periphery

III. Existential system crisis and the decline of totalitarianism from the periphery

The compliant socialist subject does not need to be satisfied with the system. The history of communism after 1956 provides numerous outbreaks of social dissatisfaction. In a totalitarian state, the party can use violence against rebellions in the form of protests, demonstrations, or strikes. However, it becomes increasingly difficult for the party to handle a protest if it is well organised and has a determined leadership, as in such acase the protest cannot be easily presented as the work of “counter-revolutionaries” or “hooligans.” Moreover, the protest produces new political forces that may establish themselves as a political entity in the system.

To label these forces as “opposition” – as it occurs frequently – is wrong, because the banning of political opposition under communism cannot be disputed. Their recognition would entail political pluralism, i.e. an untenable situation for totalitarianism. Therefore, if the non-communist political forces are not agents of the party-state, they should be regarded as resistance and not as opposition, even if they aim for the status of political opposition and at times refer to themselves as “democratic opposition” for tactical reasons.

The non-communist political forces can only be legally active in socialism if they unconditionally recognise the leading role of the party in the state and society. However, since only those activities are considered legal that are deemed lawful by the state party at the given time, the apparently unsteady criterion of legality is not sufficient for a satisfactory classification of political forces in totalitarianism. Thus, it is useful to additionally differentiate between autonomous and heteronomous political forces. The criterion of autonomy makes it possible to take into account the degree to which the state party’s unrestricted claim to power

non-communist political forces

is realised. Hence, the political forces that do not act as executive organs of the communist party can be considered autonomous. In contrast, the heteronomous political forces are supported by the ideological party state. Based on both criteria – legality vs. illegality on the one hand, and autonomy vs. heteronomy on the other – three groups of non-communist political forces (“actors”) can be identified.

The first group of actors is illegal and acts autonomously, which justifies their description as “heroic.” The so-called dissidents can be classified as “the Heroics.” The opposite group is guided in its actions by the communist party and enjoys legality. These are the “Conformists,” they include, for example, the “allied parties.” From an analytical point of view, however, the third group is the most interesting, as it combines autonomous action with legality: the “Uprights” (see Table 3 below).

Table 3: Non-communist political forces in totalitarianism

political forces

legal illegal

autonomous the „Uprights” the „Heroics”

heteronomous the „Conformists” does not apply

In the communist party-state, there were indeed individuals who, especially after 1956, succeeded in being recognised by the party as legal and in acting autonomously at the same time. Of course, these people had to endure the restrictions on autonomous action in the totalitarian state, but they were autonomous at least in the sense that they did not have to continuously affirm the totalitarian claim to power of the party, nor did they have to recognise the communist ideology as their own. Of all communist states, the “Uprights” were most widespread in Poland, where they were usually associated with or protected by the Catholic Church. The special status of the “Uprights” was expressed in the fact that they were allowed to distance themselves from the communist party’s unrestricted claim to power. From the perspective of those in power, they often served as a “safety valve” for social dissatisfaction with the system. Although they were not allowed

to openly question the system, their very existence indicated that there was a potential for change. The “Uprights” were not allowed to openly criticise those in power (let alone the system), which was what distinguished them most from the political opposition in authoritarian systems.

The objectives of the non-communist actors can be divided into system-conformist and system-subversive ones. Objectives that conform to the system do not question the existing social order, while those which amount to the deliberate undermining of socialism are to be regarded as system-subversive. Political objectives can– in any given system – be covertly or openly pursued. In totalitarian and authoritarian systems, it is particularly common for political actors to not openly state their real objectives, as this would be counterproductive.

The criteria of openness and conformity to the system indicate three types of political objectives: the covertly system-subversive, the openly system-subversive and the system-conformist ones. These objectives can in turn be assigned to political forces, as Table 4 shows.

