Gorbachev and Eastern Europe: Perestroika and Historical Compromise?
Heller, Agnes & Feher, Ferenc
The history of postwar Eastern Europe begins with "Yalta." Why quotation marks? "Yalta" signifies more than the historical meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in the Crimea, in February...
...Yalta" as a concept emerged gradually in the correspondence between the Western leaders and Stalin, attained organized form in Teheran in 1943, reached its peak at Yalta, and collapsed in Potsdam in 1945...
...There cannot be a repeat performance of either the Yugoslav escape in 1948-9 or of the Albanian withdrawal in 1968...
...Romania is still disobedient, although the combination of hunger and terror presents its leaders with the threat of domestic revolution...
...In the first period, between 1945-1948, the noncommunist parties were in the forefront of the battle...
...The character of each crisis is also totally distinct...
...Although the Soviet Union has no "historical" right to interfere here apart from "Yalta," a possible future disintegration of the Yugoslav state could not leave the Soviet leadership unaffected...
...Some of the wounds may be healed, but, on the whole, the problem cannot be eliminated, and consecutive East European crises will sap the energies invested in perestroika...
...Perhaps most damaging, their social vision was archaically conservative...
...Finally, Yugoslavia is involved in a structural crisis that threatens its delicately balanced federal structure...
...The Soviet Union's leaders will somehow be able to end its role in the war in Afghanistan...
...all Albanian governments since the Soviet-Albanian rift...
...The fourth phase of Eastern Europe's revolution against "Yalta" is currently unfolding in an extremely complex setting...
...Khrushchev, who, from agriculture to foreign policy, was a great believer in uniform, simple, and drastic treatment, did indeed apply his wonder drug of deStalinization with Stalinist methods...
...Paradoxically, "Yalta," or what it could be said to stand for, had, enthusiastically and naively, been proposed by Roosevelt, gradually joined by Stalin (for tactical purposes), only conditionally and reluctantly supported by Churchill...
...And they had no allies...
...At the same time, the natural candidates in the role of supporters have become debatable allies with respect to the domestic Soviet scene...
...Another, not entirely impossible though far less likely, scenario is the above-sketched Rapallo option...
...And after twenty-five years of chauvinistic drill, the country would hardly accept external "liberation...
...He created the artificial geopolitical unit called "Eastern Europe" out of nations that had never had a common history, a common political or cultural tradition, or a religious unity...
...With the open military intervention in Afghanistan in 1981, he unwittingly committed the Soviet Union to its first unsuccessful military campaign since the inglorious days of the 1940 war against Finland...
...Hungary's revolution, headed by a popular coalition government, made a frontal attack on the "Yalta" system when the Nagy cabinet left the Warsaw pact and declared Hungary a bloc-free country...
...Several of these were even forced out of the central committee...
...The fraternity of the two gigantic powers would coerce the anti-Yalta revolution of Eastern Europe into meek submission...
...But it will not be able to eliminate the crises in Eastern Europe...
...The direction of events in these two countries was entirely different...
...The Polish and Hungarian movements, although never synchronized, reached their peak in October 1956...
...But otherwise, the sovereignty of these nations was to remain inviolable...
...Yalta" signifies more than the historical meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in the Crimea, in February 1945...
...The East European opposition has been pondering how best to cope with the historical reality called "Yalta," a reality that cannot be discarded but whose terms can perhaps be amended...
...In terms of Realpolitik Germany was bound to turn away from an increasingly weak West (which has changed from economic benefactor to a competitor as well as, become a source of other problems) and instead appeal to the Soviet Union...
...During Khrushchev's ascendancy, each East European country was in a deep internal crisis for the same reason: Stalinist mass terror and totally irrational economic management...
...The bottom line may be briefly summarized: Gorbachev's New Team is not harassed by any powerful Western pressure...
...No one remained in the supreme party leadership bodies, in the politbureau, and the secretariat of those who had crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
...They did not repeat the mistake of Western governments after World War I. Rather, they helped Germany rebuild her powerful economy and used German power to bolster NATO, thus promoting the longest lasting liberal democratic system in German history...
