26 FEATURES
The Year of TRUTH
1989 was the most dramatic year in Europe for four decades. Here, in a provocative extract from his new book We the People, Timothy Garton Ash argues that, like 1848 in the West, 1989 was the year of the citizen in Eastern Europe.
989 was the year communism in Eastern To be sure, even without a political-military reversal inside the Soviet Union there will be many further con Europe died. 1949-1989 R.I.P. And the flicts, injustices and miseries in these lands. But they will epitaph might be: Nothing in his life, be different conflicts, injustices and miseries: new and old, Became him like the leaving it. The post-communist but also pre-communist In the worst case, there might yet be dictators; but they would be dif thing that was comprehensively installed in the ferent dictators. We shall not see again that particular newly defined territories of Poland, Czechos system, characterised by the concentration of political and lovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and in economic power and tne instruments of coercion in the the newly created German Democratic Republic hands of one leninist party, manifested sociologically as a privileged new class, in states with arbitrarily limited after 1949, the thing called, according to view sovereignty. point, 'socialism', 'totalitarianism', 'stalinism', 'politbureaucratic dictatorship', 'real existing Of course, if we walk the streets of Prague, Warsaw or socialism', 'state capitalism', 'dictatorship over Leipzig we can still find the grey, familiar traces: the flattened neo-classical stalinist facades on all the Victory needs', or, most neutrally, 'the Soviet-type Squares, the Lenin boulevardes, steelworks, shipyards, the system' - that thing will never walk again. And balding middle-aged officials with their prefabricated lies, arguably, if we can no longer talk of communism the cheap paper forms for completion in quadruplicate, the queues, tne attitude of 'We pretend to work and you we should no longer talk of Eastern Europe, at retend to pay us'. Yet even the physical evidences are least with a capital 'E' for Eastern. Instead, we Eeing removed at a speed that must cause some anxiety to shall have central Europe again, east central conservationists. (In Poland there is a scheme for preserv Europe, south-eastern Europe, eastern Europe ing all the old props in an entertainment park. The proposed name is Stalinland.) with a small 'e' and, above all, individual peoples, nations and states. If 1989 was the end, what was the beginning of the end? ALR -.JULY 1990 FEATURES 27
* To read the press you would think history began with parlour games. Yet, like parlour games, they can be amus Gorbachev. ing, and may sometimes help to concentrate the mind.
That Moscow permitted the former 'satellite' countries 1848 erupted, according to A J P Tavlor, "after forty to determine how they want to govern themselves was years of peace and stability’ while Lewis Namier describes dearly a sine qua non. But the nature and direction of the it, with somewhat less cavalier arithmetic, as "the outcome rocesses of domestic political self-determination cannot of thirty-three creative years of European peace carefully Ee understood by studying Soviet policy. The causes lie reserved on a consdously counter-revolutionary basis . elsewhere, in the history of individual countries, in their Phe revolution, Namier writes, "was bom at least as much interaction with their East European neighbours and with of hopes as of discontents". There was undoubtedly an the more free and prosperous Europe that lies to the west, economic and social background: lean harvests and the north and south of them. potato disease. But "the common denominator was ideological". He quotes the exiled Louis-Philippe declar The example of Solidarity was seminal. It pioneered a ing that he had given way to une insurrection morale, and new kind of politics in Eastern Europe (and new not only King Wilhelm of Wiirttemberg excusing himself to the there): a politics of sodal self-organisation and negotiating Russian minister at Stuttgart, one Gorchakov, with the the transition from communism. The players, forms and words: Je ne puis monter a cheval contre les idies ("I can't issues of 1980-81 in Poland were fundamentally different mount my horse against ideas"). And Namier calls hi9 from anything seen in Eastern Europe between 1949 and magnificent essay, 'The Revolution of the Intellectuals". 1979: in many respects, they presaged those seen throughout Eastern Europe in 1989. If there is any truth in Like 1848, this, too, might be called a 'revolution of the this judgment, then there was something espedally fitting intellectuals'. To be sure, the renewed flexing of workers' in the fart that it was in 1989 that the Russian leader and musde in two strike-waves in 1988 was what finally the Polish Pope finally met. In their very different ways, brought Poland's communists to the first Round Table of they both started it 1989. To be sure, it was the masses on the streets in demonstrations in all the other East European countries To find a year in European history comparable with that brought the old rulers down. But the politics of the 1989, however, we obviously have to reach back much revolution were not made by workers or peasants. They farther than 1979, or 1949.1789 in France? 1917 in Russia? were made by intellectuals: me playwright Vddav Havel, Or, doser to home, 1918/19 in Central Europe? But the mediaevalist Bronislaw Geremek, the Catholic editor 1918/19 was the aftermath of World War. The doser paral Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the painter Barbd Bohley in Berlin, lel is surely 1848, the springtime of nations. In the space of the conductor Kurt Masur in Leipzig, the philosophers a few paragraphs such comparisons are little better than Jdnos Kis and Gaspdr Mikl6s T£m£s in Budapest, the en