Table 4: Objectives of the non-communist political forces vis-á-vis the totalitarian system

political objectives

system-compliant system-subversive

hidden

open does not apply

open-system compliant (the “Conformists”) hidden-system subversive (the “Uprights”, the “Conformists”)

offensive-subversive (the “Heroics”)

Hidden subversive objectives are pursued by “upright” and “conformist” individuals. Although the two groups differ significantly in terms of autonomy, the conformist politicians in totalitarianism sometimes believe that with their activities they are pursuing system-subversive objectives. By contrast, “heroic dissidents” in particular openly advocate system-subversive objectives, which is why they must expect persecution and even state-sanctioned murder. The situation is quite different for those “Conformists” who confine themselves to pursuing

“totalitarian syndrome” system-compliant goals. For this, they are rewarded by the state party and sometimes despised by the population.

Apart from Poland, where the autonomous and legal Catholic Church was sometimes able to meet as equals with the communist party and to advocate for other autonomous forces, communist-ruled societies were, in general, politically extremely passive. The election of the Kraków Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as Pope in 1978 and the emergence of the “Solidarność” movement in 1980 emphasised this special position of Poland.

In Czechoslovakia, whose society was pacified after 1968, only small groups of dissidents who criticised the communist system emerged. Most dissidents in Czechoslovakia belonged to the most famous Charter 77. In the GDR, the dissident circles were even more manageable and were – as is well known – completely controlled by the Stasi.

The new political forces could thus become stronger or weaker over time in the totalitarian states of external origin. The theory of totalitarianism, drafted in the 1950s by Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzeziński, hardly helps to adequately assess this change. According to their theory, the “totalitarian syndrome” is composed of the following “symptoms”: the official ideology, the mass party, the terrorist secret police, the party’s almost complete monopoly of all means of communication, and the state’s monopoly of weapons as well as central control and domination of the entire economy.24

With the memories of the Third Reich and Fascist Italy still present in the 1950s, both of which Friedrich and Brzeziński considered totalitarian (their “syndrome” belongs to analogising concepts), the analysts considered war to be the most effective means of destroying “totalitarian dictatorships.” Their vision of the future is therefore not too optimistic, even though in his main work “Totalitarian Dictatorship,” written in collaboration with Brzeziński, Friedrich expressed the conviction that totalitarianism was a system incapable of surviving in the long term.25 The book includes a small chapter on resistance, however, Friedrich considered the chances of resistance as

24 Carl J. Friedrich, Totalitäre Diktatur. In Zusammenarbeit mit Professor Zbigniew K. Brzeziński, Stuttgart 1957, pp. 19 f. 25 Ibid. p. 258.

being very small.26 This misjudgement can, at least partly, be traced back to the fact that both Friedrich and Brzeziński interpreted totalitarianism in a narrow way, merely as a political system. Thus, neither of them were able to properly recognise or analyse the social forces that could have brought about or promoted its disintegration.

The change of Soviet socialist totalitarianism, usually associated with the so-called de-Stalinisation after 1956, had several causes. Although the Soviet economy, which was largely based on forced labour during the Stalin era, had long since proved its inefficiency, “de-Stalinisation” was not a simple consequence of economic mistakes. For the Soviet leadership, uprisings in the GULAG in the early 1950s probably had a greater significance in this context. Most important, however, was the desire of the party and state apparatus to achieve greater security.

It is evident from Khrushchev’smemoirs and beyond, that the highest apparatchiks in Stalin’s reign lived in constant fear of death, which affected not only the highest political leaders but all other levels of the ruling apparatus.27 As the new head of the CPSU, Khrushchev set himself apart from Stalin by offering the functionaries more security, for which the totalitarian system certainly had to pay a high price. With the criticism of Stalin, the system was at least partially delegitimised, although Khrushchev left no doubt that the communist party’s unrestricted claim to power was to remain unquestioned.

Nevertheless, the new security that the party officials enjoyed from that point on changed the face of the system, which lost its “revolutionary” dynamics based on orgies of violence. Although the upper entities of the party-state still had effective sanction mechanisms in place after 1956, the use of power for private purposes became increasingly shameless. It would be wrong, however, to speak of corruption in this context, since corruption only occurs where the otherwise applicable legal rules are broken or circumvented, whereas in totalitarianism only fear or moral strength represent the barriers to selfish action.

