II. Regimes in Crisis: China and Czechoslovakia in 1989
II.2 Czechoslovakia’s Normalization
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
into the city on May 19, after Gorbachev's departure, they were blocked by the capital's entire urban population that became sympathetic to the protesters.33 The army had to withdraw, but on the night from June 3 to June 4, fresh units were brought to the capital with orders to seize the Tiananmen using any means necessary. This time, the student protest ended in a bloodbath and persecution of its participants; the prospects of democratic transition vanished.
II.2 Czechoslovakia’s Normalization
Parallel with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, independent Czechoslovakia had been re-established by the pre-war political establishment. However, the right-wing parties that collaborated with the German occupation were banned and the parties were united into a National Front. The Czechoslovakia's Communist Party won the 1946 election by a large margin thanks to its superior tactics and its reputation as a bold enemy of the Nazis, but in 1948, it stages a Soviet-backed coup and transformed the country into a one-party state, closely following the Soviet model.
However, the centralization of the economy and political decision making proved to have their limits and twenty years after the coup, in early 1968, the Party was divided between reformers and hardliners. After more than ten years in office, the neo-Stalinist president and Party secretary Antonin Novotny became increasingly isolated and in March 1968, he was forced to resign and leave political life. The reformers, who were gaining momentum, replaced him by more flexible Alexander Dubcek as a Party secretary and started to implement economic and political reforms. Quickly, Dubcek became a popular public figure, representing Czechoslovakia’s new "socialism with a human face" and a reformist push towards economic and political liberalization.
The reforms were popular especially among intellectuals who "mobilized all the creative
33 Lieberthal 1995, 143
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
forces to a degree unknown since 1948, and forced Dubcek to follow the proposed reforms to their logical conclusion."34 However, there were two important problems. First, although Dubcek’s leadership had been formally in charge, the dynamics of the Prague Spring quickly outpaced the Communist Party’s reform schedule, so that the party lost its grip and often struggled to keep pace with increasingly profound changes in society that were happening without official sanctions. Second, the logical conclusions of the reforms would be a liberalized political system and a market economy, e.g. a complete reversal of the previous twenty years of hard-line policies following the example of the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Despite its domestic popularity, this new kind of socialism clearly deviated from the official ideological canon defined by Moscow. The conservative leadership of Leonid Brezhnev repeatedly warned Dubcek and his colleagues that the reforms in Czechoslovakia were not acceptable. Reformists in turn claimed that their reforms were Czechoslovakia’s specific contribution to the theory and practice of Socialism, nothing they had done went against country’s membership in the Warsaw Pact, and that their allegiance to Communism had remained strong. At the same time, however, the Soviet Ambassador to Prague Chervonenko, the KGB and the hardliners within the Communist Party were informing Moscow about alleged chaos and revisionism supervised by confused and powerless Dubcek.
To the suspicious Soviet leadership, their version sounded more convincing. As happened in the past in Hungary, Poland and East Germany, the Soviets were ready and willing to prevent
"political chaos" and bring their satellites back to the path of "socialist democracy" using their tanks. Still, the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968 came as a surprise not only to ordinary citizens, but also to the reformist leadership.
Although the possible results of Czechoslovakia’s reforms might have proved problematic or even contradictory in the long term, their abrupt reversal after the invasion
34 J. F. Bradley, Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution : A Political Analysis. New York: Eastern European Monographs, 1992, p. xviii.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
demoralized the society. "The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 ended the optimum chance for a fundamental reform of a socialist regime and started the long process of the decay of Communism that was to culminate in the Velvet Revolution just over two decades later. It dashed the hopes of a substantial section of the population, whose active involvement in public affairs had reflected a revitalization of their beliefs in both socialism and democracy."35
The so called "normalization" meant a restoration of pre-1968 realities, negating and abolishing most of the gains of the Prague Spring. Moreover, there were widespread purges –
"the largest purges of Communist Party membership in the history of Eastern Europe," as Linz and Stepan describe it.36 Dubcek and his group of reformist politicians failed to depart from their official posts with grace and were removed in a humiliating way. About half a million of Party members resigned, were expelled or "deleted" (out of the original total of 1.5 million Party members in a country with population of about 15 millions). Purges took place in all major institutions, including universities and media, which were placed under tight control.37 "There were 1,500 journalists dismissed from Radio Prague alone and Rude Pravo fired 45 of its 80 editorial staff; 900 university professors lost their jobs and 1,200 researchers had to find work outside the Academy of Sciences; 117 writers were banned and 344 artists forbidden to exert their profession; 14,000 full-time party officials also lost their jobs, while 140,000 Czechs and Slovaks were forced to emigrate."38
This obviously caused resentment among the purged. The intellectuals felt that their country turned into a "cultural desert" and the general population that failed to depart to the West opted for "inner emigration" into private realm. Compared with Hungary after 1956,
35 B. Wheaton and Z. Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1989-1991. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, p. 3.
