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Dissident Marxism in Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

T. Oleszczuk
T. Oleszczuk
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Abstract

An examination of the major motifs of dissident political literature from Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Hungary in the 1970s reveals a certain commonality of understanding and suggests that dissent is itself a complex, multicausal phenomenon likely to pervade the region for some time to come. Criticisms of the existing system are based on a rejection of dictatorship and its concomitant intellectual rigidity, economic inefficiency, and social alienation. The dissidents' vision of a better socialist society, in contrast, is one of decentralized decision making and of plural centers of power operating within the context of respect for human rights. The tactics put forward by the dissidents derive from these ideas: open discussion, mass mobilization within a legal framework that respects the rights of minorities, and pressure on established elites to make the necessary changes.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , July 1982 , pp. 527 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1982

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References

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23 Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 47ff. Their “models of economic integration” explicitly focus on the “legitimization of social authority” (p. 47). Cf. Rigby, T. H., “Politics in the Mono-Organizational Society,” in Janos (fn. 5), 31–80Google Scholar, and “Traditional, Market, and Organizational Societies and the USSR,” World Politics, XVI (July 1964), 539–57.

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26 Bahro (fn. 13). See Wolter, Ulf, ed., Rudolf Bahro: Critical Responses (White Plains, N. Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1980)Google Scholar, for commentary on Bahro's work by West Europeans attending a special Berlin conference.

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29 ibid., 271–74, 313–26.

30 It is interesting to note that there is a similar perspective among Western social scientists who have abandoned the concept of “totalitarianism.” Cf. Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, esp. the selections by Johnson and Lowenthal.

31 For explicit uses of the term, see Kuron (fn. 10), 113–16, 121–22; Michnik (fn. 15), 179–80; Dubcek (fn. 18), 64; Vilem Precan, “Letter to the Participants of the World Congress of Historians,” in Riese (fn. 16), 123, 125; and Miklos Haraszti, “What is Marxism?” (from the samizdat collection 0.1%), in Silnitsky (fn. 20), 148–55, at 154. Others have described the system as “monolithic” (see Casals [fn. 14] and Rakovski [fn. 12]) “centralist,” or “centralist monopolization of all … decisionmaking” (see Bahro [fn. 13], 246). Also cf. Bieckowski (fn. 19).

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34 Rakovski (fn. 12), esp. 98–104; Bahro (fn. 33), 202; Kuron, “Interview” by M.Lucbert, in Ostoje-Ostaszewski (fn. 15), 170–76. However, see Havemann (fn. 16), 160, for the idea that the working class must finish its revolution—distinctly a minority position among the dissidents.

35 Shoup, Paul, “Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: Convergence and Divergence in Historical Perspective,” in Morton, Henry W. and Tökes, Rudolf L., eds., Soviet Politics and Society in the 1970s (New York: Free Press, 1974), 340–68.Google Scholar

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37 See fn. 7.

38 Leonhard, Wolfgang, “The Domestic Politics of the New Soviet Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 52 (October 1973), 5974CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 66–69; Liehm (fn. 7).

39 See the “Letter of 59” as analyzed by Kuron (fn. 10), 118–20; Adam Michnik, “The Church and the Left,” in Silnitsky (fn. 20), 51–95, at 54 and 83; Lipinski (fn. 18), 27, 32,Konrad and SzeJenyi (fn. 15), 245; Havel and others (fn. 21), 3; Dubcek (fn. 18), 84–85; of course, “Charter 77” (fn. 16); Frantisek Kriegel and others, “Letter to the Federal Parliament of Czechoslovakia,” in Riese (fn. 16), 86–90; Havemann (fn. 16), 32–35, 213–14; and Bahro (fn. 13), 302, 308–9 (albeit only as a minimal program).

40 Kuron (fn. 10), 120; Havel and others (fn. 21), 6; “Charter 77” (fn. 16), 13; Havemann (fn. 16), 214; Bahro (fn. 13), 274, 353; Konrad Szelenyi (fn. 15), 245 (for a “certain sort of pluralism”).

41 Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 226, 227, 230; Bahro (fn. 13), 260, 313, 448, 452; “Charter 77” (fn. 16), 13; Havel and others (fn. 21), 6.

42 “Charter 77” (fn. 16); Havel and others (fn. 21), 5; Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 231–32.

43 Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 245, call for the “democratization of political relations”; Bahro (fn. 13), 344, 365–76, calls for a new party in the form of a “League,” and for its separation from the state apparatus (370).

