h’i.w,ry of European Ideas, Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 831435, 1991 0191-6599/91 $3.00+0.00

Printed in Great Britain 0 1991 Pergamon Press plc

DEMOCRACY IN EASTERN EUROPE

VITEZSLAV VELIMSKY*

La dkmocratie se kve A I’Est. SociCtC civile et communisme en Europe de l’Est: Pologne et Hongrie Miklos Molnar (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1990), x + 387 pp., FF 180.-

There is hardly a more devaluated expression than ‘Historical Events’. Like in the case of devaluated currencies shedding from time to time off a couple-or maybe scores-of unnecessary zeros, we should use elated or superlative variants, such as ‘Big historical events’ or ‘Truly big historical events’ for those likely to survive the sifting through the sieve of history. For the peoples of East- Central Europe, though, the events of 1989 are likely to be remembered as the big ones.

Fresh events call for a ‘literature of events’. When the dust settles, there is time for a ‘literature of reflexions’. Finally, and often after a considerable time-lag, when secret archives start to open and witnesses of events have produced their ‘literature of memoirs’, the time becomes ripe for ‘historiography’ more concerned with facts than inclined to theorising. But obviously, historiography can serve as raw materials for further ‘theorising’ literature. Both 1789 in France and 1917 in Russia bear amply witness to such a growth cycle of literature.

Where does the recent work of some 400 pages by Miklos Molnar a Geneva- based Emeritus Professor and French-writing scholar of Hungarian origin, stand on the above sketched scale of literature related to historical events?

The size of the book is in itself an indication that the author intended to write ‘literature of reflections’ on the subject of the interplay between a communist party in power, monopolising every aspect of the outward surface of the society, and the ‘citzenry’ or civic society, comparable at times to a mysterious hidden stream of a subterranean river (p. 210 and p. 214). Yet the fast course of events interfered with the more ponderous pace of creating a coherent and well- structured work of reflections.

As this interference could not be avoided, Molnar rightly decided to make openly best use of it, switching when appropriate (as on pp. 355,367 and 368) to the style of ‘literature of events’. Being up-to-date is a positive quality of any literature of facts, and being topical is, besides, a good selling argument. The three above mentioned pages refer to (i) the dismantling of the Berlin wall (with the specific timing ‘in the very hour that we are going to press’), (ii) the election outcome in Poland in June 1989 and (iii) the televised second burial of Imre Nagy, in the same month of the same year. The editor wisely allowed the insertion of a few freshly added facts at the stage of proof-reading and an up-to-the-minute

*30, Avenue de 1’Arbre Ballon, Boite 153, B-1090, Brussels, Belgium.

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synthesis in the preface dated February 1990. Persons acquainted with the technicalities of printing will appreciate both the author’s and the editor’s performances.

The interplay between the outwardly overwhelming might of the totalitarian party and state apparatus and the powerless individual is a legitimate subject for reflections, both for those who are or have been on either side of the divide (or, during different periods of their lives, consecutively on one and on the other side) and for the rather distant Western general public, as far as some members of it are interested in moral issues. The authoritative text on the moral issues between US and them is of course the short but brilliantly written essay by Vaclav Have1 entitled The Power ofthe Powerless. Molnar mentions Have1 twice (in fact slightly out of the appropriate context, namely in relation with the Prague Spring during which Havel’s role was a minor one) but misses the occasion to include The Power of the Powerless in his bibliography. The reviewer regards the omission of this key-text, almost a classic, on the subject of civic society and communism in Eastern Europe as regrettable.

Of course, Havel’s ethical dichotomy between living in the truth and letting oneself slip into a system based on falsehood or shortly living in the lie was not to serve a purpose of moralising but one of fighting the evil. Molnar’s work, though not lacking ethical aspects or ethical considerations, sets as its purpose rather to test the viability of civic society after half a century of systematic dismantling and atomising into a mass of ultimately homogeneous individuals and by the same token to test the viability of the communist system (either undiluted as in the ‘normalised’ Czechoslovakia, or diluted with a dose of economic reformism as in Kadar’s Hungary). The conclusion, self-evident today but far from having been obvious to everybody a couple of years ago, is that the civic society is viable, in spite of, and perhaps even because of, its persecution by the authorities, while the communist blueprint in both its variants (the dogmatic and the reformist or so called ‘third way’) and the ensuing ‘really existing socialism’ simply are not.

