The Devil in History

by Vladimir Tismaneanu

  It was an exhilarating search for the “realm of freedom” prophesized by Marx, an explosion of what Hegel called unglückliches Bewusstsein (unhappy consciousness), a revolt of the libertarian undercurrents that had survived the mortifying experience of Stalinism. The theoretical manifestations of these undercurrents provided a new semantic horizon, the coalescence of a new emotional and intellectual infrastructure that was translated into a resurgence of repressed philosophical topics, above all humanism as a privileged metaphysical concern. The crushing of the Hungarian Revolution and the attempt to tame the Polish intelligentsia, the hardening of the political line in East European countries between 1957 and 1961, and the harsh antirevisionist campaign after the publication of the program adopted by the Communist League of Yugoslavia could not obstruct the creative philosophical openings nor hinder the antidogmatic impetus that resulted in the humanist-ethical outlook execrated by the impenitent Stalinists and neodogmatics. Revisionism was suppressed because of its commitment to values fatally perverted through official manipulation. It was a fallacious strategy based on wishful thinking and a doomed yearning for moral regeneration of the ruling elite. It foolishly demanded dialogue with those who valued only brutal force. Detlef Pollack and Jan Wielgohs accurately defined its ideological character as “system-immanent.” In the same vein, Adam Michnik aptly described the inescapable dilemma of neo-Marxist revisionism in East-Central Europe: “The revisionist concept was based on a specific intra-party perspective. It was never formulated into a political program. It assumed that the system of power could be humanized and democratized and that the official Marxist doctrine was capable of assimilating contemporary arts and social sciences. The revisionists wanted to act within the framework of the Communist party and Marxist doctrine. They wanted to transform ‘from within’ the doctrine and the party in the direction of democratic reform and common sense.”43

  The dominant ideological apparatus in the East European Communist Parties tried to maintain control over, and eventually to paralyze, all these potentially dangerous spiritual developments. From the beginning, de-Stalinization raised the crucial dilemma of “the prerogative to direct and control social and cultural change…. Even in its most populist, radical moments, however, the party continued to believe in the party's unimpeachable authority over the people.”44 Ideological hacks viciously attacked the very idea of the reforms from below that would go beyond the party-approved struggle against bureaucratization and for increased productivity. The “revisionist” claim for a profound, inclement analysis of the Stalinist system and of the whole tragic texture of events and situations euphemistically designated by the Communist parties as the “cult of personality” provoked ambivalent reactions. In October 1961, at the Twenty-second Congress of the Communist Party, Khrushchev unleashed a second onslaught on the memory of the defunct tyrant. Stalin's embalmed body was removed from Lenin's mausoleum, the sanctum sanctorum of Bolshevism. This new thaw, indeed a short-lived and inconclusive liberalization, stopped short of in-depth political and economic reforms: “As the party grew more confident in publicizing its iconoclastic narratives about the Stalinist past, it also, paradoxically (although perhaps necessarily) reduced its commitment to de-Stalinizing the Soviet public sphere.”45 The party leaders rapidly became aware of the subversive implications of the Marxist “return to the source” and discovered the negative-libertarian appeal of such concepts as alienation, humanism, self-managed democracy, human rights, and freedom of the subject. They also grew increasingly weary of “the potential new forms of interaction between state and society, and between individual citizens.”46

  Subsequently, revisionism became an obsessive projection of Stalinist ideologues, the embodiment of their secret anguish. To paraphrase Leszek Kołakowski, the jester could not avoid the confrontation with the intolerant reaction of the wrathful priests; he had to radicalize his “attitude of negative vigilance in the face of any absolute.”47 The nervousness of the Kremlin leadership regarding the increasingly daring behavior of young Soviet intellectuals radicalized by the new wave of de-Stalinization is best exemplified by Nikita Khrushchev's furious reprimand of Soviet poet Andrei Voznesensky. In March 1963, at the amphitheater of the House of the Unions during a meeting with the Soviet cultural elite, Khrushchev, upon hearing Voznesensky praise Vladimir Mayakovsky despite the fact that the latter had not been a party member, exploded:

