The Intellectual Roots of Eastern Europe's Upheavals

THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS. OF EASTERN EUROPE'S UPHEAVALS Andrew Nagorski W>hen Vaclav Havel delivered his first speech as Czechoslovakia's President on New Year's Day, the dissident playwright-turned-politician expounded on the moral issues confronting his countrymen and all those seeking to navigate the path leading from totalitarianism to democracy. "The worst thing is that we are living in a decayed moral environment," he declared. "We have become morally ill, because we have become accustomed to saying one thing and thinking another ... all of us have become accustomed to the totalitarian system, accepted it as an inalterable fact and thereby kept it running. In other words, all of us are responsible, each to a different degree, for keeping the totalitarian machine running. None of us is merely a victim of it, because all of us helped to create it together." By proclaiming the importance of an intellectual theory—the link between totalitarian rule and lies and, consequently, between democracy and truth—Havel provided the most dramatic illustration yet of the powerful role of ideas in the upheavals that have toppled communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe. The ideas of people such as Havel, Poland's Adam Michnik, and Hungary's George Konrad may have once Andrew Nagorski is a Washington-based correspondent for Newsweek, specializing in Central European Affairs. He has previously served as Newsweek's bureau chief in Bonn, Moscow, Rome, and Hong Kong and will be taking up the post of Warsaw bureau chief in September. Mr. Nagorski is the author of Reluctant Farewell: An American Reporter's Candid Look Inside the Soviet Union (New York: New Republic/Henry Holt, 1985). 89 90 SAISREVIEW looked to outsiders like the abstract and highly idealistic theorizing of dissident intellectuals. In light of recent developments, however, they look more like immensely practical blueprints for the subversion of a system based on intellectual pretence and falsehood. Aside from helping to explain the genesis ofthe "gentle revolution" in most ofEastern Europe (except Romania), those ideas reveal a great deal about the region's future prospects—specifically, why the rejection of communism does not have to signal a return to the nationalistic and ethnic enmities that twice tore the region apart earlier in this century. Economic Decline, a Broken Social Contract, and Gorbachev Ideas alone cannot explain the revolution of Eastern Europe. Other factors created the climate in which those ideas could bear fruit. Growing internal discontent and frustration with stagnating or deteriorating living conditions, the lure of a more accessible West European market with its prospects of even greater prosperity after 1992, and the strategic calculations ofMikhail Gorbachev all played a vital role in the revolution. It may be hard to recall now, but communist rulers were once able to claim that they were providing steady if modest improvements in the living standards of their peoples. Although the gap between living standards in the East and those in the West remained enormous, East European leaders promised that the basic human needs of their people would be fulfilled and that, over time, more of the amenities of modern life—such as decent housing, a wider array of consumer goods, and cars—would be provided. After the suppression ofthe Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the dispatch of Soviet tanks to crush the Prague Spring of 1968, East European governments sought to strike a bargain with their citizenry. If the people agreed to remain politically passive, the tacit understanding went, they could anticipate better economic conditions. In Hungary that promise was based on steps towards economic reform and later on foreign-financed economic expansion. In Czechoslovakia it was based on the diversion of funds from investments to the consumer sector, which eventually led to the steady deterioration of the country's once formidable industrial base. In Poland in the 1970s, party leader Edward Gierek created the illusion of an economic take-off by borrowing heavily from the West, most of whose loans either were squandered on nearly bankrupt state industries or ended up lining the pockets of corrupt officials. In retrospect the results were hardly surprising. Czechoslovakia, which ranked among the top ten industrialized nations when it was founded in 1918, found it increasingly...