Eastern Europe and the End of Communism
Outline by Robert Freeman
Deep Background: What is “Eastern Europe”?
• Draw a line from Trieste (Adriatic) to Stettin (Baltic)
o To the left is “Western Europe”
o To the right is “Eastern Europe”
• West vs. East
o Protestant/Catholic vs. Orthodox/Muslim
o Germanic/Polish vs. Slavic/Turkish
o Roman alphabet vs. Cyrillic
• West has had many “capital” cities with deep contributions to “European” culture
o Florence; Paris; Amsterdam; London; Vienna
o None from the East
• Nation states and national identity
o West has long history of nation states, national identities
§ Spain; France; England; Netherlands; Sweden; Germany; Italy
o East
§ No nation-states before 1919!
§ Most are products of collapsed empires
• Austria-Hungary; Russia; Ottomans
• Poland; Czechoslovakia; Lithuania; Estonia; Latvia;
Yugoslavia; Hungary
§ Exceptions: Romania; Bulgaria; Albania Greece
• None with major influence on European affairs
More recent background: The trauma of two wars
• WWI
o Nations created but at great risk!
§ No historic institutions of self governance
§ Insufficient economies
§ Cut off from Imperial context of former support
§ Massive dislocations of polyglot populations
• Hungary: Romanians; Ruthenians; Serbs; Poles
• Czechoslovakia: Germans; Poles; Czechs; Slovaks
• Poland: Germans; Czechs; Russians; Hungarians
§ They are being used by the Great Powers
• To buffer GPs from Russia
o Cordon Sanitaire
§ They can only exist at sufferance of GPs
• When withdrawn, they will vanish
o Czech; Poland; etc.
o Witness: Little Entente
§ Czech, Romania, Yugoslavia and France
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France uses LE to replace Russia as counter
to Germany in the east
Also created to resist Hungarian irredentism
following Versailles carve up of 1919
Dissolved when France stabbed Czech in the
back at Munich, 1938
•
WWII
o 5X the proportional death of western European nations
§ 10% of populations vs. 2%
• 20% in Poland
o Elites intentionally targeted for extermination by Nazis
§ Poland: 1/3 of high school graduates killed
§ Intent is to destroy leadership, capacity to resist, organize
o Vast devastation to physical infrastructures
§ Cities, towns, villages
§ Factories, workshops, farms
§ Once as Hitler passed through; next from Russians
•
Effect of all this is to create a traumatized, enfeebled populace in E. European
countries
o It works
o No history, institutions, capacity, (aspirations?) for self-rule
o Submission is their historic, habituated way of life
o Hitler is easily replaced by Stalin
§ (As were empires by Hitler)
§ State planning is already the economic norm
§ Low standard of living is already the personal norm
§ Low level of freedoms is already the political norm
•
Soviet rule/domination will prove brutal, grossly inefficient
o Central planning is a catastrophe
§ Tells people what to produce
§ What price they can sell at
§ No market signals
o Collectivized agriculture is a catastrophe
§ Private farms taken away; converted to collectives
§ Residual is resentment
• Resistance is crushed
§ No incentives leads to very low productivity
§ Rewards go to political loyalty over profitability
o No capital for investment in industries
§ Much destroyed in the War
§ What capital there is is diverted into weapons, occupation of
satellites, massive police state
§ Notice: capital of the west was replaced by Marshall Plan
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And higher rate of productivity creates profits that generate
more new capital
§ Western European countries not spending on weapons
• Vassals of U.S. which provides security “umbrella”
o No technology
§ No cultural legacy of innovation
§ No investment in creating new technologies
§ No climate to foster creativity
§ Forces recourse to massive industrial espionage
• Theft of technology from West
•
The break-up of the communist Eastern block
• Pre-cursors where dissent was crushed
o 1953—East Germany
§ After Stalin dies, Soviets hint at some liberalization
§ But demand E. German construction workers produce more
§ Strikes break out
§ Immediately crushed by Soviet tanks throughout country
§ Clear signal that dissent will not be tolerated
o 1956—Hungary
§ Riots break out in Budapest, Oct. ‘56
§ Russians send in tanks
• But leave them outside the city
§ The complication of Suez
• The next day Israel attacks Suez
o U.S had offered Nasser money for Aswan Dam
o But Nasser recognized China, de-recognized
Taiwan
§ US China lobby is pissed
o Also, Nasser took weapons from Czechoslovakia
• US withdraws offer of funding for Aswan
o In a way calculated to humiliate Nasser
• The next week Nasser nationalized the canal
o Perfectly legal
o Offers full compensation for former shareholders
• UK and France (shareholders) don’t want to accept
Egyptian control
o They conspire with Israel to invade
o Israel invades, followed by English and French
bombing of Egyptian forces
• Russia threatens Israel, Britain and France with missiles
• U.S. forces Israel, France, and Britain to withdraw
§ Meanwhile, the PM of Hungary (Emile Nagy) has declared
intention to withdraw from Warsaw Pact
• This is too much for Krushchev
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§
o Invades Bucharest on Nov. 4 – 5
o As bombs are flying over Egypt
• Hungarian revolution is crushed
o Nagy exported to Russia and executed
HUGE lessons for the Cold War
• UK and France completely exposed
o Ruthlessness in trying to keep colonial legacies
• US talks big about helping Iron Curtain people
o Like w/E. Germany in 1953 was sending in
encouraging radio broadcasts
o But in a crunch does nothing
• But it did stand up to UK and France and Israel
• Russia looks good to developing world for defending Egypt
o But looks bad for suppression of revolt in Hungary
o 1961—East Berlin
§ Many citizens escaping to the west
• 50,000 in 1960; 70,000 in first half of 1961
• Especially highly trained ones
o Doctors, engineers, etc.