36 Linz and Stepan 1996, 318
37 Wheaton and Kavan 1992, 7
38 Bradley 1992, 6
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Czechoslovakia’s regime remained intolerant and forced everyone to participate in public acts of compliance, which became empty rituals but nevertheless served as a tool of maintaining status quo. As one of the banned authors Vaclav Havel described in his essay The Power of the Powerless (written in 1978),39 this ritualized compliance with a regime that lacked popular legitimacy resulted in an "as-if game": people were acting "as-if" they believed in the official propaganda and in exchange, they did not have to behave in the way the ideology prescribed.40 Moreover, the regime provided them, at least initially, with adequate material standard. Czechoslovakia's "normalization" thus became a version of Hungary’s post-1956 "goulash Communism", e.g. modest level of consumerism provided by the regime in exchange for the compliancy of the ruled.
However, this short-term solution of the Soviet-imposed regime’s lack of legitimacy proved self-defeating in the long term. It led to a moral corruption, widespread stealing, pilfering, exploitation of patronage and avoiding hard work by the general population. The large-scale corruption among the Communist elite provided a justification for a small-scale corruption among ordinary people, but at the same time, this all obviously undermined regime’s economic sustainability. In the end, the increasingly poor and inefficient planned economy was unable to provide enough consumer goods and the exchange of public compliance with normalization for a reasonable standard of living became unsustainable.41
Still, during the 1970s and most of the 1980s, the "goulash socialism" bargain worked, the opposition against the regime had been quite isolated and its critique of the regime on moral grounds unappealing. A broad coalition of regime critics, including expelled reform Communists, Social Democrats, liberals and conservative Catholics emerged in 1977 around Charter 77, a document questioning regime’s human rights record, but it remained a domain
39 V. Havel, The Power of the Powerless. London: Hutchinson, 1985 [1978].
40 Wheaton and Kavan 1992, 10
41 ibid., 11
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
of dissident intellectuals from Prague and Brno.42 However, in the 1980s, the young generation proved less apathetic and demoralized and more willing to question regime’s numerous weaknesses. The regime itself became less repressive and less willing to control the youth, and while it became increasingly difficult to deliver the regime's part of the
"goulash" deal, from the increasingly available Western media it became increasingly obvious that the West was offering a better deal to its own citizens. Instead of getting used to the "normalization", the young people became alienated.
Moreover, the international situation changed as well and undermined another aspect of the imposed regime’s legitimacy. New Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned the Brezhnev doctrine of military interventions in satellite countries in case of their "deviation"
from Socialism, and pushed forward perestroika, glasnost and "new thinking." Actually, these were the same things that prompted his predecessor Leonid Brezhnev to launch the military intervention to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and to terminate Dubcek’s reforms. Now, after implementing their own version of Prague Spring reforms, Soviets could no longer claim their invasion to be completely legitimate. At the same time, the Czechoslovakia’s hard-line leaders had the same problem: adoption of Soviet reforms in their country would prove that Dubcek was right after all. In the end, the question of legitimacy proved for the regime more important than searching for solutions of the economic difficulties.43
Gorbachev originally wanted to maintain Soviet influence in the Eastern Europe, but at the same time he wanted to limit Soviet subsidies to the client regimes. In mid-1988, the Soviet position shifted towards allowing or even supporting major changes in Poland and Hungary. Czechoslovakia’s regime was nevertheless reluctant to launch any substantial reforms and its praise for perestroika and glasnost had not been translated into concrete political and economic changes. Although Soviet pressure in 1987 resulted in replacement of
42 ibid., 12
43 ibid., 18
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
the aging hard-line architect of normalization Gustav Husak by equally hard-line, but less capable Milos Jakes on the post of Party Secretary (Husak retained only the more formal post of Czechoslovakia's president), at the same time, the group of technocrats around Lubomir Strougal had lost their position. Strougal had been a hard-liner also, but one who became supportive of reforms. The most pro-reform leader thus became the quite cautious Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia’s federation Ladislav Adamec, who could not do much being surrounded by entrenched hard-liners.