...According to the Western powers, Yalta meant that after the terrible devastation of World War II it is a legitimate interest of the Soviet Union not to tolerate any power on its borders either that plans to attack it or might become an avenue for an attack...
...He met resistance in only one country: Yugoslavia...
...Where a promise of such a dramatic change in Soviet defense policy after the World War, or at least a hint in this direction, is clearly necessary for the relaxed atmosphere in which preparations are made for a new Rapallo, any such promise would do more than reduce the Soviet Army's domestic standing...
...The latter seemed to be in a hurry to offer a loan of half a billion dollars, this time overtly emphasizing that Germany has interests in the region, and that it was therefore natural for it to come up with this huge loan...
...The result is a near-revolutionary situation in which there is no revolutionary actor...
...The result is, first, an East European nation with a Latin American per capita ratio of debts...
...Our only solid knowledge is that Brezhnev interpreted the Czechoslovak experiment as an outright breach of "Yalta" and crushed it as an anti-Yalta revolution...
...In fact, the three powers never fully disclosed their genuine strategies to each other, much less coordinated them...
...More important, with this escapade Brezhnev gave such a broad latitude to the concept of "Yalta" that it ultimately proved to be beyond any reasonable limits of interpretation and therefore became unacceptable to the West and the Moslem world...
...And this is precisely what Rapallo, 1922, was all about...
...Alternatives of East European Politics Under Gorbachev There are several possible, that is, logically consistent scenarios concerning East European politics under Gorbachev...
...Mitteleuropa and the German Question The German question has dominated Soviet politics since World War II...
...Yet it needs East European unity and relative stability, and, perhaps for the first time, even East European support for perestroika...
...In one version, Mitteleuropa as a nostalgic cultural-literary daydream of Hungarian, Czech, and perhaps some Yugoslav intellectuals is a concept of self-defense against Russian-Soviet political and cultural expansionism (which in some of its manifestos displays the same amount of chauvinistic intolerance toward Russian "barbarism" as Russian cultural imperialism toward "minor nations...
...This is due not only to the predictable Soviet retaliation (and Gorbachev left no doubt during 420 • DISSENT Glasnost Watch his visit to Prague in 1987 that the "friendly assistance" in 1968 was still regarded in Moscow as beneficial...
...q FALL • 1988 • 421...
...Its collapse would undoubtedly engulf a number of countries outside the Warsaw Pact (Austria, Greece, Albania) in the gravest conflict...
...It would be unfair to describe it merely as a literary and ideological cover-up for German expansionism, for the preparation of a new Rapallo...
...But whatever his diagnoses, the remedies are clearly not at the doctor's disposal...
...To placate the populace, it embarked on a policy of encouraging unlimited consumerism, which had no backing in national production...
...Timid and as yet confused but unmistakable demands for pluralism (within and without the party) were heard at the party conference, together with the public recognition of a phrase which had until recently been a sign of heresy: human rights...
...Stalin's well-known interpretation of the treaty was that he could do as he pleased...
...It would also mean a resounding defeat of one anti-Yalta revolution (the East European) at the hands of another...
...As far as the Soviet leadership is concerned, the Afghan war has been shelved...
...The transition of Germany from a pillar of the West to a neutral country that is at the same time the treasurer of perestroika would be an event of global significance...
...The battle against the heritage of "Yalta" was led by the arch rebel in Yugoslavia who had been rehabilitated in Khrushchev's anti-Stalin campaign...
...Introducing straightforward market ties with East European countries while refraining from direct political 418 • DISSENT Glasnost Watch interference would only strengthen a trend the post-Stalin Soviet leaders have never been able to control: the "centrifugal" economic propensity of these countries to find any market available for their mediocre products...
...The one hundred or so million people in that region who were eagerly waiting for modernizing reforms found them offered by the communists, not by liberals or conservatives...
...Genuine reformers now hold seats in the politbureau and the secretariat, politicians who have proved with their acts, not just with words, that they are committed to reforms...
