Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges: 1985 to the Present
1. The Decline of Communism in Eastern Europe
1. The Soviet Union to 1985
1. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia demonstrated the intense conservatism of the Soviet Union’s ruling elite and its determination to maintain the status quo in the Soviet bloc
2. There was a certain re-Stalinization of the U.S.S.R., but now dictatorship was collective rather than personal and coercion replaced terror; rising standard of living contributed to the apparent stability in the Soviet Union (ambitious individuals had tremendous incentive)
3. Another source of stability was the enduring nationalism of ordinary Great Russians
1. Party leaders successfully identified themselves with Russian patriotism, stressing their role in saving the country during WW II and protecting it now for foreign foes
2. The politically dominant Great Russians, who were concentrated in central Russia and help through the Communist party the commanding leadership positions in the non-Russian republics, constituted less than half of the total Soviet Union population
3. The Great Russians generally feared that greater freedom might result in demands for autonomy and even independence not only by eastern European nationalities buy also by the non-Russian nationalities within the Soviet Union itself; liberalism and democracy generally appeared to Great Russians as alien politics designed to undermine the U.S.S.R.
4. The strength of the government was expressed in the re-Stalinization of culture and art
1. Free expression disappeared and Brezhnev made certain that Soviet intellectuals did not engage in public protest (acts of open nonconformity and protest was severely punished)
2. Most frequently, dissidents were blacklisted and thus rendered unable to find decent jobs since the government was the only employer; more determined protesters were quietly imprisoned while celebrated nonconformists were permanently expelled from the country
3. By expelling nonconformists such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and eliminating the worst aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship strengthened the regime and the Soviet Union was solid
5. Beneath the immobility of political life in the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union was actually experiencing profound changes (three aspects of this social revolution were significant)
1. The growth of the urban population continued rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s; of the great significance, this expanding urban population lost its old peasant ways, exchanging them for more education, better job skills, and greater sophistication
2. The number of highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists expanded prodigiously, increasing fourfold between 1960 and 1985; the class of well-educated, pragmatic, and self-confident experts, which played an important role in restructuring industrial societies after WW II, developed rapidly in the Soviet Union (international “invisible colleges”)
3. Soviet scientists and technologists sought the intellectual freedom necessary to do work, and often obtained it because their research had practical (and military) value
4. Third, education and freedom for experts in their special areas helped foster the growth of Soviet public opinion (educated people read, discussed, and formed ideas about society)
5. Developing definite ideas, educated urban people increasingly saw themselves as worthy of having a voice in society’s decisions, even its political decisions
2. Solidarity in Poland
1. Gorbachev’s reforms interacted with a resurgence of popular protest in the Soviet Union’s satellite empire and developments in Poland were most striking and significant
1. The introduction of communism led to widespread riots in 1956 and as a result, Polish Communists dropped their efforts to impose Soviet-style collectivization on the peasants and to break the Roman Catholic church (Communists failed to monopolize society)
2. The Communists failed to manage the economy and in 1970 Poland’s working class rose in angry protest; when a new Communist leader came to power. He wagered that massive inflows of Western capital and technology, could produce a Polish “economic miracle”
3. Instead, bureaucratic incompetence and the first oil shock (1973) put the economy down; workers, intellectuals and church became increasingly restive then a real miracle occurred
2. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Cracow, was elected pope in 1978 and in June 1979, he returned from Rome, preaching love of Christ and country and the “rights of man”; Pope John Paul II drew enormous crowds and electrified the Polish nation (spiritual crisis as well)
3. In August 1980, the sixteen thousand workers at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk laid down their tools and occupied the plant; as other workers joined “in solidarity,” the strikers advanced revolutionary demands, including the right to form free trade unions, freedom of speech, release of political prisoners, and economic reforms (18 days of shipyard occupation)