In the apparatus of state and party, the central officials retained their key positions, but two phenomena reshaped

26 Ibid. p. 255. 27 Khrushchev, Nikita S./ Talbott Strobe (ed.), Khrushchev remembers: The Last Testament, London 1974. the new security

the balance of power. On the one hand, differences of opinion which had previously been kept secret were at times brought forward in the party leadership, yet full openness continued not to be an option. On the other hand, the central power apparatus was strengthened because the party leadership and the party top circle were increasingly depending on its support. These developments involved a certain deconcentration of power. As a result, a sort of “principalities” emerged in the Soviet Union republics with which the Kremlin “emperor” came to terms.

In terms of foreign policy, the Soviet Union and its colonies officially declared their support for the strategy of peaceful coexistence with “capitalism,” however not renouncing confrontation with the West in practice. The Cuban crisis of 1962 vividly demonstrated the Soviet will to expand.

Especially in the work of the intelligence services, which were still more successful than the Western ones, hardly anything changed after 1956. Their central fields of activity were military and, increasingly, industrial espionage and the promotion of communist parties loyal to Moscow and other allies in the West. They also attempted to exert a direct influence on the political events of democratic states, sometimes with success, as the history of the Federal Republic of Germany shows. The military competition between systems continued after 1956.

Despite all the systemic continuity, “de-Stalinisation” significantly changed the communist societies. After 1956, except for the communist states not belonging to the Warsaw Pact – such as Albania, China or North Korea which did not experience “de-Stalinisation” – most of the other communist party states limited themselves to the ritualised mobilisation of the population on the occasion of important holidays or the “fulfilment of the planned production target.” The terror directed against society diminished. The most spectacular measure in this context was the release of millions of prisoners from Soviet GULAG, which changed Soviet society. Also, most people who had been exiled by Stalin during the war from the North Caucasus to Siberia and Central Asia returned to their homeland.

None of these developments, of course, meant that the security apparatus had stopped controlling the society. Rather, it was adapted to the new situation and the new requirements by

increasingly concentrating on the prevention and infiltration of autonomous social activities.

Significant empirical studies of socialist subjects were conducted in the eighties and nineties. The research from the eighties originated mainly from Poland. These studies prove that the values of socialist ideology, especially egalitarianism, were highly popular. Poles judged the state by the extent to which it implemented these values. The disappointment that the political system always fell short of ideological promises led to a suspicious and critical attitude towards it.28 These research findings lead to the conclusion that the rebellious spirit of the Poles was partly due to successful socialist indoctrination.

Since the end of the eighties, Polish studies have been supplemented by research from other countries. According to Russian research from 1989-91, the homo sovieticus (official name: the “simple Soviet man”) socialised by the communist state actually existed. He was characterised by antagonisms and contradictions. On the one hand, these individuals were convinced of their historical uniqueness and on the other hand, they were inclined to value strangers more highly than themselves. They combined the hope for state care with a hidden distrust towards the state. They recognised the state hierarchy and at the same time thought in extreme egalitarian categories. Eventually, they exhibited imperial posturing and yet were frustrated by the suppression of their national feelings. After the Stalin era, the “deconstruction of the Soviet man” had been initiated, whereby the negative characteristics of the homosos – i.e. their complexes, frustrations, distrust, and desire for egalitarianism – had prevailed over the positive ones. In the eighties, this change was accompanied by the proceeding dissolution of the system.29

The periodisation of the communist era into the time before and after 1956 is plausible. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the communist system went through several phases of development, depending on the problems faced and the goals pursued by the party. After (1) the conquest of power followed (2) the construction of the totalitarian system. (3) The

periodisation of the communist era

28 See Władysław Adamski/ Krzysztof Jasiewicz/Andrzej Rychard (ed.), Raport z badania „Polacy 1984”. Dynamika konfliktu i konsensusu, Warszawa (Uniwersytet) 1986. 29 Juri Lewada, Die Sowjetmenschen 1989–1992, Stenogramm eines Zerfalls, München 1993.

consolidation ofthe system’s structures was followed by (4) attempting efficiency gains. In the 1980s, (5) the system was in open crisis, followed by (6) its dissolution.

