Reinventing Politics

by Vladimir Tismaneanu

  People who claim that the use of force in the struggle for freedom is necessary must first prove that, in a given situation, it will be effective, and that force, when it is used, will not transform the idea of liberty into its opposite. No one in Poland is able to prove today that violence will help us to dislodge Soviet troops from Poland and to remove the communists from power. The USSR has such enormous military power that confrontation is simply unthinkable. In other words: we have no guns …. In our reasoning, pragmatism is inseparably intertwined with idealism. Taught by history, we suspect that by using force to storm the existing Bastilles we shall unwittingly build new ones. It is true that social change is almost always accompanied by force. But it is not true that social change is merely a result of the violent collision of various forces. Above all, social changes follow from a confrontation of different moralities and visions of social order. Before the violence of rulers clashes with the violence of their subjects, values and systems of ethics clash inside human minds.5

  The civil society is strategically opposed to any dictatorial temptations. It is suspicious of those who claim to have ultimate answers to all human dilemmas and regards traditional ideological distinctions between right and left as irrelevant under the existing circumstances. Rereading Michnik’s statement on this issue, especially in the light of post-1989 developments in Eastern Europe, one sees that the idealist ardor of the dissident movements included more than a grain of wishful thinking.

  Totalitarian dictatorship suspended rather than annulled ideological divisions. Liberals and conservatives, secular humanists and radical nationalists had to freeze their disagreements because they had a common enemy in the communist regime. That did not mean they had abandoned their creeds. But in 1985, when the system seemed more determined than ever to cling to its power, Michnik’s thesis sounded quite convincing:

  I think that in Poland the conflict between the right and the left belongs to the past. It used to divide a society that was torn by struggles for bourgeois freedoms, universal voting rights, land reform, secularization, the eight-hour workday, welfare, universal schooling, or the democratization of culture. A different distinction comes to the fore in the era of totalitarian dictatorships: one between the proponents of an open society and the proponents of a closed society. In the former, social order is based on self-government and collective agreements; in the latter, order is achieved through repression and discipline.6

  Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia symbolized that attempt to overcome ideological segregation through a new approach rooted in the consideration of human rights as the most important foundation of a free society. In its founding document, the Chartists declared that the responsibility for preserving civil rights rests not only with the governments but also “with each and every individual.” Precisely because they believed in the sharing of responsibility, the Chartists constituted themselves into an open association whose commitment to the defense of human rights transcended any ideological, religious, or political differences among the signatories:

  Charter 77 is a free, informal, and open community in which various convictions, religions, and professions coexist. Its members are linked by the desire to work individually and collectively for human and civil rights in Czechoslovakia and the whole world. These rights are guaranteed by the final agreements of the 1975 Helsinki Conference and other international treaties against war, violence, and repression. Thus Charter 77 is based on the solidarity and friendship of all people who share a concern for certain ideals.7

  The Charter’s deliberate loose structure indicated the antihierarchical and anti-authoritarian orientation of the group. The founding document insisted that Charter was not an organization: “It has no statutes, permanent organs, or registered membership. Everyone who agrees with its ideas and works to realize them belongs to it.”8

  Charter made clear that it did not constitute itself as an alternative to the existing power, as a political party interested in power and the pursuit of its own strategies. The denial of its political character was, of course, linked to the regime’s obsession with any form of criticism. In the conditions of “normalized socialism” in Czechoslovakia, any form of independent political activism could be labeled “subversive” and could land its practitioners in jail. At the same time, the statement indicated Charter’s broader understanding of the realm of politics as the sphere where citizens work together in the construction of the public good. It was a way of announcing to the rulers that, while the new movement would not interfere with the vitiated, deformed area of official politics, it would do its best to restore the dignity of autonomous initiatives. This statement is therefore emblematic for the philosophy of antipolitics, which should not be confused with escapism but should rather be understood as a reassertion of civic rights and a form of resistance to the degradation of politics in the post-totalitarian state:

  Charter 77 does not constitute an organized political opposition. It only supports the common good, as do many similar organizations that promote civic initiative in both the East and the West. It has no intention of outlining specific and radical programs for political and social reform but tries instead to initiate a constructive dialogue with political and state authorities, particularly by drawing attention to specific violations of civil and human rights—by documenting them, suggesting solutions, submitting general proposals to ensure that these rights are respected in the future, and acting as a mediator in disputes between citizens and the state.9