1. The government gave in and accepted the workers’ demands in the Gdansk Agreement
2. Led by Lenin Shipyards electrician and devout Catholic Lech Walesa, the workers proceeded to organize their free and democratic trade union and called it Solidarity; joined by intellectuals and supported by the Catholic church it became a union of a nation
3. By March 1981, a full-time staff of 40,000 linked 9.5 million union members together as Solidarity published its own newspapers and cultural/intellectual freedom blossomed
4. Solidarity leaders had tremendous support, and the ever-present threat of calling a nationwide strike gave them real power in ongoing negotiations with Communist bosses
4. But if Solidarity had power, it did not try to take the reins of government in 1981; history, the Brezhnev Doctrine, and virulent attacks from communist neighbors all seemed to guarantee the intervention of the Red Army and terrible bloodbath if Polish Communists “lost control”
5. The Solidarity revolution remained a “self-limiting revolution” aimed at defending the cultural and trade-union freedoms won in the Gdansk Agreement (refused to use force to challenge directly the Communist monopoly of political power -- threat of other communists)
6. Solidarity’s combination of strength and moderation postponed a showdown, as the Soviet Union played a waiting game of threats and pressure as Poland progressed
1. After a confrontation in March 1981, Walesa settled for minor government concessions, and Solidarity dropped plans for a massive general strike (criticism of Walesa’s moderate leaderships grew, and the Solidarity lost its cohesiveness that had existed)
2. The worsening economic crisis also encouraged grassroots radicalism, as the Polish Communist leadership denounced Solidarity for promoting economic collapse and provoking Soviet invasion (In December 1981, Communist leaders General Wojciech Jaruzelski suddenly struck and proclaimed martial law, arresting Solidarity’s leaders
7. Outlawed and driven underground, Solidarity fought successfully to maintain its organization and to voice the aspirations of the Polish masses after 1981 (government’s unwillingness and probably its inability to impose full-scale terror allowed for the union’s survival)
8. Popular support for outlawed Solidarity remained strong under martial law in the 1980s, preparing the way for the union’s rebirth toward the end of the decade -- showed the desire of eastern Europeans for greater political liberty and the enduring appeal of cultural freedom, trade-union rights, patriotic nationalism, and religious feeling (fresh thinking)
3. Gorbachev’s Reforms in the Soviet Union
1. Fundamental change in Russian history ahs often come in short, intensive spurts, which contrast vividly with long periods of immobility -- transformation era of Mikhail Gorbachev
2. The Soviet Union’s Communist part elite seemed secure in the early 1980s as far as any challenge from below was concerned the long-established system of administrative controls continued to stretch downward from the central ministries and state committees to provincial cities, and from there to factories, neighborhoods, and villages (massive state bureaucracy)
1. The system safeguarded the elite, but it promoted apathy in the masse sand after Brezhnev died in 1982, his successor, the long-time chief of the secret police, Yuri Andropov tried to invigorate the system (little came of these efforts but combined)
2. With a worsening economic situation, it set the stage for the emergence in 19895 of Mikhail Gorbachev, the most vigorous Soviet leader in a generation
3. Gorbachev believed in communism but he realized it was failing to keep up with Western capitalism and technology and this was eroding the Soviet Union’s status as a superpower
1. Gorbachev wanted to save the Soviet system by revitalizing it with fundamental reforms
2. Gorbachev was also an idealist and wanted improve conditions for ordinary citizens
3. Understanding that the endless waste and expense of the cold war arms race had had a disastrous impact on living conditions in the Soviet Union, he realized that improvement in Russia required better relations with the West and such countries as the United States
4. Gorbachev first attacked corruption and incompetence in the bureaucracy and he consolidated his power; he also attacked alcoholism and elaborated his reform program
1. The first set of reform policies was designed to transform and restructure the economy, in order to provide for the real needs of the Soviet population (economic restructuring)
2. To accomplish this perestroika, Gorbachev and his supporters permitted an easing of government price controls on some goods, more independence for state enterprises, and setting up profit-seeking private cooperatives to provide personal services for consumers
3. At first, it produced a few positive improvements, but shortages then grew as economy stalled at an intermediate point between central planning and free-market mechanisms
4. By late 1988, widespread consumer dissatisfaction posed a serious threat to Gorbachev’s leadership and the entire reform program (Gorbachev was soon to make major changes)