ALR: JULY 1990 28 FEATURES gineering professor Petre Roman and the poet Mircea banner I saw above the altar in an East Berlin church Dinescu in Bucharest. Histoiy has outdone Shelley, for vividly expressed the same basic thought It said: "I am poets were the acknowledged legislators of this world. The Cain and Abel". crowds on Wenceslas Square chanted, "Long live the stu dents! Long live the actors!" And the sociology of the In order to understand what it meant for ordinary opposition forums (New, Democratic, Civic), parties and people to stand in those vast crowds in the dty squares of parliamentary candidates was distinctly comparable with Central Europe, chanting their own, spontaneous slogans, that of the Frankfurt Parliament or the Slav Congress at you have first to make the imaginative effort to understand Prague. what it feels like to pay this daily toll of public hypocrisy. As they stood and shouted together, these men and women As in 1848, the common denominator was ideological. were not merely healing divisions in thdr sodety; they The inner histoiy of these revolutions is that of a set of ideas were healing divisions in themselves. Everything that had whose time had come, and a set of ideas whose time had to do with the word, with the press, with television, was one. At first glance this may seem a surprising statement of the first importance to these crowds. The semantic oc 8F
Yet almost as remarkable, historically speaking, was the the population concerned - that this was its position. In lack (so far, and Romania plainly excepted) of major Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union helped the revolution counter-revolutionary violence. The police behaved bru along by a nicely timed retrospective condemnation of the tally in East Germany up to and notably on the state's 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion. Throughout East Central fortieth anniversary, 7 October, and in Czechoslovakia up Europe, the people at last derived some benefit from their to and notably on 17 November. In Poland the systematic ruling Elites chronic dependency on the Soviet Union, for, deployment of counter-revolutionary force lasted over deprived of the Soviet Kalashnikov-crutch, those Elites did seven years, from the declaration of a 'state of war' on 13 not have another leg to stand on. Romania was the excep December 1981 to the spring of 1989. But once the revolu- tion that proves the rule. It is no accident that it was ' tions (or, in Poland and Hungary, 'refolutions') were under precisely m the state for so long most independent of way, there was an amazing lack of coercive counter Moscow that the resistance of the security arm of the measures. The communist rulers said, like King Wilhelm powers-that-were was most fierce, bloody and prolonged. of Wiirttemberg, "I cannot mount on horseback against ideas". But one is bound to ask why not? Much of the None the less, the factor 'Gorbachev' alone does not modem history of Central Europe consisted precisely in suffice to explain why these ruling Elites did not more rulers mounting on horseback against ideas. Much of the vigorously deploy their own, still formidable police and contemporary history of Central Europe, since 1945, con security forces in a last-ditch defence of their own power sists in rulers mounting tanks against ideas. and privilege. Is it too fanciful to suggest that the constant, persistent harping of the West on certain international So why was it different in 1989? Three reasons may be norms of domestic conduct, the East European leaders' suggested. They might be labelled 'Gorbachev', 'Helsinki' yearning for international respectability, and the sensed and 'Tocqueville'. Tne new line in Soviet policy, christened linkage between this and the hard currency credits they so by Gennady Gerasimov on 25 October the Sinatra doctrine badly needed, in short, the factor 'Helsinki', played at least -1 had it my way” as he actually misquoted the famous line some part in staying the hands of those who might other i - rather than the Brezhnev doctrine, was self-evidently wise have given the order to shoot? essential. In East Germany, Moscow not only made it plain to the leadership that Soviet troops were not available for Yet none of this would have stopped them if they had purposes of domestic repression, but also, it seems, went still been convinced of their right to rule. The third, and out of its way to let it be known - to the West, but also to perhaps the ultimately decisive factor, is that characteristic ALR: JULY 1990 30 FEATURES of revolutionary situations described by Alexis de Toe- Patriotism is not nationalism. Rediscovered pride in queville more than a century ago: the ruling Elite's loss of your own nation does not necessarily imply hostility to belief in its own right to rule. A tew kids went on the streets other nations. These