The situation of the independent peace movements The appeals made to the western peace movement by independent peace groups in the East in the last three years, have not fallen on deaf ears. The third convention of the campaign for European Nuclear Disarmament (END) which took place in Perugia in July 1984, was evidence of the interest that exists among the western peace movements for establishing links with the East European movements and supporting their struggles. (1)
The deployment of SS-21 and SS-22 missiles in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Czechoslovakia, in the autum of 1983 contributed a great deal towards opening the eyes of those who still had illusions in the military policy of the Soviet government. They were forced to recognise that the only response that the Soviet bureaucracy was capable of making to the deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles, was to reaffirm their militaristic path in a step-by-step response to the escalation by the US. In this way the bureaucracy were able to use the opportunity to step up their policy of repression and increase the threat that the presence of Soviet armies poses to the populations of the East.
British END, the Dutch Ecumenical Council for Peace (IKV) and the French Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CODENE).
The forum organised in West Berlin at the beginning of February under the title of Europe and peace - forty years after Yalta' went a step further in the right direction. The idea for this came out of the Perugia meeting following the publication of two texts on the division of Europe and the perspectives for peace which were jointly signed by activists and independent peace groups in the East and West. (3) In the opinion of many of the participants, this meeting illustrated the difficulties of defining a precise framework for joint activity.
The first difficulties arose out of the differences which exist within the peace movement in the West about what attitude to adopt to the official committees in the East. There are those who persist in seeing them as 'valid representatives' — as the majority of the leadership of END do - and display great reluctance therefore in taking any initiative which might alienate the authorities in the East. Whilst conceeding the need to build links with independent groups in the East, they advocate caution and seem to prefer that such contact remains on the level that such contact remains on the level of exchange of documents.
On the other hand, there are those who would like to see the establishment of a real network of independent groups, East and West, adopting a common political programme which would lead to joint activity.
This debate also has an echo among several groups in the East, notably the USSR. The Moscow Group, which sees its activity in a strictly legal framework and bases itself on the consitution which states that every Soviet citizen must take action for peace, has always shown reluctance to attack government policy. A spokesperson of the group, Yuri Medvekov even goes so far as to say that;
"This is not meant to downplay the significance of our leaders ... I believe that we ought to give these people the benefit of the doubt or accept their work for a noble cause." (4) On the other hand, the Leningrad group, which is not so naive, stated in an appeal to activists throughout Europe:
'And we must remember that Europe extends to the Ural mountains and a considerable part of it is occupied by 1. For a balance sheet of this meeting see International Vewpoint No 61, 15 October 1984. 2. On the second END conference see IV No 31, 30 May 1983.
References made here are to the French editions of these texts which were published by CODENE and the Association Initiatives pour le Dialogue Est-Ouest, Paris 1985. 4. Extract from a tape recording made of a speech given at the West Berlin Forum on Yalta which took place in February 1985. Several of the positions cited in this article only exist in the form of copies of texts or recordings distributed to the participants. The footnotes which follow will therefore deal only with those texts which have been published
International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
Jacqueline ALLIO
This growing awareness was clearly demonstrated in the hostility to which the very 'official' Soviet Committee for Peace was subjected throughout the Perugia convention. Any attempts by this committee to win conference round were a dismal failure, particularly since the authorities in the 'socialist' countries had refused to allow independent peace movement supporters visas to come to the convention. Enquiries about the cases of independent activists imprisoned for several years because of their activity for peace were met with the reply that, "They are hooligans'. This only serves to illustate the urgency of the need to take up an active campaign of defence of the victims of repression (see box). It also poses the question of the type of relations that the western peace movement maintains with the official committees in the East.
In this respect it is important to take into account the opinion of the Eastern European peace activists themselves and first and foremost the members of the Moscow Group for the Establishment of is Trust between the USSR and the United States (an independent peace organisation which has equivalent groups in Leningrad and other towns in the USSR). This group still believes that a break by the western peace movements with the official committees will only serve to reinforce their own isolation and facilitate repression against them by the authorities. The example of the Perugia meeting tends to back this up. The very fact that the bureacracy was in attendance lent much more significance to the protests which were raised 14 against the policy of the Kremlin and its supporters. At the same time, it is important to note the development in the views of other independent groups on the subject.