  Why are you so proud that you are not a Party member? We will sweep you off clean! Do you represent our people or slander our people? … I cannot listen calmly to those who lick the feet of our enemies. I cannot listen to the agents. Look at him. He would like to create a party of noncommunists. Well, you are a member of the party, but it is not the same one I am in…. The Thaw is over. This is not even a light morning frost. For you and your likes it will be the arctic frost [long applause]. We are not those who belonged to the Petöfi Club. We are those who helped smash the Hungarians [applause]. … They think that Stalin is dead and anything is allowed … No, you are slaves! Slaves! Your behavior shows it.48

  A NEW FREEZE

  By the end of Khrushchev's rule in the fall of 1964, it was quite clear, both in the USSR and Eastern Europe, that systemic reform from within by a free-thinking intelligentsia operating within the party-defined boundaries of the permissible had ceased to be a viable option. At the same time, the epistemological priority of revisionism in the Soviet bloc consisted in focusing Marxist historical methodology on Marxism itself. In other words, the historicity of Marxism, the moment of the Marxist self-consciousness was central to reinventing the true value of negativity as a new space for the affirmation of particularity against the spurious universality glorified by the system. The Hegelian-Marxist direction seemed the most appropriate for assuming a metaphysical legitimacy, that spiritual source which expressed and symbolized the same ambitions, obsessions, anxieties, and hopes. During the sharp polemics of the 1930s, Karl Korsch postulated clearly the significance and seditious content of Marxist dialectics, and East European critical Marxists did not hesitate to adopt his stance, even to go beyond the positions crystallized in Marxismus und Philosophie: the Marxist thinker had the obligation to emphasize the philosophical dimension of Marxism, the negative nerve of dialectics, “in contrast with the contempt previously manifested, in different forms but with the same result, by the various currents of Marxism, toward the revolutionary philosophical elements of the doctrine created by Marx and Engels.”49

  The champions of the neodogmatic theology were, of course, the Soviet and East German official philosophers who specialized in hunting down the slightest sign of heterodoxy: in the GDR, from the party's chief theoretician, Kurt Hager, to people like Manfred Buhr or Wilhem-Raymund Bayer, the East German ideologues missed no opportunity to combat and eradicate the revisionist heresy.50 From this point of view, I believe it would be inaccurate to consider, with Kołakowski, that the traditional exclusive-dogmatic mentality was almost completely replaced by a cynical, strictly pragmatic approach specific to the new type of Communist bureaucrat. Certainly, the most intolerant generation of ideological clerks vanished after 1960, but one should not suspect the subsequent cohorts of apparatchiks of liberal or humanistic leanings. Morally and psychologically, they belonged to a generation different from the “priests” once evoked by Kołakowski. They had not been personally involved in the Stalinist crimes and had no reason to look for historical rationalizations, but politically they must have shared the same values as their forerunners. They were “objectively” prisoners of the same fallacious logic.51 The indifferent, amoebic ideological apparatchiks, with their simulated axiological aloofness, were actually an efficient element of the smoothly functioning authoritarian-bureaucratic superstructure: they had nothing in common with Marxist philosophy or Socialist ethics; they superbly ignored embarrassing problems of historical responsibility. To paraphrase Engels, their main task was to correct the logic of conflicting facts, to fashion and expound upon history, against all
hope, as immutably marching toward Communism. They had only one faith, one absolute credo; they paid tribute only to one God; they honored but one political value: their own bureaucratic survival, their enduring access to power, their right to dominate, to dictate, and to terrorize. They abandoned all pretense of credible, trustworthy communication of faith, thereby undermining the sustaining and eschatological myths of Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless, for instance among the Soviet leaders grouped around Leonid Brezhnev, “the enduring influence of Marxism-Leninism as the source of legitimacy and language of politics, together with an ingrained Stalinist outlook, produced a deep distrust of the West and a lasting susceptibility to ‘revolutionary’ appeals and expansionist policies.”52 The neo-Stalinist nomenklatura preserved deep loyalty to a radically simplified version of Marxist-Leninist holy writ: “[Brezhnev] thought that to do something ‘un-Marxist’ now was impermissible—the entire party, the whole world, was watching him. Leonid Ilyich was very weak in [matters of] theory and felt this keenly.”53

