EUROPEAN COMMUNISTS & EUROPEAN DEFENSE

...Therein lies the rub: is it genuine...

...It can also be judged no less accurately by their willingness to support Europe's deterrent capability...

...Russia is heir to the Byzantine empire...

...The protective oceans create a conviction that American democracy needs no other protection...

...In Europe, as in America, a majority of the electorate has stood to the left of center ever since the war, producing such phenomena as Scandinavian socialism and the British welfare state...

...Waves of surviving "reform" Communists, sadder and in some cases even wiser, fled to the West...

...Such a "mellowing of Communism" has represented the hopes and the wishful thinking of Western leftists all along, from the platitudes about "goulash Communism" down to self-deceptions about the nature of the detente...

...Mikhail Suslov even dusted off the unmentionable Mr...

...It does represent the only possible happy ending to the challenge to the European humanitarian ideal posed a century ago by Karl Marx...

...The present Soviet regime may be less effective than that of Lenin and Stalin, but it is no less autocratic in its commitment and practice...

...Geographically, Western Europe is a slender littoral at the fringe of a Russian landmass...

...It is trivial to inquire about the sincerity of the men and women who proclaim that turn...

...Communist aims are fundamentally different...

...In the process, they may cause some problems and may make some valuable contributions, but, most of all, they may, at last, come of age...

...The recognition, to be sure, came too late to do them much good, for a revolution triumphing with Soviet aid becomes damnably permanent...

...It is hard to credit the sincerity of anyone who professes a faith in democracy but denies it the ability to defend itself...

...There Communist reformers end up on the 276 ERAZIM KOHAK gallows—unless they succeed in escaping to the West...

...As long as economic, social, and civic backwardness lends legitimacy to the Communist protest, the great hope for disarming the Communist threat to liberty is to incorporate the Communist parties in the democratic process, giving them a vested interest in its preservation...

...While Communism may appear as a grotesque EUROPEAN COMMUNISTS & EUROPEAN DEFENSE 275 posturing in any socially and economically mature society, it does represent an articulation of the legitimate protest of the outcasts, both of the proletariat and of the intellectual aristocracy, in societies struggling to break the stranglehold of latent feudalism in the age of industrialization, as in the Germany of Karl Marx's time or in the Italy and Spain of our own era...

...What is their attitude toward European defense...

...In the joint Franco-Italian declaration, Marchais and Berlinguer, general secretaries of their respective parties, pledge allegiance to freedoms won by the "great bourgeoisdemocratic revolution" and speak of democracy as the condition of socialism in terms that once won Karl Kautsky the title of "Renegade...

...More than...

...By contrast, Lenin's October putsch (now "The Great October Revolution''), which restored the principles of a rigid autocracy (now "democratic centralism") in the name of a holy orthodoxy (now "the scientific world view, Marxism-Leninism"), built on the bedrock of the Russian tradition...

...European Communist parties, for threescore years Stalin's vanguard, seem to be discovering democracy...

...A Communist party in Britain, in Austria, or in Denmark has nothing to gain by turning democratic...

...In both these respects, Europe's reformed Communists speak with less clarity than with respect to social welfare...

...Charged with the responsibilities of governing, the Communists have produced rather ordinary, reasonably honest, reasonably effective municipal administrations, socially sensitive and responsible...

...They have aided Eastern Europe's rebels and have called for a Soviet withdrawal from their European empire—more, ironically, than can be said for Kissinger...

...The Italian CP, while still indulging in some revolutionary rhetoric, has turned vigorously to electoral politics...

...That has, after all, happened before...

...It is clear enough what the Soviet empire stands for...

...That Communism is not the conviction of men and women, but the official ideology of an empire—and imperial ideologies cannot mellow without a decline of the empires...

...Europe, including European Communist parties, can evolve to democracy only if it can preserve its autonomy against the Russian—Soviet—imperial pressure...

...Quite specifically, this means first of all a commitment to the economic and political integration of Europe's unoccupied littoral, a consistent and emphatic rejection of Soviet interference in West European affairs, a refusal of Russia's imperial expansion into Europe and wholehearted support for all that increases Europe's ability to preserve the autonomy of its democratic institutions...

...Though today's Social Democrats may not care to remember it, the Social Democratic party in Germany a century ago was a radical revolutionary party, as ready to trample human rights in the name of a dictatorship of true believers as the bloodiest of today's Communists...

...The crucial point is not whether the Communists now "sincerely believe," but whether they are prepared to accept the democratic rules of the game only as long as these serve their feelings and purposes—or whether they are prepared to work for their strengthening even against their own power ambitions...

