In February 1985, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. (CPSU). In 1986, Gorbachev began the political reforms known as perestroika (restructuring); an attempt to ensure the survival of the Soviet Union by the partial reform of the economy and political system [1]. In brief, the policy is described by Mary McAuley:
In the economy, the aim was to introduce elements of a market mechanism, and a variety of forms of ownership; in the political sphere, the vision was of a reformed Communist Party, still firmly in control, but a party whose officials both at central and local level would, to some degree, be accountable to elected bodies. Greater freedom of discussion, and scope for autonomous social groups would characterize a society in which party-state institutions no longer owned and managed all spheres of activity. [2]In the longer term, the policy resulted in the end of Communist Party control in the Soviet Union, and can therefore be counted a failure, at least by comparison with Gorbachev's aims. However, in the late 1980s, the introduction of perestroika had an immediate effect on the relationship between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, at the very least because the régimes there viewed what was happening with interest, and in some cases, distaste [3]. The first major instance of change was in the Polish crisis of 1989.
The crisis in Poland had its root in the foundation
of the independent trade union Solidarnosc (Solidarity)
in 1980. Two factors influenced this event. The first was the
formation of free trade unions on the Baltic coast in the late
1970s. the second was the election of the Polish Cardinal Karol
Wojty_a (of Kraków) as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church
in October 1978. D.S. Mason comments that on Wojty_a's return
to Poland in 1979 as John Paul II, he "was welcomed by millions
of Poles and [he] gave them a sense of both hope and power".
Following an attempt to raise food prices in the Summer of 1980
strikes spread throughout the country, resulting in the replacement
of Party Leader Edward Gierek by Stanis_aw Kania, and the creation
of Solidarno__ in August.
In the following sixteen months Solidarity's prestige
and power increased rapidly as millions of Poles joined the organisation.
It began to challenge the Communist Party, the Polska Zjednoczona
Partia Robotnicza (Polish United Workers Party) with increasing
effectiveness. For example, Mason points out that twelve million
out of a total workforce of sixteen million people joined Solidarno__
or its rural affiliate. Solidarity's chairman was the ex-leader
of the Strike Committee at the Lenin Shipyard, Gda_sk, Lech Wa__sa.
The challenge of Solidarity to the PUWP ended on the 13th December
when General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced the creation of a "Military
Council for National Salvation", and, under martial-law,
the Army and Police crushed any resistance. According to the authorities,
the decision to impose martial-law was a Polish one. This was
later justified by the then deputy prime-minister, the former
editor of Polityka, Mieczyslaw Rakowski. He stated in an
interview that the Polish Communist leadership had "not done
the job for them" (our Soviet friends), and added that in
1981 "the only alternative to martial law was to raise our
arms and let ourselves, the state itself, be destroyed".
Ratowski's opinion was that "blood would have flowed like
rivers if we hadn't imposed martial law on December 13. And civil
war would have followed, so the forces of the Warsaw Pact would
have entered". Despite these pronouncements, there is likely
to have been some Soviet influence, direct or indirect, on the
Polish events of late 1981. Although Jaruzelski's government now
held power, it found it difficult to gain any authority. George
Schöpflin has written that in Poland "the aftermath
of Solidarity left behind a generation of intellectual and working-class
activists for which the existing régime was completely
inauthentic and who simply opted out of official structures wherever
and whenever they could". Solidarity survived in an underground
way, and published newsletters and organised occasional strikes
and demonstrations. Many people, according to Mason, became apolitical
or apathetic, but were largely disillusioned with the government
and also with socialism.
In the later 1980s, encouraged by the 'reformist'
leadership of Gorbachev, and by another attempt to raise food
prices, there were widespread strikes. Negotiations in 1988 and
1989 legalised Solidarno__ and in April 1989 new parliamentary
elections were called, in which Solidarity was allowed to compete
for a limited number of seats in the Sejm (Parliament),
and for all seats in a second chamber, the Senate. In the elections,
held in June 1989, Solidarity won all the contested seats in the
Sejm and 99 of the 100 seats in the Senate. In September
1989, a non-communist coalition government was formed under a
new Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a supporter of Solidarity.
The Soviet Union did not react to the Polish events
according to the 'Brezhnev Doctrine', as it had done in Czechoslovakia
in 1968, or even in the nominally "hands-off" approach
they had taken in the 1981 Polish events. Instead Moscow took
a much more relaxed attitude. In October 1989, Gorbachev had told
the President of Finland that "the events that are now taking
place in the countries of Eastern Europe concern the peoples and
countries of that region ... [and that] we have no right, moral
or political, to interfere in events happening there". Similar
ideas had surfaced in Gorbachev's 1987 book, Perestroika.