• A huge drain on Soviet resources to have trained and lost
• Also a huge propaganda loss that they fled and talked
§ So government builds a “Wall” separating East from West Berlin
• Pretext is to keep Westerners from infiltrating East
§ Clearly, E. Germany has become a huge concentration camp
o 1968—Czechoslovakia
§ In early 1968 govt. of Alexandar Dubcek began administrative
reforms
• Liberalization on speech, travel, and media
• Limitation to actions of secret police
• Also, economic liberalization
o To better fit Czechoslovakia to the non-Soviet
economy that it actually was
o More consumer goods
o Sales to the West
o More pay for higher skilled workers
§ Many famous writers began criticizing regime and its repression
§ Dubcek proposed splitting country into two
• Czech Republic and Slovakia
§ The sum of these policies were criticized sharply
• By Brezhnev
• By rulers of Poland, E. Germany, Hungary
o Felt they would undermine their own rule
§ Brezhnev negotiates with Dubcek to limit the extent of the changes
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Especially the right of intellectuals to criticize the govt.
Dubcek defends the reforms
o But promises to continue path of MarxismLeninism
Aug. 20, 1968 200,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers invade
• 2,000 tanks
Dubcek tells people not to resist
Dubcek is replaced
• Reforms are reversed
• 300,000 flee
“Socialism with a Human Face” as it was called became the model
Mikhail Gorbachev would use after 1985 to liberalize and
eventually end the Soviet Union.
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The critical role of Mikhail Gorbachev
o Comes to power in 1985 after 3 leaders in 3 years
§ First university-educated Soviet leader since Lenin!
o Liberal reformer who wants to make communism work
§ Understands USSR is in deep trouble
• No political trust among people
• Badly failing economies
• Satellites increasingly in revolt
• Falling rapidly behind the West
o Domestic policies
§ Perestroika—Restructuring
• Increased privatization in agriculture
• Market setting of prices
• Reduced state ownership and planning
• Reduced subsidies to satellite states
§ Glasnost—Openness
• Relaxation of censorship
• Admits failures of central planning and collectivization
• Dissidents allowed in Communist Party
o Allowed into Congress of People’s Deputies
• Mocks Brezhnev era as “era of stagnation”
o Foreign policies
§ Immediately seeks rapprochement with U.S.
• Weapons limitation talks on medium range missiles
o Possible elimination of all nuclear weapons
§ Shelved by U.S. military
§ Pulls out of Afghanistan (1988)
§ Declares every socialist state must find its own path
• “Any attempt to restrict the sovereignty of states, both
friends and allies or any others, is inadmissible.”
• Refuses to intervene to prop up failing communist satellites
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o E. Germany
o Czechoslovakia
o Romania
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The deluge
o Poland—the first peaceful transition to non-communist rule
§ 1980: Gdansk shipyard strike by worker’s union (Solidarity)
creates first plausible counter to Communist Party rule
• bGovernment enters negotiations re: worker rights
§ 1987: National strike to protest price increases
• Govt. asks Solidarity to mediate
• Solidarity agrees but only on condition of political
participation, open elections
§ 1989: National elections; communists totally routed
§ 1990: Communist Party cedes power
o Hungary—second case of peaceful transition from communist rule
§ 1988: Liberal communist party reformers oust Kadar from power
• Massive demonstrations commemorating 1848 revolution
o Where Russian army suppressed nationalist revolt
o Implicit defiance of Soviet army
§ But everyone also leery of another 1956
• Party leaders see collapse of popular support
o Begin initiating reforms to try to undercut
opposition
§ New constitution
§ Free, multiparty elections
§ Economic reforms
§ 1989: May: Government removes emigration restrictions to
Austria
• Cut down barbed wire barriers separating
o East Germany—1989
§ 5/89 opening of Hungary (see above) makes it a route of escape for
East Germans
§ Eric Honecker (President) demands Hungary return fleeing
Germans
• Hungary says “No”
§ Honecker orders police to attack demonstrators
• Krenz (head of secret police) Refuses
§ Gorbachev visits Berlin in 10/89
• Hundreds of thousands turn out to cheer him
• And his policy: Each Socialist State Must Find Its Own
Way
• Explicitly states SU will NOT assist in suppression
§ Krenz replaces Honecker
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Declares people free to leave—11/89
o 3M East Germans pour into West Germany
• Tears down Berlin Wall—11/9/89
o HUGELY symbolic end of communist state
German re-unification
• Elections in /90 favor re-unification with WG
• 10/90 Actual re-unification
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Why the Soviet Union Collapsed
o No trust from its own people
§ Decades of dictatorship, brutality finally took their toll
§ Determined resistance from internal dissidents
• Andrei Sakharov (physicist)
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel, Literature)
o Nationalist uprisings within SU
§ Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan
o Collapsing economy
§ Couldn’t deliver basic consumer goods
§ Couldn’t afford subsidies to its satellite countries
§ Couldn’t keep up with west in technology race
§ Couldn’t keep up with west in arms race
§ Oil price collapse in the 1980s undermined all of economy
o Revolt of Satellites (see above)
o Lost the will to continue suppression of people, domestic and foreign
Mikhail Gorbachev MUST be considered one of the political giants of the 20th century
for his central role in dismantling the Soviet Union and defusing the Cold War
WITHOUT VIOLENCE. No other empire in the modern world has gone as peacefully as
did the Soviet, not the British, certainly not the French or Dutch, not the Romanovs,
Ottomans, Hohenzollerns, Bourbons, Hapsburgs—NONE. Will ours?
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