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Communist rollback
Auguries ComWt
Rollhck
when the count.ries of EasrCentral Europe won their freedom from the USSR in 1989, most Americans expected they would be eager to join the West--ideoiogicaRy, PO_ fitically, e&ono~~~y, and &ate@tally. Today, East Europeans do want to join the West strategically-they do not, after all, wish to fall again under the sway of Russia. But ideologically, po&icallyt and especially economically~ these same people not only appear to shun Western ways, they are actively returning to the peaple and practices that governed them prior to 1989. Consider the Visegrad Three (Poland, Hungary, and Czechostovakia), the countries expected to lead the westward procession. Through Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Movement, Poland triggered East Europe’s break with Moscow and was thus the sentimental favorite to be our fust Westem “recruit.” Yet in 1993, Poland elected a leftist majority to parliament, and Jozef Olesky, a member of the pre-1989 Communist Party’s Central Gommittee, became speaker of the parliament’s lower house. In March 1995, Olesky became prime minister of Poland. And in November 1995, the fomrer communist Ateksander Kwasniewski, head of Poland’s Democratic Left Alliance, won the presidency, briefly sending Walesa
back to work on the docks of Gdansk. When Prime Minister Otesky resigned inJanuary 3996, amid charges he had spied for the former Soviet Union, Kwasniewski named another exWlodzimierz Cicommunist, moszewicz, to replace him as prime minister. Kwasniewski, Ciioszewicz and the new government’s foreign minister-Dariusz Rosa& also an excommunist- “‘are known in Poland as the ‘Boys From Ordynacka,’ a reference to the Warsaw street where the Communist Party’s Associatiun of Polish Students had its headquarters.“’ Hungary, too, had a special place in the hearts of Americans who remembered its courageous 1956 rebellion against Moscow, Yet in the parliamentary electiuns of 1994, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, which had led Hungary in its transition from communism, was nearly obliterated, retaining only 37 seats out of 3%. By contrast, the former ~~u~~ party (now the Hungarian So&list PartyHSP) won an outright majority in parliament, 203 of 386 seats. The HSP then went on to ally itself with the center-left Alliance of Free Democrats, which had 70 seats, giving the ruting coa&ion the two-thirds majority necessary to restructure Hungary’s political system. For Hungary’s prime minister, the coalition chose Gyula Horn, the fast foreign minister under 1Jane Perk, “Poiand’s Fkw Leaderz Are Gazing Intently Westward,” Neru York Timm, Apr. 6, 1%.
Auguries the old communist regime, and a man who-lie most East European leaders of his day-was educated in the Soviet Union. Moreover, Horn “served in a worker’s militia that had assisted Soviet troops in suppressing the 1956 liberal uprising,” making his accession to Hungary’s post-communist premiership the ultimate symbol of communist rollback.2 Lastly, Czechoslovakia held a special meaning for Americans, in part because of Alexander Dubcek’s 1968 Prague Spring and in part because Czechoslovakia’s first postcommunist president, Vaclav Havel, was well known in the West for having been a dissident under the co~unist regime. But Czechoslovakia proper vanished on January 1, 1993, splitting into the Czech Republic under the pro-capitalist Vaclav Klaus, and Slovakia under the pro-socialist Vladimir Meciar. Thereafter, Westemers who spoke of “the Visegrad states” frequently failed to note whether they meant to include Slovakia or exclude it. Most preferred to exclude it. If the Visegrad states seemed likely to be the first group to join, or rejoin, the West, the Baltic stateswhich became independent in September 1991, after the failed Moscow likely to be the seccoup -seemed ond. After all, the United States never technically recognized Moscow’s sovereignty in those lands, and their vocal diasporas in the West had made the Baits seem the epitome of captive peoples yearning to breathe free. Yet in Li~uania, largest and most populous of the Baltic states,
zkacbs on File, Mar. 10, 1994,p. 165
492 I Orbis
voters in the 1992 parliamentary elections ousted the Sajudis movementturned-party that had led the country to freedom. They voted instead for the former communist party (now called the Democratic Labor PartyDLP), giving it an outright majority in parliament, 73 of 141 seats, while Sajudis retained only 30 seats. Presaging the pattern in Poland (to which it has historic ties), Lithuania then went on in 1993 to elect a president from the DLP-Algirdas Brazauskas, who had been first secretary (which is to say, head) of the Lithuanian Communist Party when the country was still a Soviet republic. Because of Lithuania’s agricultural woes, Brazauskas picked as his prime minister Adoifas Slezevicius, former deputy chief of the agricultural section of the Lithuanian Communist Party. The next major test for socialist enlargement will come in Russia itself, where Gennardi Zyuganov is the presidential candidate of an unabashedly Communist Party. If Zyuganov wins, he will command considerable resources with which to “engage” like-minded politicians in East Europe and thus further “enlarge” the socialist sphere. His success in that venture is likely to be inversely proportional to the degree that East Europeans fear and resist it. And that, ironically, means socialist enlargement in the region will likely have greater success if the West S East Europeans with strong security guarantees regardless of their voting habits.
