Reinventing Politics
Page 27
The implications of a revisionist General Secretary in the Kremlin were momentous. It was not only bound to fuel a bitter and intense debate within the Soviet Union over almost all aspects of Soviet life. It was also bound to revive and intensify the more far-reaching East European revisionism, while depriving the Kremlin of the ideological cathedral from which to excommunicate the heretics. It posed the particularly grave danger of dissolving the common core of Marxist-Leninist tenets of world communism. In brief, even modest revisionism in Moscow had to accelerate the political disintegration and the doctrinal eclipse of communism as a distinctive historical phenomenon.7
Remember how initially Gorbachev tried to keep both the internal and external empires together? During his first years in power he preferred to streamline relations with the East European countries, to establish closer ties with the CMEA, and to coordinate international actions. While engaged in the new approach within the Soviet Union, he wanted Eastern Europe to remain calm, and it was in his interest to deal with younger, reform-oriented leaders in those countries. He did not encourage immediate changes. Seweryn Bialer characterized Gorbachev’s early attitude toward Eastern Europe as an all-out hard-line policy that included “a much stronger insistence on political orthodoxy, particularly in Poland and Hungary; crackdowns on dissent; encouragement of a siege mentality and of crude anti-Western propaganda; greater pressure against economic experimentation; and rapid reaction to social and political unrest or to signs of attempted greater independence of satellite leaderships.”8 But that restrictive and imperialistic attitude did not last long. Gorbachev could not separate the developments in the Soviet Union from those in the satellite countries.
The shock waves of glasnost galvanized political opposition in all East European countries. For instance, East German peace and human rights activists made glasnost one of their slogans with which to challenge directly the conservative leadership under Erich Honecker. In Poland Solidarity gathered momentum, and in Hungary the Democratic Opposition started to organize itself as a political party, particularly during 1988. Both those in power and the oppositionists in Eastern Europe realized that Gorbachev’s new definition of socialism inaugurated a new stage in Soviet-East European relations. The image of the Soviet Union as international gendarme, always watching over the orthodoxy of local leaderships, dissolved at the moment the Soviet leader proclaimed at the Nineteenth Party Conference in June 1988 that his country was renouncing “everything which deformed socialism in the thirties and which led it into stagnation in the seventies.”9
Later on, in December 1988, Gorbachev elaborated further on his new philosophy of international relations. Addressing a United Nation session, the General Secretary endorsed the rights of nations to engage in struggles for democratization. His frankness in renouncing the traditional Soviet claims about the need to continue ideological competition with the West indicated that he was not merely indulging in rhetoric. Although he did not abandon the Leninist veil of his language, Gorbachev recognized the non-Leninist thesis that the relations between states should not be subordinated to ideological considerations:
Today the preservation of any kind of “closed” society is hardly possible. This calls for a radical review of approaches to the totality of the problems of international cooperation as a major element of international security …. The new phase also requires de-ideologizing relations among states. We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.10
This statement, although paying lip service to the fears of dogmatic hardliners, was unequivocal in its determination to relinquish the logic of the Cold War.
The idea that the world was divided along ideological lines, a leftover of Stalin’s or even Lenin’s approach to international affairs, was yielding to a new conception that allowed for each nation to decide its own fate. To his credit, Gorbachev understood that the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe was strategically less important in the age of European integration. The nations of Western Europe, already united against the Soviet Union militarily, were moving steadily to overcome their political differences to create an economic power bloc never before seen in Europe. With living standards in Western Europe already surpassing those in the Soviet Union, if the Soviet Union was to modernize, avoid further isolation, and rival an integrated Europe, it had to reduce its imperial burden. There was no reason to continue to protect local communist bureaucracies against growing social movements from below. On the contrary, it was in Moscow’s best interest to appear as the ally of change and progress rather than the stereotype (based on history) of “Big Brother,” always ready to use his troops to restore the privileges of local despots.
The new attitude toward political change in Eastern Europe stemmed from the realization that the cost of the outer empire, including the psychological cost, had been too high for its benefits. Stalin’s obsession with the western border had led the Russians to an overextension that sowed the seeds for popular uprisings. In November 1988 the imminence of such a series of revolts was already obvious:
[M]ost people in most of those eight countries in communised Eastern Europe do not want to be run by communist governments, and do not like being told by Russians that they have got to be. Forty years of this double arrogance from Moscow—Marx knows best, and Russia knows what Marx really meant—have created the makings of an East European rebellion.11
The new Soviet approach to Eastern Europe was actually the result of long discussions within Soviet think tanks. One should also keep in mind that among Gorbachev’s advisers were a number of former editors of the Prague-based World Marxist Review, who had empathized with Dubcek’s renewal movement in 1968 and deplored the Soviet intervention that put an end to that reformist experiment. As the Soviet Union’s Foreign Minister and one of Gorbachev’s closest allies within the Politburo, Eduard Shevardnadze had great influence in the decision-making process that led to the disbandment of the bloc. Actually, after his resignation as Foreign Minister in 1990, Shevardnadze was singled out by conservative critics for his “deleterious” role in the collapse of Soviet international power.