...This long-lasting political crisis with revolutionary undercurrents led to the historic party conference in Hungary at the end of May...
...Most of the nationalist forces in Eastern Europe did not have a highly reputable war record...
...It is also the real explanation for the sudden flare-up of (leftist and rightist) German anti-Americanism...
...Even today the last financial power a troubled Hungary could turn to is the conservative government of the Federal Republic...
...The most likely scenario remains that of a long stalemate...
...Worse still, it had unworthy champions: Hoxha's Albania, a hermetically sealed Third World edition of Stalinism, and Cea§escu's Romania, which cautiously played the card of anti-Yalta nationalism to compensate the Romanian middle classes for its unbroken domestic Stalinism and scandalously inept economic management...
...As a result, he almost blew up Stalin's empire and caused rifts that have never healed...
...The dissatisfaction of the Soviet army high command became visible in a recent outburst by General Yazov, the new minister of defense, a Gorbachev appointee, against a too-liberal interpretation of perestroika...
...Poland is still rebellious, or at least turbulent...
...Those who offer this compromise regard the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe as sheer conquest...
...However, they could neither achieve a peaceful unification of the two Germanies nor were they prepared to remove the last symbolic vestiges of Germany's dependence on the victors (there is still no peace treaty with Germany...
...And by now it must be clear to the new Soviet leaders that policing Eastern Europe with troops is not a substitute for having organic ties within "the socialist community...
...The banner of the anti-Yalta revolution was picked up by Poland and Hungary...
...Stalin therefore had an easy victory...
...This much had to be acknowledged by the new General Secretary Grosz, who is a centrist without a distinct political physiognomy...
...Yalta" signifies a major trend in the wartime diplomatic efforts of the "Big Three," manifest in their correspondence as well as the records of their meetings...
...East Germany is in part the subject and in part the object of a long, involved power game whose outcome could easily rewrite the entire postwar map of Europe...
...The main reason for skepticism is that the region defined as Eastern Europe has been so widely diversified in the last decades (or rather: re-diversified, returning again to its old historical pluralism), that the Soviet leadership simply cannot repeat the methods of Khrushchev or find a single therapy for so many different diseases...
...The Polish opposition to a combined Soviet and German pincer movement requires no detailed explanation...
...In the period between the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Brezhnev's death in 1982, a long winter's snow blanketed the "anti-Yalta revolution...
...The present discussion of Mitteleuropa must be understood in this context...
...The conclusion the Soviet leaders must inevitably draw, insofar as they wish to be realistic, is the following: Even if we attribute the greatest possible credibility to the politics of perestroika, that is to say, to Gorbachev's promises of social reform, this policy cannot offer a universal solution to the East European crisis...
...Whether this cultural daydreaming will ever translate into political power remains to be seen...
...The Poles were particularly careful not to cross this Rubicon...
...When, more than three years ago, we wrote an article predicting that Eastern Europe would be threatened by the shadow of a new Rapallo, similar to the 1922 agreement between Soviet Russia and a defeated Germany, a host of prominent leftist German intellectuals seemed to be in a hurry to argue that this perspective was nothing but a nightmare of the twisted minds of East European émigrés...
...In fact, it is possible to write the history of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe from the aspect of its long revolution against "Yalta...
...We have traveled a long way toward this fairly ominous turn of events but have not yet gotten that far...
...However, the East European nations that were never consulted—or even properly advised— about the implications of an agreement so gravely affecting their future have since 1945 evidenced rebellion against "Yalta...
...At this stage, only the following features of an emerging policy toward the legacy of "Yalta" can be ascertained...
...With these contradictory trends, the whole panorama must be viewed in order to understand the strategy of the Gorbachev leadership...
...Furthermore, the change came to a very great degree under the pressure of the party membership (which in turn had been under the constant pressure of the wider populace...
...It was not due to the "wise" and "gracious" concession of leaders, nor was it simply a "reform from above...
...It is an offer of a historical compromise...