In 1983, East German activists addressing the second END convention insisted on the need to maintain links with the official committees. (2) Two years later, in a contribution to the Yalta forum which was held in West Berlin in February 1985, they wrote :
"The policy of detente in the 1970s allowed West Europeans to journey more easily to the East and it gave us the promise of the right according to which "any citizen is entitled to leave a country, including their own" - This assurance has allowed some citizens, since, to leave the GDR forever, but not to go on foreign visits, like this West Berlin meeting. That is what we have to remind the official delegations of, especially remind those from Peace Committees at international forums. At the next Amsterdam convention for a nuclear-free Europe there should be a resolution to allow the representatives of the peace committees observer status only, if visas are once again refused to members of the independent peace movement.'
The authors of this text reckon that it is even more important, 'to establish contact between the equal rights and the peace movements in East and West Europe.' They claim to have no illusions about the possibility of changes in the short term in their situation. This appeal has strengthened the links between East and West as can be seen in all the contributions of groups and individuals in Eastern Europe since the contacts began to be made and in the initiatives of the
a state in which the numerous statements made by its leaders on defending peace and on the need for disarmament are in sharp contrast to their deeds, which are aimed at speeding the buildup of military and nuclear power.' (5)
Furthermore we have to take account of the instabilisty of the independent groups in the East who are constantly threatened with repression. The only movement as such that we can talk about
- the one which existed in the GDR from 1982-1983 - suffered terrible blows as a result of harassment by the political police, which was intent on destroying combative groups like the one in Jena. The most active militants were thrown into jail, several were driven to emigrate, or were simply expelled from the country as was the case for Roland
Jahn. (6)
In the USSR, several peace campaigners were incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals and even several founder members of the Moscow Group were forced to emigrate. Even in Hungary, where the Dialog group prided itself, where the Dialog groun nrided itself at the beginning, on its good relations with the authorities, independent activists who refused to comply with the diktats of the official committee found themselves gagged. (7)
Link the fight for peace and the fight for democratic rights
However, the peace groups are far from disappearing either in the GDR, Hungary or the USSR. The very fact that the Synod of Protestant Churches in the GDR declared itself, in September 1984, explicitly against the deployment of missiles in the East as well as in the West shows that the independent peace movement still carries some weight on the political arena. This was confirmed shortly following this decision by the appearance of the common declaration of peace activists and oppositionists in the GDR and Czechoslovakia against the deployment of Soviet missiles and for peace in Europe. (8) As for the Moscow Group, which some people thought had disappeared following mass arrests in the spring of 1984 whilst merbers were collecting signatures for a petition for peace, it took new initiatives last summer on the occasion of the anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki by the USA. And Yuri Medvekov announced last December that,
*We conservatively appraise our number of Moscow supporters at around 1,000 -this is approximately the number of people that we actually have direct contacts with and with whom we can maintain some relationships, owing to the inherent difficulties of working without the post or telephones?
In Hungary, those militants who have not given in to the pressures of the bureaucracy have taken up the fight again and are debating new initiatives.
It must be noted that in Poland, where no peace movement to speak of International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
SOLIDARITE avecle KOR erkus les pacifistes indépendants arig
The third European convention, Perugia, 1984 (DR)
existed before, coming to light about positions being developments are taken by the Committee for Social
Resistance (KOS) or left groups organised around the journal Wola in
Warsaw. Also regular links with peace groups in the West have been established and the Fighting Solidarity Organisation along with the KOS have approved the setting up of peace grouns called pante for Peace and Solidarity which are setting up of peace groups called Ranks pacifist in inspiration.
The main difficulty in reaching joint positions and joint action between peace activists East and West hinges on the different appreciation that each side has on the question of war, because the immediate issues they both have to face are not identical. For example, from the beginning groups in the GDR, Charter 77 in Czecholsovakia and the Moscow Group made it plain that, for them, the decisive issue was to make the links between the fight for peace and the fight for democratic rights.