This development pattern cannot be applied to all totalitarian regimes without further adjustment, because some countries had experienced serious crises before 1989: the GDR in 1953, Poland in 1956, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1968, 1970, 1976, 1980–1981, and 1988–1989. All these crises not only put the political leadership under pressure to make decisions but also shook the very existence of the system. The communist parties affected by these crises were forced to push through decisions of great significance, such as the replacement of the entire party top circle. These crises, however, revealed the serious weaknesses in the legitimacy of communist totalitarianism.

In Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Soviet socialism could only be re-stabilised by the use of force. However, the Soviet military interventions that followed the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring led to the disappearance of the “Uprights” and “Heroics” from the political stage of both countries. The situation was different during the numerous systemic crises in Poland. Crises recurred periodically in this country because it had always proved to be possible to avert Soviet military intervention through an internal Polish solution of the previous crisis. This saved Poland from pacification following Soviet military intervention. It is noticeable that in particular the totalitarian states of external origins repeatedly entered states of crisis, which confirms the known thesis that the decline of empires starts at the periphery.

In the eighties, the “community of socialist states” was confronted with economic, political, social, and military problems that could no longer be solved. If a political system encounters unsolvable problems, it lapses into an existential systemic crisis. This crisis can only be overcome with by means of a system change.

In answering the general question of whether a system is in crisis, the criteria by which its stability and performance are measured play a decisive role, although in a totalitarian system obviously only the rulers determine these criteria. However, since communism was in competition with “capitalism,” it had to

compete at least in part with its performance. Whereas the “capitalist” system had been in the middle of a technological revolution from the industrial to the information society since the 1970s, the communists continued to insist on the forced expansion of the heavy industry. The socialist economies were at best only capable of adapting new Western technologies; even technologies for their new weapons had to be bought in the West or obtained by industrial espionage.

Looking beyond weapons and raw materials, the centrally planned economies hardly produced any goods that could have been sold on the international markets. However, the Soviet Union was extremely well endowed with natural resources and was able to avert an economic catastrophe for decades by selling oil, gas and precious metals. The situation was different with the satellite states such as Czechoslovakia, the GDR, the Hungarian Socialist Republic and the People’s Republic of Poland. At the beginning of the 1970s, these countries engaged in a dangerous experiment of “consum socialism,” from which they hoped for both positive economic impulses and greater legitimacy. Accordingly, the higher standard of living was supposed to increase work motivation and thus economic system efficiency.

At the same time, these states were aiming for ever-closer economic cooperation with the West, which consisted primarily in taking out large foreign currency loans in “capitalist countries.” This way they financed not only new production facilities but also the rising consumption, which initially lead to high economic growth, but in the interim caused a mountain of foreign debt.At the beginning of the 1980s, at least three communist states were effectively bankrupt: the German Democratic Republic, the Hungarian Socialist Republic and the People’s Republic of Poland. In Hungary, where the per capita debt to the West was the highest, even within the communist leadership, there was an increasing belief that the country could not escape the economic catastrophe without changing the economic system. However, nothing was done about it.

By contrast, the Romanian party top circle under Nicolae Ceauşescu decided to consistently reduce the debts that had grown in the 1970s with cuts in energy supplies, drastic restrictions on consumption, and by massively resorting to coercive measures. This obstinate policy, however, did not exactly encourage other

“consum socialism”

military weakness states to follow suit, especially as it did not remedy the fundamental weaknesses of the centrally planned economy– hostility

to innovation, waste of resources and labour, technological

backwardness, and low productivity.