  In this respect, the late Soviet dissident and philosopher Aleksandr Zinovyev was right to delineate a perfect continuity from the first Stalinist generation—those people who perpetrated the crimes or supported the whole terrorist system—to the contemporary distant, cold, pseudosophisticated cultural (ideological) clerk making use of Marxist rhetoric to cover a moral and intellectual vacuum. However, it is difficult to sympathize with Zinovyev's simplistic attempt to identify Marxism with Stalinism and his total lack of interest in the “heretic” tradition of Marxism. Zinovyev banished as irrelevant all “revisionist” developments, the entire Hegelian-Marxist heritage and the contemporary negative-dialectical currents, as well as the para-Marxist criticism of totalitarian bureaucracy. He refused the possibility of “critical-genuine” Marxism, rejected as hypocritical and logically inconsistent any position attempting to separate original doctrine from adulterated practice: “Stalin was the most genuine and the most devoted Marxist…. Stalin was perfectly adjusted to the historical process which engendered him.”54 Zinovyev's negative attitude toward Western Marxism, his skeptical approach to negative dialectics and generally to any hypostasis of philosophical radicalism, should be related to the general metaphysical malaise Soviet and East European intellectuals expressed in their dissatisfaction with the “democratic illusions” and Socialist strategies promoted by the “radical humanist opposition” in the advanced industrial societies. At any rate, he showed a certain short-sightedness, ignoring the libertarian dimension of critical reason and underrating the absolute divorce between this outlook and the bureaucratic-Institutional orthodoxy. To reject de plano the validity and relevance of the antitotalitarian Marxist arguments meant suppressing a valuable segment of the necessary criticism of neo-Stalinist régimes and erasing a whole tradition of utopian-emancipatory thought.

  The publication of the young Marx's philosophical contributions had a tremendous impact in East European societies, because they were perceived as a true manifesto of the freedom of subjectivity, the emancipation of revolutionary praxis, and an unbounded approach to the social, economic, political, and cultural problems of Soviet-type regimes. The young Marx was a precious ally of liberal forces against the political conservatism of the dominant bureaucracies of Eastern Europe; a sensitive reading of these writings revealed irrefutable arguments against the oppressive prevailing order. To use Dick Howard's formulation, “Marx did announce that the specter of democracy is haunting Europe.” In rediscovering Marx, East European revisionists discovered the democratic implications of his theory.55

  The entire unorthodox Marxist tradition was eventually summoned to participate in the struggle against sclerotic social and economic structures: from Rosa Luxemburg to Trotsky, form the young Lukács and Karl Korsch to Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, from Gramsci to Sartre to the Frankfurt School, a whole intellectual thesaurus was invoked and developed in this offensive against the authoritarian bureaucracies. It was like the unexpected revival of a forgotten tradition, an evanescent osmosis with the impossible utopia, a tragic endeavor to recreate a mentality altogether opposed to the self-satisfactory, philistine logic of the monopolistic Communist elite. In partaking of this revolutionary and Marxist tradition, revisionist intellectuals had yet to renounce socialism. The young Marx's impulse was thereby unified with the rebellious legacy of classical German idealism; the unhappy consciousness was breaking loose from bureaucratic coercion. It was, therefore, logical that the counterreaction of the ideological apparatus consisted in supporting regimented philosophical and sociological investigations, those research areas that avoided the collision with the power monopoly of the Communist Party. Paradoxically, the watchful guarantors of official doctrine became supporters of the epistemological, praxiological, and logical researches, openly encouraging the once abhorred wertfrei approaches.

  Avoiding any simplifying scheme, we can distinguish three fundamental levels of ideological-spiritual stratification within the East European “bureaucratic-collectivist” societies in the 1960s and 1970s. First of all, there was the official ideological party apparatus, whose main concern was to preserve the purity and the integrity of the apologetic dominant doctrine and to ensure its hegemony. There were, of course, differences among the East European regimes: in Hungary the party bureaucrats spoke about the hegemony of Marxism, whereas in Romania or the GDR Marxism, or more precisely, the party interpretation of Marxism, was supposed to enjoy a total cultural-philosophical monopoly. The second level comprises the intellectuals trusted by the party apparatus, who shared the dominant values and myths of the regime. The party recruited many future apparatchiks from within their ranks, especially in the cultural field, thus bringing about a new social structure of the political elite. The third level was represented by those whose subversive and antisystemic voices become gradually more articulated from the ranks of the silent intellectual majority. This stratum was that of the challenging subgroup of dissidents and was made up both of all-out anti-Communists and of those who started along the path of revision but through disenchantment found the door open to apostasy. The interaction between these three camps, especially in the last decade of the Soviet bloc, represents one of the most important keys in explaining the sudden and shocking end of Communist regimes. Their respective positions set up the trajectories for liberalization and democratization in the region.