movements were all, without excep and threw a few words. The police beat them. The kids tion, patriotic. They were not all nationalist. Indeed, in their said: You have no right to beat us! And the rulers, the high first steps most of the successor regimes were markedly and mighty, replied, in effect: Yes, we have no right to beat less nationalist than their communist predecessors. The you. We have no right to preserve our rule by force. The Mazowiecki government in Poland adopted a decisively end no longer justifies the means! more liberal and enlightened approach to both the Jewish and German questions than any previous government, In fact, the ruling Elites, and their armed servants, dis indeed drawing criticism, on the German issue, from the tinguished themselves by their comprehensive unreadi communist-nationalists. In his first public statement as ness to stand up in any way for the things in which they President, Vddav Havel made a spedal point of thanking had so long claimed to believe, and their almost indecent "all Czechs, Slovaks and members of other nationalities'. haste to embrace the things they had so long denounced as His earlier remark on television that Czechoslovakia owes 'capitalism' and 'bourgeois democracy'. All over Eastern the Germans an apology for the post-war expulsion of the Europe there was the quiet flap of turning coats: one day Sudeten Germans was fiercely critidsed by - the com they denounced Walesa, the next they applauded him; one munists. In Romania, the revolution began with the ethnic day they embraced Honecker, the next they imprisoned Romanian inhabitants of Timisoara making common cause him; one day they vituperated Havel, the next they elected with their ethnic Hungarian fellow-dtizens. It would re him president. quire very notable exertions for the treatment of the Ger man and Hungarian 1848 was called the minorities in post-revolu- Springtime of Nations or the A- m* v tionarv Romania to be worse Springtime of Peoples: the * ' than it was under Nicolae Volkerfruhling, wiosna Ceausescu. lud6w. The revolutionaries, in all the lands, spoke in the Of course there are name of 'the people'. But the counter-examples. One of international solidarity of the nastier aspects of the 'the people' was broken by “All over Eastern German revolution was the conflict between nations, old excesses of popular support and new, while the domestic Europe there was the for a Party-government solidarity of 'the people' was , campaign against Polish broken by conflict between quiet flap of turning 'smugglers and profiteers', sodal groups - what came to and abuse of visiting black be known as 'classes'. students and Vietnamese "Socialism and nationalism, coats. ” Gastarbeiter. In Hungarian as mass forces, were both the opposition politics, the product of 1848," writes A J fierce inf ightingbetween the P Taylor. And for a century Hungarian Democratic after 1848, until the com Forum and the Free munist deep freeze, central Democrats was not without Europe was a battlefield of an ethnic undertone, with nations and classes. some members of the former questioning the 'Hungarian- Of what, or of whom, was 1989 the springtime? Of 'the ness' of some members of the latter, who replied with people'? But in what sense? "Wir sind aas Volk," said the charges of anti-Semitism. Thousands of Bulgarians public first great crowds in East Germany: we are the people. But ly protested against the new government giving the within a few weeks they were saying "Wir sind EIN Volk": Turkish-Muslim minority its rights. we are one nation. In Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the crowds were a sea of national flags, while the If one looks slightly further ahead, there are obviously people raised their voices to sing old national hymns. In potential conflicts over other remaining minorities: notab Hungary and Romania they cut the communist symbols ly the Hungarians in Romania, the Romanians in the Soviet out of the centre of their flags. In East Germany there were, Union (Moldavia), the Germans in Poland, Romania and at first, no flags, no hymns. But gradually the flags came the Soviet Union, and gypsies in several countries. There out, plain stripes of red, black and gold without tne GDR are the potential political uses of anti-Semitism. There is hammer and dividers in the middle: the flag of Western - the difficulty of rinding a combination of Czecho- and and before that of united - Germany. -Slovakia fully satisfactory to both Slovaks and Czechs. And there are the outstanding frontier questions, above all In every Western newspaper commentary on Eastern that of the post-1945 German-Polish frontier on the Oder- Europe one now invariably reads that there is a grave Neisse line. danger of something called 'nationalism' reviving in this region. But what on earth does this mean? Does it mean Yet compared with Central Europe in 1848 or 1918/19 that people are again proud to be Czech, Polish, Hungarian this is a relatively short list. Most nations have states, and or, for that matter, German? That hearts lift at sight of the have got used to their new frontiers. Ethnically the map is flag and throats tighten when they sing the national an far more homogeneous than it was in 1848 or 1918: as them? Ernest Gellner has observed, it is now a picture by A IR : JULY 1990 FEATURES 31