5. Gorbachev’s bold and far-reaching campaign “to tell it like it is” was much more successful
1. The new found “openness,” or glasnost, of the government and the media marked an astonishing break with the past of censorship, dull uniformity, and outright lies
2. Long-banned and vilified émigré writers sold millions of copies of their works, while denunciations of Stalin and his terror became standard fare in plays and movies
3. Initial openness in government pronouncement quickly went much further than Gorbachev intended and led to something approaching free speech and free expression
6. Democratization was the third element of the large scale reform of Gorbachev
1. Begging as an attack on corruption in the Communist party, Gorbachev and the party remained in control, but a minority of critical independents was elected in April 1989 to a revitalized Congress of People’s Deputies (millions of Soviets watched the new congress)
2. Millions of Soviet citizens took practical lessons in open discussion, critical thinking, and representative government; the result was a new political culture at odds with the party
3. Democratization ignited demands for greater autonomy and even for national indepen-dence by non-Russian minorities, especially in the Baltic region and in the Caucasus
4. In April 1989, troops charged into a rally of Georgian separatists in Tbilisi but Gorbachev drew back from repression and nationalist demands continued to grow in Soviet republics
7. Finally, the Soviet leader brought “new political thinking” to the field of foreign affairs and acted on it; he withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan sought to reduce East-West tensions
1. He sought to halt the arms race with the United States and convinced President Ronald Reagan of his sincerity and in December 1987, the two leaders agreed in a Washington summit to eliminate all land-based intermediate-range missiles in Europe (reduction)
2. Gorbachev encouraged reform movements in Poland and Hungary and pledged to respect the political choices of the peoples of eastern Europe, repudiating the Brezhnev Doctrine
8. By early 1989, it seemed that if Gorbachev held to his word, the tragic Soviet occupation of eastern Europe might wither away, taking the long cold war with it once and for all
2. The Revolutions of 1989
1. The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
1. Solidarity and the Polish people led the way to revolution in eastern Europe
1. In 1988 widespread labor unrest, raging inflation, and the outlawed Solidarity’s refusal to cooperate w/ the military government had brought Poland to brink of economic collapse
2. Thus Solidarity pressured Poland’s frustrated Communist leaders into negotiations that might work out sharing of power to resolve political stalemate and the economic crisis; subsequent agreement in 1989 legalized Solidarity and declared that a large minority of representatives to the Polish parliament would be chosen by free elections in June 1989
3. The Communists believed that their rule was guaranteed for four years and that the Solidarity would keep the workers of Poland in line and under control
2. Lacking access to the state-run media, Solidarity succeeded nonetheless in mobilizing the country and winning most of the contested seats in an overwhelming victory
1. Solidarity members entered the Polish parliament and a dangerous stalemate developed but Solidarity leader Lech Walesa obtained a majority by securing the allegiance of two minor procommunist parties that had been part of the coalition government after WW II
2. In August 1989, Walesa was sworn in as Poland’s new noncommunist leader
3. In the first years, the new Solidarity government cautiously introduced revolutionary changes
1. It eliminated the secret police, Communist ministers in the government, and at the end, Jaruzelski but did so step by step to avoid confrontation with the army or Soviet Union
2. In economic affairs, the Solidarity-led government was radical from the beginning and applied shock therapy designed to make a clean break with state planning and move quickly to market mechanisms and private property (abolished controls on many prices on January 1, 1990, and reformed the monetary system with a “big bang”)
4. Hungary’s communist boss, Janos Kadar, had permitted liberalization of planned economy after a 1956 uprising in exchange for political obedience and continued Communist control
1. In May 1988, in an effort to retain power by granting modest political concessions, the party replaced Kadar with a reform communist (opposition groups rejected progress)
2. In the summer of 1989 the Hungarian communist party agreed to hold elections in 1990
3. Welcoming Western investment and moving rapidly toward multiparty democracy, Hungary’s Communists now enjoyed considerable popular support
4. They had believed that they could defeat the opposition in the upcoming elections and in an effort to strengthen their support at home and put pressure on East Germany’s Communist regime, the Hungarians opened their border to East Germany (iron curtain)