...In Poland, the new government, despite the fact that its nucleus consisted of Gomulka's national-Communist faction, came to the conclusion that for the Soviet leadership the political domination of Poland formed the heart of "Yalta...
...Behind this studied naïveté there is a historical perspective and will that express the opinions of large sections of the populace of "Eastern Europe," possibly the majority...
...Gorbachev seems to be much more astute in that he is apparently aware that the present East European crisis could be considered general only in the sense that it envelops almost all states of the region...
...Even the most skeptical observer must agree that Gorbachev is at least intent on changing the character of the satellites' dependence on the Soviet Union (if not the fact of their dependency...
...There were four distinct phases in Eastern Europe's long revolution against "Yalta...
...The East European countries live, so to speak, in different historical times: Albania in the Stalinist fifties, Czechoslovakia in the time of the unfinished de-Stalinization of the sixties, and Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Poland in yet different presents...
...Khrushchev at least believed that he had a panacea...
...Therefore, it was in some measure legitimate to believe that the same panacea could be applied uniformly...
...The national crises of the East European region are in part, but only in part, economic in character...
...Michnik further contends that since the Soviet leaders submitted Stalin to severe criticism under Khrushchev, and now Gorbachev repeats considerable parts of this, why should Stalin's interpretation of Yalta be exempt from criticism...
...Nor is he likely to find any...
...In Hungary, a leadership initially not just realistic but even extremely cautious introduced an agricultural reform decades ago...
...Czechoslovakia is perhaps the only state in which Khrushchev's therapy is being cautiously applied by Gorbachev...
...But these spokesmen of the opposition, and the populace at large, state that they are prepared to accept part of Soviet expansionism in exchange for renegotiating the internal conditions of the pact...
...Two of them are possible logically, but are totally excluded practically...
...Another reason is the unwillingness of the Western powers to assist any defector from the Soviet bloc...
...There cannot be the slightest doubt that, apart from its long-range strategic consequences, the trend toward a new Rapallo would be highly beneficial for Gorbachev's East European policy...
...The distinct character of each national crisis—in their entirety constituting the general crisis of Eastern Europe—will presumably not escape Gorbachev's, or his advisers', attention...
...Adam Michnik, the Polish dissident, argues that the Soviet Union had achieved, due to its role in the victory over Hitler, a loose frame of agreement at Yalta, with the Western and Soviet interpretations always different...
...and to some extent even Cea§escu's Romanian regime...
...In Poland, for example, the system has for some time suffered from a legitimation crisis tied to economic depression, itself a result of a long period lacking in reforms...
...Separated from the rest of the world geographically, encircled by overwhelming military and economic powers, the East European anti-Yalta movement would have no option but to obey...
...The best they can do, and this is indeed the recipe they adhere to, is to wait and see (or intervene only when compelled...
...Romania is the one country where the old Khrushchevite recipe, de-Stalinization from above, could still have beneficial results...
...The removal of Husak from his position of leadership after eighteen years of repressive rule offers a very limited road to alleviating social pain...
...Imre Nagy's short-lived cabinet during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which declared Hungary neutral...
...It can now enjoy the respite provided by political divisions in the West, as well as the disarray in major Western economies...
...We are rather inclined to understand it as a clear warning by the army with regard to its role...
...In an Eastern Europe geopolitically and economically encircled by the military power of the USSR on the one hand and the economic power of a confederated Germany on the other there is no chance whatsoever for a revolution...
...East European Crises and Soviet Solutions Like Khrushchev's rise in 1953-54, Gorbachev's ascendancy also took place amid a general crisis in Eastern Europe...
...The least likely, though not impossible scenario, is the one we would find the most positive of all...
...Although self-consciously pragmatic and almost totally free of ideological commitments, it is still not able to offer any solution to alleviate the East European crisis...
...These parties did not have the slightest chance of victory...
...And the Gorbachev period does not promise to be an exception...
...It also upheld the interests of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe (as the Western powers consistently understood the pact...
...It has two entirely different meanings...
