The attempt to expel Left Alternative and Obroda from Civic Forum has met with considerable resistance. The OF parliamentary fraction has come out against it, and, according to The Guardian (London) of November 6, "sizeable numbers of Forum MPs in the Federal and Czech parliaments rebelled against the decision, describing it as an 'undemocratic outrage'"
An Inter-parliamentary Civic Association (ICA) has been formed by OF deputies as a counterweight to Klaus' Club of the Democratic Right, involving figures from beyond those threatened with expulsion, among them the social democrat Rudolf Battek and Valtr Komarek. The ICA states its aim as being to keep the Civic Forum true to its original programme, as a broad democratic social movement, resisting "the artificial ideological division of the OF into right and left." $
A spokesman for Left Alternative, Martin Hekrdla, commented: "our thinking is really at odds with what is happening now 1. Interview with Petr Havlik, an advisor to Klaus, in Mlada fronta. October 1990. 3. Newsweek interview, October 29,1990. 4. New York Times, January 25, 1990. 5. Svobodné slovo, November 1, 1990 6. Obcansky denik, November 1, 1990. 7. Rudé právo, November 1, 1990.
K LAUS' putsch has been accompanied by the formation of a "Club of the Democratic Right" including over 30 mcmbers of the OF's fraction in the Federal parliament and coincides with the discussion in parliament on the so-called "small privatization law" , which deals with the change of ownership of small firms, businesses and properties. These are to be sold at public auctions in two rounds, with only Czechoslovak citizens being allowed to take part in the first round. No preferential treatment is given to current employees — a source of considerable discontent amongst said employees in recent months. This goes hand in hand with a bill to organize restitution of properties — excluding agriculture — confiscated after 1955.
This is to be followed by a "large privatization law" , to decide the fate of the big state monopolies. The tenth variant of this latter, adopted as a proposal by the government at the start of November, envisages the issuing of "coupons" to every Czechoslovak citizen which can only be used to buy shares. Foreign ownership is to be limited. If the timetable is adhered to, a final version of this law should take effect in Spring next year. Almost a year after the "gentle revolution" put an end to the neo-Stalinist regime that had ruled Czechoslovakia since April 1969, pro-capitalist hardliners have seized the initiative in the strug gle over the future of the country.
Vaclav Klaus, described as a "mainstream economist who believes in basic textbook economic thinking" is the finance minister in the Federal govern6 ment. For months there have been reports in the press about tensions between him and figures allegedly wishing to pursue a "third way" between full-scale privatization and the imperatives of social protection. It would be hard to find any leading figure giving explicit support to such a "third way". Nonetheless Klaus' target is the outlook of President Havel and his circle who are considered excessively sensitive to the social costs of capitalist restoration in practice, and thus guilty of "populism". • Such populism also consists in refusing to break decisively with those maintaining "vague hopes still linked to socialism in one way or another".
A number of prominent figures associated with the moderate viewpoint, notably Valtr Komarek, an economist who came to prominence during the November events, have seen themselves removed from influential positions in Civic Forum in recent weeks, while Klaus beat a close friend of Havel's, Martin Palous, for the leading position in OF.
Discreet but systematic oposition
Klaus' growing authority rests on a discreet but systematic opposition to the style of the tcam that shot to power after the November revolution. His election to the head of Civic Forum was followed by a series of interviews in the Czechoslovak media — usually with headlines along the lines of "the start of a new epoch" — in which his views on all subjects, from the Slovak crisis to anti-communism to economic policy were solicited, as if the country had a new ruler. In Klaus' view the thinking of the Havel team - many of them long-time
International Viewpoint #195 • November 26, 1990
CZECHOSLOVAKIA in Civic Forum, but not with its original condition. I would like to remind people of the OF's election slogan: 'the parties are for their members, we are for everyone''. . ' And Obroda's Milos Hajek insisted: "insofar as OF turns into a right-wing party, I, as one of the founders of Civic Forum, deny that they will then have the right to the Civic Forum label."?
