The City of Truth

Document 9 of Briefing Book 293 of the GW National Security Archive presents a translated conversation from a visit by Egon Krenz to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev. Krenz had recently replaced Erich Honecker as party leader in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and this conversation features relatively frank discussion of the social and political developments regarding mass protests in Leipzig, as well as the economic realities facing several nations of the Warsaw Pact.

Prominent features of the conversation include the reference to the bloated debt of Poland, the myopic resistance of Honecker to reform, and the improbability of German unification due to preferences for retaining the competing alliances by both eastern and western leaders as “factors that make up a necessary equilibrium.” Even more significant than these observations, are several telling statements made by both men. Early in the dialogue Gorbachev refers to the “human standpoint” in contrast to the clearer political perspective regarding the problems facing the East German regime. This human standpoint, which he describes as “dramatic,” was foundational to the aspirations of demonstrators in Leipzig and growing numbers of other East Germans. Policy changes by Honecker, which Gorbachev suggests could have allayed the unrest, would not have changed the reality of these considerations of human dignity, and even as he fails to see that the gradual emergence of honesty in communist governance was unleashing uncontrollable forces, he does recognize that there were more than simply political and economic forces at issue.

During the discussion of the debate on German unification, Gorbachev indicates an understanding of the need for special relations between the the GDR and the German Federal Republic (FRG), but that ties between the “two German states… should be kept under control.” This persistent expectation that reform could be controlled as in the past indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of his own reform programs of “perestoika” and “glasnost.” Public acknowledgement of the need for reform emboldened dissidents in a new way. This new phenomenon, which opened the door to genuine electoral competition and eventually the demise of formal communism, was no more controllable than the political momentum that would drive the FRG to absorb the poorer and weaker GDR. In short, Gorbachev and Krenz have some idea that the ground is shifting beneath them, but they are just as blind as Honecker to the fact that they have already lost control of the course of events in East Germany, and will not be able to influence them from any standpoint, human or otherwise, much longer.

As far as evaluating the source, I can only rely on the reputation of the archive to confirm that this source is a valid one. The conversation was most likely recorded, according to my estimation, for this transcript to have been transcribed; however there is no mention of the method of its collection, and indeed no specification of the medium of conversation. I am left to assume it was a meeting in person, as the description states that Gorbachev was receiving Krenz on November 1. There is no way for me to evaluate the degree of accuracy of the translation, as there is no copy provided of the original, and the interpretation is essential for my understanding as this conversation likely took place in Russian, or less likely in German. The following citation is provided after the text of the document:

Source: Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, Fond 1. Opis 1. On file at the National Security Archive. Published in Mikhail Gorbachev i germanskii vopros: sbornik dokumentov 1986-1991. Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2006, pp. 232-245 Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya.

In his account of the events of 1989, Timothy Garton Ash explains his role as a historian who was observing historic happenings, had some appreciation for the magnitude of the situation, and realized that his privileged access to chief players and organizations put him in a unique position to take advantage of a perfect storm of sorts. His narrative is appropriately discerning to acknowledge that future readers will have information that he does not, and that a major contribution from his perspective is the mood of the participants and the spirit of the moment, because that is something that fades inevitably as time marches on, which always seems to happen.

Ash goes through a geographic progression, as have others in our previous readings, starting in Poland with his speech to miners before the June elections, and providing clarifications about candidates to new voters at the polls (p.28). His straddling of the line between observation and political incitement is not lost on him (p. 12), and this self awareness informs the rest of the book. He moves then from Budapest at the time of the reburial of Imre Nagy, and next to the German Democratic Republic. His treatment of the German case contains sketches of the scene of Ossies wandering into the newly open Berlin, and using the gift of 100 Deutschmarks in “Greeting Money” from the other Germany, to explore the other part of their city (p. 62). His descriptions of the street view, and the frenzied considerations of what reform might make of a new East Germany alludes to an uncertain future, and the complex transition we now know came during German unification.

The author then moves to Prague, where he has the most access, and details his intimate access to The Civic Forum and the hero Václav Havel. His proximity makes for a more realistic and balanced portrayal of Havel, as the charismatic figure in a more democratic movement than Lech Wałęsa, but a leader nonetheless. The broad movement of students, suddenly active workplace councils, and artists were a collection of voices, and Havel, as much as he wanted to be a writer and not a politician (p. 103), successfully found a way to genuinely give one voice to Prague.