Social sciences in general have so far not devised any generally accepted method of testing the viability or otherwise of such nebulous entities as the civic society or of concepts such as the really existing socialism (according to the officially fostered parlance-otherwise synonymous with ‘communism’ in its frequently used vulgar meaning). In such an endeavour, sociology seems to be even less helpful than other branches of human sciences. Molnar is well aware of this difficulty and opts for a pluridisciplinary approach (and is acknowledging co-operation with specialised scholars in some particular areas such as e.g. economics). The reader, depending on his/her own tastes and methodological preferences, may either welcome the diversity of approach as conducive to better grasping of the facts, or resent it as creating a certain untidiness of the argumentation. Another risk of MolnBr’s pluridisciplinary approach is that a reader in search of his/her own particular field of study may find some sub- chapters highly informative and other sub-chapters less valuable if not downright dull.

Before presenting the reviewer’s impressions and/or observations, let us recall the structure of the book and the geographical framework, specified in the sub- title.

The general considerations, summed up in an elegant and refreshingly non-

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pedantic French, are to be found in the final pages of conclusions and in ‘conclusions of conclusions’ sensibly located in the preface, written not before but after the corpus of main texts. This corpus of twenty-two loosely interrelated sub-chapters is, however, held in a coherent chronological frame of five periods articulating by the same token the five main divisions or grand chapters of the book. The chronologically most distant layer traces the idea of civic society (or its absence) in Western political thought, in classical Marxist thought, and in Russian and Central European environment. The second grand chapter traces the dismantling or enslaving of the civic society in the examined countries of East-Central Europe during the onslaught of full-blooded Stalinism on both countries (roughly between 1944/1945 and 1953 or 1956-but in fact continuing throughout the fifties and sixties). The third grand chapter recalls the sequence of events after the famous XXth Congress of the CP of SU and Khrushtchev’s secret speech on the ‘cult of the personality’ and its misdeeds, the aim of the narrative being to show that attempts to shake off the fetters of an unworkable model imposed from outside, both revolutionary (as in Hungary in October 1956) and reformist (as in Czechoslovakia from January to August 1968), failed. The ensuing stalemate is the chronologically logical content of the next grand chapter. Yet then a ray of hope for the civic society starts to shine from unexpected quarters, namely first from the Vatican, from where the fervently patriotic John-Paul II encouraged his fellow-countrymen not to fear, and then from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdarisk where a fearless electrician won a memorable strike and founded a nationwide trade-union rooted in the civic society. The last grand chapter is obviously about the late eighties. The easy way would be to label this period ‘the Gorbachev era’ and to dish up the words glasnost andperestroika in every possible context. Molnar does not do that and quite rightly stresses the indigenous, that is in his context Hungarian and Polish, forces of change. There are, in the reviewer’s reading,

(i) reconquest of the social space by the civic society. (ii) truthfulness (as regards mainly the picture of the past of one’s country, but

also of the ecologic and economic situations). (iii) deliberate overstepping of the taboos imposed by party watchdogs and/or

their Russian overlords. (iv) the ‘implosion’ of the party itself, manifest in dwindling numbers of rank-

and-file membership and also in ideological somersaults, more spectacular than credible, among prominent members of the leadership.

The geography of Molnar is that of the twelve last years of the reign of Louis the Great (of the Anjou dynasty in Naples)-1370 to 1382-and of the thirty-six years of reign in both countries of the two last elder Jageillons (Ladislas II, respectively III and Louis IQ-1490 to 1526-when crowns of the two realms were borne by the same monarchs. But much more conspicuously, also that of forty-six years of foreign occupation jointly meted out (in spite of the fact that Poland was on the winning and Hungary on the losing side in World War II) between 1944 and the time of writing. Singling out Poland and Hungary is justified on other grounds too. One reason is a kind of spiritual affinity of the two nations (though not of their leaders: The political longevity of Kadar cannot be

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compared to the successive failures of Gomulka, Gierek, Kania and Jaruzelski). The other is the trigger role, first-and at the cost of much suffering during the ‘state of war’ period-by Poland, and then in the autumn months of 1989 by Hungary, in bringing the other domino pieces standing on the western outskirts of the Warsaw treaty area to shake and eventually to topple over.

Molnar was unduly shy to cross the border between the literature of reflections and the literature of events on this particular point, namely the merits of the Polish civic society to ‘sit out’ the state of war and its aftermath (between 12 December 1981 and 31 August 1988) and then to allow the undemoralised Solidarity leadership to accept the principle of ‘half-free, half-rigged’ parliamentary elections and finally to talk the insignificant, but for the parliamentary vote crucial, peasants’ party into casting off its former communist allegiance. There is a cursory half-paragraph on the subject on p. 353.