Rollhck
when the count.ries of EasrCentral Europe won their freedom from the USSR in 1989, most Americans expected they would be eager to join the West--ideoiogicaRy, PO_ fitically, e&ono~~~y, and &ate@tally. Today, East Europeans do want to join the West strategically-they do not, after all, wish to fall again under the sway of Russia. But ideologically, po&icallyt and especially economically~ these same people not only appear to shun Western ways, they are actively returning to the peaple and practices that governed them prior to 1989. Consider the Visegrad Three (Poland, Hungary, and Czechostovakia), the countries expected to lead the westward procession. Through Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Movement, Poland triggered East Europe’s break with Moscow and was thus the sentimental favorite to be our fust Westem “recruit.” Yet in 1993, Poland elected a leftist majority to parliament, and Jozef Olesky, a member of the pre-1989 Communist Party’s Central Gommittee, became speaker of the parliament’s lower house. In March 1995, Olesky became prime minister of Poland. And in November 1995, the fomrer communist Ateksander Kwasniewski, head of Poland’s Democratic Left Alliance, won the presidency, briefly sending Walesa
back to work on the docks of Gdansk. When Prime Minister Otesky resigned inJanuary 3996, amid charges he had spied for the former Soviet Union, Kwasniewski named another exWlodzimierz Cicommunist, moszewicz, to replace him as prime minister. Kwasniewski, Ciioszewicz and the new government’s foreign minister-Dariusz Rosa& also an excommunist- “‘are known in Poland as the ‘Boys From Ordynacka,’ a reference to the Warsaw street where the Communist Party’s Associatiun of Polish Students had its headquarters.“’ Hungary, too, had a special place in the hearts of Americans who remembered its courageous 1956 rebellion against Moscow, Yet in the parliamentary electiuns of 1994, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, which had led Hungary in its transition from communism, was nearly obliterated, retaining only 37 seats out of 3%. By contrast, the former ~~u~~ party (now the Hungarian So&list PartyHSP) won an outright majority in parliament, 203 of 386 seats. The HSP then went on to ally itself with the center-left Alliance of Free Democrats, which had 70 seats, giving the ruting coa&ion the two-thirds majority necessary to restructure Hungary’s political system. For Hungary’s prime minister, the coalition chose Gyula Horn, the fast foreign minister under 1Jane Perk, “Poiand’s Fkw Leaderz Are Gazing Intently Westward,” Neru York Timm, Apr. 6, 1%.
Auguries the old communist regime, and a man who-lie most East European leaders of his day-was educated in the Soviet Union. Moreover, Horn “served in a worker’s militia that had assisted Soviet troops in suppressing the 1956 liberal uprising,” making his accession to Hungary’s post-communist premiership the ultimate symbol of communist rollback.2 Lastly, Czechoslovakia held a special meaning for Americans, in part because of Alexander Dubcek’s 1968 Prague Spring and in part because Czechoslovakia’s first postcommunist president, Vaclav Havel, was well known in the West for having been a dissident under the co~unist regime. But Czechoslovakia proper vanished on January 1, 1993, splitting into the Czech Republic under the pro-capitalist Vaclav Klaus, and Slovakia under the pro-socialist Vladimir Meciar. Thereafter, Westemers who spoke of “the Visegrad states” frequently failed to note whether they meant to include Slovakia or exclude it. Most preferred to exclude it. If the Visegrad states seemed likely to be the first group to join, or rejoin, the West, the Baltic stateswhich became independent in September 1991, after the failed Moscow likely to be the seccoup -seemed ond. After all, the United States never technically recognized Moscow’s sovereignty in those lands, and their vocal diasporas in the West had made the Baits seem the epitome of captive peoples yearning to breathe free. Yet in Li~uania, largest and most populous of the Baltic states,
zkacbs on File, Mar. 10, 1994,p. 165
492 I Orbis
voters in the 1992 parliamentary elections ousted the Sajudis movementturned-party that had led the country to freedom. They voted instead for the former communist party (now called the Democratic Labor PartyDLP), giving it an outright majority in parliament, 73 of 141 seats, while Sajudis retained only 30 seats. Presaging the pattern in Poland (to which it has historic ties), Lithuania then went on in 1993 to elect a president from the DLP-Algirdas Brazauskas, who had been first secretary (which is to say, head) of the Lithuanian Communist Party when the country was still a Soviet republic. Because of Lithuania’s agricultural woes, Brazauskas picked as his prime minister Adoifas Slezevicius, former deputy chief of the agricultural section of the Lithuanian Communist Party. The next major test for socialist enlargement will come in Russia itself, where Gennardi Zyuganov is the presidential candidate of an unabashedly Communist Party. If Zyuganov wins, he will command considerable resources with which to “engage” like-minded politicians in East Europe and thus further “enlarge” the socialist sphere. His success in that venture is likely to be inversely proportional to the degree that East Europeans fear and resist it. And that, ironically, means socialist enlargement in the region will likely have greater success if the West S East Europeans with strong security guarantees regardless of their voting habits.