THE COMMUNIST BLOC AFTER THE COLD WAR

      THE COMMUNIST BLOC AFTER THE COLD WAR

      By Van Nguyen

  The Helsinki Agreement

In 1975, an international conference 25 countries including the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to reach agreement on cooperation ‘in security, economics, science, technology, and human rights. The title is the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation, which is regarded as a turning point for the beginning of détente and of the Cold War. Successive dialogues between the United States and the Soviet Union opened up to treaties on missile and arms limitations in spite of specific quarrels.  There were, it was believed, many violations of the provisions of the accord. There was an awareness of contrasts between Western Europe and Eastern Europe in the Eastern Bloc, diverse groups emerged, survived, and even strengthened their positions, in spite of severe repression. Certain officials or economic specialists, and even some party members began to show signs of skeptics about the effects of centralized planning. There was then increasing discussion of the advantages of utilizing market mechanisms.

   Eastern Europe

The first clear sign came in Poland in the early years of the 1980’s.Polish workers protested against economic policy condemning ill-treatment. A series of strikes came in a rights struggle in the Gdank shipyard. An organized federation of trade unions, “Solidarity” with Lech Walesa at its head emerged.  Political demands added weight to the economic interests of the workers. This was the crucial step towards a labor solidarity movement of an independent, self-governing trade union. Poland proved itself an independent and free country. Alongside, clandestine organization and publication, strikes and demonstrations, and continuing ecclesiastical condemnation of the regime sustained responsibilities and braved consequences.

Poland led Eastern Europe to freedom. Events there were quickly been perceived in other Communist countries whose leaders were much alarmed. In varying degree, the Eastern Europe was exposed to increasing flow of information about new events through television, especially marked in the Democratic Republic of Germany. More freedom of government, more access to foreign books and newspapers advanced the process of criticism there as in Poland.  A change in consciousness was under way The Hungarians had moved almost as rapidly in economic liberalization as the Poles, even before overt political change. But their actual contribution to the collapse of Eastern Europe came in August 1989. Germans from the Democratic Republic of Germany were then allowed to enter Hungary freely as tourists, though their purpose was known to be to present themselves to the embassy and consulates of the Federal Republic for asylum.

     Successive incidents unfolded, aggravating the situation. A complete opening of Hungary’s frontiers came in September 1989 when Czechoslovakia followed suit, and a flow became a flood. In three days, 12,000 East Germans crossed from these countries to the West. The Soviet authorities admitted that this was “unusual.” For the Democratic Republic of Germany, it was the beginning of the end. On the eve of the carefully-planned and much-wanted celebration of forty years’ “success” as a socialist country during a visit by Gorbachev. Riot police had to battle with anti-government demonstrators on the streets of East Berlin. The government and party threw out their leader, but this was not enough. November opened with huge demonstrations in many countries against a regime whose corruption was becoming evident. On November 9 came the greatest symbolic act of all, the breaking of the Berlin Wall. The East German Politburo caved in and the demolition of the rest of the Wall followed.

     After four decades of Communist rule, the six countries of Eastern Europe still within the Soviet sphere of influence--those that, collectively, and often been referred to as the ‘Soviet external empire’--underwent what can only be described as revolutionary transformation. By the end of 1989, the Communists were no longer dominant in the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and --arguably--Hungary, while their hold on power in the Germany Democratic Republic and Bulgaria was tenuous. They looked set to --and did--loose powering those countries in 1990. Symbolically, at least, the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. Even in the most authoritarian and seemingly immutable of the entire Soviet -bloc countries of the region, Romania, the quarter-century dictatorship of Nicolae and Elem Ceausescu had collapsed--unfortunately, at considerable human cost. There, as in other European countries, the constitutional guarantee of the ‘leading role’ of the Communist party had by the year’s end been abolished, and the country was no longer officially described as a ‘Socialist Republic.’ Moving beyond the Soviet Bloc, Yugoslavia was clearly in crisis, not only was the ideology of Marxism-Leninism apparently about to be officially abandoned, but the country itself was in great danger of disintegration (Leslie Homes, 1993:301-2).

At the end of 1990, the condition of what had once seemed the almost monolithic East European bloc already defied generalization or brief description. As former Communist countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary) applied to join the European Community or got ready to do so (Bulgaria), some observers speculated about potentially wider degree of European unity than ever before. More cautious judgments were made by those who noted the virulent emergence of new-- or emergence of the old--national and communal division to plague the new East. Above all, over the whole area there generated the storm-clouds of economic failure and the turbulence they might bring. Liberation might have come, but it had come to peoples and societies of very different levels of sophistication and development and with very different historical origins.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

     Mikhail Gorbachev became President of the Supreme Court, Head of State in 1989 and was elected to a five-year term as executive president in March 1990. Drastic political, economic, and defense developments increasingly shattered the Union, In  In June 1Successive989, the USSR, for the first time conducted open general elections for a popular congress amid the movement for democracy in Peking was at its climax and Eastern Europe sought for greater real freedom. In August, 1989 the Solidarity Union of Poland won popular general elections and came to power. The Communist Eastern Bloc was in chaos. Ceausescu was overthrown after a bloody demonstration. Tudor Zhukov was eliminating. Honaker was called to resign from office. Vaclav Havel led the Velvet Revolution, won the general elections and became President.

 Incidents of disintegration ever mounted, Chaos surged. Nationalists challenged in Kazakhstan, Baltic republics, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Lithuanian parliament declared the annexation of 1939 invalid. Lithuania asserted independence. Latvia and Estonia also claimed their independence, though in slightly different terms. Parliaments in the nine of the Soviet republics had either declared they were sovereign or asserted a substantial degree of independence from the central government. Some republic made local languages official; some others even put Soviet ministries and economic agencies to local control. The Russia Republic, in particular, sought to operate its own economy independently from that of the central administration while the Ukrainian Republic sought to set up its own army. In March 1990, elections led President Gorbachev once more back to the path of reform and a search for a new Union treaty which  could preserve some central role for the State.

 The true state of the Soviet Union and its people’s attitudes was revealed to the rest of the world. “Glasnost” (openness) had brought the first surveys of public opinion through polls discrediting of the party and nomenclature. Economic failure was also a factor. Accelerations for domestic, economic and political programs of “perestroika” (restructuring) from 1987 proved to be futile. After seventy years of socialist construction under the aegis of Marxism-+Leninism, the USSR was revealed to be unreal. The three Baltic republics Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania manifested dissatisfaction with their lot and, in the end, left the way to political change. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union agreed to end one-party rule. The Supreme Soviet passed the law allowed freedom of religion. In August 1991, hard-line communist staged a coup to remove Gorbachev from power, but the president was still in power owing to strong opposition from Yeltsin, who then led the way in dissolution of communist rule. In November and December 1991, the republic seceded from the Union. Total disintegration of the Soviet Union was clearly in sight, and the collapse of the Communist Bloc was certain.