...It is highly questionable whether the 1968 Czechoslovak attempt at domestic deStalinization belonged to Eastern Europe's revolution against "Yalta...
...One such scenario is the escape of a single country from the Soviet-dominated "Yalta" system...
...But the Soviet leadership simply does not have the "soft money" to relieve Hungary and Poland of their national debt (together equal to the debt of Mexico...
...But this quest for the magic formula could be the premonition of the Soviet leaders' slowly developing sense of the region's necessary pluralism...
...some of them directly collaborated with Hitler...
...The Soviet Union could, if it wished, deliver the goods: the (symbolic or actual) unification of the two Germanies together with opening new markets for German economic expansion...
...Soviet predominance over Poland was slowly reinstated...
...We also refer to several East European communist or leftist governments that have been overtly or covertly hostile to "Yalta": Tito's government ever since 1945...
...The Soviet effort aiming at ending the war by peacefully winning the whole of Germany continues...
...If the long-term consequences of the sweeping changes are as yet obscure, the immediate results are obvious...
...It also promised wider economic changes and, when these were not implemented, lost its selfrestraint...
...They are Albania, Bulgaria, and East Germany...
...But there is apparently no domestic figure able to implement such change...
...This trend, revealing the deeper meaning of "Yalta," is often misunderstood as the legitimate coordination of the war effort by the three allied powers...
...For the Soviet Union, such a turn in German politics, if completed, would mean a dramatic victory...
...The more surprising but unmistakably hostile attitude of the East German party apparatus is most likely accounted for by the simple fact that the present state of events (USSR-guaranteed power prerogatives plus economic injections coming from West Germany) seems beneficial...
...Signs pointing in this direction would trigger concentrated and fairly desperate efforts on the part of other Western powers to stop this trend...
...In fact, the only real violation of "Yalta" came from Brezhnev himself...
...But there is a significant difference between the current East European crises and those of Khrushchev's period, a difference Gorbachev must confront if he wants to forge a coherent policy of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe...
...Behind such awkward formulations there is, however, the realistic perception that a Central European conglomerate (similar to the defunct Hapsburg Empire) could, in alliance with the West, prove a bulwark against German and Russian supremacy...
...But in terms of historical time, Kadar and Jaruzelski are contemporaries, even partisans of perestroika, which is why their recent, or long-term, fiascos cannot be amended with Gorbachev's methods...
...Most important, Hungarian society received indirect encouragement toward self-organization and relative autonomy, a trend which has been stimulated by the Hungarian opposition for a decade now and which Kadar —as shown in his conservative and aggressive speech at the beginning of the conference, which also serves as his dubious political testament—was prepared to crush...
...There is hardly any conceivable scenario of even a symbolic German reunification that would not imply a relative diminution in power of the East German party bureaucrats...
...Nor would this necessarily be coercion of a violent type...
...Rather, their respective and highly distinct failures, or apparently insurmountable difficulties, bode ill for perestroika itself...
...Nor could he even if he were willing...
...Yugoslavia is in a constitutional (as well as social) crisis whose outcome cannot possibly leave the USSR indifferent...
...Another only logically viable scenario is the voluntary dissolution of "Yalta" by any Soviet leadership, however reformist, in behalf of perestroika and détente...
...it might, even more dangerously, whet its appetite...
...This should not be understood as mere political grandstanding, for those who make this offer are prepared to guarantee, or at least promote, social peace in the region that would be highly beneficial, indeed indispensable, for perestroika...
...But unlike Brezhnev, he is equally unwilling to overstep the boundaries of "Yalta...
...If we briefly consider the area that covers a wider territory than the countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact (but always keeping in mind countries that had once politically and socially belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence), we can find only three countries that are not, at least for the time being, in a state of crisis...
...Undeniably, however, old romantic notions are being rekindled of a Germany standing between East and West and thus creating, so to speak, a "center" of Europe, which is not part of the West but serves the role of great mediator...
...We now observe with bitter satisfaction that a reconciliation between the whole of Germany and the Soviet Union (with a possible by-product the emergence of a German confederacy) has become a commonplace topic in German politics, right and left...