In the 1980s at the latest, the ecological consequences of the centrally planned economy became apparent. After having been pursued for decades without any consideration for the environment, industrialisation had turned almost all industrial centres of the Eastern Bloc into areas of ecological catastrophe. The communist economies had no means available to counteract this development.

The catastrophe of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in April 1986 revealed, on the one hand, the link between technological backwardness and ecological destruction, and on the other hand both the inability and unwillingness of the political leaders to take appropriate care for the victims.

The military weakness of the Soviet Union was crucial, as was exemplified by the Red Army’s inability to bring Afghanistan under control after the 1979 invasion.

The existential system crisis also had two closely interwoven dimensions: a cultural and a demographic one. In all communist states, a new generation had grown up that did not remember the terror of the Stalin era, nor the years of war, and out of carefree naïveté, this generation had expectations of the state that the latter could not fulfil, thereby spreading disillusionment among the youth. It was specifically this generation that came under the constant influence of the new Western technologies and media – such as tape recorders and fax machines, video recorders, satellite dishes, photocopiers, etc. – which were gradually introduced into communist countries, making it easier to escape indoctrination by the state.

All these problems faced by the communist states would not have been enough to create an existential crisis if they had not been accompanied by a long-overdue activation of society by a kind of rebellion. This rebellion took on different dimensions and forms: protests, strikes, demonstrations, appeals by intellectuals, open criticism of the rulers and the system, free economic activities, illegal reproduction of forbidden books and magazines, the formation of associations without state permission, etc. The spontaneous appearance of society for the common good gave

meaning to the rebellion and added a genuine political dimension to the existential system crisis.

Such a crisis carried the danger of the massive use of force, both domestically and regarding foreign policy, and even threat of a world war. These dangers could only be avoided because the Soviet leadership diagnosed the crisis in time and – albeit awkwardly – actually sought to resolve it. The situation was different in many other communist states. There, the original dogmatic state parties denied the crisis and monitored the developments in Poland, the Soviet Union, and Hungary with suspicion.

In terms of foreign policy, the main adversary of the Soviet Union, the United States of America, pursued an extraordinarily successful policy and exerted pressure. Under the leadership of Ronald Reagan (and since 1989, George Bush), the US demonstrated both the determination and strength to resist the “empire of evil” and the willingness to cooperatively assist the Soviet Union in its struggle with reforms.

As soon as the symptoms of the existential systemic crisis became obvious to the political actors in the respective communist country, the path to political upheaval was paved. This interpretation contradicts the opinion repeatedly expressed in analyses that dissatisfaction with material living conditions was the most decisive cause of the system change. This usually ignores the aforementioned fact that the crises mainly affected Central European states where the standard of living was highest. It is true, however, that the economic problems favoured the existential crisis, because in those countries the demands for an even better standard of living had to be higher, too. Moreover, it is undeniable that a decline in the standard of living often trigger protests and rebellions. Nonetheless, the Central European crises never had a primarily economic character, because in countries with a nationalised economy the desire for sausage had to be of a political nature.

As far as the end of communism is concerned, it has, up to this point, been explained and interpreted in two different ways. While one explanation is actually intended for children, the other one dominates political science analysis. The first interpretation deals with the good communist party leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who one day appeared under the nickname Gorbi and did good to the world by giving the subjugated peoples back their freedom. This fairy tale is extremely popular among adults in Germany.

material living conditions

the lost faith in ideology

The common celebration of reunification in Germany, to which a few selected foreign politicians are repeatedly invited, confirms the public opinion in the wrong assumption that Gorbachev and a handful of Western politicians were responsible for the world-historical upheaval of 1989. In reality, however, the Western politicians were merely skilful administrators of this upheaval. Of course, this judgement does not apply to Gorbachev, who was in the midst of a permanent political storm during the 1980s and early 1990s and, despite all his efforts, was unable to keep up with the event dynamics in his country.