He wrote that every nation "is entitled to choose its own
way of development, to dispose of its fate, its territory, and
its human and natural resources". Although this was to some
extent a plea for a more tolerant attitude from the West to the
Soviet system, as a policy it also had the added effect of encouraging
the Eastern European satellite countries to go their own way.
The Brezhnev Doctrine was replaced by what Gennady Gerasimov,
then a Soviet spokesman, called the 'Sinatra Doctrine' which permitted
other communist countries to go their own way. Michael Howard,
the historian, commented in 1989 that Moscow seemed to be "for
the moment content to allow its satellites to solve their problems
in their own way. It seems even to accept that the solution to
those problems will lie in open contact with the West - that capitalism
may succeed where socialism has evidently failed". In any
case, the result of Soviet inactivity over Poland was visible.
Mason has since commented that in 1989 the "message for both
Poland and the rest of the [Eastern] bloc was clear ... Moscow
was no longer an obstacle to systematic change". This said
we must keep in mind Timothy Garton Ash's comment of 1988 that
"Gorbachev's impact [on Eastern Europe] has been large: it
has also been complex, ambiguous, more indirect than direct, and
the 'Gorbachev factor' has played into political scenes that,
at least in Hungary and Poland, already had powerful dynamics
of their own".
Apart than Poland, the first country in Eastern Europe
to take obvious advantage of the changed situation was Hungary.
In fact, in line with Garton Ash's comment, the process of change
had been at work there for a number of years. András Bozóki
has written that "Gorbachev's ascent to power in the Soviet
Union - did not launch, but encouraged and justified from the
outside, the process of structural transformation slowly enfolding
in the daily routine of Hungarian society". The revolution
in Hungary happened in such a slow and un-dramatic way that is
has been described as a "negotiated" revolution.
Following the failed revolution of 1956, Hungary
was ruled by the Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt
(Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party) under its leader János
Kádár. In the 1960s the party leadership began a
series of liberalising measures, primarily in the area of economics.
The New Economic Mechanism (NEM) of 1968 permitted a certain amount
of decisions to be made at local level. Despite these reforms,
and others made in the 1980s, Hungary began to show signs of political
instability. Kádár, who had dominated Hungarian
politics for over thirty years, was removed from power in May
1988, leaving a power vacuum. With Kádár gone, the
MSzMP split into 'reformist' and 'hard-line' groupings. To complicate
things further, the growth of a democratic opposition in the 1960s
and 1970s, cumulated in the formation of popularly supported opposition
groups like the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) in 1988.
Issues came to a head in the Summer of 1989. Members
of the MSzMP agreed to meet the Opposition Roundtable (EKA), and
conceded that a new political system should be created. The negotiations
were numerous and very thorough, and resulted in the fall of the
Communists from power. At the end of October, Hungary became a
Republic (rather than a Peoples' Republic), and the country began
to prepare for elections in March and April 1990.
The changes in Hungary had a direct influence on
how the transitions occurred in both the German Democratic Republic
(GDR) and Czechoslovakia. One result of the roundtable negotiations
was that on the 11th September the Hungarian government decided
to allow East German "tourists" to cross the border
into Austria. This event is often seen as the immediate trigger
for the remaining 1989 revolutions. For example, Gale Stokes said
that these East Germans, who had in some cases camped out in the
woods around the border crossing for weeks, had realised that
"in Hungary, unlike Berlin, where the wall remained in place,
the Iron Curtain - the ugly commonplace of a divided Europe -
was starting to come down". In the following weeks, thousands
of East Germans fled to the West via this "green border"
into Austria. Others besieged the official representation of the
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in East Berlin, or the West
German embassies in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw. This mass exodus,
according to Mary Fulbrook, posed a "major crisis of legitimacy
- and even of basic functioning - for the GDR regime".