...A surprising combination of forces opposed to such a perspective has emerged within the Gorbachev orbit: the party apparatus of the GDR, the Soviet army command, and Poland (this time both society and state...
...We think this the most likely option not just because of our general skepticism about the Gorbachev experiment...
...Although the strategic purpose of "Yalta" was later buried under the debris of the cold war, it provided indirect legitimation for Stalin to do as he pleased (as Stalin himself interpreted the deal...
...The Gorbachev team is still looking for a magic formula to describe their real strategy, much like Stalin's "people's democracies" (his code name for the Sovietization of Eastern Europe), or Khrushchev's "socialist community" (de-Stalinization within a basically unchanged Soviet predominance...
...The reasons for this dramatic change are fairly obvious...
...His efforts to cut an irrational military budget, his intent to walk away as quickly as he can from the Afghan war, point in this direction...
...Instead of raising the great strategic issues involved in the Yalta pact, they conducted a petty vendetta against Tito's enemies and thus lost their moral and political leadership...
...Just a few days before Yazov's comments, a highly satisfied Genscher (West Germany's Foreign Minister), emerging after consultations with Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, stated that he was now convinced that the Soviet Union is prepared to eliminate its superiority in conventional armies...
...The second, dramatic phase of Eastern Europe's long revolution covered the memorable years between 1953-1956...
...But once the populace gets used to the slightly new climate, problems will begin again...
...However, the Yugoslav leadership committed the blunder of egoistic Realpolitik...
...But the record shows that the principles of a future peace treaty were never even seriously discussed...
...This is the secret of the continued financing of the East German economy by West German loans and the implicit integration of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the European Economic Community...
...It was indeed a serious attempt at a coercive world government by the superpowers...
...Organic ties have never been found by any predecessor of Gorbachev...
...Yazov's statement was generally attributed to the conservative stance of the army...
...second, a country whose leadership squandered its hard-won political credibility by attempting to cajole the populace through consumerism instead of launching moderate structural reforms...
...They were national and nationalist political bodies without the slightest experience and with little or no willingness to coordinate the political struggle across national borders...
...This opens up the possibility of restoring Hungary's genuine—revolutionFALL • 1988 • 417 Glasnost Watch ary and democratic—historical continuity, of "rehabilitating" one of Hungary's greatest revolutions...
...He seems also to realize that the cause of the crisis in one nation is almost entirely different from that in another...
...For, despite cold war rhetoric, the Western FALL • 1988 • 415 Glasnost Watch powers firmly stood by what they had promised Stalin and only reserved their right to a different interpretation of "Yalta...
...Third, and perhaps most important, today's Hungarian political life is characterized by a loss of hope in reforms, whether proposed from the top or below...
...When we refer to rebellious East European nations, we not only have in mind a more or less popular consensus...
...The flawed legitimacy of this regime, which generates a universal and indiscriminate mistrust, then becomes the obstacle to reforming the economy even when the regime, as now seems, inclines toward reforms...
...Such a statement by German FALL • 1988 • 419 Glasnost Watch officials would have been inconceivable fifteen years ago...
...This self-imposed caution, or even immobility, only reinforces the troubled stalemate of Eastern Europe...
...The plan of this compromise is simply an East European strategy of selfFinlandization...
...Realistically, then, different possibilities are open to speculation...
...To a great extent as a result of "Yalta," the Western powers have proved incapable of formulating a consistent policy toward Germany...
...Yet another version of the Mitteleuropa dream is growing on German soil...
...First, similar to Churchill's blunt wartime declaration that he was not prepared to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, Gorbachev is surely not willing to preside over the dissolution of the "Yalta" 416 • DISSENT Glasnost Watch system...
...Its real meaning can be read in the agenda of the Crimean conference, which after victory tried to shape the entire world according to the victors' will...
...Because of this incorrect assumption, however, the "Yalta-trend" is sometimes understood as the preparation of the victors for establishing a lasting peace settlement once they were certain of their victory...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
