Ostpolitik Reborn Earlier This Year, the German SPD Suffered a Serious Election Defeat

Ostpolitik Reborn Earlier this year, the German SPD suffered a serious election defeat. Like the British Left it is rethinking. In this interview with Eric Hobsbawm, Peter Glotz, until recently general secretary of the SPD, assesses the prospects for the Left Peter Glotz was general secretary of the SPD from 1980 until June of this year. During the early 80s he played a key role in establishing contact between the SPD and the burgeoning social movements. He is the author of several important articles on the state of the European Left. He was born in Bohemia in 1939 and is presently a member of the Bundestag and its foreign relations committee. You have written a good deal about the out. relations between Eastern and Western Secondly, intensified economic con- Glotz (left) and Hobsbawm Europe, though it is not very well-known tacts. There are now initiatives, again in Britain. How do you see the relations coming from Gorbachev, which we years the SPD has discarded its quite between the Western socialist movements should seize - for example, proposed understandable fear, which goes back and the Eastern bloc countries, or the joint ventures between East and West. several decades, of contact with the movements within the Eastern bloc? We should not allow the Americans to communist parties of the Eastern bloc Well, I start from a concept which is force us into curbing the transfer of and now has what are cautiously highly controversial, namely Central technology between West and East. termed information contacts but which Europe. I believe that it still exists. Rather, it is in the interests of peace as nevertheless amount to regular rela- Now this is highly controversial, and I well as common development that tions. Not in the sense that we conduct come in for a lot of flak in my own modern Western technology reaches government negotiations, but in the party, because there is always the risk the East, and in a good many instances sense that we try to promote develop- that 'Central Europe' will be inter- the reverse will hold true. ments in the economic and cultural preted as a German hegemony or a Thirdly, I think that cultural discus- sectors in particular, and also to German-Austrian hegemony over Hun- sion should play a much larger and discuss disarmament questions. And at gary, Czechoslovakia and all the other more crucial part than it does today, the same time we maintain contact with small states of Central and Eastern along with the mutual exchange of our the oppositional movements there, in so Europe. That is not the idea at all. intimately related European cultures. far as these things are compatible and Today we are in a situation in which it Even in the head of an average German feasible. And that gives us quite a is not possible to dissolve the two blocs Social Democrat, Warsaw today is different perspective. We have to in the short term, and which therefore basically a city on the other side of the create what I call a second Ostpolitik. offers us no chance of going our own Iron Curtain; the fact that Warsaw, ways. For this reason I am also rather Prague and Budapest are profoundly And how does this second 'Eastern policy' critical of the ideas put forward for a European cities, just as European as differ from the first? restoration of the small-German Bis- Paris, London or Berlin, is simply Fundamentally, the first Ostpolitik re- marckian empire in the name of suppressed and forgotten. We lean our moved the legacy of the war and reunification; I put more faith in a real backs against the Wall, facing Portugal, restored normal relations. We as the European solution, and I believe that it discussing the question of olive imports government then were proud, and quite must proceed from the present-day or wine exports. There's no longer a rightly so, of bringing about a four- blocs, the present-day bloc situation, dialogue, and the Slavs are behind us - party agreement on Berlin, so that we and must try to overcome it - in three Attila the Hun is at our backs, so to were not forced to use airlifts to feed areas in particular. speak. That is an absurd position and it people. Khrushchev still used to send Firstly, I believe that we can make must be broken down; not by confronta- up aeroplanes when the German feder- Central Europe a disarmament zone, tion but through intensified cultural al parliament met in Berlin. That is all and here we are talking about a contacts. For someone like me, coming over. But in addition we had to secure chemical weapon-free zone, about a from the Austro-Hungarian empire in a the borders - a de facto recognition of nuclear-free corridor or indeed the manner of speaking, from Bohemia, the existing demarcation. That was Gorbachev proposals, which are now where Czechs and Germans have lived necessary too. But now we must go addressing the question of middle- alongside one another for a thousand further and really develop these rela- range missiles and which originally years, it is a matter of special signi- tions with regard to content. One aspect came from the West, and might favour ficance. But it really should be intelligi- of this is tourism in either direction; this trend. Demilitarisation, then, not in ble to others, too. another is that we must encourage the sense of a complete shedding of all Let me say now, on quite a practical these countries to let their people out. troops, but still a very marked thinning level, that in the past three or four The GDR still retains the fig-leaf that 14 MARXISM TODAY AUGUST 1987 slowly he will not get into orbit; if he is quite true that we encounter a great proceeds too swiftly he will be pushed deal of misunderstanding and many off course. And when it comes down to questions from some of our friends, it, none of us can gauge exactly the particularly in France, and notably the balance of power in such a country French Socialists. after 60 years of that kind of socialism, of petrified and dogmatised socialism. Yes, I think that we must unfortunately He also faces all kinds of fearsome admit frankly that the French - including resistance from the middle-ranking the French Left - have somehow worked officials, and in the economy. And even themselves up into a new Cold War mood. if there is no organised political opposi- It's what I always call the Yves tion at present, it is still tremendously Montand effect. In France there is the difficult to push through reforms. He problem that they regard a Germany needs successes. The question is divided and turned against itself as whether the West is clever enough to more predictable than a Germany that give him these successes, or whether it is admittedly divided but still working will speculate that it would be better if together within the policy of coexist- he failed. ence. Obviously the Americans are hoping he will Yes, that's right. But it is not a purely fail. German thing. For instance, I would say Yes they are, quite clearly, and so are a that it is also very noticeable in the good many circles in West Germany attitude of the French to Poland and to the and other conservative circles in West- Soviet Union. The fact is that the French ern Europe. They are virtually longing find it extremely difficult to digest the for the return of old Brezhnev. He did Gorbachev phenomenon in any way - even not come up with any surprises, nor did many people in the French Left. In the last he force us to adapt to change. He five years they have simply dismissed maintained the old concept of the everything with the word 'Gulag'. There enemy. To that extent it is a was no need to analyse... 'Oh, they're all tremendously interesting but also a just totalitarian societies, there's nothing tremendously ambivalent and vulner- going on, nothing ever happens there.' I able process, and no-one can say must say quite frankly that I find this exactly what will come out of it. The attitude incomprehensible nowadays, in only hope we have is that he derives a the 1980s. people are only allowed out for family 'The SPD has great deal of his support from The term totalitarianism may have reasons. But in the meantime it has academics, the KGB, and also from the been applicable to the society which been extended so much that, on the discarded its higher echelons of the army. These are, Stalin set up in the 1930s and 1940s, and whole, opportunities for travel are quite after all, relatively strong groups in to that extent analyses like Hanna already very much better, though still understand- such an organised society. Arendt's and many others do have not good enough. But much better than able fear of certain plausibility. But today I would 10 years ago. And the same goes for contact with But it is still interesting and welcome and no longer employ the concept of countries like Hungary. In my opinion unexpected that a man like Gorbachev rose totalitarianism as it is employed by the the further development of this pro- the to the top of a party which everyone French and by a section of the German cess, with the three elements of dis- communist regarded as a bureaucratic structure, Right. armament, culture and economics, completely immobile and immune to any would definitely mark a qualitative parties of the Eastern bloc' attempt at reform.

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