At the same time, opposition groups were formed and came into the open politically, in particular Neues Forum (New Forum) formed in early September. This eventually led to demonstrations in some of the larger towns, Halle, Dresden and Potsdam, but particularly in the industrial city of Leipzig. On the 7th October, Gorbachev visited East Berlin, and the East German leader, Erich Honecker, made it clear that he would not tolerate any change. On the 9th October a large demonstration of about 70,000 people took place in Karl-Marx-Platz, Leipzig, and despite rumours that the security forces were ready and prepared to use force to disperse the crowd, it passed off peacefully. Much of the credit for this was later taken by Egon Krenz, the person responsible for security affairs at national level, but in reality the local party issued an appeal for non-violence on the suggestion of Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and others. On the 18th October Honecker resigned and was replaced by Krenz. Despite this, the demonstrations grew larger and larger, reaching about 300,000 in Leipzig in early November. On the 4th November, about half a million took part in a spectacular march in East Berlin finishing with a rally at Alexanderplatz. Less than three months later, one of the speakers, the writer Christa Wolf summed up what the meeting meant for many of the demonstrators.
It was the end product and climax of a long process in which literary and theater people, peace groups, and other groups had been coming together under the aegis of the Church, to meet and share talk from which each learned the urges, thoughts, and language of the others, and drew encouragement for action.
With Honecker gone, and the mass exodus continuing,
the obvious path for the GDR was the way of reform. On the evening
of the 9th November the Berlin wall was opened. There is evidence
to suggest that the authorities did not mean to open the Wall
at this moment, but in the confusion and in the absence of any
specific instructions, the border guards followed the mood of
the people. The Berlin Wall has been called the "central
monument of the Cold War ... [and] an emblem of the division of
the late 20th-century world into two political spheres".
In 1989, the Wall very quickly became obsolete, and a focus for
(Western) tourists to appreciate the end of the Communist era.
By the end of November there was a new prime-minister, the reform-minded
Hans Modrow. Eventually from the chaos, the Communists began roundtable
talks with the opposition in an attempt to salvage some role for
the eastern part of Germany. Elections were held on the 18th March
1990, and the Christian Democrats (CDU) won over 48 per cent of
the vote. A pro-unification coalition government was formed under
Lothar de Maizière in order to "achieve the unity
of Germany swiftly and responsibly for the whole of the German
Democratic Republic at one time after negotiations with the Federal
Republic of Germany ..." In July, currency union was achieved
between the two states, and full unification followed at midnight
on the 3rd October 1990.
There were at least three main factors at work in
the German revolution of 1989. Firstly, there were reform minded
people in the Communist Party, like Modrow and possibly Krentz,
who saw the need for change, and acted accordingly. Taking Gorbachev
as their lead, they were in favour of a certain degree of freedom,
and at the very least wanted to maintain a veneer of economic
prosperity by importing western consumer goods. Fundamentally,
they wanted to retain political power for themselves. Their actions
were supported by the policy of Ostpolitik practised for
many years by the Federal Republic. This policy, described in
detail in Garton Ash's book In Europe's name, was an attempt
by West German leaders to bolster the East German state through
the lending of money and diplomatic activity, ostensibly to avoid
the problem of instability in the neighbouring state. This cumulated
in people-for-money swaps, where dissidents and others were moved
into the Federal Republic in exchange for money. This policy meant
that some West German politicians had a vested interest in the
survival of the GDR, at least before the Wende (Turning
Point). In 1989, the East German reformers were able to achieve
the overthrow of Honecker, but because of deep seated divisions
and through plain incompetence, they were unable to take advantage
of this.
A second factor in the 1989 revolution was mass emigration.
The GDR could not easily cope with the drain of people into the
Federal Republic. The loss of such large numbers of people, which
included a disproportionate number of the young, could not be
borne by the state. A third factor was the growth of a democratic
opposition. There has been some debate as to which of these two
factors was the dominant one.
Gale Stokes comments that "It was they [the ones who stayed] who toppled the Berlin Wall", thereby seeing those demonstrators and organisers of demonstrations as the prime-movers in the revolution. On the other hand, Norman Naimark says that "Those who left the country started the revolution, while those who demonstrated maintained it [the state]." What he means is that the democratic opposition were on-the-whole happy to exist in a reformed GDR, and saw no immediate need for unification with the FRG. For example, the writing of Christa Wolf in the months following the Wende expresses the bewilderment and pain endured by those who still believed in an independent, socialist future for the GDR.
We seem to have been mistaken. Our uprising appears to have come years too late. The damage to many people and to the country runs too deep. The unbridled abuse of power has discredited and undermined the values in whose name the abuse occurred. In a period of a few weeks, we have seen our chances to make a new start at an alternative society vanish before our eyes, and seen the very existence of our nation vanish with them.
