Who benefits from anti-Communism? FOUR MONTHS after the "gentle revolution" of November 1989 Czechoslovakia's triumphant opposition finds itself in an impasse. All currents united to remove the detested government of Gustav Husak and Milos Jakes, but removing the bureaucratic regime as a whole is a different matter.
Rumours abound of police involvement in trying to divide up the opposition, and there is great disquiet that the forces of the ancien regime are recycling themselves under new labels. At the same time the new government itself is being accused of reluctance to take steps to clean out the police and army.
In this anxious atmosphere, a petition to outlaw the communist party has been getting some support, diverting popular anger from the real question of replacing the bureaucratic power structure. Below we publish a comment by Czech revolutionary Marxist Petr Uhl on this troubled situation. This text first appeared in the independent Czech newspaper Lidové noviny in its issue of March 24, 1990. It has been shortened slightly for space reasons. DOCUMENT unleashed the struggle against Communism and Communists. This is a special cultural phenomenon: the KSC promoted - and despite its weakness now promotes even more vigorously — a petty bourgeois outlook. All the force of our revolution was thrown against this petty bourgeois mentality. At the same time, however, we took into this as into every other revolution an enraged petty bourgeois, full of hatred, longing for revenge and a final solution. A piece of this petty bourgeois lives in everyone, though some of us try to suppress it.
"And how did they behave?" "They were not so kind to us". These expressions send a shiver down the spine above all of those to whom they were really not too kind, or people in positions where they feel some sort of responsibility concerning other people, and who therefore refuse to fire the latter without some concrete evidence that they really did someone some harm. Are we going to repeat the experience of the purges of 1969-70? (I don't want to be misunderstood -there is no reason why StB officers should pick up salaries for not going to work and i do not think that the heads of the regional police departments should keep their jobs. Nor do I believe that local OFs should be run by party functionaries or other mafiosi.)
Elections are coming up. Either we will
D ISCONTENT with Civic For-
Sum (OF) has grown in recent weeks. In the districts and localities, in enterprises and institutions the old bureaucratic mafias are still in control, and in local OFs "shirtchanging" is the rule. Pcople feel that the purge of the armed services is proceeding at a scandalously slow pace. The secret police (StB) has not yet been wholly abolished. The preference of the OF for corridor politics is being more and more noisily criticized, as well as its lack of democracy.
If, however, we agree that the possibility of an armed putsch has been ruled out, ty of an armed putsch has been ruled out we must also agree that careful preparation, forethought and broad-mindedness for the solution of these questions are better for our democracy than speed or longing for revenge, retribution and personal satisfaction.
The collapse of the bureaucratic structures in the first weeks was surprisingly swift. The Charter 77 ethic - its accent on human rights, the offer of a dialogue with the outgoing regime, tolerance and an explicit belief that freedom of speech and assembly applied to everyone ready to respect democratic rules — all this led to round tables at every level, in a peaceful transfer of legislative and executive power. As a result the Communists supported Václav Havel who, as president, is 10 the guarantee of justice for them as well, a guarantee of existential security for them International Viewpoint #182 • April 9, 1990 and their families. For this reason a majority of the Communist party's members also felt themselves liberated by the revolution. It opened up for them the perspective of a new life. Many left the party and those who - perhaps from a sense of propriety remained have freed gradually
(1 themselves from its discipline.
ХорА,
There was the hope that the
Elections are coming up. either we will proclaim the KSC to be a criminal organization and try to condemn or otherwise persecute all its members or we will continue the dialogue with all parts of society, including the Communists and refuse to discriminate against anyone. We majority of them would not vote for the Czechoslovak
Communist Party
(KSC) in the elections.
For some these original civic attitudes were evidently only salami tactics. Now that the state structures and the KSC itself have been broken up and reshaped to such an extent that the old order can clearly not be restored, our "rev-
Hey guys, we've killed the dragon (from olutionaries" have the Ukrainian satirical weekly "Starchel")
оторвахмЕ сЕ
ЛАМЯТА!
should legally pursue and curtail at work only those against whom it can be concretely proved that they committed a crime — which does not mean merely for supporting the old regime. (The exdissidents could bring charges on the grounds of supporting the old regime against all those who voted in elections, were in the official trade union movement or who did not sign the [dissident] document "Some Sentences".)
At the same time many people are saying that it is not necessary to outlaw the KSC, merely to expose the Communists - both present and former. Even those who left the KSC 20 years ago but were members in the 50s. This is not a fantasy. These are the real accents of the present wave of global primitive anti-communism.....
This demagogy, calling people to a "just" war on Communism uses deceitful terminology. Slogans such as "democracy from below", "direct democracy", , "permanent revolution" are being bandied about. As someone who has used this terminology for a long time, I must categorically state that fanaticism and vengefulness have nothing to do with its real content. This does not of course mean that our revolution should not constantly refer back to these ideas or struggle to make our democracy a democracy for everybody, complementing its parliamentary basis with self-managing and direct democracy. Social conflicts, the struggle over the ownership of the means of production and the two-year period for preparing a constitution and the development of political life will give us plenty of opportunity.
Swelling wave of anti-Communism
Who benefits from the swelling wave of indiscriminate anti-Communism? The answer can be found in the opinion polls. The OF is losing popularity while all those threatened are being driven together. Without this campaign the KSC would probably have lost even more people and would have had trouble getting over the 5% barrier. If the campaign gets stronger, we can expect that the KSC will get 2030% of the votes. The autumn local elections will be even worse. The people who will vote for it will not be voting for some kind of overall programme, but for institutions that will defend their basic rights —to work according to their qualifications, of their children to education and so on. No wonder. We can wonder, however, who is responsible for the campaign. And we can wonder that people do not see how the secretariat of the KSC's central committee are rubbing their hands with glee. In individual cases we can even ask whether the agreement of interests between the anti-Communist and Communist apparatchiks is accidental or whether someone is behind it. *
CZECHOSLOVAKIA / EASTERN EUROPE The working class and the democratic revolution THE FOLLOWING discussion on the current state of working class consciousness in the GDR, Poland, Hungary and the USSR was organized by In precor, the French language sister publication of International Viewpoint. The participants in the discussion were Annett Seese, an East German student and a member of the United Left in Leipzig; Milka Tyszkiewicz, from Poland, a member of the Socialist Political Centre in Wroclaw;
Laszlo Andor, a Hungarian economist and a member of the Left Alternative; and Poul Larsson, a member of the SAP, the
Danish section of the Fourth International, who has recently returned from a visit to Moscow and Siberia. Questions are by
Inprecor.