Then in July 1988, at a Soviet—American scholarly conference in Alexandria, Virginia, the Soviets presented a paper representing the collective work of the staff of the influential Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System, headed by Academician Oleg Bogomolov. Although only semi-official, the paper indicated clearly that there were substantive changes in the Soviet approach to Eastern Europe. It recognized that far from having eliminated the diversity of the cultural, ethnic, political, and economic traditions in Eastern Europe, the externally-imposed Soviet model of socialism “had not withstood the test of time, thereby showing its sociopolitical and economic inefficiency.” According to the paper, a pressing need had arisen for those countries to engage in radical reforms that would result in the creation of a new model of socialism that would be truly humane in nature. The paper offered a vivid analysis of the main features of Sovietism as a militaristic-bureaucratic system based on uniformity and coercion:
In many countries of Eastern Europe, perestroika of the system of political power has begun. The model of the existing system was created in the Soviet Union during the 1930’s and 1940’s. This model was profoundly influenced by Stalin’s perverted concepts of the character of political mechanisms in socialism, as well as by the insufficient political maturity on the part of Soviet society and the lack of democratic traditions and political culture. The administrative-command system started in the USSR was replicated in other socialist countries. It was characterized by hyper-centralism, an absolute monopoly on the decision-making, monolithic thinking, a disdain for the masses (who were seen as “small crews” and as objects of management), and isolation from the outside world. Political institutions aimed at securing political stability primarily through suppression and the leveling of diversity. This system, which demanded servile obedience, undermined the foundations of societal dy
namism and viability.12
For any reader familiar with Imre Nagy’s writings of 1955-56 or with the Action Program of the Czechoslovak Communist Party adopted in April 1968, the revisionist flavor of this analysis was unmistakable. The Soviet scholars shared the revisionist illusions that changes in Eastern Europe could be kept within the systemic boundaries. The issue for them was to construct a new model of socialism. They did not address the most disturbing question: whether the nations in that region were interested in testing such a new model.
At least during 1988, the Soviets partook of the traditional revisionist fallacy that socialism still had a future in Eastern Europe, if it could be stripped of its bureaucratic outgrowth and allowed to arouse the social energies and imagination suppressed during the Stalinist age. The solution for them, as for the revisionists of 1956 or 1968, was a return to the genuine Marxist paradigm. The systemic roots of the deplored aberrations were thus obfuscated by the ultimately mystical belief in the redeeming virtues of socialism.
The essence of the new model of power can be defined as the delegation of considerable responsibility to the local level, to labor and territorial collectives; the expansion of pluralism in public life; and the democratization of institutions, including the vanguard party. The aim is to create more effective guarantees against the power monopoly of the layer of managers and professional politicians—against the bureaucratic apparatus.13
In the summer of 1989 Gorbachev addressed the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. On that occasion he went farther than ever in his repudiation of the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty. He admitted that there was no immutable social system and hinted that such transformations could take place in Eastern Europe as well. Gorbachev’s statement in Strasbourg was widely interpreted as a green light to reformers in Eastern Europe in their efforts to move toward a multiparty system and a market-oriented economy. According to Gorbachev,
The fact that the states of Europe belong to different social systems is a reality. The recognition of this historical fact and respect for the sovereign right of each people to choose their social system at their own discretion are the most important prerequisite for a normal European process. The social and political order in some particular countries did change in the past, and it can change in the future as well, but this is exclusively a matter for the people themselves and of their choice. Any interference in the internal affairs, any attempts to limit the sovereignty of states—both friends and allies or anybody else—are inadmissible.14
The meaning of the Strasbourg address did not go unnoticed by the East European political actors, both rulers and oppositionists. The possible excuse for the communist governments to organize new crackdowns on dissent in order to avoid Soviet intervention had lost its deterrent effect.
In the months preceding that address, tremendous changes had already taken place in Eastern Europe. In February Hungary’s ruling communists had agreed to move toward a multiparty system, a decision that no one had anticipated one year earlier. In Poland the government and the opposition organized a roundtable that led to the signing of an agreement in April. The agreement provided for the legalization of the banned Solidarity trade union, for one-third of the the seats in the lower house of the parliament to be reserved for the communists, and for free elections to a new upper house. The Polish changes also ensured the communist government’s control over the military and the security apparatus, and the powerful presidency remained in the hands of General Jaruzelski.