A number of political scientists also enjoy reciting the fairy tale of the good Gorbi. Of course, the majority of serious political analysts of communism assume that it was the death of the Marxist-Leninist ideology which lead to the death of totalitarianism. An ideology disappears or dies when its followers decline in numbers. According to Juan J. Linz, it was precisely for this reason that the elites of the communist regime lost their ability to mobilise the party and its organisations:

The fall of the ideology, its ossification and ritualisation, and the loss of any mobilising utopia ultimately meant that the cadres, especially the middle and lower levels, did not feel legitimised to deploy the intact and still large coercive apparatus in crisis situations. This resulted in negotiations with demonstrators and round tables [emphasis in original].30

Was the lost faith in ideology indeed the cause for the end of communism? Did this loss trigger the crisis of legitimacy of totalitarianism and deprive totalitarian mass mobilisation of its ground? This is contradicted by the indisputable fact that the ideology did not stop moving spirits only in the 1980s. Rather, it has always been popular almost exclusively among some – predominantly Western – intellectuals. As for the people living in totalitarianism, including the party cadre, most of them conformed to the ruling system not because they believed in Marxism-Leninism, but because they saw no other way out. Incidentally, in the totalitarian states with occupation syndrome, ideology was generally regarded from the outset as the indoctrination instrument of the “occupier.”

30 Linz, p. 35.

Anyone who claims that communism collapsed because of the ideology’s death also says that ideology kept the totalitarian state alive. However, this assertion is wrong. The totalitarian state indeed needs an ideology that legitimises it. But for its existence– as in the case of other systems – the widespread conviction that the “real-existing” nation-state is permanent, even unshakeable, is much more important. In totalitarianism, of all systems, this conviction is generated despite the unpopular state ideology. The fear of state oppression contributes most to this.

Whether the people under socialism are inclined towards the ideas of justice and equality propagated by Marxism-Leninism does not play a decisive role in the communist state. After all, the proven popularity of these ideas nevertheless failed to save the totalitarian system overall.

The references to the death of the ideology and Mikhail, who wanted and did good, have a common denominator regarding their attempt to explain the collapse of communism. However, both ignore the dynamics of the events that led to this collapse, which follows the pattern of dissolving an empire and must be examined empirically.

The following frequency of events caused communism to fail.

The final parting from this system began on the periphery of the empire, specifically on the Baltic Sea coast in the Polish Summer of 1980. Those events were preceded by the visit of John Paul II to his homeland in 1979, which had strengthened the identity and, in particular, the organisational capacity of the Polish nation. The gathering of three million pilgrims in Częstochowa, probably the largest gathering in history, went smoothly, although it was predominantly organised by Church volunteers.

The largest wave of strikes in post-war Europe, which had been rolling over Poland since June 1980, forced the communist rulers to recognise the free trade union movement “Solidarity” – “Solidarność.” Within a few weeks, 80% of all employees in the country had joined this trade union, i.e. a good nine million people. A couple of months later, a free trade union of private peasants was formed with three million farmers. The legalisation of “Solidarność” was followed by a wave of countless smaller autonomous organisations. At about the same time, the Polish United Workers’ Party lost its “outer party”: the number of its members decreased

perestroika

from three to two million. The party-state – the People’s Republic of Poland – was only able to meet this challenge because the validity of the “Breshnev Doctrine” was undisputed at the time.

The autonomous political actors at the head of “Solidarność” strove for legal status in 1980-81 with their partly hidden anti-communist programmatic. The declaration of martial law in December 1981 by the party leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski had aimed at destroying the free trade union movement and the other autonomous organisations in Poland. This, however, resulted in the emergence of the largest underground movement in post-war European history; one that can be classified as the “heroic” type.

The People’s Republic of Poland in the eighties was a totalitarian state of external origins with its state society devoting most of its energy to enforcing its unrestricted claim to power. This state was opposed by a society that was in many ways beyond the state’s influence.