  Like the KOR or the Hungarian samizdat opposition, Charter 77 viewed violent opposition to the communist regime as a political dead end. Those movements considered that, hypocritical as they certainly were, the legal systems of the post-totalitarian regimes had to be exploited to further the cause of human rights. The civil society reemerged by using the loopholes in the system’s structure by challenging the rulers to abide by their own promises and pledges. In the struggle new forms of association and new types of communities emerge, including the independent peace and ecological groups, the underground publishing houses, the flying universities, and all other expressions of what the Czechoslovak human rights activist called the “second culture.” That those attempts met the repressive response of the system was not surprising. At the same time, those engaged in such activities knew that their efforts would not have any social meaning unless the parallel structures communicated, penetrated, and influenced the “official” ones. Havel warned against any elitism on the part of the emerging informal communities:

  [I]t would be quite wrong to understand the parallel structures and the parallel polis as a retreat into a ghetto and as an act of isolation, addressing itself only to the welfare of those who had decided on such a course, and who are indifferent to the rest …. [E]ven the most highly mature form of the parallel polis can only exist—at least in post-totalitarian circumstances—when the individual is at the same time lodged in the “first,” official structure by a thousand different relationships, even though it may only be the fact that one buys what one needs in their stores, uses their money and obeys their laws.10

  The dissident, by the very fact that he or she challenged the prevailing universe of norms, habits, taboos, and prejudices, proposed a sense of human identity rooted in the notion of responsibility. If the system aimed to convince the individual that the existing reality was the only possible one, the new movements argued that there was nothing absolutely foreordained in human destiny, and that no mechanical determinism could compel the individual to accept the status quo slavishly. In one of the letters he sent from prison to his wife Olga, Vaclav Havel wrote:

  The problem of human identity remains at the center of my thinking about human affairs. If I use the word “identity,” it is not because I believe it explains anything about the secret of human existence; I began using it when I was developing my plays, or thinking about them later, because it helped me clarify the ramifications of the theme that most attracted me: “the crisis of human identity.” All my plays in
fact are variations on this theme, the disintegration of one’s oneness with himself and the loss of everything that gives human existence a meaningful order, continuity, and its unique solution. At the same time … the importance of the notion of human responsibility has grown in my meditations. It has begun to appear, with increasing clarity, as the fundamental point from which all identity grows and by which it stands or falls; it is the foundation, the root, the center of gravity, the constructional principle or axis of identity, something like the “idea” that determines its degree and type. It is the mortar binding it together, and when the mortar dries out, identity too begins irreversibly to crumble and fall apart.

  From this rediscovery of the relationship between the integrity of personality and the ethos of civic duty, Havel could draw the following memorable conclusion: The “secret of man is the secret of his responsibility.”11

  Likewise, the new movements were exactly the opposite of the official vision of politics: While the communist elites were exclusive and intolerant, the civil society championed openness, dialogue, and tolerance. In 1986, responding to questions sent to him by the exiled Czech journalist Karel Hvizdala, Havel offered extensive answers pondering the meaning of his artistic and political experiences. The result of that exchange was a fascinating memoir, a book that shed revealing light on the significance of dissent as the first step in the reconstruction of a public sphere based on trust and solidarity. Referring to the deliberately nonideological nature of Charter 77, Havel wrote:

  Perhaps I should say something more about plurality within the Charter. It was not easy for everyone—many had to suppress or overcome their ancient inner aversions—but everyone was able to do it, because we all felt that it was in a common cause, and because something had taken shape here that was historically quite new: the embryo of a genuine social tolerance (and not simply an agreement among some to exclude others, as was the case with the National Front government after the Second World War), a phenomenon which—no matter how the Charter turned out—would be impossible to wipe out the national memory. It would remain in that memory as a challenge that, at any time and in any new situation, could be responded to and drawn on.12

  The role of the new movements is to convince the average citizen, the greengrocers who support the system in an inertial way because they cannot envision any alternative to it, that change is indeed possible even under such abysmal conditions as those of the post-totalitarian state.

  That hope should not be abandoned is the message conveyed by all people engaged in the rebuilding of civil societies in Eastern Europe:

  Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and the most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to do good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.13

  One should recollect the conditions in Eastern Europe in the first years after Gorbachev’s coming to power, when there were no indications that the new Soviet leader could engage in anything but a streamlining of the existing system. Most analysts of Soviet affairs could not predict the dramatic changes in the Soviet concept of intrabloc solidarity. The signals coming from Moscow were generally indicative of the Kremlin’s interest in replacing the old East European leaders with new ones, recruited from the same communist elites. The most people could expect in terms of Soviet benevolence was support for communist reformers.14