He concludes with some explanation the realignments that accompany the transition of Eastern Europe, with a capital E for Eastern (p. 131), and the return of the region to more specific distinctions of location (east central, south-eastern, eastern). There is also reflection on the essential elements of the collapse, “which might be labelled as ‘Gorbachev’ ‘Helsinki’ and ‘Tocqueville (p. 140).’ ” A further revisitation from ten years later offers new insights about the significance of 1989, with 1789 used as a point of comparison, and how this period hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.

His sources seem to consist of his personal interactions and his contemporary attention to the news media. Some interesting anecdotes – such as his creation of the 10 years, 10 months, 10 days trope – provide colorful additions to his already vivid record.

Garton Ash, Timothy. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of  ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague. 1st Vintage books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

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Rudolf Battek was among the notable dissidents who had been a Party member, and in 1968 founded the Club of Committed Non-Party Members (KAN) after his exit from his position in the ruling order. Another party expelled him in 1990, the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) after he had been a member of the Civic Forum and A Chartist. His was a winding path through Czech party politics. He also joined the Association of Social Democrats, and sociologist Jirina Siklova called him “the only [genuine] social democrat in [his] country.” His career brought him 10 years of prison time during normalization, but also brought him to acquaintance with heavyweights of European social democratic politics like Chancellor Willy Brandt (Germany) and Prime Minister Olaf Palme (Sweden).  He passed away at age 88 on March 17, 2013.

“Former dissident, post-1989 politician Battěk dies,” http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/former-czech-dissident-post-1989-politician-battek-dies-aged-88/915045 (Accesed: March 6, 2014)

“Former dissident, post-1989 politician Battěk dies,” Czech News Agency (ČTK), March 2014. Prague Daily Monitor, March 17, 2014, http://praguemonitor.com/2013/03/18/former-dissident-post-1989-politician-batt%C4%9Bk-dies-aged-88 (Accesed March 18, 2014, 9:45 AM)

The account from Tina Rosenberg, in The Haunted Land, of those living in the shadow of recently collapsed communist regimes provides a more intimate look at the effects of a half-century of totalitarian rule on culture and relationships than the previous readings. I appreciated the narrative depictions of, among others, dissidents decried as collaborators, the general (Jaruzelski) enslaved by communism as much as any of his countrymen, and ordinary men whose court proceedings put the GDR itself on trial. However, I thought the interjection of her critical judgements of Falk Zimmermann’s contrition beside compassion for the struggles of Lothar Pawliczak, or the criticism of the sensational Opfer-Täter (victims and victimizers, p. 386) mediation media phenomenon, interfered with an important documentation of recent history. Once I was reminded of the fact that hers is a journalistic perspective, I came to better appreciate her choices. In fact, some personal reflections that were impossible to get from the thorough but detached work of Dr. Gale Stokes (hopes for reflection in the second edition on his predictions in the first) were present in The Haunted Land, and they provide benchmarks for the reader to consider.

As I mentioned in class, I feel like the justice administered for crimes which occur in moral grey areas, and relies on newly written or rewritten codes, is problematic. As such, the trials in Germany of former East German border guards were important for presenting the realities of the recent past for national consumption, but the sentences ultimately imposed seemed fair despite the heinous nature of their actions. This also applies broadly to lustrace in the Czech case in my opinion.

Another critical piece of this story is evaluation of the new societies formed after communism. Rosenberg points out the many flaws of Falk Zimmermann as a dissembling penitent, and self-deluding betrayer of his friends, but of his set of environmental activists “he was the only one who knew his way around capitalism (p.373),” and perhaps that indicates some imperfections of the transition. More than once Rosenberg alludes to the problems created by a rash nature of the cleanup. Zukal, the chartist disallowed from practicing his profession by the communists or participating in the new democracy by the democrats, was a typical (p.45) figure in his evolution from idealistic communist to idealistic dissident. But in fact, the system that condemned his youthful mistakes informing for the StB also found Václav Havel to be “StB positive” with a C rating (p.102). Clearly Havel was could not be tainted by the contents of a file because of his credibility, but a selective double standard said that the guilty communists were unfit to participate, even though Dubček was once a communist politician. The ideological backlash, informed by a need to isolate some for their participation in the system without acknowledging that all were tainted by it, is itself an unfortunate legacy of communism. This notion, a desire for quick and simple answers, is captured most succinctly in the words of a Czech grammar which once read “only socialism can guarantee the development of mankind” and by the time Rosenberg was reporting it had changed to “only capitalism can guarantee the development of mankind (p.114).” Whether this is an apocryphal example, it highlights a common tendency in humanity to embrace uncomplicated solutions that absolve us of moral responsibility for wrongdoings in a complicated past.