For many western peace activists, involved in mass mobilisations around Pershing and cruise and the demand for unilateral disarmament by their respective governments, such insistence on the question of human rights often strikes them as a diversion. This shows a failure to understand that for independent activists in the East it is a matter which determines whether they can do anything at all. As the Leningrad group recorded;
... when thousands of you were freely jumping over national boundaries with your peace marches, people in Moscow who simply spoke out in favour of establishing trust between nations as a pledge for peace (The Group for Trust) could not even leave their own homes to join the peace march by Scandanavian peace advocates (summer 1982) through the territory of the USSR. They are being kept under illegal house arrest, their telephones are disconnected, they are threatened with prosecution; in a word, we suppressive machinery of a totalitarian the suppressive machinery of a totalitarian state is directed against them. All this cannot be passed over in silence, when peace in Europe is under discussion.' (9)
Today, this concern is largely taken up by peace activists in the West, or at least by those who understand the importance of collaboration with independent groups in the East. By the same token, the latter groups have changed their attitude towards the peace movements in the West which they had often previously suspected of being transmission belts for the
Kremlin. 'How can such a movement itself be independent when there are so many of its participants who are not?' Janusz Onyszkiewicz, ex-spokesperson of. Solidarnose, demanded rather crudely, in a letter addressed to the IKV leader Mient Jan Faber on the eve of the Perugia conference. Here he was alluding to the presence of official peace committees from Eastern Europe at the conference. These sort of doubts are generally based on the belief that the peace movements in the West are politically dependent on the Kremlin.
"Your protests against the arms race are being used in the official propaganda of countries of the Eastern bloc.' (10) This accusation is made in a Polish KOS text and though such a statement may shock at first it is important to understand what lies behind it.
The official press in Eastern Europe has always done its utmost to present the western peace movements as 'allies' by referring to this 'new phenomenon' which 'constitutes a serious challenge to capitalism's monopoly interests.' The 5. Return Address: Moscow No 1, September 1, 1984 — an international news bulletin on the activities of independent peace activists 6. in the USSR, published in New York. See IV's sister publication, the French language Inprecor, No 159, 24 October 1983 for an interview with Roland Jahn. 7. See IV No 67, 14 January 1985. 8. Ibid 9. Return Address: Moscow, op, cit. 10. See KOS journal No 32, 9 May 1983
15
Soviet review Kommunist even went as far as to express its approval of;
'the participation of hundreds and thousands of young men and women in antiwar demonstrations, often involving direct clashes with police and army detachments, provides an invaluable practical school of political education for today's younger generation.' (11) Such statements can only engender mistrust within the independent movements in Eastern Europe. All the more so because there do exist currents within the peace movement in the West who present the USSR as an ally and who close their eyes to its militaristic policies, supposedly for tactical reasons and in order to concentrate the fight against the main enemy, NATO. It is around the slogan for unilateral nuclear disarmament that the most bitter debates between independent militants of East and West have crystallised. This partly arises from problems of language: For the citizens of those countries under Soviet occupation, the slogan of one-sided disarmament creates the impression that, in the interests of European security — real or imagined -the western peace movement would be prepared to leave the eastern part of this continent to its fate, Janos Kis, the Hungarian dissident stated in a contribution addressed to the Perugia convention. It is incumbent on peace activists in the West to assert and reassert that the aim of unilateral disarmament has nothing to do with supporting the military policies of the Kremlin. On the contrary, it is based on the conviction that if, in one country in Western Europe the movement could force the government to refuse to deploy American missiles, this this would represent a tremendous victory for the entire European working class, East and West. END explained it in this way in a letter to the Polish KOS; Unlike the leaders on both sides who do nothing but oppose the weapons of Tight security at Red Square, Moscow (DR) 16 their adversaries, we believe that the only way for us to actually start disarming the blocs is to take first steps on our own territory." (12) By the same token, the citizens of the GDR have mobilised against the militarisation of civil life imposed by the East German government and against the deployment of the new SS-21 and SS-22 missiles which strengthen the Soviet presence and the dependence of the country on the Kremlin. This does not mean to say that they are unaware of the threat which the Pershing missiles deployed in West Germany represent to them. But how can anyone deny that each movement must mobilise where it is likely to achieve results? Debates on the role of imperialism
However the differences over the slogan for unilateral nuclear disarna ment do not only reflect a misunder standing of the ultimate goal. They also reflect a profound misunderstanding of the respective roles of US imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy in the arms race. In rejecting, quite justifiably, their government's subservience to the military policies of the Kremlin and especially the presence of Soviet troops on their soil, many Eastern European oppositionists quite simply deny certain facts in attributing responsibility for the arms race to the Soviet bureaucracy.