Even more parsimoniously are treated the merits of Hungarian society (including the leadership of the moment) in the autumn months of 1989 when first the technical apparatus of keeping the Austrian border insuperable for fugitives, mainly barbed wire fences, were quietly dismantled, and then, in violation of the multilateral agreement between the Warsaw treaty border police forces, hundreds of thousands of East German ‘tourists’ let through. Molnar, in a sentence dealing also with the influx of ethnic Magyars from Romania into Hungary (p. 336) merely acknowledges ‘great efficiency and great dignity’ of the Hungarian government in both cases.

Those two instances, of brilliant ‘home’ politics in Poland and ‘foreign’ politics in Hungary, would have deserved, in the reviewer’s opinion, a definitely much more central place in a book entitled Democracy rises in the East, as they pertain to the core of the subject. Or perhaps Molnar could be encouraged to write a new book of reflections focusing on 1989. Readers would certainly welcome it.

Molnar does not attempt to sell any ‘scholarly thesis’ except the assertion, amply borne out by the facts, that in societies, such as the Polish and the Magyar, having belonged for more than a full millennium to the Western Christian civilisation (including its late more secular variants), the civic society remains viable (and even invents quite new forms of its organisational structuring), while the Marxist blueprint (be it as presented in the Stalinist ‘Vulgata’ or in the heterodox ‘human face’ variant) is not. The absence of a scholarly tone makes the book accessible to the general public, but in at least two instances the style appears as careless about terminology. On page 286 the reformist current in the communist party is designated as right wing and the conservative as left wing. In this, without inverted commas, Molnar follows the despicable practice of the concrete-filled heads of the agit-prop. Nine pages later, at least inverted commas are added to point out the irony of such a terminology. The reviewer would favour a frank inversion of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ accompanied if necessary by a few words of explanatory detail. Another instance of carelessness is the colloquial-journalistic use of the word ‘East’ in the political sense. Molndr knows and even notes (on p. 52) the objections of e.g. Kundera against such an amalgamation of antagonistic civilisations but then dismisses the terminological (or geo-political) delimitation as ‘difficult and controversial’.

Be it as it may, the flaws (some of them inherent to the multifarious approach to the description of party life, church life, intellectual elite life, associations’ life

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and civic society life in general in the two countries under scrutiny) are by far outweighed by the uncontested qualities of Molnhr’s recent work.

The reviewer already prized its timeliness. Two other qualities should be stressed in the concluding remarks of the present review:

Molnar does not fear to show his flag, i.e. the Hungarian flag, when he describes-not without sympathy-the three triggers of the awakening of the civic society: (i) the ecologically controversial hydroelectrical and navigational project on the Danube between B8s (GabCikovo in Slovak) and Nagymaros, (ii) the plight, often followed by flight to Hungary from their homes, of Magyar- speaking minority in Transylvania under the rule of Ceau$escu, and finally (iii) the re-appraisal of the events of 1956, branded as counter-revolution during the thirty-two plus one years (KadBr’s era and that of his first successor) in MolnLr’s birthplace. Not to conceal one’s ethnic feelings appears as natural-and positive-to the reviewer.

The second, and by far not the least quality of Molnir’s work is its mature humanism. On two occasions (p. 172 and p. 195), he mentions-again not without sympathy-the expression ‘a communism which does not forget the man’. In the first instance, this dictum is mentioned as a guideline of Imre Nagy in his pre-1956 career (and also as a precursory expression to Alexander DubEek’s ‘socialism with a human face’), in the second instance as a reality during the middle stretch of time (politically benign and economically almost successful) of the long Secretaryship-General of Janos KadBr.

Let us conclude by an extensive quotation from one of the ‘Polish’ sub- chapters of MolnBr’s book, aptly summing up the humanist content in the awakening of civic society. The quotation (from page 249) is double-the first four lines are MolnLr’s, the remainder is from Marcin Kr61, ‘Inna revolucja’ (Another Revolution) in: Res Publica, No. 7 (1980), p. 3. The setting is the first visit of John-Paul II to Poland in 1979:

As a matter of fact, this event (Pope’s journey) announced a revolutionary shift, bringing with it also enormous aspirations belonging rather to the moral than to the material aspects of life, addressing more directly the ‘existential’ than the social needs of man:

The causes of the crisis were of psychical nature . . . The revolution could not be labelled either “social” or “political”; it was indeed a moral or “existential” revolution aimed principally at showing all of us that we are still alive, that we are still able to react simply as human beings: to do what is good, to behave as friends to each other, to respect the truth.

In this double quotation, Molnar and Kr61 remarkably rejoin Havel.

Brussels, Belgium Vitezslav Velimsky