The Intellectuals in Soviet Reform
Coser, Lewis A.
We bring together here several short comments on the remarkable events in Eastern Europe. As usual, each writer expresses an individual opinion. —EDs. In one of the earliest issues of...
...This "ideal type" of totalitarianism applies to conditions under Hitler and Stalin but Arendt failed to register and analyze, except partly in the case of Hungary, later developments in the Soviet empire...
...The dominance of the Russian oligarchy," I wrote, "may be ended in various ways, but it will not be terminated by its self-immolation on the altar of democracy...
...The startling increase in mass communication among citizens within a nation and between them and the outside world has reduced pluralistic ignorance and atomization...
...What one encounters only too often, he argued, is the absence of "cognitive pluralism," or what I would call the inability to tolerate ambiguity...
...The Catholic church in Poland provided powerful alternative channels of communication and the Protestant church in East Germany provided similar, if not quite as potent, bonds of community...
...This means that a majority of citizens may feel deprived and opposed to the regime, but because there is no communication between them, they are unable to pool their knowledge and hence remain powerless and passive...
...They had to allow the citizen, even though most reluctantly, to profit from networks of communication within or outside of official channels...
...Recently I listened at Harvard to a young Russian social psychologist from Moscow University who, while clearly on the side of glasnost and perestroika, injected a few sobering notes...
...By and large, however, conditions are not ripe for a military solution...
...In totalitarian societies, such as existed under Hitler and Stalin, there can be no spontaneous bonds among people—what bonds there are, are imposed from above, and people are reduced to social atoms or "monads" without windows...
...With them, well understood self-interest and moral interest go together...
...The party and state apparatus under Gorbachev and in Eastern Europe have moved toward reform at a pace that would have astounded even Deutscher, but at the same time, forces from below, less so in the Soviet Union than in the satellites, have reappeared on the political scene in a way that would have astounded even Rosa Luxemburg...
...we are moral, they are evil...
...A military regime might acquire some sullen acquiescence but surely no enthusiasm, particularly among the intelligentsia...
...But modern men and women of ideas have skills that are absolutely indispensable for those in power...
...You cannot have a closed society based on computers and fax machines...
...This reduction of pluralistic ignorance has led, especially among the satellites, to a political wave of tremendous power...
...Totalitarian regimes, Arendt argued, were characterized by the atomization of society and an enforced destruction of all bonds of community among individuals...
...SPRING • 1990 • 183...
...The clandestine circulation of opposition newsletters, easier access to foreign news, more frequent contacts with foreigners—all enabled people to gain a less distorted knowledge of events abroad and also fostered a sense of relative deprivation, an informed comparison between what "they" had and what "we" lacked...
...Such retreats stimulate not only neo-Stalinist thought but also dreams of a military solution...
...Yet it seems a fact that economic conditions in the Soviet Union and the Soviet block are disastrous...
...You can no longer rely on enforced ignorance if people can listen to the BBC or the Voice of America, especially when what you listen to is not only a more realistic picture of what life is like abroad but also within the Soviet sphere...
...that is, they clung to a Luxemburgian belief in the spontaneity of oppressed masses in revolt against totalitarian overlords...
...Such trust, it seems to me, has been eroding in the last few decades...
...What I have been saying so far sounds optimistic but it ought to be balanced by discussing some less pleasant aspects of an exhilarating set of events...
...They will become visible as the restraints of the past are weakened...
...Even though there may be some nostalgia for the good old days under Stalin, this style of thought is not likely to stop the progress of glasnost and perestroika...
...He argued that in significant strata of the population the recent changes encountered resistance because, as a heritage from the Stalin era and perhaps from earlier times in Russian history, there is a tendency to think in black-and-white terms...
...I answered him in the same issue, arguing that no ruling groups are ever likely to acquiesce in a curtailment of their power and that basic democratic changes in Russia would come from below rather than from above...
...Earlier despotisms found it relatively easy to deal with dissatisfied mandarins, who could be decapitated without much fuss...
...It is the conjunction of these two forces that explains the world-shaking events that we have been witnessing in the last few months...
...About this I do not share his pessimism even though I see the dangers he points to...
...What we have been witnessing in recent months in the Soviet Union, and in its satellites as well, is a mutual dependence of reforming forces from above and below...
...He argued that a military regime would not necessarily preclude a loosening of governmental ties in the economy...
...We are good, they are bad...
...Even when the powers-that-be attempted to delay the introduction of modern channels of communication, they could no longer proceed on the basis of collective ignorance...
...Let me try to sketch some of the factors that explain these momentous events...