44 Here there are various indirect codewords: Kuron (fn. 10), 120–21 (“parliamentary democracy”); Lipinski (fn. 18), 33 (“political pluralism”); Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 232 (“contending political forces”); Zdenek Mlynar, “Letter to the Communists and Socialists of Europe,” in Riese (fn. 16), 135–45 (“political democracy” and the “rights and freedoms of the bourgeoisie”); Bahro (fn. 13), 303 (“political democracy of the great bourgeois revolutions”), and 300 (“political representation of … particular interests”). Yet at 344–48, Bahro wavers on the question, and at 350 he specifically rejects the notion of the revival of the Social Democratic Party. In general, he seems to endorse the idea of the acceptability of a multiparty system through the splitting of the ruling SED (see 250 and 380, for example). Havemann (fn. 16), 214, is one of the few to advocate the right to form new parties directly and without circumlocution (“right to form … organizations, and parties”).

45 Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 232–33, 249; Kuron (fn. 34), 172, 751; “Charter 77” (fn. 16), 13; Havel and others (fn. 21), 5–6; Bahro (fn. 13), 274–75, 426, 437, 438.

46 Lipinski (fn. 18), 33; Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 232 (“legitimate expression of different interests”); Havel and others (fn. 21), 5; “Charter 77” (fn. 16); Bahro (fn. 33), 220; Krokovay, Zsolt, “Reflections on Censorship,” excerpt from 0.1%, in Index on Censorship, IX (April 1980), 17–21, 47–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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49 However, Bahro (fn. 13), 98, 202, 307–9, and Bence-Kis (Rakovski [fn. 12], 32–34) express severe reservations about the trends embodied in the actual reforms espoused by the Czech Communist Party in 1968. They fear that, rather than widespread democratic control over industry, a new form of domination (technocracy) would result.

50 Tökes, Rudolf, “Human Rights and Political Change,” in Tökes (fn. 8), 19–22.Google Scholar

51 Havel and others (fn. 21), 6–7; the “Letter of 59” as discussed in Kuron (fn. 10), 118–20; Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 231–32; Bahro (fn. 33), 226, 232.

52 Kuron (fn. 10), 117, 119, 135; Bieckowski in Erard and Zygier (fn. 19), 166; Rakovski (fn. 12), 138; Casals (fn. 14), 89–90; Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 251–52; Havemann (fn. 16), 166, 168–70, 177, 181–82; Bahro (fn. 13), 340–41, 363, 400.

53 “Charter 77” (fn. 16), 13–14; Bahro (fn. 13).

54 Kuron (fn. 34), 172; Havemann (fn. 16), 160. Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 174–75, suggest workers[ councils and Soviets as “the first order of business” of any workers] uprising.

55 Kuron (fn. 10), 117, 124, 130; Michnik (fn. 39), 93–95 (on the Catholic Church as an ally of reformers); Rakovsky (fn. 12), 69; “Charter 77” (fn. 16), 13–14; Bahro (fn. 13), 326, 371, 374.

56 Michnik (fn. 48), 276; “Charter 77” (fn. 16), 14; Bahro (fn. 13), 318–20, 325, 344. Cf. also Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), 234–52.

57 Kuron (fn. 34), 176; Havemann (fn. 16), 182; and Bahro (fn. 13), 333–34, are three major examples.

58 Bahro (fn. 13), 365–76. One could make the case that this optimism is tied to a pessimism about the vulnerability of the masses to “bourgeois” ideas, much in the way that “reformist” Tito continued to press the idea of class struggle despite the optimism of the establishment of “workers' self-management.” See Oleszczuk, Thomas, “Group Challenges and Ideological Deradicalization in Yugoslavia,” Soviet Studies, XXXII (October 1980), 561–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Dubcek (fn. 18), for example.

60 Rakovski (fn. 12), 28, 42, 47, 65–66, 99–104; Casals (fn. 14), 45–49, 52–53, and throughout.

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64 Ibid., 47, 49.

65 Kolakowski (fn. 47), 467, 526 30, sees an “end of ideology” in Eastern Europe, which appears to be rebutted by the current dissidents.

66 Konrad and Szelenyi (fn. 15), XIV.

67 Bahro (fn. 13), 114, 339.

68 See fn. 57, and Pelikan, Jiri, The Socialist Opposition in Eastern Europe (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), 61, 64–65.Google Scholar

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71 Ibid.; Raina (fn. 19), 431–32, n. 119; Connor (fn. 6), 11, n. 39, 40.

72 Kusin (fn. 70), 321; Robinson and Kusin (fn. 70).

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