The reform movements in Eastern Europe could hardly be contained. The logic of change within authoritarian systems shows that whenever concessions are made by those in power, new demands are formulated by the opposition as an expression of the growing expectations of the masses. If those demands are not met by the government, social unrest heightens and the rulers have to grant new concessions. Gorbachev watched those changes and did not show any irritation with them. In April 1989 he met the Hungarian communist leader, Karoly Grosz, and, after having discussed the experiences of 1956 and 1968, when the Soviets had crushed attempts at democratization in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia, respectively, he told his guest that “all possible safeguards should be provided so that no external force could interfere in the domestic affairs of socialist countries.”15
The new Soviet approach had an enormous impact in Eastern Europe. It weakened the conservative forces, primarily in the Romanian, East German, Czechoslovak, and Bulgarian communist leaderships. For one, those hard-liners found Moscow unwilling to endorse their neo-Stalinist policies. In July 1989 a Warsaw Pact summit took place in Bucharest. On that occasion Gorbachev challenged the hard-line coalition within the bloc by advocating the transformation of the alliance from a military and political one into a political and military one. The final communiqué of the meeting denied the existence of a universal socialist model. Following the summit, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Gyula Horn declared that it was high time for the practice of socialism to be updated in order to meet the challenges of the modern world. Expressing the position of the reformist trend within the bloc, he said: “We also stated in this respect, and I find it highly important, that the times are past for a number of states or the alliance to interfere by any means with the internal affairs of another member. As we set it down: the period of enforcing the so-called Brezhnev doctrine is over once and for all.”16 To sum up, after the first attempts to establish a new cohesion within the bloc, Gorbachev moved radically toward an increasingly tolerant approach to unity within the bloc. Not only was diversity now permitted, but it was actually encouraged.
The modification in the Soviet policy toward Eastern Europe was defintely linked to domestic struggles in Moscow. One should not forget that even during the Nineteenth Party Conference, but primarily earlier, in March 1988, when Nina Andreyeva’s notorious letter was published, the Soviet conservatives had criticized what they perceived as a policy of unjustified concessions to the West. There was a direct relationship of mutual determination between domestic democratization and disengagement from external adventurism (usually presented as defense of “proletarian” conquests, as in the case of the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia). In her indictment of perestroika, Andreyeva, a lecturer from Leningrad whose views spelled out the frustrations of the emerging coalition of Stalinists and Russian nationalists, took the Gorbachevites to task for their championing of what she saw as an extremely dangerous course in international relations:
I was puzzled recently by the revelation by one of my students that the class struggle is supposedly an obsolete term, just like the leading role of the proletariat. It would be fine if she were the only one to claim this. A furious argument was generated, for example, by a respected academician’s recent assertion that the present-day relations between states from the two socio-economic systems apparently lack any class content. I assume that the academician did not deem it necessary to explain why it was that, for several decades, he wrote exactly the opposite—namely that peaceful coexistence is nothing but a form of class struggle in the international arena. It seems that the philosopher has now rejected this view. Never mind, people can change their minds. It does seem to me, however, that duty would nevertheless command a leading philosopher to explain at least to those who have studied and are studying his books: What is happening today, does the international working class no longer oppose world capital as embodied in its state and political organs.?17
Indeed, Andreyeva was not alone in lamenting the end of the ideological age of conformity, fanaticism, and blind regimentation. Even some of Gorbachev’s Politburo colleagues, primarily his longtime nemesis Yegor Ligachev, saw the new thinking in foreign policy as a “capitulation” to Western pressure.
Far from giving in to the admonitions of his critics, Gorbachev continued to push for further changes in the structure of the bloc. What he was aiming at, in this stage, was to help reformers within the ruling communist parties get the upper hand and get rid of the St
alinist hacks. One can assume that Gorbachev’s strategic calculation was that in all East European countries revisionist leaders would come to power who would embrace his political vision of a socialism based on law and respect for the individual. Addressing the Soviet Congress of Peoples’ Deputies on October 23, 1989, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze insisted that “historic, qualitative changes” were taking place in Europe, and they required a complete divorce from the old ready-made recipes: “New, alternative forces are entering the political arena in some of these countries. No one is bringing them in. They arise because the people want them.”18 It was obvious that, as the Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov put it bluntly, the Brezhnev Doctrine had been replaced by a new perspective, respectful of each country’s right to have “its own way.”19 Some might even say that a “Sinatra Doctrine” was thus born.