Theories Of The New Class: Intellectuals And Power

6. Intellectuals under Postcommunism

123 Six Intellectuals under Postcommunism 1989: A Successful Revolution of Socialist Technocrats? In retrospect, it appears that 1989 can be seen as a successful revolution by the socialist technocrats and managers. After two decades of intra-elite struggles, the technocrats were finally able to defeat the bureaucratic fraction of the elite. This happened first in Hungary and Poland, and two years later in the Soviet Union. In the other state socialist countries, the domestic processes may not have been enough to culminate in a system breakdown. In countries like Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Rumania, or Bulgaria, the old guard had to be forced out with the help of Soviet reformers. In the whole region, however, the trend of declining bureaucratic power and increasing influence of the technocracy was visible. The most clear-cut change took place in Hungary, where, at the February 1989 meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the old guard lost power and the technocratic reformers finally took charge of the party. Both the Hungarian and Polish technocratic elite at this point wanted a negotiated transition from communism in which a transition to a capitalist economy would take place under the conditions of the cautious expansion of democratic rights and institutions. 124 Intellectuals under Postcommunism The new technocracy did not want to rule as the bureaucratic estate had; thus the separation of economic and political power was foreseen. Unlike the bureaucratic estate, the new technocratic elite’s power base was not in politics, but in the economy. Thus the essence of the strategy was to retain the command positions in the economy and gradually transfer political power to some new political elite, which was supposed to come from the younger generation of Communist Party politicians and from a mixture of liberal and nationalist dissidents . The roundtable negotiations between the technocracy and the dissident intellectuals were supposed to figure out how this transition could be stage-managed without a political break (Bruszt and Stark 1991). The new technocratic elite accepted the principles of a relatively autonomous sphere of democratic politics and a move toward a multiparty system. Initially, however, it wanted to manage this change in a way that kept the process under the control of the politicians of the Communist Party. According to public opinion polls of early 1989, the Communist Parties in Hungary and Poland had the support of about one-third of the electorate; thus, with a carefully designed electoral system, it was not unrealistic that some sharing of political power between former dissidents and reform communist politicians could be achieved. How and in what capacity the new technocratic elite could retain economic power became a struggle. As early as 1988, the project of privatization began to enter the political agenda. Both in Poland and Hungary, policies were implemented that were supposed to serve what was then called “spontaneous privatization,” which really was a strategy of management buyouts. Judwiga Staniszkis (1991) and Elemér Hankiss (1990) developed their theory of political capitalism and formulated their hypothesis concerning the conversion of political capital into private wealth, after being inspired by these practices. The 1989–90 period, however, had its own, unforeseen dynamics . Instead of there being a gradualist, negotiated transition to capitalism and democracy, the socialist systems began to collapse, a development that fueled a strong anticommunist mood. Around 1990, it appeared that the former socialist technocracy and managerial strata might not be able to retain power. Everywhere in Central Europe, the former Communist Parties, even though they made an attempt to recast themselves as social democratic parties, were wiped out of power. In the Eastern part of the region, however, this Intellectuals under Postcommunism 125 did not happen. Former Communists were able to retain political power in Rumania, Bulgaria, and Serbia, though they had to open to the nationalist right wing to do so. The first democratic elections in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland were won by conservative, patriotic, occasionally religions parties that pursued a strong anticommunist campaign. In all of these countries, suddenly a new political elite appeared on the scene, which made an effort to implement radical change in the composition of the cultural and economic elite. Legislation was considered, in both Czechoslovakia and Poland, to exclude former members of the nomenklatura from the privatization process and possibly also from public office. The mood shifted from reform to revolution and a call for radical circulation of elites. The hegemonic ideology was...