To prevent a systemic crisis in the Soviet Union, like the one in Poland since 1980, the Soviet party leader Mikhail Gorbachev had initiated the perestroika in 1986.31 Gorbachev did not aim at the abolition of socialism but assumed that a new policy promoting the activity of the subjects would result in a considerable increase in the system’s efficiency. Not for the first time in the history of Soviet socialism, however, the assumption that the communist system was capable of reform proved naïve. In the years of the perestroika, the Soviet economy developed even worse than in the preceding period of the strictly centralised system. The economic failure of Gorbachev resulted in the population increasingly turning away from socialism, with the result that more and more autonomous social structures developed in the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev also introduced the policy of glasnost’ – transparency. Hoping that a free discussion would help renew society, he loosened up censorship. Like perestroika, glasnost’ was not directed against the socialist state, and, also as with perestroika, glasnost’ developed a system-subversive momentum of its own, which its creator had not intended. If, for instance, free discussions about reforms in the state media were not possible because

31 Anatoli Tschernajew, Die letzten Tage einer Weltmacht. Der Kreml von innen, Stuttgart 1993, p. 62.

of censorship, the new autonomous actors switched to the socalled samizdat, i.e. to the underground publishers.

By 1989 at the latest, the Soviet party top circle had lost control of the developments in many Union republics. It was confronted with the unintended consequences of the perestroika and glasnost’ initiated by Gorbachev: the catastrophic economic situation, social protests, new political forces as well as signs of decay within its ranks (open factionalism). The decisive factor, however, was the national movement in the Soviet republics, of which the Lithuanian “Sąjūdis” had become a model. Together with Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia likewise became the pioneers of structural change in the Soviet Union. Amongst the largest population-wise and most economically significant Slavic republics of the Soviet Union, Ukraine (especially its Western part) was the most politically active. A similar development was gradually taking place in the Caucasus and other republics. The activation of the Soviet nations since 1988 set the long-overdue system change in motion.The rebellious spirit finally reached Russia, where the Moscow party leader Boris Yeltsin even more unabashedly took advantage of nationalist and anti-communist sentiments in the power struggle against his political enemy Gorbachev. In the centre of the communist empire, the previously only latent tension between state society and society became manifest.

In the end, the Soviet Union too was confronted with a crisis similar to the Polish one, although both the extent and the degree of organisation of autonomous activities were smaller than those of its Western neighbour. As for the historical significance of Gorbachev in this context, his greatest merit is that he apparently rejected the reuse of the Stalinist methods of rule. He did not give up hope of being able to combine the spontaneous activities of society with the principles of the totalitarian state. Like most communist reformers, and unlike the reactionary communists, Gorbachev did not understand the naivety of this hope.

The development at the empire’s centre had an immense impact on foreign policy. As soon as the totalitarian system in the Soviet Union staggered, its satellites were presented with new opportunities for overcoming it. These opportunities were immediately exploited in Poland and Hungary, which in turn strengthened the system-subversive forces in the Soviet Union.

Round Table

With some setbacks, the Polish departure from totalitarianism took until the peaceful change of system in the spring of 1989. In February 1989, after a few months of preliminary discussions, the first Round Table in the communist sphere of power was set up in Poland. There, representatives of the party-state, the hitherto prohibited “Solidarność,” and the state trade unions officially and media-effectively determined important modalities of the system change which had been negotiated in parallel secret talks between the communist party and “Solidarność” (with the Catholic Church as mediator). This was followed by the formation of the first government in Central Europe, whose prime minister – aCatholic “Solidarność” activist, Tadeusz Mazowiecki – was an anti-communist.

Parallel to the Polish and Soviet developments, the situation in Hungary changed dramatically, where the reformer took power within the communist party in May 1988.At about the same time as the Polish United Workers’ Party, the Hungarian Communist Party renounced its totalitarian claim to power at the turn of the years 1988–1989 by officially declaring its support for social pluralism. Therefore, at the beginning of 1989, the ideological party states in Poland and Hungary, and thus, totalitarianism, no longer existed.In both countries, it was now important to master the political and economic system change.