This point of view was also supported by some West German intellectuals, most notably by Günter Grass. For Naimark it was the pressures from the mass emigration of 1989 which dictated the pace of the revolution and its ultimate result in the unification of Germany. In addition, it is his opinion that New Forum perhaps "understood the needs of the East German people no better that the GDR authorities". This may have been the case for sme of the demonstrators. Certainly, following unification, the actions of GDR writers like Wolf seemed somehow compromised.
They had overwintered comfortably adapted in their niches; they had accepted privileges as bribes; they had been allowed to feign a small pseudo-public arena within the boundaries of an inwardness protected and monitored by the political powers; they had only ever worked within the system - and precisely this distinguished them from the real champions of civil rights like Václav Havel; they had persisted for far too long in the illusion of an autonomous third way for the GDR and had thus isolated themselves from the 'people's movement', which had had enough of left-wing intellectuals' plans to improve the world.
This said, the opposition groups did not just consist
of utopian socialists who wanted to preserve a reformed GDR. The
opposition groups did have a direct relevance to the peoples'
aspirations in 1989. For example, Gert-Joachim Glaeßner
points out that the West has always overlooked the (numerically
small) opposition in the GDR because they had overlooked the possibility
that "these few courageous men and women articulated what
so oppressed the great majority of the population". As before,
the events of 1989 show that "once the protest is voiced,
it becomes clear that it is shared by many people".
West German politicians had thought it best to ignore the small democratic opposition in the GDR, unless it would encourage "destabilisation". Despite this, in 1989 the opposition was effective. Timothy Garton Ash concludes that "those who contributed most to Germany's peaceful October revolution [were] ... the tiny minority of human and civil rights campaigners".
Without the brave minority that faced down armed police on the streets of Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, the ultimate goal of Bonn's policy [of Ostpolitik] would never have been achieved - Gorbachev or no Gorbachev.
After the Berlin Wall opened, events flowed out of
the opposition's control. In the end, the idea of a separate democratic
East Germany proved neither achievable or acceptable to the majority
of the East German people, but the democratic opposition in the
GDR did have some influence on events in 1989.
The growth of a mass democratic opposition in Germany
was a dramatic event in itself. Fulbrook has noted that even in
the summer of 1989 "private grumbling combined with public
conformity remained the most predominant political orientation
for most" East Germans. The opposition groups themselves
often originated in the Churches and the peace movement, and John
Sandford has commented that "peace protest did not necessarily
imply fundamental criticism of the system as a whole: indeed,
it could be taken to mean accepting socialism for its utopian
promise of a world free of the causes of war". The rôle
of the Protestant Churches in the GDR has been the subject of
several studies. According to Fulbrook, a pact had been achieved
between Church and state, "such that Christians are perceived
- both by themselves and by the state - as actively contributing
towards the building of socialism in a more or less harmonious
partnership with Marxists". The churches, however were the
only social organisation in the GDR independent of the state.
In time, and particularly in the build up to the 1989 revolution,
the church became involved in an unofficial peace movement, opposing
the gradual militarisation of East German youth. In 1989 it was
the Churches, who hosted protest meetings at the Nicolaikirche
in Leipzig, and the Gesthsemanekirche in Prenzlauer Berg, (Berlin),
who according to Fulbrook did much to help the "non-violent,
gentle, character of oppositional activity ... and the way in
which this too shaped the reactions of the authorities, aiding
the crumbling of regime responses, the partial capitulations,
the willingness to enter into dialogue rather than engage in violent
confrontation". The Protestant churches, however were divided
in their motives for liberalisation and democratisation. Some
preferred Western traditions of economic and political liberalisation,
others were more sympathetic to socialistic, utopian visions of
liberalisation. As Erhart Neubert has commented, these latter
found less support in the population at large, as seen by the
"unfavourable election outcome for the citizens' movements
which comprised mainly these critical Protestants".
The primary objective of the opposition groups was not immediate unification with the Federal Republic, but for reform. Peter Neckermann said that they "wanted a share of the power in their own state, and they wanted reforms ... they wanted a socialistic state that would turn its attention to the people". This need not be a surprise. In 1989 the GDR appeared to be a viable state and the impetus for unification had hardly started. Garton Ash first noticed a change in the Leipzig demonstrations in mid-November.
I noticed one elderly man with a home-made hardboard placard on a stick. It carried the slogan of East Germany's October revolution: 'Wir sind das Volk.' But the das was crossed out and replaced by EIN, so it now read not 'We are the people' but 'We are one nation'.
