1970s, he began seeking out old friends in Prague. Together they formed a discussion group. They exchanged ideas and compared their literary creations, and the group soon attracted many among Prague's literary and artistic avant-garde. The group dedicated itself to taking up the work begun and quashed in the Prague spring of promoting freedom of expression in Czechoslovakia. Eventually their activities attracted the attention of the government censors, agents of the communist bureaucracy who saw artistic expression as a threat to communist rule, sometimes with comic effect.

The first cause that Havel and his friends took up was the defense of a rock n' roll group that called themselves the Plastic People of the Universe. Havel thought their music was refreshing; the censors thought it was subversive and tried to prosecute these rock musicians as criminals. Havel characterizes the group this way: "They were simply young people who wanted to live in their own way, to make music they liked, to sing what they wanted to sing, to live in harmony with themselves and to express themselves in a truthful way." As for the censors and their bureaucratic masters, Havel strikes a note similar to that of Drakulic about communist political authority: "Their cause was not political. It was something far worse: an attack by the totalitarian system on life itself, on the very essence of human freedom and integrity."

In defense of this cause, Havel and his friends began to publicize their demand for freedom of artistic expression more directly. By 1977 they drafted the Charter of '77, a manifesto of their demand for civil liberties. Openly and secretly, support for their efforts grew. More and more prominent intellectuals rallied to their cause. Havel's discussion group was the embryo of the Civic Forum, the revolutionary movement that would usher in the revolution of 1989 in Czechoslovakia. As a new kind of revolutionary formation, it was analogous to that of Solidarity in Poland.

Eventually Havel was arrested. He remarks in his memoir that in those days he lived near the Ruzyni prison in Prague. He passed it everyday. One day a police agent accosted him and cheerfully invited him to "drop by his office to answer a few questions." Thus began a long process of intimidation, in the kindly manner of postmodern totalitarianism. After his first interrogation, he was "invited" back each day for up to eight hours of questioning. He was threatened with a long prison sentence, advised that "the fun is over," and reminded that "the working class hates what you are doing." After several weeks of this routine, he was arrested. Many of his friends in the group underwent the same interrogations, but none was arrested. Havel attributes this to the fact that he alone owned a car. His arrest, his interrogators believed, would intimidate the others and persuade them to desist from their civil rights campaign.

Of course it did not. The agitation in behalf of the Chartist movement grew, though Havel was sent to prison. Even though he knew his cause was just, he found the public disgrace of prison difficult to bear. In May 1977, he was released after serving four months. But he was arrested and imprisoned again in 1979, this time for four years. This was a difficult time, as he was subjected to conditions of slave labor. He worked in the prison's welding shop, then its laundry, then in a scrap metal plant. The work quotas he was set were impossible to fulfill and he was punished with reduced rations. The regimen took its toll on him physically. But he found the resources for mental discipline. He claims to have emerged from prison stronger, if not so jolly.

No one was more surprised to find Havel elected president of Czechoslovakia in December 1989 than Havel himself. In a now famous speech that he delivered to the Polish parliament in January 1990, he drew an inspiring portrait of the tide of freedom that was rising across eastern Europe. His vision remains unrealized, for leaders with his honesty and courage are few.