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.