The Soviets would have probably wished for a less hard-line leadership, but they were preoccupied with improving their relations with the West and cared much less than twenty years ago for its inflexible satellite regime. Their apparent reluctance to get involved in their satellites allowed Czechoslovakia’s hard-liners to ignore Soviet reforms, but it also reduced fears of Soviet tanks among the increasingly dissatisfied population. "The illegitimate government, unwilling to act upon Gorbachev’s advice and unable to cope with the gradual evaporation of fear prompted by the example of dissident and countercultural activity and the effect of a distant perestroika, would find itself with a diminishing ability to use force to preserve itself and a declining capacity to deal with economic difficulties."44
In the end of the 1980s, political upheaval in some Eastern European countries (especially Poland with its Solidarity movement, but also Hungary with its negotiations between the regime and the opposition), economic difficulties, growth of public criticism and a rise of young generation that lacked direct experience with the regime’s oppression all contributed to emergence of open anti-regime protests. In Czechoslovakia, first substantial protest appeared in 1988. Violent repression of these protests had not only antagonizing effect on the population, but also failed to prevent new participants joining these protests.
Although the active dissident supported and sometimes participated on these protests, the
44 ibid., 21
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
most of the participants were young people without prior record of opposing the regime.45 The first big protest in Czechoslovakia took place on August 21, 1988, the twentieth anniversary of Warsaw Pact invasion. About 10 thousand people gathered in the Prague’s centre, speakers denounced the invasion, demanded democratic elections, abolition of censorship, rehabilitation of victims of politic persecution, and in the end, the protest was dispersed by police, but cheered by passer-byes.46 The second protest took place on October 28, 1988, the seventieth anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s independence on Austria-Hungary after the World War I, with participation of about 5 thousands, brutal police crackdown and arrests. The third protest on December 10, 1988, a fortieth anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, had been allowed in order not to antagonize French president Francois Mitterrand on his state visit to Prague. However, the appearance of dissidents alarmed the regime which quickly returned to its previous hard-line approach.
In 1989, the protests followed the same pattern: in January, several thousands of people gathered in Prague despite official warnings to commemorate Jan Palach, who in 1969 protested against the invasion and subsequent normalization by setting himself on fire. Police responded with indiscriminate force and detained leading dissidents including Vaclav Havel (sentenced to nine moths in jail), who were sometimes not involved in the protests. This in turn led to a wave of international condemnation and to a petition with demanding democratization of the regime, signed by about 40 thousand people as of September 1989.
Other protests took place on May 1, August 28, October 28 and finally on November 17, 1989.
The protest on November 17 differed from the previous events as it was an officially sanctioned event organized by Prague's student organization to commemorate Jan Opletal, a Czech student leader murdered by German Nazi occupants fifty years ago, on November 17,
45 ibid., 25
46 ibid., 26
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
1939. After the official part, however, the crowds of people marched into the city centre, defying the official orders to disperse, and in the end, the core of the participants was isolated and beaten by the police.
Unlike after the previous anti-regime protests, this time the police crackdown sparked protests and on November 20, about 200,000 people gathered on Prague's central Wenceslas Square in front of the building of the second largest daily at the time, Svobodne Slovo. The reason was that the Socialist Party, member of the Communist-dominated "National Front"
and publisher of the daily, decided to defy its rubber-stamp status and issue a protest against the crackdown on the front page of that day's issue of Svobodne Slovo (for more details about the article, see chapter IV.2, section D, of the thesis). During the next few days, the protests exponentially grew, the media organizations one after another got rid of their hard-line supervisors and started to provide enthusiastic coverage of the demonstrations, and the opposition organized in Civic Forum under leadership of dissident playwright Vaclav Havel launched negotiations with federal prime minister Ladislav Adamec, as he was the only member of the otherwise paralyzed Communist leadership who had enough flexibility to do so. Less then one week after the initial crackdown, the Party leaders resigned from their posts and the fate of the regime has been sealed by a successful two-hour general strike organized in the whole country on November 27 by the Civic Forum. Next day, the Communist Party announced it is giving up its single-party state, deleted provisions about its leading role from the constitution and started removing barbed wire from the borders with Western Germany and Austria. One month later, on December 29, Civic Forum leader Vaclav Havel replaced Gustav Husak as a president of Czechoslovakia and on June 8-9, 1990, first free elections were held, with demoralized Communist Party receiving only 13.6 % votes compared with 36.2 % and 10.4 % received by the Civic Forum and its sister party in Slovakia, Public Against Violence, respectively. Paradoxically, the Socialist Party that launched the Velvet
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Revolution received only 1.9 % of votes and no parliamentary seat.47