REFORM IN EASTERN EUROPE
Liehm, A. J.
What has been called Eastern Europe since the end of World War II is a political, not a geographical, phenomenon. Geographically it comprises countries that have always been considered part...
...It would and could incorporate a kind of Khrushchevian reform into its national program...
...The introduction of some kind of pluralism was probably the only way out of the crisis...
...At the same time all kinds of special units and detachments of the army, police, and militia were strengthened...
...The Soviet political and economic model definitely does not fit the countries of "Eastern Europe...
...The two paradoxes that issued from these first experiments in reform and change are: (a) The psychological aftereffect of the Polish crisis of 1956 was a sense of victory: the Soviets retreated...
...The first movement for change in the 1960s was political, motivated largely by the absence of any measurable de-Stalinization in the 1950s...
...Far-reaching economic reforms, as well as democratization of the political structure, were among the goals sought in this reform, which, it must be noted, presupposed continuing ties with the U.S.S.R...
...Stalinism was imposed on the countries of "Eastern Europe" in 1948-1949...
...after Stalin's death in March 1953, efforts at reform started almost immediately...
...Almost from the outset the armed forces were kept out of the conflict...
...Geographically it comprises countries that have always been considered part of Central Europe (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland), as well as countries distinctly East European (Bulgaria, Rumania...
...in a political deal at the Yalta conference...
...Which means that the "East European" societies must be considered as societies in movement, limited as that movement may be at different moments...
...It seems impractical for the Soviet Union to attempt to streamline them, as long as overall military and political control is assured...
...It has also become clear that the graft of Russian culture (under the aegis of Soviet communism) on cultures of a radically different character has failed...
...give us back our rights and we shall organize and renegotiate a new contract with the powers-that-be...
...This is how the Solidarity movement came about...
...Thus when the time came for armed intervention, it could be carried out without Soviet participation...
...THESE THREE MAIN ATTEMPTS AT REFORM in "Eastern Europe" were different in character, undertaken at different times, in different circumstances, and against different traditions...
...But when the contract collapses for economic reasons, and the state begins to talk about such things as productivity, adjustment of prices, harder working norms, initiative, the other side answers: the contract does not seem to be working any more...
...After the reform movement was suppressed by the Soviet invasion, what had been first its strong point (the fact that it originated in the system and did not wish to destroy it) became its weakness...
...b) the catastrophic, deteriorating economic situation, which makes compromise impossible "over the butcher's counter" (this played an impor240 tant role in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia...
...They should not be considered as a monolithic bloc...
...Are they not, under the pressure of circumstances, developing toward a kind of system that has resigned itself to abandoning totalitarian control of all aspects of an individual's life, in favor of a sort of authoritarian militarism —an "East European" brand...
...There will be no sharing of absolute power, retained nominally by the Communist party but, in reality, more and more by the army and the police, the "apparatus in uniform...
...Already we can see that Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania (for example) live under arrangements that make them extremely unlike each other in many respects...
...And, unlike in Hungary, the invasion brought to power the worst and most incompetent representatives of the Stalinist past, advocates of total subservience to Moscow...
...This eventually was attempted in Hungary...
...According to that contract (a model I started working with about ten years ago), the East European state guarantees the citizen employment for life, at a mediocre salary, with all kinds of social services, for little work and almost no individual initiative...
...One might also be tempted to ask whether certain countries and societies (such as the Polish or Hungarian) still fit the definition of totalitarianism proposed by Hannah Arendt...
...and the Warsaw Pact...
...Eastern Europe, as now defined, is the territory 238 conquered by the U.S.S.R...
...Those in power had no role in the movement and, to all practical purposes, the Party disintegrated...
...nor ethnicity (some are Slavic, some not...
...One of the aims it almost achieved was the democratization of the CP...
...They were crushed at the moment they reached the point of sharing power...
...By the summer of 1968 it was firmly implanted in the factories, which became, after the Soviet invasion, the bastions of political and moral resistance to "normalization...
...Kadar, on the contrary, led his depressed and traumatized country closer and closer to the fulfillment of many of the proposals and promises of 1956, away from confrontation and toward a growing degree of compromise...
...These attempts have failed, but almost 40 years after the end of World War II, "Eastern Europe" remains an extremely heterogeneous and explosive conglomerate, held together only by the Soviet military presence...
...In this context, let us not forget that Poland, before 1948, did not have a significant Communist party...
...General Jaruzelski's popularity was promoted...
...nor similar experience in World War II (some fought Hitler, others were his allies...
...It is often argued that the West abandoned these countries to the U.S.S.R...
...In exchange, the citizen yields all his civil rights, and most of his human rights, to the state...
...As long as both sides stick to the contract, social and political calm remain in balance...
...The reform movement was, to a large extent, born within the system...
...They accepted a Polish "solution," and will do so again under pressure...
...At the same time, Czechoslovakia was one of the two countries in "Eastern Europe" (the other being Bulgaria) with a long tradition of a good, unpoisoned relationship with Russia...
...This does not mean that there is nothing left for "Eastern Europe" but to develop into a series of little Russias (which is not even true for the various republics of the Soviet Union...
...2. Others thought that after a mere four years it would be possible to return to the status quo ante (to the conditions of 1948, and even further back), and rebuild the country more or less along the lines of a multiparty parliamentary democracy...
...The Eurocommunist movement really started here...