  Turning back to a general assessment of critical Marxism, one must stress that this phenomenon signified more than just resurrection of the original humanist-emancipatory drive of the philosophy of praxis. It brought about a new sense of intellectual responsibility, rejuvenating the critical dimension of spiritual action. In this respect, providing a different matrix than its counterpart in the Western world, the critical Marxist paradigm developed by East European radical thinkers offered the main epistemological and historical-political categories and concepts necessary for a comprehensive criticism of authoritarian-bureaucratic institutions and methods and provided as well the prerequisites for a project of essential change. That was the reason for the angry attack on Rudolf Bahro in the GDR, for the unexpected rage of the Kádár regime regarding the theoretical conclusions worked out by Konrád and Szeleńy, the denunciation of the Prague Spring efforts to humanize socialism, or the “moderate” persecution of the Budapest School. In the words of historian Vladislav Zubok, “The regime, as before, did not want to encourage an autonomous civic spirit or share its control over the cultural sphere with intellectuals, writers, and artists.”56

  The ideological state apparatuses in Soviet-type regimes had no greater fear than the crystallization of the interior resistance, the structuring of a critical social consciousness, the radicalization of the intelligentsia. The latter was perceived as the most perilous evolution, a menace to the stability of the dominant institutions and values. East European critical Marxism attempted to counterbalance the inept official “dialectical triumphalism,” the conservative-dogmatic functionalism promoted by the ruling Commu
nist parties. Its project was to offer the spiritual weapons for criticism of the system in order to engender a more humane, less asphyxiating, eventually democratic socio-political order. Ultimately, it succeeded, as correctly shown by Ferenc Fehér, in transforming “the semantic potentialities of their vocabulary into the language of an actual politics of dissent.”57

  The most significant theoretical achievement of critical Marxism in the Soviet bloc was the enhancement of the humanist, antitotalitarian potential of dialectics, the illumination of the negative-emancipatory substratum neglected and occulted by the official triumphalist-apologetic doctrine, and the revelation of the latent radical tendencies within the bureaucratic continuum. The philosophical and sociological researches undertaken by Kołakowski, Karel Kosik, or the Budapest School contributed to the revival of the qualitas occulta of dialectics, the renaissance of negativity in a social universe that seemed saturated with a distressing positivity. Yugoslav critical Marxism does not enter the area encompassed by this study, for many reasons, at once historical, economic, sociological, and cultural. Nevertheless, the philosophical and sociological investigations carried out by the Praxis group (Mihailo Markovič, Svetozar Stojanovič, Gajo Petrovič, Predrag Vranicki, and others) furthered the theoretical consolidation of the humanist criticism of Soviet-type authoritarian-bureaucratic regimes. Their main objective was to establish a metaphysical and sociological humanism as a counterpedagogy that would have both therapeutic and prophylactic consequences. Another very important function of the Praxis group was their distillation of revisionist thinking from across Eastern Europe in the pages of their journal. The latter became the most important platform of antibureaucratic opposition in the region. At the same time, Praxis succeeded in developing collaborations with anti-Communist thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Lucien Goldmann, Erich Fromm, and André Gorz.58 One should mention, however, that the relationship between certain East European critical Marxists and the Western New Left was rather contradictory. The latter was suspected of despotic-terrorist temptations and accused, more than once, of messianic sectarism. Kołakowski's merciless criticism of utopian millenarianism in his Main Currents of Marxism expressed more than a dissatisfaction with the desperate powerlessness of negative dialectics: it was an invitation for critical Marxists to go beyond their ideological and emotional attachments, to assume the basic ambivalence of their doctrine, to honestly examine Marxist false consciousness, and to transcend the metaphysical paradigm of Hegelian-Marxist radicalism.