Only after a Round Table had also been set up in Hungary in June 1989 and the formation of the Mazowiecki government in Poland had been completed in September of the same year, did the first official signals come from Moscow that the Soviet Union would accept the system change of its satellites. In October 1989, at a press conference held in the United States, Gennady Gerasimov, thehead of the Information Department at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, announced that the Breshnev Doctrine had been replaced by the Sinatra Doctrine, which read: “I will do it my way.” This joke put an end to the history of several decades of Soviet rule in Central Europe, which had cost millions of lives and ruined the countries concerned.

But even after that, in the autumn of 1989, the Soviet Union was not prepared to release its satellites from the Warsaw Pact for strategic reasons, particularly concerning Poland, as the following statement by Vitalij Svetlov, the long-standing head of the Polish department in the foreign policy department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in December 1992, shows:

Poland was especially important to us. Hypothetically, we could have come to terms with the loss of Hungary or Czechoslovakia – they were remote, they were not so important to us. The loss of Poland would have been a catastrophe, it would have blocked our path to the West. Everyone thought at the time (autumn 1989) [emphasis in original] that the whole system of socialism in Europe and the world was threatened. If it had been overthrown in Poland, it would have led to the downfall of socialism on a global scale.32

It was only long after the events in the GDR (the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and its consequences), Bulgaria (the fall of party leader Shivkov in November 1989), Czechoslovakia (the so-called Velvet Revolution in November 1989), and Romania (the “fake revolution” against Ceauşescu in December 1989) that the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The last meeting of its Political Advisory Committee took place in June 1990, and at the end of March 1991, it disappeared for good.

In the course of 1990, the signs of the dissolution in the Soviet Union became obvious. It was primarily due to the desire for independence of many Soviet republics, including Russia, which was of decisive importance. It was accelerated by the failed coup of August 1991 and sealed in December of the same year by the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravtchuk, and the Chairman of the Belarusian Parliament Stanislav Shushkevitch.

Leszek Kołakowski strongly advocates the thesis that only pressure from society can cause the downfall of totalitarianism. Already in 1981, he wrote:

History leaves no doubt. Whatever has happened in any country to mitigate totalitarian dictatorships has come from the pressure of society, from resistance and struggle, never from self-correcting mechanisms of the state. Inevitably, the state and the ruling party showed a tendency to overrule such changes as soon as they felt strong enough again. And if it is true that almost everywhere – even in the Soviet Union – we can see cracks in the state’s all-encompassing control of social

32 Artur Hajnicz, Polens Wende und Deutschlands Vereinigung. Die Öffnung zur Normalität 1989–1992, Paderborn 1995, p. 57.

life, this is not a symptom of the ‘democratisation’ of communism, but of its decay and decline.33

Recommended literature

Friedrich, Carl J., Totalitäre Diktatur. In Zusammenarbeit mit Professor Zbigniew K. Brzeziński, Stuttgart 1957.

Hajnicz, Artur, Polens Wende und Deutschlands Vereinigung. Die Öffnung zur Normalität 1989–1992, Paderborn 1995.

Inkeless, Alex/ Gleicher, David/ Rosow, Irving (ed.), The Soviet Citizen. Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society, Cambridge (Mass.) 1961.

Lewada, Juri, Die Sowjetmenschen 1989–1992, Stenogramm eines Zerfalls, München 1993.

Frank Grube und Gerhard Richter (ed.), Der Freiheitskampf der Polen. Geschichte. Dokumentation. Analyse, Hamburg 1981.

Sinowjew, Alexander, Homo sovieticus. Roman, Zürich 1984.

Tschernajew, Anatoli, Die letzten Tage einer Weltmacht. Der Kreml von innen, Stuttgart 1993.

33 Leszek Kołakowski, “Die polnische Lektion,” in: Frank Grube /Gerhard Richter (ed.),

Der Freiheitskampf der Polen. Geschichte. Dokumentation. Analyse, Hamburg 1981, p.239–249, p. 243.