The right wing offensive takes place against a background of sliding public confidence in the governments elected in June, in the Civic Forum movement and in politics in general. An opinion poll published in September found that 29% of people in Bohemia, 32% in Moravia and 43% in Slovakia believed that the changes since last November were more about replacing personnel in the top posts than substantial reform. The poll also revealed that while in January 40% of people had been ready to get involved in public life, this had fallen to 2-4%. Communist party supporters, and supporters of the Slovak nationalists and Moravian regionalist movements, however, retained considerably more interest in taking on political responsibility. Nonetheless the poll also discovered that there "were big hopes in the forthcoming local elections in November. The hope was that these would start a real change in the system". A subsequent poll found that only 14% of respondents in the Czech Lands (Bohemia and Moravia) had great confidence in the Civic Forum, while some 20% had no confidence at all.?
The government team has furthermore antagonized a lot of people by appearing as a club of ex-dissidents, sharing out the top positions amongst themselves. Havel himself is surrounded by advisors — usually personal friends — who form a sort of "second government" outside parliamentary control.
Rule of the ex-dissident commandantes
At this level Klaus' moves can appear
1, VRAfTE CO JSTE NAHRADLI! - =as a step towards clearcut democratic politics against the rule of the exdissident commandantes. The vagueness of the Civic Forum's structures - essential to Klaus' victory — is also a characteristic of the elitist libertarianism of the new governing stratum. The nonexistence of a defined party structure is a condition for Havel's ability to appear as above day-to-day politics, while in fact directing much of what happens. It seems that in some areas local Civic Forums function as exclusive clubs rather than as a organization that those who want to can join, and according to Petr Uhl, there are only a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand Civic Forum activists at a regional and district level. 1°
The OF's media spokesperson, Vladimir Zelezny, furthermore, admits that the student movement which provided much of the impetus behind the November events no longer exists, and there is no OF group at Prague's Charles University. "
Evidently any party or figure who appears to represent the possibility of open discussion and decisive movement — whether towards the "free market" as with Klaus or towards regional or national independence or autonomy, as with the Slovak and Moravian movements -will have the benefit of a widespread feeling that hard decisions are urgently needed.
At the same time, Klaus and the pro-capitalist right feel that they must get down to work to create adequate instruments for the bloody business of turning Czechoslovakia into a normal peripheral capitalist country, with a position in the European pecking order similar to Greece or Portugal. Czechoslovakia was - and remains — one of the most completely nationalized economies in the world, including a lot of out-of-date "smokestack" industry. Any attempt to rationalize this monster without strong powers of control and if necessary veto by those adversely affected, will give a
INVESTUJTE CO JSTE HAKRADLI frightening push to social disintegration.
The privatization assault takes place, furthermore, against a deteriorating economic background, due both to internal and external factors. The East German market has now been closed off, while the supply of oil from the Soviet Union has been cut at a moment when the Gulf crisis has shut off possibilities of finding cheap alternatives. Czechoslovakia will also have been hit by the anti-Iraqi sanctions, since Iraq has big debts with Czechoslovakia.
The rocky road to privatization
Nonetheless, despite the apparent pro-market consensus, the introduction of privatization and its economic prerequisite, free prices, have in fact hardly got underway. Where changes have been made, they have provoked reactions. Proposals for the privatization of shops and restaurants via public auction were met with strikes by workers in these sectors who "pointed out that they would have to bid against black marketeers and former apparatchiks, who were the only Czechoslovaks with sufficient capital to buy small businesses." 12
Lidové noviny on October 30, reports on the postponement of a strike by Prague transport workers, who wanted to ensure that "privatization" took place in a form favourable to their interests. On November 3, the same paper reports on a miners' strike against plans to close a pit. By November 1, some 900 miners were still occupying the mine. Strikes against price rises and petrol rationing have been threatened in the oil industry. The trade unions have come out in favour of forms of private ownership favouring employees rather than open auctions.
Communist party poses problem for the left Vaclav Klaus' response to criticism of his programme is that of his political co-thinker, Margaret Thatcher.
"There is no alternative (TINA)" as she has been telling the British and anyone else who has cared to listen for over a decade. And it is indeed true that the weakness and disarray of the left is a crucial source of strength for the pro-capitalist right. The Communist Party leader, Vasil Mohorita, recently claimed that the country was entering a period of intense confrontations and proposed that the CP reestablish its factory cells.