John Breuilly has said that "never have the
multiple meanings of the word Volk, combined with a shift from
the definite article to the indefinite article, reflected so profound
a change in mood and purpose." Unlike other Eastern European
countries, the GDR had a wealthy, successful neighbour to which
all its citizens were entitled to passports. The opening of the
Berlin Wall further exposed East Germans to Western political
ideas and consumer goods, and thereby opened up in the minds of
most people the possibility of unification for the first time.
In any case, on the 28th November the West German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl had taken advantage of events and proposed a ten-point plan
for unification. For whatever reasons, the East German people,
according to Neckermann, "intuitively decided that their
future would be much better as part of the democratic/capitalistic
order".
Any debate over the relative merits of those who emigrated in 1989 to those who stayed as factors in the 1989 revolution must remember the political realities of that time. Those who chose to leave were dramatically demonstrating that they did not believe that the régime had either the will or the ability to reform itself. This is why so many of those who left were young. They had known no other government. It is difficult to see now just how improbable German unification seemed in 1989. The following was written by two political commentators in 1992.
Looking back at these momentous events we may find it difficult to recapture the sense of stunned amazement felt by Germans and outsiders alike, not only at the speed with which unification had been effected, but that a [sic] united Germany should have come about at all.
For example, Fulbrook records the German joke (of 1989) that "the reunification of the Germans was taking place, but on West German soil". This does not show any awareness of the momentus events to come. Those who left the GDR did so for many reasons, but their primary aim was not to undermine the authority of the state, but to start a new life in the west. This had been the path of many other of their fellow citizens during the history of the GDR. Emigration was an acceptable form of protest against the state, and was punishable with imprisonment. As Garton Ash has said in another context; the German form of revolution is emigration. It is perhaps ultimately unwise to apportion the entire credit for the 1989 revolutions to either emigration or demonstrations.
In comparison with the GDR, the Czechoslovak Socialist
Republic was in a very different position in 1989. The state was
just as oppressive as in East Germany, and the country was almost
as unprepared for radical change. The Communist Party did not
contain a large number of reformers, on the Gorbachev model, as
most of these had been seen off in the events of 1968. By the
late 1980s the government appeared as entrenched as it always
had been. After all, the régime had little else to do except
keep itself in power and to ensure that there was no threat of
'revisionism' in its own ranks. However, there was a large democratic
opposition movement; Charter 77.
One of the founders of Charter 77, and its well-known
representative was the dissident Václav Havel. Havel was
a playwright who had first come to prominence in the 1960s. His
first play, Zahradni Slavnost ('The Garden Party') was
premièred at the Na Zábradlí Theatre
in Prague on the 3rd December 1963. During the following years
he became an outspoken critic of the régime, and in 1968
wrote an article, 'Na téma opozice' ('On the subject
of opposition') in Literární listy proposing
a two-party system for a democratic Czechoslovakia. After 1968,
Havel endured being bugged, followed and interrogated. On the
1st January 1977, Havel together with Jan Pato_a and Ji_í
Hájek, became one of the first three spokesmen for the
Charter 77 movement. In 1979 he was sentenced to four and a half
years in prison, and he stayed there until the beginning of 1983.
In 1978, Havel wrote an essay on 'Mocbezmocných'
('On the power of the powerless') which became an important document
in the eastern Europe of the 1980s, and for the 1989 revolutions.
By the late 1970s, Czechoslovakia had entered a long
period of economic stagnation. Politically, the country was still
led by those who had taken control in the period after 1968. Following
'normalisation', the régime became ideologically and economically
dependent on the Soviet Union. The economy was run with a series
of Five Year Plans, ... Czechoslovakia was hard hit by the world-wide
oil crisis of the early 1970s. The country does not have large
deposits of oil, and therefore almost all has to be imported.
Between the years of 1971 and 1981, the amount of oil imported
almost doubled, while the price-per-tonne in 1981 was over five
times the 1971 price. This was a major factor in Czechoslovakia's
trade deficit which increased during the 1970s. By the end of
the 1970s it was clear that Husák and his colleagues had
not succeeded in creating a healthy economy. For a while, the
leadership were able to protect the citizen from too much financial
hardship, so that Kusin in 1978 was able to state that "measured
by bread alone, the Czechoslovak citizen is better off than he
was ten years ago. If there is grumbling, then it is because expectations
are higher, not because past living standards were."
The maintenance of living standards was one of the policies of the Czechoslovak leadership in the years after 1968. There was a kind of unspoken contract between people and state which encouraged increased consumption in exchange for political stability. Consumerism was therefore an attempt to de-politicise the people, what Otto Ul_ described as "the transformation of the unruly citizen into the consumer expending his energies in the laborious process of acquiring the goods that constitute the socialist petty bourgeois ideal".