If the West shows itself to be weak then a third world war is inevitable' stated members of the Polish 'Ranks for Peace and Solidarity' in an address to peace activists in the West in July 1984 (13) KOS, for its part, puts forward the following:
"The demand for unilateral disarmament in the West will lead to a heightening and not a lessening of the danger of war.' (14) Do such people need to be reminded that the only time nuclear weapons have been used was in 1945,
KOS by American imperialism at Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9? Or that it is US imperialism that has threatened to use nuclear weapons on several occasions since, at times of heightened international tensions. How can we forget that since the Second World War it has always been the US, who has taken the initiative to step up the arms race? Must we also remind people like members of Polish KOS that US imperialism did not wait for * Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 or Afghanistan in 1979 to send its troops to crush popular rebellion and national liberation wars when it concerned their economic and political interests, as it did in Santo Domingo in 1965 and in Vietnam. Finally, today it is still US imperialism which is threatening to use its vast armed forces to intervene in Central America against people who are defending, arms in hand, their very right to existence.
It is all the more shocking to discover that this profoundly wrong notion is also being fed by someone like Jacek Kuron, from whom one would never have suspected such ignorance in matters of international politics. In a letter addressed to participants in the West Berlin forum in February of this year he stated that:
'I would like to say above all that it would be a fundamental error to judge the two military and political blocs from the same criteria ... Western Europe and the US are ruled by a social democratic system within which there are certain choices and these choices can be good or bad ... However, if we treat these bad choices made in the context of democracy in the same way as we look at the evil committed by a system governed by the socialist countries, that is by totalitarian states, then we end up confusing what is a bad choice made by a group of people with what is the consequence of a whole system ... Totalitarianism, in the sense that people have no choice, is in itself, evil, while choices made in a democratic system, even the worst sort of choices are still ones which can be changed or corrected; people are what they are, the system is what it is, but it can be changed and corrected' 11. Kommunist No 12, August 1984. 12. Peace and Democracy News, Nol, spring 1984, New York. 13. B iuletyn D olnoslasky, No 55, June-July 1 1984. 14. KOS No 41, 23 October, 1984.
International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
Is Jacek Kuron trying to make us believe that the American people were in favour of the Vietnam war or that this war, and the threatened US invasion of Nicaragua, are the products of the natural imperfections of democracy and not the product of the economic foundations of the capitalist and imperialist system?
How can he explain the fact that the Belgian government has just decided to deploy American nuclear missiles when 78 per cent of people asked in opinion polls in this country said they were against such a decision?
Because they live in a totalitarian society many dissidents in Eastern Europe fall into the trap of making superficial analyses of the two politicomilitary blocs which are confronting one another and look only at the form of a particular regime and not at the socioeconomic foundations it is based on. These dissidents tend to project onto the whole world the situation in their own country and their own region, which is dominated by the Soviet bureaucracy, in the case of Eastern Europe, and suggest that the destiny of the whole world is threatened by the desire of the USSR to dominate everywhere. In the face of this, of course, western imperialism is seen as, at best, a secondary danger to humanity.
In this discussion with independent peace activists in Eastern Europe it is important that the voices of those in Eastern Europe who are fighting against this erroneous and all too prevalent view of the role of the US and imperialism in general, is heard. In his address to the Berlin forum, Jiri Hajek, the spokesperson of Charter 77 asserted that:
'The policies Reagan is pursuing in his efforts to restore America's hegemony his efforts to restore America's hegemony are designed to boost the crucial arms factor. This means requiring more active involvement and greater efforts on the part of America's allies. What it means as regards America's relations with its opponents, is an effort to convince them of their inferiority and oblige them to utilise still greater resources for military purposes and thereby damage their economic development." Mihailo Markovic, a Yugoslav philosopher and one of the main thinkers in the Praxis group also declared that;
'Independent Eastern European intellectuals who see in freedom and respect for civil rights a precondition of peace are indeed right as long as they speak about their own part of the world. They would only not be right if they assumed that somehow it would be the responsibility of the West to achieve for them their freedom and civil rights. There are vast disagreemen among Eastern European intellectuals this respect. Jaroslav Sabata in his lett to Edward Thompson rightly on "international solidarity of all those who resist every kind of oppression On that basis a trend of "convergence of the struggle against the modernisation of NATO and the struggle against the violation of civil rights in Eastern Europe" , could indeed take place.
*However, Vaclav Racek expressed a view which is both unrealistic and dangerous when he demanded that the peace movement, "support the military forces of western democracies as instruments of human rights confronting totalitarian systems." This view is unrealistic since the military forces of the USA and other western countries are anything but "an instrument of human rights" - suffice to examine how they were used conquering colonies in the past and in Latin America, South Asia, North Africa more recently?