Rosenberg, Tina. 1995. The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after Communism. New York: Random House.

Addendum:

Here is a news article about Andrej Babiš and his legal challenge to assertions of his StB collaboration as an informer and agent. This is an example of the political implications of lustration twenty five years after 1989. The contention that the past is a tool in the struggle to control the present is a fair one, and the Czech Finance Minister appears to think this issue is important enough to take his case to a Slovak court to protect his reputation.

The author, Padraic Kenney, argues that social and political movements changed the relationships between communist states and their populations in the years before 1989 in such a way that made possible the seemingly sudden revolution. He uses the term carnival to highlight the plural and joyful nature of many of the phenomena that constitute his subject matter. This argument differs somewhat from that presented by Gale Stokes in The Walls Came Tumbling Down in that his focus is narrower, on the 1980s and particularly the years between the 1986 incident at Chernobyl and 1989. It also highlights much more the role of grassroots dissent and its variety of political flavors and younger/smaller characters (Ludwig Melhorn in the GDR, Czechs like Jan Svoboda, Petr Placák , and Ruth Šomorová, and Hungarians like Tomás Fellegi and István Stumpf) rather than the well known opposition leaders (like Lech Wałęsa, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel, etc.) or party leaders (Károly Grósz, Imre Pozsgay, Gen. Jaruzelski, Erich Honecker, etc.) that dominated the narrative in our first reading.

The cast of characters and sampling of organizations presented a broader view of the people who participated in the carnival from 86-89. Kenney made the accounts much more vivid for having so much detailed personal recollection; and perhaps dealing with personalities of students and artists, among others, made it easier to flesh out the stories than those of the big names. Environmentalists, church activists, teenaged students, and varied musical devotees (of punk or John Lennon) changed the nature of dissent; by embracing causes that were not explicitly political to break the stranglehold of the communist party on various facets of life, they made things like music and school into political spheres and their resistance thus became political. Surrealist performers and artists, bringing the public on the street into their spectacular “happenings” found innovative ways to combat communist orthodoxy; not by “refusing to ape official ideology,” but instead they found it “more effective to ape it grotesquely” (1). Confronting party  rhetoric in public gave another view of the hollow promise of communism which was publicly visible in an empty Warsaw butcher shop (2), but had not previously been open for public discussion.

Though some of the important groupings that provoked public action were supplanted by the older dissident leaders (as in Poland when Solidarity took the lead at the Roundtable negotiations), their efforts built momentum for a civil society that laid foundations for revolution and later political pluralism. Kenney uses extensive personal interviews, ranging from 1996 until 2000, while acknowledging that he accounts for personal biases by claiming to filter out obvious accounts of personal self-glorification or blame. He also lists a great number of samizdat publications as sources of direct evidence. Kenney concludes that the end of the carnival came suddenly in each case, but that the training needed to make it possible came over years; 10-13 in Poland, followed by progressively shorter courses in Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech lands, East Germany, and Western Ukraine. He mentions that many of the younger leaders were marginalized in favor of the Havels and Wałęsas once the negotiations began for new governments. Where Stokes moved from cautious optimism to a more circumspect reflection between his first and second edition, Kenney writes in between and seems to present the carnival as having ended firmly when the revolution came. His reflection is more about the memory of participants, and in the end how the lack of public catharsis manifests in a lack of public remembrance, than on the legacies that are observable in the societies of contemporary Central Europe.

The Polish Voting Rights poster (3) seems a good representation of the way the old guard (of dissenters) harnessed public energy, preserved during the period of martial law by a flowering of different aboveground and underground groups, for new electoral possibilities. An electoral strategy to compel change in a new government (with a Senate as a new feature) relied on an empowered populace that had come to believe in change as a realistic prospect.