Withdrawal from political participation was complemented by a fetish for private possessions as the dominant determinant of both economic and social advancement.
Garton Ash has written that "Forgetting is the key to the so-called normalisation of Czechoslovakia. In effect, the regime has said to the people: 'Forget 1968. Forget your democratic traditions. Forget that you were once citizens with rights and duties. Forget politics. In return we will give you a comfortable, safe life ... Keep your mind to yourself'". Havel in an open letter to Husák published in 1975 attacked this attitude. He wrote that "by fixing a person's whole attention on his mere consumer interests, it is hoped [by the authorities] to render him incapable of realising the increasing extent to which he has been spiritually, politically, and morally violated".
It needs little imagination to see that such a situation can only lead toward the gradual erosion of all moral standards, the breakdown of all criteria of decency, and the widespread destruction of confidence in the meaning of values such as truth, adherence to principles, sincerity, altruism, dignity, and honour. Amidst a demoralization "in depth," stemming from the loss of hope and the loss of the belief that life has a meaning, life must sink to a biological, vegetable level. It can but confront us once more with that tragic aspect of man's status in modern technological civilization marked by a declining awareness of the absolute, and which I propose to call a "crisis of human identity." For how can the collapse of man's identity be slowed down by a system that so harshly requires a man to be something other than he is?
This policy had a chance of working if living standards could be maintained. However in the early 1980s, as a result of the continuing decline of the economy, accelerated by Soviet reductions in the supply of oil, living standards actually began to decline. Table 1 shows changes in some selected indicators of consumption. The early 1980s were a period of recession all over Europe, and this partly inspired the events associated with the rise of Solidarity in Poland. In Czechoslovakia, the relative decline in living standards did not result in strikes or political unrest.
Table 1. Indicators of consumption in Czechoslovakia,
1956-1985
| Personal Consumption | Meat per head | Car purchases | Housing completed (area) | |
| 1956-60 | 137 | 128 | 153 | |
| 1961-65 | 122 | 110 | 126 | 133 |
| 1966-70 | 127 | 130 | 253 | 150 |
| 1971-75 | 127 | 115 | 173 | 148 |
| 1976-80 | 117 | 108 | 111 | 111 |
| 1981-85 | 104 | 101 | 74 | 83 |
Note: Figures are percentages of the previous period
Source: Myant, M., The Czechoslovak economy, 1948-1988.,
(1989), p. 213.
Political control in Czechoslovakia was also achieved by the practice of coercion. During the 'normalisation' process, a large police force was built up, and in 1973 a Criminal Code was enacted to enable the immediate persecution of any political or ideological deviance. In the early 1970s there were repeated purges of the KS_ to eliminate supporters of reform communism in 1968. The actions of the state were successful in preventing serious opposition to the régime at the start of the 1970s. The human consequences of 'coercion' could be great. Intellectuals often had their chosen profession closed to them, and therefore took up jobs as cleaners, taxi drivers, waiters, and the like. Havel had worked in a brewery for a short time when he was short of money. Another, fictional, example is that of Pavel Hollar the dissident philosopher who works as a cleaner in Tom Stoppard's play Professional foul.
The Czech nation has been stood on its head ... The most independent, intelligent, and best are at the bottom; the worst, stupidest, and most servile, at the top.
The consequences of dissidence; financial hardship,
persecution, bugging, intimidation -both of self and family, and
imprisonment made the prospect unappealing. The philosopher Pato_a
was arrested soon after signing Charter 77, and following eleven
hours of interrogation, he collapsed and died. Facing this, many
Czechoslovak citizens became practitioners of what Garton Ash
calls "the split between the public and private self, official
and unofficial language, outward conformity and inward dissent",
which he notes is a phenomenon common to all Soviet-bloc countries.
As Kusin remarked in 1979, "passivity, escapism and even
servility mark the attitudes of the population at large".
The rise of Charter 77, however, suggests that the régime was not successful in eliminating all opposition or dissent in Czechoslovakia. Charter 77 was not primarily a movement for political change, but a human rights organisation. Havel later wrote that at its launch, "Charter 77 emphasised that it was not an opposition because it had no intention of presenting an alternative political programme". However at that time, the Charter could not avoid being political. As Skilling notes, "the full implementation of the rights the Charter defined would have transformed or even undermined the existing system in Czechoslovakia". The Charter was not a political party and had a loose organisational structure, which was partly dictated by the repressive political atmosphere in which it had to operate. Theodore Draper called it a "band of loosely associated individualists". According to Havel, it was to act as a "permanent appeal to the state power and a mirror of its work" and "a continuing challenge to fellow citizens". To this end, Charter 77 as well as Havel's essay "On the power of the powerless" encouraged people to live, in their own way, "in the truth", and thereby to escape from the ideological control of the KS_. Havel noted that this path is open to all, and not just to those designated "dissidents".
