Two Decades After the Fall

The epic upheaval of 1989 was a time when east Europeans lost their fear, overcame their moral frustration and political impotence, and regained a central role in the political sphere. The heart of this series of profound events survives across twenty years

Two decades have passed since the chain of dramatic events in east and central Europe that led to the accomplishment of what most had regarded as unthinkable: the collapse of communist regimes, the end of a system that had seemed destined to last forever. Indeed, the very idea of a post-communist situation appeared before 1989 to be utopian. Communism may have been a terminally sick system, yet the possibility that it would disappear was widely dismissed in policy and academic circles in the name of pragmatic realism.
True, some dissidents (such as the Russian, Andrei Amalrik) and scholars had seen the end coming. In 1988, I published a book called The Crisis of Marxist Ideology in Eastern Europe: The Poverty of Utopia in which I argued that two factors were leading to an imminent collapse: the ideological erosion that had engendered a fatal “legitimacy crisis” of the communist regimes, and the rise of alternative movements and ideas (“civil society”). In the book, I focused on various cases, including the little studied independent peace movements in what was then the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was clear to some of us that the ruling elites - those bureaucracies that the historian Stephen Kotkin calls “uncivil society” - had lost the indispensable self-confidence essential to their ideological commitment.
There was no zeal anymore; the Marxist-Leninist official creed had become a collection of trite slogans. The Mikhail Gorbachev factor (renunciation of the Leonid Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty) and Pope John Paul II‘s emphasis on the sacredness of truth further catalysed the revival of social forces that aimed to dismantle the system. The prevailing bleak outlooks dissolved in the course of months, then weeks, then days. The revolutions of 1989 irretrievably shattered Leninism and opened the path to the self-empowerment of the citizens of the eastern European countries. In doing so they made a vital intellectual breakthrough: the rethinking of the notion of citizenship, which had been systematically subverted and negated by communist regimes.

The great refusal
The struggles that followed in the post-communist period centred on the concepts of civility, memory, justice, and accountability. Politics, culture, social relations - all were connected in one way or another to definitions of what it means to be a citizen. The immediate aftermath of 1989 revealed that two possible paths lay ahead: one where the revolutions succeeded in instilling a sustainable sense of civic belonging, another where the revolutions themselves were sidetracked - and even negated, aborted or abducted. All in all, it seems that Ralf Dahrendorf’s synthetic formula remains brilliantly enduring: “citizens in search of meaning”. The crucial challenge after 1989 was that of successfully (or at least satisfactorily) building a moral and political consensus based on shared trust in accountable institutions and predictable procedures.
Post-communist societies are imperfect. But, to paraphrase Adam Michnik, they are composed of regular people and are defined by “normal” conflicts. As Ken Jowitt once said, in order to survive “democracy needs ordinary heroes”. Democracy has a paradox built into it: “without heroism, public virtues cannot be sustained; they gradually deteriorate into egoistical calculi of social, economic, and political self-interest. The individual is replaced by the self.” At the same time, though, “a charismatic hero abhors, in fact is incapable of, democratically appreciating the deficiencies of average people”.
Indeed, Ralf Dahrendorf was not mistaken: the 1989 revolutions destroyed the old regime, but they could only painfully construct the utterly strange and often perplexing world of liberal democracy. This road of transition led eastern Europeans into disenchantment with “extravagant hopes for a new world of unconstrained discourse, equality and fundamental democracy”. But this if far from implying that the revolutions failed. It was precisely their goal not to succumb to new utopian schemes, and in this respect, they succeeded. They did not extol a “republic of virtue”, they rejected fundamentalist, neo-Jacobin temptations.  
Instead, these revolutions opened the path to democratic normalcy, to the revitalisation of societies that still bear the stigma of the communist-totalitarian experience. Apocalyptic forms of radicalism have not managed to prevail. The “moral revolution” championed by the Kaczynski twins in Poland has not resulted in a national catharsis. On the contrary, people have expressed fatigue, exasperation, and annoyance with self-righteous populist manoeuvring. Democracy and memory are intertwined, but confronting the traumatic past does not mean the need to encourage vindictive passions. I explored these issues in my book Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-communist Europe (Princeton University Press, 1998; paperback 2009).

