When perestroika seemed to result in little but empty shelves
and glasnost invited bitter complaints from the citizenry, Gorbachev
sent the people to the polls-and thus let the apparatchiks take
the heat. The nationwide election to the new 2,250-member Congress
of People's Deputies became a stunning rebuke to the custodians
of the status quo. A third of the Communist Party's regional chiefs
failed to win seats. Gorbachev was counting on democratization
to spur pressure for reform, but it also fanned secessionist fever
in the Baltic republics and ethnic violence in the Caucasus.
"The many countries crushed into some semblance of historical and ideological unity under communism are at long last beginning to assert their claims to separate identities. These countries are claiming their right to be themselves."
-Andrey Sinyavsky (one of the leading dissidents of the 1960s,
immigrated to Paris in 1973 after almost six years in a labor
camp)
They had come to mourn the death of political reformer Hu Yaobang;
they stayed to welcome Gorbachev, who was making the first Soviet
state visit to Beijung in 30 years. Soon up to 1 million citizens
had joined the student occupation of Tiananmen Square. then, early
one morning, the tanks rolled in. One column was stopped for six
minutes by a single youth. At least 1,000 were killed, thousands
more arrested. Executions followed. Among the feared victims:
the one man whom human-rights organizations have identified as
Wang Weilin, 19, Officially, the massacre never occurred
"The pressure against the system is building, and there comes a point beyond which one cannot turn back. However naive our faith may seem, we will continue the fight. Even if we are convinced the battle is lost from the beginning, at least for the time being we will have to answer the challenge."
-Wuer Kaixi (A leader of the students' movement, now in self-imposed
exile in the U.S)
The government had begun the year by announcing it would tolerate
the formation of independent political parties. In May Hungarian
soldiers cut the electrified barbed-wire fences along the Austrian
border. A month later, the remains of Imre Nagy, the Premier whom
the Soviets had hanged for his part in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
were exhumed from an unmarked grave and reburied with honor. Free
parliamentary elections were scheduled for the spring of 1990.
Although the communists have renamed themselves socialists, they
face humiliation, perhaps even political extinction.
"I am proud that these historical changes have come about without bloodshed or force. This is the result of the wisdom of the people. No one called for revenge."
-Arpad Goncz (Author and playwright. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1956 and released under a 1963 amnesty. Unable to publish, he worked as a pipe fitter.)
Outlawed for seven years, Solidarity became the government's
negotiating partner in February and a full-blown opposition party
in the summer's parliamentary elections. Running largely on their
identification with Lech Walesa, the Solidarity candidates so
completely trounced the communists that the regime felt it had
no choice but to form a coalition. After one false start, President
Wojciech Jaruselski settled on Walesa's handpicked choice for
the premiership, lawyer Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Now the once jailed
and their former jailers share a common enemy: a bankrupt economy
"Polish society, often badly assessed by itself and its leaders, has proved itself better and much more mature than we thought it was."
-Adrzej Wojda (Senator and movie director.)
In a year filled with powerful images, none was more dramatic
or more hopeful than the breaching of the structure that had stood
for the harsh division between East and West. That event as the
culmination of a process that began in May, when Hungary allowed
East Germans to pour across its border to Austria. While many
of East Germany's best and brightest voted with their feet, others
gathered to chant "We want to stay!" and demand political
reforms. Protests in East Berlin and Dresden met with brutality,
but then Gorbachev nudged hard-liner Erich Honecker into belated
retirement. In a desperate bid to keep the Communist Party in
power, Honecker's successor Egon Krenz opened the wall. But three
weeks later he too was swept aside.
"I must weep for joy that it happened so quickly and simply. And I must weep for wrath that it took so abysmally long."
- Wolf Biermann (East German poet and protest singer who was
stripped of his citizenship in 1976 while on tour in West Germany.
An idealistic socialist, he returned to his country in December
1989 and later moved back to his original home, Hamburg.)
The face was familiar, although it showed the passage of years
spent in punitive obscurity: Alexander Dubcek, the tragic hero
of the 1968 Prague Spring, returned triumphantly to join the huge
protests. A week earlier, riot police had attacked student demonstrations,
but now playwright Vaclav Havel could speak of "the power
of the powerless." Soon the communists yielded power to a
noncommunist majority. A sign in Prague summed it up:
"In everyone there is some longing for humanity's rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being and a sense of transcendence over the world of existence."