... it is impossible to talk about what in fact "dissidents" do and the effect of their work without first talking about the work of all those who, in one way or another, take part in the independent life of society and who are not necessarily "dissidents" at all. They may be writers who write as they wish without regard for censorship or official demands and who issue their work - when official publishers refuse to print it - as samizdat. They may be philosophers, historians, sociologists, and all those who practice independent scholarship and, if it is impossible through official or semi-official channels, who also circulate their work in samizdat or who organise private discussions, lectures, and seminars. They may be teachers who privately teach young people things that are kept from them in the state schools; clergymen who either in office or, if they are deprived of their charges, outside it, try to carry on a free religious life; painters, musicians, and singers who practice their work regardless of how it is looked upon by official institutions; everyone who shares this independent culture and helps to spread it; people who, using the means available to them, try to express and defend the actual social interests of workers, to put real meaning back into trade unions or to form independent ones; people who are not afraid to call the attention of officials to cases of injustice and who strive to see that the laws are observed; and the different groups of young people who try to extricate themselves from manipulation and live in their own way, in the spirit of their own hierarchy of values. The list could go on.
In the late 1970s, Charter 77 did not have any effect
on the stability of the Czechoslovak régime. Despite this,
the organisation acted as a "symbol of hope and as a focus
for non-conformist activity and thought".
The churches in Czechoslovakia were unable to provide
a focus for opposition, as they had done in the GDR and Poland.
The Protestant churches were generally happy to co-exist with
the régime. The Roman Catholic Church was dominated by
the pro-régime organisation called Pacem in Terris.
From 1973 the KS_ leadership insisted that all bishops should
be members of this organisation. Virtually all senior clergy were
members, but they lost credibility in the eyes of both the laity
and the Vatican. The Vatican would not appoint as bishop any member
of Pacem in Terris. In 1986, eleven of the sixteen Czechoslovak
sees were vacant. In general, the Roman Catholic hierarchy were
uncritical of the régime. When John Paul II took over in
the Vatican, things began to change. The Czech Primate, Cardinal
František Tomášek condemned Pacem in Terris
in 1982, and slowly began to speak out against the régime.
In 1977, the Cardinal had been fairly unsympathetic to Charter
77, but by the mid 1980s there was a much more friendly relationship
between the two organisations.
Like all organisations, Charter 77 was not a homogenous
group of people with the same aims. Some members were ex members
of the KS_ who still believed that reform socialism, à
la 1968, was the foundation of change, and thought that the major
agent of change would be the Party itself. Other Chartists had
no political strategy, but thought in terms of political or metaphysical
truth. The Chartists had good relations with the world outside
Czechoslovakia. For example, Havel had personal contacts with
Western playwrights like Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller and Tom
Stoppard. The change in Czechoslovak society wrought by Charter
77 was barely perceptible. However, Havel noticed that between
entering prison in 1979 and leaving it in 1983 that there was
a slight change in people's reactions to the régime. This
gradually began to undermine the party leadership.
Three major factors can be found as causes of the
growing destabilisation of the régime in the 1980s. Firstly
there was the continuing economic decline, which got even worse
during the 1980s. Secondly, there was the growing activity of
Charter 77, and other opposition groups. Thirdly, there was, of
course, the arrival of Gorbachev in the Kremlin in 1985. Ultimately,
the timing of the 1989 revolution was due to events in Poland,
Hungary and the GDR, but the causes were present many years before.
The economy went from bad to worse in the 1980s.
Economic growth fell short of the plan targets, and Schöpflin
said that "failure to modernize and to increase investment
had left the country's once-modern industry resembling a 19th-century
industrial scrap heap". Even worse, the leadership showed
no signs of initiating market-based reforms, as had been done
in Hungary. Husák was replaced as general secretary of
the Communist Party by Miloš Jakeš in 1987, although
he remained in the post of President. The October revolution in
the GDR inspired the pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia,
and the country, together with Rumania and Albania began to look
fairly isolated from the rest of eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union.