...Yet even that shift may be taking place...

...Intentions apart, power corrupts—but European political parties, including the Communists, would be rather less exposed to its corrupting effect within a federal European framework...

...Given the Soviet dependence on American wheat and the rising power of China, that might be a long, long time...

...The range of opinion in its journals is far more reminiscent of the German Social Democratic press a century ago than of the monolithic drabness of Communist publications ten years after the war...

...Seen in that light, the successful Communist participation in Italian democratic politics is less a defeat for democracy than the only kind of victory democracy can wish for: the incorporation of its radical challengers within the basic democratic practice...

...But Europe is not Russia...

...It was the Italian Communist leader Togliatti who first criticized Stalin's Byzantine model of Communism from within...

...In Russia, Lenin, Stalin, and their successors had all the prerequisites for imposing their ideology after the manner of Oriental despots...

...Rather, the Communists, long chained to the Byzantine ideal, may at long last be "going European...

...All three parties have given clear indications of their willingness to exercise the democratic option...

...Previous writers, offering different points of view, have included Bogdan Denitch, Dennis Wrong, and Irving Howe in the Fall 1975 Dissent and other issues...

...Learning to think of a country as "we" rather than "they," the basic step in democracy, is a long and laborious process...

...In 1848, it was the Russian invasion of the Austrian empire that crushed the Magyar uprising and restored the Hapsburg monarchy as bulwark against democratization for another 70 years...

...There are reasons for caution, but there are also reasons to believe that such a democratization of Europe's major Communist parties is taking place...

...But Europe has no ocean protecting its eastern borders...

...If Communism were to become democratic, not simply as a matter of tactics, but as an abdication of the Byzantine model in favor of a European, democratic one, they would lose all distinctness...

...Europe is building up safeguards...

...Should the Communists now be genuinely willing to participate in European political life, as partners in democracy rather than as the vanguard of despotism, this could change the entire complexion of European politics and make it far more difficult for the Soviets to hold on to their central European empire...

...The postwar expansion of the Soviet empire over half of Europe and its results gradually made the point that Europe, whatever it is, is not Russia...

...At the moment, Italian Communists are clamoring for participation on the national level, protesting their devotion to the democracy within whose framework they are operating...

...In America, this may seem less obvious...

...For centuries, the principles of Russian social cohesion had been Byzantine pravoslavi i samoderzhavi, orthodoxy and autocracy...

...The rejection of democracy, after all, has been the major point distinguishing the Communists from the socialist movement...

...That, to be sure, is not new...

...It is not easy to convince oneself that such a change is really taking place...

...The criteria for evaluating the Communist "democratic turn" must be political rather than emotional...

...These new refugees brought a whiff of reality into the never-never land of Western Communist ideology in which 273 Lenin's Byzantine notions had long survived untarnished...

...Not, rather than...

...Russian power has cast its Byzantine shadow over European political growth ever since the rise of the Russian state and the fall of the Polish kingdom in the 18th century...

...Russia's empire is the greatest obstacle to Russian progress: any reform in Russia would spell revolt in Russia's imperial domains, as was demonstrated by the Polish, Magyar, or Czech responses to Khrushchev's attempt at de-Stalinization...

...It took Karl Kautsky quite a while to work his way to the honorable status of "Renegade Kautsky...

...But it might not be a vain hope with respect to Western Communism, if the democratic turn of the European Communist parties is genuine...

...Democracy cannot simply surrender to such a claim...

...More recently, it was again Russia's armed might, in aggression and open warfare, that crushed the democratic reforms in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia...

...Democracy cannot simply dismiss that challenge...

...Unable to win victories on the barricades-and thank God for that—the SPD turned to the ballot box...

...Democracy's great strength and hope is its ability to incorporate voices of protest as responsible components within the democratic process...

...To be acceptable to Europeans, Communism would have to be recast within Europe's heritage of freedom and democracy...

...A great many of the pre-1933 Nazis were genuinely, idealistically sincere...

...That question is far less moot than the question of sincerity...

...For some 20 years, European Communists continued to hope that they could avoid such recasting by trusting Soviet might rather than their own popular acceptability to bring them to power...

...The socialists have consistently regarded socialism as essentially an economic extension of democracy in an industrialized society, justified as a reaffirmation of the European ideals of freedom and dignity under the strains of industrialization...

...Recently, Soviet hopes for a Communist summit that would reaffirm the traditional role of European Communists as the docile vanguard of Soviet imperialism have been repeatedly frustrated by Italian insistence on autonomy and integrity of their party...