Modigliani rather than Kokoschka. The historical record even though it used them, to, in perverted ways: for ex must show that 1989 was not a year of acute national and ample, in appeals to 'civic responsibility' meaning TCeep ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe west of the Soviet frontier. quiet and let us deal with these troublesome students. Quite the reverse: it was a year of solidarity both within Why it did not manage to poison those words is an inter and between nations. At the end of the year, symbolic and esting question - to which I have no ready answer - but the humanitarian support for the people(s) of Romania came fact is that when Solidarity's parliamentarians came to give from all the self-liberated states of East Central Europe. A their group a name, they called it the Citizens Parliamentary springtime of nations is not necessarily a springtime of Club; the Czech movement called itself the Civic Forum; and 'nationalism'. the opposition groups in the GDR started by describing themselves as Biirgennitiatwen, that is, citizens' or dvic initia In any case, what was most striking was not the lan tives. (In the East German case, the actual word was probably guage of nationhood. That was wholly predictable. What imported from West Germany, but the fact remains that they was striking was the other ideas ana words that, so to chose this rather than another term.) And the language of speak, shared the top billing. One of these was 'society'. In dtizenship was important in all these revolutions. People had Poland, a country often stigmatized as 'nationalist, the had enough of being mere components in a deliberately word most often used to describe the people as opposed to atomised sodety: they wanted to be dtizens, individual men the authorities was not 'nation'; it was spoleczenstwo, and women with dignity and responsibility, with rights but society. In Czechoslovakia the word 'society' was used in also with duties, freely assodating in dvil sodety. a similar way, though less frequently, and here it could not simply be a synonym or There is one last point euphemism for 'nation' be about the self-description of cause it covered two nations. the revolution which is per In both cases, it was as mean haps worth a brief mention. ingful to talk of social self- As Ralf Dahrendorf has ob determination as it was to served, Karl Marx played on talk of national self-deter the ambiguity of the German mination. term biirgerliche Gesellschaft, which could be translated Everywhere stress was either as dvil sodety or as laid on the self-conscious “1989 was the bourgeois sodety. Marx, says unity of intelligentsia, Dahrendorf, deliberately workers and peasants. Of springtime of societies conflated the two 'dties' of course in part this unity was modernity, the fruits of the created by the common Industrial and the French enemy. When communist aspiring to be civil. ” Revolutions, the bourgeois power had been broken, and and the dtoyen. I thought of real parliamentary politics this observation when a began, then conflicting so speaker in one of the mass cial interests were robustly rallies in Leipzig called for articulated. Thus probably solidarity with the the most distinctive and biirgerliche Bewegung in determined group in the Czechoslovakia. The bour new Polish parliament was geois movement! But on not communists or reflection there seems to me Solidarity, left or right, but peasant-farmers from all par a deeper truth in that apparent malapropism. For what ties, combining and conspiring to advance their sectional most of the opposition movements throughout East interests. Central Europe and a large part of 'the people' supporting them were in effect saying was: Yes, Marx is right, the two Another concept that played a central role in opposition things are intimately connected - and we want both! Civil thinking in the 1980s was that of 'civil society'. 1989 was rights and property rights, economic freedom and political the springtime of societies aspiring to be civil. Ordinary freedom, finandal independence and intellectual inde men and women's rudimentary notion of what it meant to pendence, each supports the other. So, yes, we want to be build a civil society might not satisfy the political theorist. dtizens, but we also want to be middle-class, in the senses But some such notion was there, and it contained several that the majority of dtizens in the more fortunate half of basic demands. There should be forms of association, na Europe are middle-dass. We want to be Burger AND tional, regional, local, professional, which would be volun biirgerlich! Tom Paine, but also Thomas Mann. tary, authentic, democratic and, first and last, not controlled or manipulated by the Party or Party-state. So it was a springtime of nations, but not necessarily People should be 'dvil': that is, polite, tolerant, and, above of nationalism; of societies, aspiring to be dvil; and all, non-violent. Civil and civilian. The idea of citizenship above all, of dtizens. had to be taken seriously.
Communism managed to poison many words from the TIMOTHY GARTON ASH's We thePeople. TheRevolutions mainstream of European history - not least, as this book of 1989 was released in Australia in June by Granta Books. has repeatedly indicated, the word 'socialism'. But somehow Tliis extract is reproduced by arrangement with Granta it did not manage to poison the words 'citizen' and 'civic'. Books. AIR: JULY 1990