East Europe Activists Up the Ante

WASHINGTON —  After long battles, a group of Polish peace activists called “Freedom and Peace” scored two startling victories. In June, the Polish Parliament agreed to change the wording of the military oath; no longer will conscripts honor the country’s “fraternal alliance with the Soviet Army.” And in July, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s government released all conscientious objectors serving prison terms and announced that, from now on, people will have a civilian alternative to military service.

In legitimizing conscientious objection, the Polish regime conceded a liberty communist governments have never acknowledged before--the right of the individual to place conscience above the dictates of the state. At the same time, other Eastern European countries face similar pressures from human-rights and peace activists on this issue; Hungary has indicated it may follow the Polish example.

The broader lesson is that the momentary surface calm of Eastern Europe is exceedingly deceptive. Except when jolted by periodic eruptions, both the Kremlin and the West have tended to write off Eastern Europeans as marginal players in the East-West conflict. But it would be a colossal mistake to do so again. Today, Eastern Europe boasts some of the world’s most innovative and provocative political thinkers and activists; their sustained attack on weakening totalitarian regimes challenges the assumptions of all those who have taken the durability of the Soviet empire for granted.

If that seems too sweeping, consider the evidence. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and, to a much lesser extent, East Germany have all developed “parallel cultures” outside Communist Party control. These feature independent groups lobbying for human rights, peace and environmental causes, samizdat presses that spew out regular journals and books and informal courses and seminars in private homes. Increasingly, activists are raising fundamental political issues once completely taboo. They are openly demanding political pluralism, national sovereignty and an end to the division of Europe. All this, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 20 years ago this month.

Independent activism flourishes throughout the region as a grass-roots movement, and by no means signifies that the governments have suddenly forsaken one-party dictatorships for democratic principles. East Germany continues to arrest dissidents, keeping its well-deserved hard-line reputation intact. Czechoslovakia’s new Communist Party chief Milos Jakes has vowed never to legalize any political opposition; his security forces routinely harass and detain activists. Poland’s Jaruzelski likes to portray himself as extremely accommodating, but on the crucial issue of independent unions he is unrelenting. Last May, he used riot troops to break up a steel mill strike rather than meet the workers’ demands for the reinstatement of fired Solidarity activists. Even Hungary’s government, the most liberal in the bloc, sent in the police to beat demonstrators in June.

Nonetheless, with the exception of East Germany, all those regimes have now adopted the rhetoric of reform. Partly, this is a response to Mikhail S. Gorbachev proclaiming gospels of glasnost and perestroika . Eastern European leaders do not want to appear recalcitrant. And sensing the opportunity, Eastern activists have pushed harder and faster.

They have been able to seize this moment because of groundwork laid during the last decade. Long before Gorbachev’s ascension, the region’s most creative intellectuals had formulated the theses that guide their actions today. The essence of their argument is that by behaving as free men in an unfree society, citizens can progressively render that society more free.

Eastern European dissidents believe that all talk of stability in East-West relations is illusory so long as Europe is divided, and that the division is created specifically by the imposition of totalitarianism on the countries east of the Elbe. Accordingly, they advocate two steps to lessen the grip of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.

First, Eastern Europeans must banish the totalitarian spirit, a process that begins with the individual. “You score a victory not when you win power but when you remain faithful to yourself,” Polish historian Adam Michnik wrote in one of this prison essays.

Dissident intellectuals have espoused the tactics of nonviolence, defying the conventional wisdom that nonviolent resistance can only be successfully deployed against democratic governments. The civil disobedience they advocate is active not passive, defying the state by ignoring its instruments of control. The samizdat press, for instance, overcomes censorship by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the censor. Publishing openly, under their own names, activists have set an example.

Second, dissidents insist that the creation of social pluralism can lead to dismantling the Communist Party monopoly on power. This is a fundamental point; dissidents know that, without institutional guarantees, any increase in freedom can always lead to new repression. Hungarian samizdat editor Miklos Haraszti describes the situation in his country: “They’ve loosened the leash but people no longer accept the leash.” Their strategy, in short, is to legitimize pluralism as the basis for regaining national self-determination.

Eastern European intellectuals are convinced that their region’s future is crucial, not only for them, but also for the West. “Western Europe rests its back against a wall of dynamite, while blithely gazing out over the Atlantic,” wrote Hungary’s George Konrad. “I consider Western Europe’s good fortune as uncertain as our misfortune.”

Previous collisions between the pent-up frustrations of Eastern Europeans and their communist masters have led to the frequent use of military force. The Eastern European writers argue that superpower deals overlooking Eastern discontent cannot bring an end to the Cold War--or ensure that tanks won’t roll again.

Now, with “parallel cultures,” tougher battles lie ahead. While activists invoke glasnost and perestroika in their push for further reforms, they recognize that Gorbachev envisages liberalization under continued one-party rule, not political liberation. In fact, his instincts on Eastern Europe remain basically conservative, wary of encouraging forces that could challenge Soviet control of the region.

But Gorbachev and Eastern leaders realize that they must revive ailing economies. They are faced with the necessity of combining economic liberalization with painful austerity measures as subsidies are cut--for bankrupt industries and for consumer prices. Hungary, having pioneered economic reforms, is already forcing such sacrifices, producing a steady drop in real wages. To avoid backlash, governments promise a measure of political reform in return. That is what gives activists the chance to press further; each time they have won limited freedoms, they have pushed for more.

In this maneuvering, Eastern Europeans have urged the West to offer assistance. They want Western policy-makers to shed any remaining complacent assumptions about the stability of the status quo in Europe. At the very least, the West should recognize the dimensions of the struggle taking place. Ideally, the West would fashion responses that match the imagination of those fighting and thinking at the same time.