...2. The ideology of the movement was provided from the outside by the enormously powerful and influential Catholic counterculture, well structured and entrenched, and identified with Polish nationalism...
...It sought to adapt its proposals to the country's own traditions, at the same time reassuring the U.S.S.R...
...Unlike in Poland, there was no parallel structure on which to fall back (for instance, the Catholic church...
...What brings them together is neither history and civilization (they belong to traditions as different as West European and Eastern forms of Christianity...
...Since the working population was not yet directly hurt by the consequences of the economic slump, this movement was essentially propelled by a political oppo239 sition that profited from the weaknesses of the regime...
...However, the workers and even the peasants ultimately joined the movement, which concentrated more and more on problems of economic reform and self-management...
...This eventually happened in Poland...
...Czechoslovakia had a long democratic past, a successful experience of parliamentary democracy, and a deeply rooted tradition of trade unionism, with working-class political parties and movements of a socialist character...
...2. Unlike Poland or Hungary, the mass membership of the Czech Communist party brought under its enormous one-party umbrella a great many people who retained ties to the country's democratic traditions—political, intellectual, trade unionist, and socialist in general...
...It is probably inevitable that the U.S.S.R...
...Characteristically, absolute calm reigned during the reform period...
...The specific characteristics of the situation in Poland after the crushing of the attempt at reform are: (a) the existence of a parallel ideological and political structure that cannot be "normalized": the Catholic church...
...the organization and performance of the country's economy improved...
...Very few care to risk breaking the stalemate...
...nor a comparable degree of political and economic development (before World War II some were democracies, most dictatorships, some industrialized, others underdeveloped and agrarian...
...For the first time—but probably not the last—the army and the police publicly assumed the role of the single authentic safeguard of the regime...
...Nor was there much strength left in the illusion that it might be possible to return to the pre-1948 situation...
...The two main characteristics of the Polish reform movement seem to be the following: 1. It came not from within the system, but from outside it...
...The rejection of the graft has become one of the permanent characteristics of "Eastern Europe's" existence...
...It seems, however, more accurate to state that "Eastern Europe" is just one of the consequences of the Soviet military victory in World War II that probably could be entirely reversed only by a Soviet defeat in a World War III...
...For a better understanding of the situation, let us look at the three main attempts at reform in 1956,1968, and 1982...
...As for Hungary, it lacked the solid tradition and experience of parliamentary democracy...
...1980-1982 FOURTEEN YEARS LATER (but the breakthrough had been prepared throughout the 1970s), the Polish crisis produced a classic case of how the "new social contract" had collapsed, replaced by Stalinist terror...
...The question arises whether the time has come for negotiating a new status for the area, provided a system guaranteeing Soviet security and strategic interests could be worked out...
...The workers originally spoke not of selfmanagement but about organizing themselves against the employer, that is, the state...
...They have tried again and again to reform it, change it or, at least, adapt it to their own needs and traditions...
...These differences probably will grow...
...That it didn't come shows the limits of Soviet willingness to accept any changes in the area...
...On the other hand, "Eastern Europe," once considered an asset by the U.S.S.R., has become a heavier political and economic burden...
...about its strategic interests...
...b) A self-conscious Poland was led by Gomulka further and further away from the promises and hopes of 1956, toward a new confrontation in 1970, which can be seen as the first rehearsal for the crisis of 1980-81...
...The Poles published my text on the "new social contract" through the underground publishing house NOWA in the mid-1970s, and often referred to the concept in their writings and discussions...
...will tolerate, and maybe even instigate, some adjustment to local conditions and national traditions, as well as economic reforms that would reduce the burden on Soviet shoulders...
...Repeating a traditional Polish myth, they were cast in the role of possible mediator...
...1968 THE CZECHOSLOVAK ATTEMPT at reform came 12 years later (the "long march" toward 1968 having actually started as early as 1961...
...what you are asking for now was not part of the contract...
...It is a role they have played for a long time, but with less publicity, all over "Eastern Europe...
...Those who then attempted a change were confronted with two kinds of temptation: 1. Some believed that "Stalinism" was just a deviation...
...These different psychological attitudes governed further developments...
...By this time it was no longer tenable to consider Stalinism as little more than a deviation...
...1956 THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT REFORM came after a rela tively short period of Stalinist rule...
...in World War II and transformed into a huge Soviet province upon which the Soviet political and economic system was imposed...
...The country was thrown into a state of turpitude and remains there...
...There were two main characteristics to the Czechoslovak reform movement: 1. In the absence of a national nobility and with a weak national middle class while nationalism was a growing force, Czech intellectuals became a genuine political class by the end of the 18th century, and more so at the beginning of the 19th...
...The attempt at reform was carried out in a highly industrialized country (whose traditional economic structure was badly damaged by Stalinist economic policy...
...In contrast, the Hungarians were psychologically traumatized by defeat in 1956: a heroic revolt was crushed, as it had been crushed before and will be crushed again in the future...
...c) the openly admitted political role played by the "apparatus in uniform" (Lenin...
...It can thus be said that the Czechoslovak attempt at reform proposed to change the system considerably without bringing on its collapse...
...In their view, it would be sufficient to rehabilitate people, avoid the excesses of coercion, slow down the rhythm of industrialization, change agrarian policy, elect a new politburo, and so on, and everything would be all right...
...There is, however, a common denominator to them all...
Vol. 30 • April 1983 • No. 2