...The strength or weakness of European democracy, including the democratization of Europe's Communist parties, is directly proportionate to Europe's ability to shelter its political development against the pressure of Russian might...

...Europe is not "going Communist" whenever another Communist major is elected...

...The Communists have no less consistently rejected those ideals as "bourgeois" and have offered instead an "enlightened" despotism by the economically elect—though, with a logic only a Marxist can fathom, they regarded ideological purity as the mark of economic election...

...East European Communists too would find Western Europe far more attractive than Russia if they saw there is room for them there...

...Old habits and postures die hard: after years in militant opposition, the Communists still tend to identify as "progressive" anything that undercuts the society's ability to govern and defend itself effectively...

...Some of the new converts to democracy in all likelihood do not "truly, sincerely believe" what they preach, others undoubtedly do...

...There was silence, then resistance, reform, then repression and alienation...

...The initial impulse came, interestingly enough, from Europe's occupied eastern half...

...Zhdanov, Stalinist boss of the Cominform...

...On the local level, Italian Communists have scored significant electoral successes, yet their long-dreaded victories did not produce local red terror...

...In those countries, however, where the accidents of history or the facts of economics enabled the Communists to attract a significant popular following, the story has been different...

...Be that as it may, sincerity is no guarantee against the corrupting effect of power...

...The Russian shadow over Europe is the most ominous threat to European democracy...

...The Europeans, as Portugal and Greece have shown, can deal with their native dictators, but they are no match against the overwh..'lming Russian might...

...But no Russian government, least of all the present Soviet one, can afford a democratization of Russia as long as it must sustain imperial domination over a host of recalcitrant, non-Russian peoples...

...In country after country—most recently in Czechoslovakia in 1968—Soviet tanks put a swift and brutal end to attempts at democratization...

...Whether such a strategy can be successful depends, to be sure, less on Communist good will than on the strength of Europe's democratic institutions and military deterrence...

...Eqs...

...Since the neck is a rather sensitive part of even a Communist's anatomy, this proved to be a powerful impetus for second thoughts...

...But when faced with a sharp decline in support in public opinion polls, the Czechoslovak CP used its position to stage an armed coup—and within a few weeks it reemerged as the most vicious and bloody of Europe's ruling Communist parties this side of Mother Russia...

...But, as Eastern Europe had shown that such help is undesirable, Portugal showed that it is also unavailable except in contiguous territories east of the Yalta line, at least until the Soviet Union feels strong enough to resume its stalled march to the Atlantic...

...The Communist refusal to accept the rules of democracy—and the Socialist refusal to accept their participation on those terms—had split the left-of-center electoral majority into parliamentary minorities...

...Nothing will endear it to the voters: it might as well retain its revolutionary purity that at least attracts the intellectual Bolsheviks in the universities...

...It is easy to be democratic while winning at the polls...

...Survivors of earlier Communist victories may, of course, be permitted a healthy dose of scepticism...

...The party he once headed has repeatedly condemned Soviet domestic practice and international policies and has regularly given aid to the 274 ERAZIM KOHAK assorted reformers who have incurred Moscow's wrath...

...They could cling to the Byzantine ideal and condemn themselves to perpetual, ineffectual opposition—or they could participate actively and effectively in political life, though at the cost of accepting the presuppositions of democracy...

...It may be unfortunate, but it is a fact that today one of the crucial tests of a commitment to democracy is a commitment to its ability to defend itself...

...With reason—and yet, if genuine, the change could mark the end of an era, profoundly affecting Europe's conservative stance...

...West European Communists, who had long thought that the choice facing them was simply a tactical one—whether to seek Byzantine power by electoral or revolutionary means—discovered that the choice was rather different...

...When Stalin exported Lenin's Byzantine model of Communism to Europe there was no sigh of relief, not even among people who considered themselves Communists...

...The sole shield of its precarious autonomy is its military capability to EUROPEAN COMMUNISTS & EUROPEAN DEFENSE 277 deter the Russians from resuming their interrupted advance...

...Whenever democracy stifles a legitimate voice of protest, it dies no less surely than when it simply surrenders to it...

...Altogether, the democratic turn of Europe's major Communist parties, though not without risks, could be a hopeful development...

...Yet, such a change should be most welcome— and not at all surprising...

...There was another reason as well...

...There have been too many Popular Fronts...

...Its other root is the ancient Roman conception of the human as endowed with intrinsic, individual rights...

...But neither can democracy simply stifle, strangle, or eradicate it...