8. Lidové noviny, October 10, 1990.
9. Lidové noviny, October 12, 1990.
10. Interview with Steve Painter, in the Australian socialist weekly, Direct Action, November 6,
"Give back what you have stolen" — "Invest what you have stolen" (from Lidové noviny)
1990, 1990.
11. Interview with Steve Painter, October 10,
1990.
7
12. According to Steve Painter, Direct Action,
October 23, 1990.
November 26, 1990 •
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Slovak independence movement gathers force "THE whole Bratislava region is subject to special security arrangements, which, in case of need, may be extended throughout the Western Slovak region" stated Slovak prime minister Vladimir Meciar on October 30. Such remarks show the gravity with which the Czechoslo.
vak authorities view the recent wave of militant nationalism in the Eastern part of the Czechoslovak federation. The most spectacular expression of this mood has been the big demonstrations against the new Slovak language law, which, claimed Slovak nationalists, gave too many rights to the country's Hungarian minority.
Slovakia has undergone a profoundly different historic development from the Czech Lands, and only in 1918 was it united with the latter in a common state — a creation largely of the Czech bourgeoisie. Separatism has always been a powerful force in Slovakia, often linked up with strong pro-Catholicism, with the Czechs being viewed as "atheistic" . In the war an independent clerico-fascist Slovak state was formed under German auspices, and, until 1945, resistance to this regime also took place on a Slovak rather than Czechoslovak basis, culminating in the Slovak national uprising of 1944. In recent months attempts have been made to commemorate the leader of the clerico-fascist state, Joset Tiso.
The collapse of the neo-Stalinist regime last November brought down with it the centralizing force of the Communist Party, allowing the federalized state structures to come to the fore. Virtually all parties in Slovakia have since striven to extend the powers of the Slovak government and limit the prerogatives of the Federal government in
Prague.
After inter-governmental discussions in the Slovak town of Trencianske Teplice in August, it was decided that, as of January 1,1991, the federal government would become a coordinating agency for the Slovak and Czech states, retaining control of defense, policing, foreign policy and structural economic matters such as currency. Soon after, the Slovak National Party and other nationalist groups issued a Joint statement demanding a fully independent Slovak state. Since then it appears that the SNP, which won 12% of the vote in the federal elections in June, has been gaining public support.
The Slovak national struggle does not only directly involve relations with the Czechs. For many centuries before 1918, Slovakia formed part of the Hungarian kingdom and some 600,000 Hungarians continue to live in Slovakia. Powerful irredentist moods have been surfacing in Hungary, posing an evident menace to Slovakia. A Slovak commentator, Boris Lazar, in making out a case in favour of the Slovak government ensuring language rights for Slovakia's Hungarians, uses the argument that to deny this would give the Hungarian irredentists 'a trump card' which would be used in the first place against Hungarian democrats, and secondly in the European forum in Strasbourg. when the question of minorities is discussed"(Lidové noviny November 7, 1990).
Opposition to the nationalists in Slovakia and in the Czech Lands mainly takes its stand on the fact that it will cut off Slovakia from the West and from the possibility of foreign investment. Thus, as in other
East European countries, a polarization is emerging between elitist pro-Western liberals and right-wing populist nationalists. Here also, a "third way" seeking to fully realize national aspirations through international cooperation, offers the only long-term solution. The existing
Czechoslovak "post-Stalinist" state - and above all its army and police - cannot be the vehicle of this solution. *
Apart from the CP there are a number of currents who refer in one way or another to left-wing ideas and the traditions of the workers' movement, among them the Social Democrats (who are split into two wings, one inside the Civic Forum, the other independent of it), the Democratic Forum current which split from the CP at the start of this year, Obroda, which mainly contains individuals prominent as "reform Communists" in the Prague Spring of 1968, the Left Alternative and the Anarchists. Evidently, developing a policy towards the Communist Party is one of the strategic problems for a viable left in Czechoslovakia, as well as the question of international contacts. Another issue is how to assess present developments in Civic Forum and how to relate the need for an organized left to the desire to create a broad social movement.
Left searches for an "integrating element"
The various left groups and currents have been seeking ways of uniting their efforts. The Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, which stayed outside Civic Forum, looking towards the moment when a "modern party structure" would come into existence — via the disintegration of OF — is now putting itself forward as the "integrating element" of the democratic left. Obroda appears to be responding to these overtures.