On the 17 November 1989, a group of students marched
to the Slavín national cemetery in Vyšehrad in memory
of Jan Opletal, a Czech student killed on the same day by the
Nazis in 1939. The crowds were larger than expected and many were
carrying banners with pro-democracy statements. The crowd, wanting
to move on to Wenceslas Square grew larger and more outspoken
in their demands for democracy and freedom. They were met by the
police in Národní Street where they found themselves
blocked. They waited there and sang songs while the police looked
on. After about two hours, the police lost their patience, and
after asking the crowds to disperse for a last time they began
to indiscriminately attack the demonstrators with their batons.
The crowd tried to flee, but found that they could not. In the
confusion, there were reports that a demonstrator had died. This
was later shown to have been incorrect, but the rumour was enough
to anger and inspire the demonstrators. There has been some debate
over who was responsible for authorising the attack on the demonstrators.
It now seems that Jakeš did not, and there has been speculation
that the Soviet KGB were somehow behind events. There is evidence
that the reported death was faked, possibly in an attempt to force
the resignation of Jakeš and his replacement by a pro-Gorbachev
reform Communist. If so, they had misjudged the mood of the Czechoslovak
people.
The violent end of the 17 November demonstration persuaded many Czechs that something needed to be done. Strikes started in Charles University and other higher education institutions. On the 19 November, representatives of the pro-democracy groups, including Charter 77, met in Prague and formed the loose alliance known as the Ob_anské Forum (Civic Forum). They asked for four things:
The immediate resignation of the communist leaders responsible for preparing the Warsaw Pact intervention in 1968 and the subsequent devastation of the country's life, starting with the president, Gustáv Husák, and the Party leader, Miloš Jakeš; the immediate resignation of the federal interior leader, František Kincl, and the Prague first secretary, Miroslav Št_pán, held responsible for the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations; the establishment of a special commission to investigate these police actions; and the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience.
The natural leader of the Forum was Václav
Havel. In the meantime, the demonstrations in Wenceslas Square
grew larger and larger, and the statue of St. Václav became
the focus of pro-freedom slogans and handbills.
Dub_ek arrived from Bratislava on the 24 November,
and shared the balcony at Wenceslas Square with Havel. The same
day, the politburo and Central Committee secretariat resigned.
Jakeš was replaced by Karel Urbánek. It was hoped
that this replacement of the Stalinists would appease the crowds,
but it was too late for this. On the 27 November, despite the
appeals of Urbánek and the Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec,
a general strike began which gained widespread support. As a result,
Adamec agreed to form a new government in December, and the articles
of the constitution guaranteeing Communist Party power were abolished.
Adamec announced his new government on 3 December.
It was still dominated by communists, and following further demonstrations,
he resigned four days later. Marian _alfa, Adamec's deputy, then
put together a government with a non-communist majority and promised
elections. To all intents and purposes the revolution was over.
On the 10 December, Husák resigned the Presidency.
At the end of December, Havel was elected President
by the Federal Assembly. In his New Year Address in January 1990,
Havel spoke to the two nations, speaking of his dream of a "republic
economically prosperous and yet socially just ... of a humane
republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds
the hope that the individual will serve it in turn". Havel
at the end of his speech paraphrased the statement that Masaryk
had borrowed from Comenius in his own first presidential speech:
"People, your government has returned to you!".
In June 1990, elections were held, and had a high
turnout of 96 per cent. Civic Forum, and its Slovak equivalent,
Public against Violence, emerged with 170 seats out of 300 in
the Federal Assembly. The Communists got 47 seats, and the Christian
Democrats 40 seats. The Slovak Nationalist Party did well, gaining
over ten per-cent of votes in the Federal Assembly. This success
opened the way for renewed calls for Slovak independence. In early
1991, the Slovak Prime Minister, Vladimir Meciar, started a campaign
for more powers to be passed to the provincial governments. Further
elections were held in June 1992 which served to further highlight
the extent of the split between the two countries. In the Czech
lands, the Civic Democratic Party and its leader Václav
Klaus were dominant, while Meciar's Movement for a Democratic
Slovakia proved popular in Slovakia. Following negotiations, it
was agreed in August that Czechoslovakia would formally split
into two independent states on the 1 January 1993. This was not
to the taste of all Czechs or Slovaks, but political realities
prevailed. Havel was elected the first President of the Czech
Republic on the 26 January 1993. As Havel commented in February
1991, "everything is more complicated than I had anticipated".
Written 1993-94. Web Page by Michael
Day, University of Bath.
Last updated: 20 January 1998