-Vaclav Havel (Playwright and leader of the democracy movement,
now president of the Czech Republic.)
The people's overthrow of President Nicolae Ceausescu's paranoid
dictatorship last week seemed to take ten hours. On Thursday night
the megalomaniacal leader and his wife Elena were ensconced in
the presidential palace in Bucharest; by Friday morning, they
were gone. But unlike the bloodless revolutions in the rest of
the Warsaw Pact countries, the Rumanian convulsion was soaked
in blood. The number of casualties is till not known, but if the
estimates of thousands killed turn out to be correct, Ceausescu's
name will be indelibly linked to one of the largest government-inflicted
massacres since World War II. Ceausecu fled his grandiose palace
only after the army refused to shoot demonstrators and many troops
switched sides, joining them.
While the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in 1989 was aided
by Gorvachev's policies and his sometimes timely interventions,
the main impetus for change came from within these countries.
All the upheavals except that in Romania were marked by massive
peaceful demonstrations against the leadership. The widespread
opposition to the Communist leadership had long existed. For instance,
Vaclav Havel wrote of the double life characterized by a public
support but private disdain for the regimes. Once the populations
perceived that some possibility existed to overthrow the regimes,
the private side was given vent in the massive demonstrations.
The fact that no major counterrevolution occurred except in Romania
can be attributed to the Communist hierarchy's loss of faith in
their right to rule. They no longer thought the system worth defending.
Communist central planning and thought control contained the seeds
of its own destruction.
"Today, Eastern Europe is again Central Europe-which it has always been historically, culturally and philosophically."
Zbigniew Brzezinski said that on March 7, 1990. Truer words
were never spoken. By 1990, Europeans could point with pride to
many postwar achievements: the reemergence of Europe as powerful
economic and cultural force, the growth of affluence, the rejection
of authoritarian government in the south, greater independence
in foreign affairs, and the end of European overseas colonialism.
But most important was the apparent end of the Cold War and division
of Europe. With the demise of Stalinism and Leninism, Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union appeared headed for some more democratic
forms of government and a closer association with Western Europe.
Despite these obvious advances, Europeans had to face up to many
enduring and new problems: a fading but persistent nationalism,
the slow political and economic integration of Europe, a continuing
inequality for women despite improvements, terrorism from Separatist
groups, a new form of youth alienation, a persisting bureaucratization,
a need to better integrate ethnic minority groups, ecological
threats to the environment, and the fading of distinctively European
culture.
The massive popular upheavals of 1989 and Gorbachev's initiatives
have made it possible to begin the democratization of the former
Eastern bloc countries and to anticipate a long-term development
of a "common house of Europe," as Gorbachev terms it.
Gorbachev claims, "Europe is indeed a common home where geography
and history have closely interwoven the destinies of dozens of
countries and nations." Both for economic and political reasons,
Gorbachev hopes to tie the Soviet Union more closely to Western
Europe and weaken Europe's ties to the United States. Close cooperation
with Western Europe could provide the Soviet Union with the economic
aid and technical expertise it needs to modernize its economy
and satisfy a historical Russian yearning to be a part of the
European milieu. The once-subjugated Eastern European states are
openly rejecting their former association with the Soviet Union
in their head-long rush toward democratic government and some
form of market-oriented economy. Barring a Soviet return to authoritarianism
and resultant crackdown in East-Central Europe, Europe seems headed
for a greater integration.
The integration of Europe could take many forms. Since it would
be impossible immediately to fully integrate the weak economies
of the former East bloc countries with those of either the EC
or EFTA countries, some gradual method of integration will have
to be employed. Moreover, economic reform is intricately tied
to the reform of the political systems of the former East bloc
countries. As Gorbachev painfully learned, economic reforms demand
the destruction of the authority of party officials who obstruct
change in order to preserve their power. This political modernization
is progressing rapidly in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary
but not in the Soviet Union, Romania, or Bulgaria where the Communist
parties retained much of their authority in early 1990 and beyond.