Elsewhere, Left Alternative and the Czechoslovak Democratic forum are planning to collaborate on the production of a joint newspaper. According to Jiri Kouda in the Left Alternative monthly, Polarita, "the hysterical shouting [from the right] about the formation of a left are unfortunately untrue. The democratic left finds itself in a phase of trying to find its own identity and profile. Sporadic attempts at dialogue, and sometimes collaboration, take place in the shadow of fears cast by the dark shape of the Communist Party. "4
Nonetheless, Left Alternative and other such groups are attempting to speak to the needs and feelings of the Czechoslovak workers, supporting for example a Club for Self-managed Popular Enterprises which aims to "put forward a concept for the de-statization and privatization of the national property which is a real alternative to the existing government proposals."IS Furthermore they have the possibility of drawing on all the formless hopes for radical social change aroused last year, and which are currently being disappointed by an indecisive government whose libertarian utopianism lacks a socialist backbone. As the pollsters cited above noted: "A crisis of Civic Forum is.a crisis of the whole reform process. 16*
13. Lidové noviny, November 7, 1990.
14. Polarita, November 5, 1990.
15. Polarita, November 5, 1990.
16. See Footnote 9.
Such was the outrage that this proposal created — including a 20,000 strong demonstration in Prague — that Mohorita backed down and has now been replaced as party leader. The CP has already lost most of its pre-November
8 membership and suffered a number of
International Viewpoint #195 • November 26, splits by organized currents. It is nonetheless possible that the party will attempt with some success some social demagogy in the coming period, with the intention of being re-admitted in one form or another to the corridors of power. 1990
POLAND lowaras a new identity for Solidarnosc Introduction SOLIDARNOSC is going through a profound crisis. The congress which has just taken place in Lower Silesia, the second largest stronghold of the movement in terms of size, bears witness to the fact. The congress elected a replacement for Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, the historic leader of Solidarnosc in the region, who was obliged to resign after having taken over as head of the Civic Movement-Democratic Action (ROAD), the party founded in July 1990 by the partisans of Tadeusz Mazowiecki (see IV 191)Three tendencies put forward candidates to replace Frasyniuk. The first was that of Thomas Wojcik, close to the line of Lech Walesa, leader of the minority of the regional leadership and unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the trade union at its February congress (when he obtained 20% of the votes, running against Frasyniuk). The second was that of Bogdan Karauda, outgoing vice-president, who portrayed himself as a supporter of Frasyniuk. Finally, there was a rank and file tendency, the Committee of Inter-Enterprise Coordination (MKK), bringing together the trade union commissions of 17 of the most important enterprises in Wroclaw, which presented Zbigniew Sliwinski, leader of Solidarnosc in the "Hydral" steel factory. He was supported by Joset Pinior, another historic leader of Solidarity in the region. On the first ballot, Wojcik received 44% of the votes, Karauda 38% and Sliwinski 18%. On the second, Wojcik won with 57% of the votes against Karauda. Several militants of the MKK were also elected to the posts left vacant in the regional leadership by friends of Frasyniu who had resigned. These results indicate the loss of influence of the pro-government current in a region which was until now a fiefdom of ROAD, and the increasing power of the partisans of Lech Walesa. However the appearance inside the MKK of a current for class independence constitutes something new in Solidarnosc. It is too soon to judge whether this is a regional specificity, or the first sign of an overall trade union recomposition. The propositions formulated by the MKK nonetheless merit publicity, for they represent a potential alternative to the current orientation of Solidarnosc. For this reason we are reproducing large extracts from Zbigniew Sliwinski's presentation of his candidacy — Cyril Smuga. DOCUMENT
A Mazowicki, eveN support not TORN between Walesa and the programme of Balcerowicz and the aspirations of the workers, we are undergoing a profound identity crisis. On the one hand, Solidarnosc is associated with the economic policy of the govemment and its effects for the majority of workers. On the other, these same workers expect Solidarnosc to defend their interests. This situation produces a form of schizophrenia inside the trade union and disarray among its militants, torn between their loyalty to our government and that towards the people in the workplaces.