1 Kenney, Padraic. A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. p.159

2 Chris Niedenthal, “The Butcher Shop, Warsaw,” Making the History of 1989, Item #23, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/23 (accessed February 18 2014, 1:27 pm)

3 “Polish Voting Rights,” Making the History of 1989, Item #93, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/93 (accessed February 18 2014, 1:27 pm)

In my reading of The Walls Came Tumbling Down by Gale Stokes, his thesis was valid – that an abandonment of the prospect of reform had vital, and causative, importance in the eventual collapse of communist regimes in 1989. That fundamental point is accurate, in that the abandonment of reform as an approach to improve communism was essential to convince people that the possibilities for their lives would not expand past a certain point. The truth that had to be accepted was that the neither the Marxist-Leninist ideal  nor the Neo-Stalinist reality, within which many citizens of the nations of the Warsaw pact lived, would ever cede its totalitarian power as promised in the utopian vision of a new socialist world where eventually the state would wither. The predictable failure of the project to change human nature and create a new socialist man and communist society was a difficult one for some to accept, but once they did, change was inevitable.

That said, I do not think Dr. Stokes gave enough attention or credit to the decisive role of the conscious, even if uneven, choices to avoid violent coercion which made 1989 possible. His heavy focus on Solidarity in Poland does convey that the Polish regime believed it could prevent an intervention of the kind experienced in 1968 Czechoslovakia, by limiting the dissent; also the early characterization of Lech Walesa ascribes to him to a similar sentiment, that self-limitation would provide safety. Once the situation in Moscow changes in the mid-80s, that calculation must also have changed, and once it became apparent that the shift away from the Brezhnev Doctrine was genuine, the tactics of dissenters and reformers seems to have accordingly become more assertive . The evidence that Stokes presents of crowds crying out “Gorby” during his visits testify to the symbolic importance of his leadership, and I am unconvinced that continual repression, the weak recovery from recession, or the lure of the new Europe would have been enough to ensure that the liberation of 1989 occurred despite violent crackdowns that could well have happened without the restraint/exhaustion of communist leadership. Whether it was truly restraint or just fatigue at having to enforce the order of a morally bankrupt system, authorities made conscious efforts to alter their pattern, and consequently their power to rule was taken by the ascendant forces of change (and even in Romania, the army that fought the state security forces changed their behavior in some significant way).

From Northern Virginia Community College

In his treatment of Yugoslavia, I think Stokes rightly sets it apart as a unique case, and gives separate treatment of the ethnic tensions that broke down, and later exploded the Yugoslav state. Somewhat apart from his arguments about the causes of collapse in the other states, he seems to argue that it was the long term instability of a state premised on South-Slavic unity that ensured the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the paranoid and superficial efforts to maintain that unity over decades that caused it to be so bloody.

The map of Bosnia (http://www.loc.gov/resource/g6861e.ct003048/) provided serves to clarify the distinctions between ethnic affiliation, and indicate how they relate to nationalist politics. In the political settlement intended to end the conflict in Bosnia at the Dayton Accords a line was finally drawn, which has endured, ostensibly dividing Serbs on one side from Croats and Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) on the other. The differences in ethnic composition from 1991 and ethnic control in 1997 reflect not only the violent ethnic cleansing of the wars, but also that ethnic division in Bosnia is not neat or simple and peace required, and still requires, compromise. And even though the ethnic distinctions (which seem to be mainly along religious lines as opposed to linguistic) between Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, and Croats may confound citizens of an multi-ethnic nation with religious tolerance enshrined in law, they were and are all too real; furthermore opportunistic nationalist politics can use various justifications beyond nationality as typically understood (ethnicity, class, religion, etc.) to suit its ends, and this is reflected in some of the other cases in the text north and east of Yugoslavia as well.

The conclusions from Stokes were interesting in comparing the first and second editions. In the first he seemed to emphasize the triumph of pluralism over the hyper-rationalist approach to modern development. As he recounted the early struggles of these new regimes, it was apparent that he was confident in the momentum of the formerly communist states toward becoming thoroughly European. In the second edition, he seems more circumspect than when he wrote in the 1990s of “invisible structural strength” that follows when totalitarian dysfunction disappears. His sources seem to rely heavily on recent and contemporary scholarship and journalism from the 1980s and 1990s (and in the second edition from the 2000s), with some limited personal accounts; that balance seems appropriate given the scale of his project, and the cultural and political forces that are emphasized. The second edition seems to better distinguish between the victory over communism and the inevitable challenges, and possible regression, that lay ahead for the cases he examines. Considering the updates in information, he does a good job of acknowledging the relative failures of neoliberal efforts at shock therapy in the Czech Republic, where in the first edition he had been cautiously optimistic about its early successes. In all of the cases he reflects upon the enduring challenges of uneven economic progress and the travails of European integration, and in both editions his identification of pluralism more as a process than an outcome justifies optimism.