Unrest will continue as popular pressures for faster change encounter
last-ditch elite efforts to preserve entrenched positions. It
remains unclear if the reformist forces in the Soviet Union can
achieve an economic turnabout in time to prevent a successful
reaction against their policies. If Soviet reforms should fail
and a reactionary group were to take power, the Eastern European
countries would also suffer. Such a reaction might bring about
a civil war in the Soviet Union among reformers and reactionaries,
among the different ethnic groups, and between republics; it would
certainly bring opposition in Eastern Europe. The reactionary
forces would also face insurmountable economic problems as they
cut themselves off from outside economic aid and attempted to
revert to a Stalinist economic system. A protracted victory by
the forces of reaction seems impossible but a short-term resurgence
is possible.
Has there, in fact, been a resurgence of nationalism in Europe
and thus a decline in the support for a united Europe? Some singled
out the strengths of neo-Fascist parties in the sixties, the National
Democratic Party (NPD) in West Germany, and the Movimento Sociale
Italiano (MSI) in Italy as proof of rising nationalism. However,
the experience of the NPD suggests that its growth was transitory.
After winning a number of local elections in West Germany in the
1960s, the NPD quickly lost most of its support. Despite predictions
of continued victories, these extremists were never able to win
a single seat in the West German Parliament. The NPD appears to
be no more significant than the traditional extreme-rightist fringe
represented by the Germany Party of the Right from 1946 to 1949
and by the Reich Social party.
However, it seems that East Germany may provide a future source
of nationalism. A rather strident German nationalism appeared
in the East as soon as the Communist dictatorship waned. But such
Nationalist sentiments may pass once the euphoria generated by
the overthrow of the Communist leadership has subsided. The Italian
reactionaries have lost ground as well: the fascistic MSI has
failed to increase its representation in the Chamber of Deputies
since 1958. In 1990 and the 1991 the neo-fascist, anti-semitic
movement led by la Pen in France was stirring up nationalistic
emotions, but it too seems to be only a temporary phenomenon.
It seems more accurate to say that nationalism has not regained
strength but has never been totally eliminated. The support for
and opposition to a united Europe seem to have changed little
in the past thirty years. The Benelux countries and France were
then and are now the strongest advocates of European unity. Although
de Gaulle never favored a truly united Europe except insofar as
it enhanced French prestige and power, other French leaders such
as Monnet and Delors have been major architects of European unity.
The British have always opposed a political unification but are
now being forced to seek further economic integration or face
economic adversity.
The declining support for European unification in the 1970s was
closely tied to economic phenomena. The energy crisis brought
about by the cutback in Arab oil production led each country to
seek its own solution tot he shortages. Countries also had specific
concerns with regard to a "depending" of the economic
contacts. Italy was unsure of its industry's ability to compete
with those of Germany and France in customs-free European community,
and many British leaders still were anxious about a complete economic
integration in the EC. Many French farmers opposed Spanish entry,
since lower cost Spanish agricultural products threatened heavily
subsidized French agriculture.
In the 1980s, increasing foreign competition and the imaginative
policies of Delors, the president of the European Commission of
the EC, overcame much of the opposition to further integration.
It appears that a fuller economic integration of the EC economies
will be retarded only by the need to broaden economic activities
to include the Eastern European countries and EFTA. Plans are
now underway to create a free-trade zone, the European Economic
Space, to include both the EC and EFTA. Eastern European economies
will be integrated only very slowly with Western Europe because
their manufactured goods are not competitive and can be sold only
to the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. Gorbachev
is right when he argues that the East European countries need
to maintain their contacts with the Soviet Union until their manufactured
goods are internationally competitive.
In Eastern Europe, nationalism was only temporarily silenced by
Soviet might. It appears that Eastern Europeans publicly acknowledged
the brotherhood of all Communist states but privately harbored
many pre-World War II attitudes. Once the Soviet lid was lifted,
earlier nationalistic and anti-Semitic attitudes reemerged. These
attitudes may diminish after the euphoria associated with a greater
self-determination dies down.
Terrorism remains a disruptive but declining phenomenon in
most countries except Northern Ireland. The turmoil in Northern
Ireland (Ulster), in Cyprus, and in the Basque region of Spain
originated before World War II. The Ulster violence can be traced
back to a centuries-old conflict between the native Catholic Irish
and the primarily English and Scottish Protestant settlers. Whether
its source is essentially socioeconomic (as asserted by the Irish
Republican Army, the IRA) or religious (as asserted by the British
and the Ulster Protestants), the enmity has been a part of the
European experience for generations.