  People like Adam Michnik in Poland, Janos Kis in Hungary, and Havel in Czechoslovakia admitted that the changes in the Soviet Union and their impact on the local situation in each East European country were critically important. Yet those thinkers refused to pin all their hopes on the good will of an enlightened czar. Changes, if they were to be fundamental, had to go beyond the visible locus of power. Their source had to be in the reawakening of society, in the collective pressure exerted by autonomous groups and movements, including even certain wings within the ruling elite, on the power-holders to get out of the obsolete system and allow social innovation. Responding to those who pinned all their hopes on Gorbachev’s intention to modernize the system and allow genuine reforms, Havel insisted that for the changes to be authentic, for them to result in the detotalization of society, society itself had to be involved in their initiation. More clearly, to those who saw the struggle between doves and hawks, or between liberals and conservatives in the communist Politburos as the generator of political pluralism, Havel and other East European thinkers counterposed the vision of the civil society and its slow but uncontainable growth. The good will of the best general secretary cannot replace the system—it can only make it more bearable. For politics to rediscover its emancipatory dimension, for the individual to cease being treated as a means by those who think they have been designated by history to rule and oppress others without any accountability, a resurrection of the society as a mature and conscious partner in the exercise of government was needed:

  I leave to those more qualified to decide what can be expected from Gorbachev and, in general, “from above”—that is, from what is happening in the sphere of power. I have never fixed my hopes there; I’ve always been more interested in what was happening “below,” in what could be expected “from below,” what could be won there, and what defended. All power is power over someone, and it always somehow responds, usually unwittingly rather than deliberately, to the state of mind and the behavior of those it rules over. One can always find in the behavior of power a reflection of what is going on “below.” No one can govern in a vacuum.15

  Civil society, although encountering the resistance of the entrenched apparatus, fills the vacuum and is the place where this new understanding of politics takes place. For example, in Czechoslovakia, where Husak and Jakes had gone out of their way to erase the memory of the Prague Spring and instill in the population the feeling of complete dereliction, the example of the Charter and civic actions contributed to society’s reawakening. Not only dissidents, with their “islands of self-awareness and self-liberation,” but also groups and associations that were not directly opposed to the system, the “gray area” between the government and the opposition, expressed the rise of the barely perceptible but extremely significant undercurrent of social activism: “Again and again, we were astonished at all the new things that were going on, the greater risks people were taking, how much more freely they were behaving, how much greater and less hidden was their hunger for truth, for a truthful word, for genuine values.”16 The myriad unauthorized publications, the formation of rock and jazz groups in defiance of official bans, the mass demonstrations in defense of religious freedoms—events characteristic of the second part of the 1980s—showed the erosion of the post-totalitarian state’s capability to contain the increasing pressure from below. When an unofficial group called VONS (Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted) was created, the government labeled it an “antistate organization” and arrested its leaders, Havel included. The mushrooming independent activities demonstrated that the pseudo-consensus based on fear and desperation had exhausted its paralyzing power. All those forms of civil disobedience were showing that deep-seated social discontent smoldered underneath the apparent tranquility of the post-totalitarian state:

  To outside observers, these changes may seem insignificant. Where ar
e your ten-million-strong trade unions? Why does Husak not negotiate with you? Why is the government not considering your proposals and acting on them? But for someone from here who is not completely indifferent, these are far from insignificant changes; they are the main promise of the future, since he has long ago learned not to expect it from anywhere else.17

  The civil society advanced faster and farther in Hungary and Poland than in countries like the GDR and Czechoslovakia. The case of East Germany, with its bureaucratic police state and rigid orthodoxy, deserves special attention. After all, one can barely understand the collapse of the Honecker regime in the fall of 1989 without reference to the history of democratic dissent and opposition in that country. Formed with Stalin’s blessing in October 1949, the German Democratic Republic claimed to be the first German state of the workers and peasants. It was the only European country whose very existence was based on an ideological assumption, namely that a class principle could justify the separation of a nation into two states. In August 1961, to prevent a catastrophic demographic hemorrhage, Honecker’s predecessor, the Stalinist hard-liner Walter Ulbricht, decided to erect the Berlin Wall. Following that action, the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) pursued a policy of Abgrenzung (demarcation) to preserve and enhance the differences between the two German states. To foster its legitimacy, the Communist state claimed to inherit the humanist (“progressive”) traditions of German culture. The official propaganda insisted that the GDR was committed to the defense of peace, but that self-serving rhetoric failed to convince the people in the GDR. They could see with their own eyes that the regime was actually engaged in a militaristic course. At the same time, the rigid ideological stances favored by the party leaders resulted in continuous and systematic harassment of those critics who tried to offer an alternative to the official line. In their adamant opposition to reforms, the East German leaders were unmatched by any other Warsaw Pact leader, with the exception of Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu. During his first years in power, after he succeeded Ulbricht in 1973, Erich Honecker seemed to embody a more flexible approach to social and international affairs. He even expressed interest in a dialogue with the party intellectuals, increasingly disaffected with the regime’s dogmatism. Later, however, especially after 1980, Honecker rejected any tolerance for the opposition. East Germany party leaders had not forgotten the June 1953 working-class uprising.