This article from The Atlantic reminded me of the GDP statistics listed among our primary sources. It seems notable that the Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia have different results from the rest of the areas in the area of our concern. Also, East Germany is now part of the “rich” Germany, however East Germany shows results of “poor” (consistent with the pattern) followed by “so racist” in a separate search. Would these search results have been the same in the late 1990’s and up to the crisis of 2008?

UPDATE: The recession of the 1980’s does seem to have had caused disruption to the fragile Eastern European economies. The persistently lower GDP threshold must have also played a role in intensifying the discontent during such a recession. However, there is some variation within the Eastern Bloc; according to these GDP figures, the Czechoslovak and Hungarian economies did not take such a hard hit as Yugoslavia, and recovered more quickly than Poland. Perhaps the Polish case provides a reason for the acceleration of the collapse of the regime in Poland, which preceded the revolutions in Berlin, Prague and Sofia, the bloody coup in Bucharest, as well as the somewhat less dramatic transition in Hungary.

German Troops Marching in Wenceslas Square

Two sets of personal accounts found among the exercises in the World History Sources page at the Center for History and New Media focus on American reactions to German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. A letter from Mark Kistler, a vacationer traveling in Central Europe treats the invasion of Prague as once incident, though an important one, among several in his excursion. Before reading the commentary on certain selections, my first impression of his letter was that his restraint in characterizing the invasion may have been out of caution in a letter, sent from Nazi Dresden, which may very well have been intercepted by Nazi authorities. After reading the comments, I agree that perhaps his recounting of the events in Prague may have derived from a lack of awareness. The chatty tone of the letter may indeed make it seem silly, however this is a letter which seems to be from one young cousin to another, and relaying the details of his whereabouts may have been more of a priority than giving an account of the German occupation. He was aware enough  of the growing political tensions to know that his American passport provided some protection.

If one estimates his age at about 20 years, based on his listed activities and the tone of the note, his impression of the coming war is somewhat understandable for somebody who would have no personal memories of the previous world war. Furthermore, considering that public isolationism in America was still strong enough to affect the decision making of national leaders, Kistler should be forgiven for his naïve assumptions that Americans will not be immediately at risk in Europe. The historical record conveys that some believed the Munich Agreement might have precluded an outbreak of war, so the further provocation made by the occupation may not have struck him as a drastic development. The telegraphs which follow, including the tepid rebuke by the US government, makes clear that the United States still maintained diplomatic relations with Germany. Perhaps some travelers assumed a conflict was unlikely to occur, and if it did they could get in a last bit of fun in Italy or Switzerland before the war. Moreover, even if Kistler was aware of the danger in Central Europe, openly revealing his concerns in a letter, at a time when Germany was still attempting to uphold the fiction of their peaceful intentions may have made his next stop at a German border much more problematic.

In the second account, telegraphs indicate that Acting Secretary of State Welles and Minister Carr in Prague had reason to believe that their communication was secure. In an age when diplomatic cables were not subject to interception by hacktivists, these two clearly had some expectation of privacy. Carr feels he can be frank about the state of censorship and the danger posed by the Gestapo, even if he cannot be blunt with his superior, and has to make his hopes to return from his post in coded language about “instructions in regard to [his] future course.”

Solidarity Logo from the BBC

Two primary sources from the 1989 website give an indication of the tone of the opposition in Poland at the time of the collapse of the communist totalitarian system. Both convey something about the confidence felt by those battling the ruling party. The anarchist pamphlet has many images, symbols, and Polish text, the translation of which is beyond my ability. However, two things are evident to me that seem significant. The first is the recognizable Solidarity logo, and the second are the list of names found at the top of one side of the page. If these names are those of the producers of the flier, that would indicate a confident defiant stance against the authorities just as the Chartists in Czechoslovakia provided their names and address in 1977 to convey their lack of fear of state reprisals, which were still a potential danger . The Solidarity logo is also found on the election poster portraying Gary Cooper as he carries a ballot. That logo appears to be a powerful brand, as Solidarity was a broad opposition movement, and from my reading of Stokes, the branding that included the logo and the name change of the Interfactory Strike Committee to Solidarity was an important precursor to making the trade union movement so broad, and eventually overtly political.