After the imposition of direct British rule in Ulster in 1972,
desperation drove the IRA to extend the terrorism to the streets
of London. Unable to overcome the Protestant majority in Ulster,
led since 1971 by Ian Paisley and the Democratic Unionist party
(DUP), and confronted by British tanks and soldiers, the IRA hoped
to paralyze both the Ulster and British governments in order to
attain its goals of equality for the Ulster Catholics and the
incorporation of Ulster into the Irish Republic. In October 1982,
a renewed round of violence began after elections to a new Northern
Ireland Assembly designed to be a first step in restoring local
self-government. Catholic candidates all refused to participate
because, as they argued, the Protestant majority in the Assembly
would deny Catholics any role.
But the recent violence is only an exaggerated phase of the continuing
hostility in Northern Ireland. Efforts at reconciliation have
been thwarted by divisions among the Catholics and Protestants
as well as between the two. Not one Catholic or Protestant group
can speak for all Catholics or Protestants and therefore neither
Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA), the Catholic Social
Democratic and Labor party (SDLP), the DUP, or the Official Unionist
party (OUP), among others, can effectively represent each side
during negotiations. Britain's two-part strategy has not yet borne
fruit. One part is the 1985 British agreement with Ireland that
gave the Irish Republic a consultative role in Northern Ireland
but permitted Ulster to remain a part of the UK as long as the
majority of its citizens desired it. The second part made Ulster
semi-autonomous by creating a local assembly. The Unionists' fear
that this assembly was a first stage in taking Ulster out of the
United Kingdom led all fifteen Unionist MPs to resign their seats
in the British Parliament in December 1985. In June 1986, Britain
dissolved the assembly and relied solely on the Anglo-Irish intergovernmental
conference. The number of deaths from political violence increased
to sixty-two in 1986. No end is in sight for the violence and
divisions.
Newspapers have referred to Europe's rebellious youth as the
new "lost generation." Their aimlessness, despair, cynicism,
and occasional violence is met with incomprehension by most of
the older generation. Especially troublesome during the last few
years has been the youth occupation of buildings, random violence,
and sharply increased deaths from drugs. The police were kept
busy in Germany and the Netherlands in the early eighties evicting
squatters from their "homes." In staid Zurich, Switzerland,
youths broke windows and set buildings afire when Swiss authorities
closed a youth center that police claimed had become a center
for the distribution of drugs. In France, youths shocked their
elders by stealing cars, racing them through cities, and then
burning them-called "moto rodeos" by the youths. The
authorities are perplexed by the apparent aimlessness of their
activities. It does not have as clear a purpose as the youth protest
of the sixties. Then, youths were in revolt against colonialism
and imperialism (Algeria and Vietnam) and against bureaucratization
(1968); they were also prorevolutionary. Except fort he neo-Fascist
groups, today's youthful rebels are apolitial and anarchistic.
They reject Marxist organization as well as that of their own
governments. As one said, "Who wants to hear about organizing
when we want to undo the organization."
Some of the discontent can be explained by the unemployment that
accompanied the economic slump in Europe after 1973. the number
of idle youths increased rapidly. In 1982, youth unemployment
topped 20 percent throughout Europe. With nothing to do and little
prospect for work, some youths have given in to hopelessness and
cynicism. These youths developed an anger at what they consider
to be the welfare state's preoccupation with order, cleanliness,
and economic security. They feel deserted and isolated. There
are a few who have joined radical fringe groups, such as the Maoists,
the German Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades, the neo-Fascists,
etc., but many alienated youths have simply stopped supporting
any objective. Their lives have become a meaningless welter of
drugs, video games, and rock music. They live for today and do
not believe that tomorrow is worth preparing for.
In contrast to this rebellious minority is a conformist majority
who are usually at peace with existing society. Although dissatisfied
with some educational policies and the shortage of meaningful
jobs, most Western youth accept existing society. They have joined
in demonstrating only to protest the unresponsiveness of rigid
bureaucracies or governments' excessive use of police force. Of
course, youths in Eastern Europe have played a major role in toppling
the Stalinist regimes-and here perhaps lies the real hope and
function of the younger generation for the future of a unified
Europe.