...The fact that the intelligentsia is no longer dispensable in the Soviet sphere is among the prime reasons why a return to a totalitarian regime or to military solutions is unlikely...
...They feel disoriented by the often contradictory messages 182 • DISSENT European Revolutions they now receive, even from official spokespersons...
...As communist societies became increasingly dependent on mass media of communication and citizens could no longer be shut off from kinds of news and knowledge from which the regime wished to shield them, the Arendt model no longer applied...
...The "haves" are more prone to cling to superannuated styles of thought than the "have-nots...
...If public opinion has become important, you need social scientists to study it...
...Granted, then, that a military regime is conceivable in the Soviet Union and perhaps elsewhere, it is still unlikely...
...It is also worth mentioning that the positive steps of Russia on the international scene may well be perceived by some Russians as humiliating retreats...
...The regime is in a bind because, while it may well wish to reduce the freedom of the intelligentsia, it is also dependent on it...
...If the West were to be unreceptive to Soviet attempts to terminate the cold war, then such a military regime might find some popular support and encourage foreign adventures...
...And indeed Pinochet in Chile showed that one can very well combine political dictatorship with economic "liberalism...
...And, perhaps more important, they are not likely to inspire trust in the population at large...
...Accustomed to black-and-white thinking, such people lack the secure guidelines they received under Stalin and his successors...
...Given this large-scale development of the productive forces, Deutscher argued, in good Marxist fashion, that one was now likely to witness a relaxation of controls, a liberalization of the regime, and a gradual democratization of Soviet society...
...Let me put it another way...
...Very much of what will happen in the Soviet sphere will depend on the way the intelligentsia plays the very complicated game of accepting benefits and concessions from the regime while also, at the same time, refusing to be coopted...
...other factors contributed...
...They profit directly from the fact that channels of communication are now wide open...
...I do not think that either the other editors or I were aware of the contradiction between a Luxemburgian belief in the creative spontaneity of the workers and the Arendtian contention that in the totalitarian iron cage, SPRING • 1990 • 181 European Revolutions given the destruction of all nonparty social forces, mass action was no longer possible...
...I am arguing that we deal here not with simple imitation but with learning from what others are doing...
...There may appear all sorts of social ills that could in the past be hidden...
...The economic reforms now undertaken are likely to have severe short-term negative consequences: more unemployment, more insecurity, more suffering...
...What Hannah Arendt and most of us failed to realize was that the atomization model ceased to explain Soviet events once Soviet citizens could no longer be insulated from contacts with the rest of the world and once individuals found ways to escape from the enforced isolation that had them in its grips during the Stalin years...
...The military have been successfully insulated from political affairs for many decades...
...Students, academics, and professionals have been in the vanguard of the struggle for freedom in the Soviet Union and its satellites...
...If you hear of the miners in Siberia going on strike or of Baltic nationalists demanding autonomy, you will be motivated to emulate them...
...Be this as it may, it is important to realize that with the restructuring of society, all sorts of reactionary and retrogressive forces attempt to share the limelight with the newer, enlightened ones...
...Such men and women may create significant forces of resistance to the restructuring now in process...
...Nor were television and radio the only powerful means of decreasing pluralistic ignorance...
...Such formerly forbidden knowledge may not only result in new attitudes but also in new kinds of action...
...I surmise, however, that such reactionary tendencies are less potent among the young, among various national communities, and among women...
...That is one reason the power holders will find it exceedingly difficult to reverse their liberalizing course...
...Openness is in their personal, their corporate, and their moral interest...
...If the intelligentsia is indeed indispensable, it may well be the saving remnant in the decaying structure of the Soviet bloc...
...In one of the earliest issues of Dissent (Summer 1954) we published an essay by Isaac Deutscher on "The Future of Russian Society" in which he argued that the major reconstruction of the Russian economy had been completed and that Russia was now engaged in a gigantic effort to further develop its productive forces...
...That is why the regime, even when it talks tough to the intelligentsia, as in China, cannot risk losing its contributions...
...Yet we also subscribed, fully or only partly, to Hannah Arendt's diagnosis of totalitarian societies as marked by the attack on the bonds of class, family, religion, profession, and the coordination of all societal forces by all-embracing totalitarian overlords...
...You cannot do without computer operators, without atomic physicists, or without laser technicians...
...Under such conditions we have what sociologists call pluralistic ignorance, a state of affairs where citizen A may be discontented and dissatisfied but does not know that citizen B has a similar experience...
...For many years Dissent editors were largely agreed on the proposition that basic change on the Soviet scene could only come from revolt of the underlying population...
...My Moscow colleague thought that under these circumstances a military coup would be not probable but possible...
Vol. 37 • April 1990 • No. 2