The post-communist world
After 1989, the region’s reality was inevitably eclectic. The Leninist dissolution produced a void that has been gradually filled with both pre-communist and communist traditions: from nationalism (either civic or ethnic) to conservatism, from neo-Leninism to quasi-fascism. These twenty years have been characterised by a fluidity of beliefs, partisanships and political engagements. In a sense, it could be said that the former Soviet bloc is an ongoing experiment in democratic politics.
A key unresolved issue in most of the region’s countries is the problem of an unmastered totalitarian past. This has proved to be a formidable obstacle in the way of establishing a lasting connection between democracy, memory, and civic activism. But I consider that it is possible to achieve this resolution, and provide a new foundation for individual and collective identity as a result, on the basis of all the resources (negative and positive alike) that a national history can provide.
Besides the trauma of the early Stalinist days, all the countries in question had and still have to deal with “the grey veil of moral ambiguity” that was the defining feature of “really existing socialism”. These societies and most of their members have a bad conscience in relation with the past. A new solidarity based upon the duty of remembrance is still awaited, but its nourishment has the potential of advancing political goals that lie beyond the priorities of the present murky and (it can seem) never-ending transitional period.
The negative effects that accompany entrenched societal amnesia must not be underestimated. The lack of real public debates and sober analyses about the past (including the acknowledgment by the highest state authorities of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by communist dictatorships) fuels silent - or not so silent - dissatisfaction, even revolt; and this in turn allows new demagogues to accede to state power. A case in point is Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia; an essential ingredient of the legitimacy of his “managed democracy” is institutionalised amnesia, the falsification of the 20th century history, of the Soviet past, and particularly of the Stalinist genocide(s).
Post-communism did bring with it (Tony Judt, again) “a new wooden language of public policy with very little meaning or concern to many citizens.” Yet it is also vital to recall that the very “illusions” of 1989 about what was to come were vital to the defeat of Leninism. It was the year when most eastern Europeans stopped being afraid, when their moral frustration and political impotence vanished, and they regained a central role in the political sphere. The core evidence for such a statement is that most of the nightmarish scenarios for the region - which gained life against the background of the Yugoslav wars - have turned out to be wrong. In conclusion, I believe that the lessons of the 1989 upheaval are in fact unquestionable arguments in favour of the values that are currently considered to define democracy. 

 

Rein Müllerson
1989 symbolises a period that was anything but dull. At twenty years’ distance, a definitive balance-sheet of these years of excitement is still elusive.
If for Confucians who value stability and order the ancient Chinese phrase “May you live in interesting times” may have sounded like a curse, for people in eastern and central Europe - whose states were part of the Soviet bloc - these were years full of promise. There was a lot of idealism and naivety in the air and expectations were high. It is natural that not all promises were fulfilled. For many the glass seems half empty; for some it is indeed emptier than before. Thus in trying to answer the question “do we live better now than twenty years ago?”, it would be difficult, even preposterous, to speak on behalf of every person, every social group or even every nation.
There is certainly more freedom today, both in Europe and in the world as a whole. Most countries have also become more prosperous. However, quite a few societies have become less equal and several bloody conflicts have emerged whose facilitating circumstances at least (if not their roots) lay in those transformations. For the grieving mothers, sisters and daughters of Srebrenica there is no consolation in the aggregate increase of freedom.
True, for the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, as well as for most people in former Soviet central Asia and the Caucasus, the collapse of the Soviet Union (for Vladimir Putin “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”) meant coveted independence; but many women in (say) Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan don’t feel at all that they have become freer than when they were ruled from the Kremlin. Independence does not always lead to an increase in freedom. The Caucasus has seen several bloody conflicts that have created immense human tragedies, where many find it hard to see the benefits of the post-1989 changes.
The unravelling of federal states like the Soviet Union and socialist Yugoslavia left many ethnicities discontented. It is indeed difficult to explain (I know it since I have tried it) why the Croats, Slovenes or Georgians (for example) deserve independent statehood while the Kosovars, Abkhazians or South Ossetians don’t; and, when the latter have (thanks to external support) also declared themselves to be sovereign nations, why some deserve recognition while others don’t. After all, the “uniqueness” of a case seems to be only in the eye of the beholder.
A lesson of these twenty years is that authoritarian, multiethnic states may not survive transition intact; but that attempts to encourage dissolution and attempts to hold together entities whose parts don’t want to live together can be equally dangerous. There aren’t any ideal solutions; a choice between lesser evils is often all that is available.
The enlargement of the European Union has in general been a blessing for those newly independent states already under Brussels’s umbrella (or close to it). The EU is criticised on account of its bureaucracy, its waste, its democracy-deficit and other (real and exaggerated) sins; but it has benefited those who were lucky to be close to this postmodern union. Nato’s role has been more controversial, and its transformation from cold-war alliance into a collective-security entity has been too slow.
The processes of transformation in Europe that peaked in 1989 came in the decade after their tenth anniversary to be overshadowed by other developments: 9/11 and the “war on terror”, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the end of the unipolar moment and the rise of China, the global financial and economic crisis, nuclear proliferation, and acute environmental crisis. All have impacted on central and eastern Europe. The full influence of the Barack Obama administration is still to be felt; but in the region, its less confrontational attitude and more pragmatic foreign policy are not always to the liking of those who, having dismantled the old walls to the west would prefer to erect new fences to the east.
Where one stands depends on where one sits. During these twenty years I have lived in three capitals (Moscow-Tallinn-London, and now again in Tallinn) and worked for a while for the United Nations in central Asia. This experience has given me a multi-perspectival view of the developments unleashed by the attempts of Mikhail Gorbachev to reform the Soviet Union. Such a view is not better or worse; it is simply different. An approach that may lack passion, and be capable of noticing the strengths of opposing policies and attitudes, tends to conclude in a recipe for reflection rather than a call to action. So be it. In any event, the balance-sheet is in my view positive, and not even every unintended consequence has been wholly negative; though with hindsight we see that sometimes too much was lost in the transition and too many left behind.