...The Czechoslovak Communist party, for instance, operated for years as a responsible party within a democratic framework, even forming a national government strictly by the rules...

...As long as the Soviet Union clings to its European empire, the point at issue simply is not Communism or capitalism, but European freedom and Russian despotism...

...it was its electoral victories...

...Europe's basic conservatism in recent decades has been largely a paradoxical product of the Communist parties' commitment to despotism...

...The Communist is not, as the Communists were wont to claim in their Popular Front phases, simply a socialist in a hurry...

...To the extent that the Communists are willing to participate in strengthening European democracy and European security, they should be more welcomed than feared...

...Nor was it simply a matter of tactics...

...Unfortunately, present policy in the West and in the Soviet Union offers Moscow neither the incentive nor the opportunity to divest itself of its embarrassing European empire without a major trauma...

...The change has been no less marked in domestic politics...

...The one opportunity, represented by Czechoslovakia's Dubcek with his policy of "democracy, socialism, and friendship" (with the Soviet Union, that is), died when Soviet armored tanks rolled across the Czechoslovak border on August 21, 1968...

...A democratic turn, to be sure, does not represent a live option for Communist parties in countries where an awareness of Soviet realities, social and industrial maturity and/or an effective social democratic movement have deprived the Communists of any significant popular appeal...

...Within two years, Italians will be electing members to a European parliament and carrying the new purplish passports bearing the legend EUROPA...

...If Europe's freedom is both internally and externally strong and secure, it is capable of including the Communist parties of Italy, France, and Spain in the democratic process...

...Some of them, like Rohm, paid for their sincerity with martyrdom, just like the sincere idealists who brought Communism to power in Eastern Europe...

...The sincerity of the Communists' turn to democracy will be gauged quite accurately by their willingness to support European integration...

...The idea of democratic Communism cannot help but appear as a contradiction in terms...

...In recent years the Italian and the Spanish Communist parties have consistently criticized Soviet imperial ambitions...

...With the disastrous extension of the Russian empire into its heartland, it does not have even a cordon sanitaire to separate it from Russia...

...The spectacle of Communists, their comrades and erstwhile heroes, fleeing from the East, brought home to the Western Communists the point that a successful revolution might leave even their own necks dangerously exposed...

...It was always a self-deception with respect to official Soviet Communism...

...Kerensky's forlorn attempt at liberalization was built on thin air...

...There, Communist parties brought to power by Soviet intervention discovered, after a generation of Soviet-style bloodletting, that the long-scorned "bourgeois'' commitment to human rights and the democratic recognition of opposition parties are crucial both for building socialism and for the safety of the builders' necks...

...The shift, so far, is rather underwhelming, but the trend is there, and welcome...

...Admittedly, the only lasting hope of freeing Europe from Russian pressure, as mongeneral de Gaulle saw, is the Europeanization of Russia...

...They are clearly reconsidering their opposition to European integration and even, hesitantly, their opposition to NATO...

...In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, it was the massive presence of Russian conscripts in the heart of Europe that moved the Congress of Vienna, not only to annul French revolutionary despotism, but to set back Europe's liberal aspirations by some three generations...

...But the choice is real for those Communist parties that are able to command a significant popular following, as are the Italian, the French and, probably, the Spanish CPs...

...Which tactics should European Socialists adopt toward them...

...Europe's cultural heritage is rooted in the democracy of ancient Greece with its conception of the state as a polls, the commonweal of free citizens rather than a chieftain's fief...

...Sincerity is cheap...

...But it was not Bismarck's antisocialist laws that made the Social Democratic party democratic...

...The frank defense of democracy by Western Communists at the 25th Congress of the Soviet CP in Moscow proved a time bomb that sent the Soviets scurrying to defend their supremacy (officially called "proletarian internationalism...

...Even to many non-Communist Italians the change seems welcome after 30 years of entrenched conservative administrations kept in power less by conviction than by fear of the Communist alternative...

...While Marxism may be a legitimate voice of protest, it is a philosophical primitivism, hopelessly inadequate for the complex task of balancing common weal and individual rights...

...Few Americans have noticed and fewer still are willing to trust the change...

...Under these conditions the effective test of the European Communist parties' new-found democracy is not their commitment to civic welfare but their commitment to the political and cultural autonomy of Europe...

...Germany's Social Democratic party became democratic as it acquired a vested interest in the democratic process...

...Fused by the Judeo-Christian conviction of the worth and dignity of the human, those ideals gave Europe a profoundly democratic, humanistic temper that Europeans reaffirmed again and again through centuries of struggle...