There is a good chance that most of the peace groups in the GDR would agree with this view since in their contributions they have always coupled their rejection of the deployment of Soviet missiles in the country with a parallel rejection of Pershing in West Germany. They have sometimes made very valuable contributions to an understanding of the different motives of the bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the bureaucracy on the other or to the 15 15. END No 12, October-November 198 London.
Solidarity with peace campaigners in Eastern Europe All those in the USSR who decide to demonstrate their desire for peace outside of the official structures can expect a 'choice of prison, exile or psychiatric hospital. They can be subjected to repeated 48-hour detentions; continual questioning and harassment by the KGB; sacking from their jobs; prolonged internment in psychiatric hospital; being sent to Siberia; imprisonment.
The repression meted out to independent peace activists is no different from the usual methods the bureaucracy have of silencing any opposition although in the case of the majority of members and sympathisers of the Group for Trust they, for example, do not see themselves as oppositionists.
In the spring of 1984, the activities of the Moscow Group provoked several arrests. These activities involved collecting 800 signatures in the streets on May 18 and 19; a demonstration of 500 people on June 1, and more signature collecting the rest of that month.
During the summer, 36 people were arrested on the eve of a demonstration which had been fixed for the anniversary of Hiroshima and fifty others were arrested a few days later whilst they were holding a group seminar. Several were afterwards but others were held in prison for 15 days, accused Ha, bi the Sovi autorin do not us hat at dina of 'thoughtless hooliganism'. They were constantly threatened with being sent as the following cases illustrate:
Lidia Latsis-Doronina, 57 years old, was condemned to five years in a camp and three years in exile, for distributing a Group for Trust leaflet in Riga;
- Aleksandr Vorona, was put in a psychiatric hospital for distributing propaganda from the Group for Trust in Novosibirsk;
- Oleg Radzinski, one of the leaders of the Moscow Group was condemned to exile;
- Yuri Popov and Serguei Troyanski have been subjected to forced neurological treatment in the psychiatric hospital in Moscow since they were arrested in 1983;
— Vladimir Gershuni is detained in a psychiatric hospital in Alma-Ata;
— Valerii Senderov, a trade unionist, was condemned to 12 years in prison and then five years - 17 years in total.
- A particularly tragic case is that of Aleksandr Shatravka, who was arrested in April 1982 and condemned to three years in a prison camp in April 1983. Since his arrest he has faced continual torture and privation from sleep, to the point that, in May 1984 he tried to commit suicide. So he was placed in solitary confinement, where the ill treatment continued. Shatravka has been fighting battles for 15 years now. In 1971, he refused to serve in the army because of his pacifist convictions, following which he was sent on several occasions to psychiatric hospital, where he has spent most of his adult life. He is currently in the Kazakhstan prison camp at SSSR Dzhambulskaya, obl.g, Zhanatas, Uchr. 158/3.
This repression has not stopped the Group for Trust pursuing its activities. They continue to hold weekly seminars, mainly on issues like arms reconversion, on the medical effects of nuclear war and on the consequences of the 'nuclear winter'. They also organised a demonstration for April 12, 1985.
Twenty people were arrested on the eve of the demonstration called by the Moscow Group for May 16, 1985:
- Nicolas Khramov, 'a habitual offender' was sentenced for the umpteenth time to 15 days in prison with the possibility of 7 years.
- V. Brodsky accused of 'serious hooliganism' has a possibility of five years in prison;
- Olga Kabanova and Natasha Atvylenkova, young women of 16 and 18 years old respectively were put in the psychiatric hospital in Moscow.
It is vital to demonstrate our solidarity with these victims of Soviet repression. Telegrams should be addressed to the Soviet embassy and to the Official Peace Committees to protest against their treatment and to demand information on all the above and other cases. International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
militarisation of society and the arms race. Their links with peace activists in West Germany and their facility for receiving daily information from West German television undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that they have less illusions than other peace activists in Eastern Europe, in the democratic character of western governments.
As always the debate on the role of imperialism is not confined to a polemic between peace activists from East and West but involves a discussion among peace activists within Eastern Europe itself. But at the same time we must be aware that the Bast European peace movements can often bring to Western activists information and even an analysis on the motives and dynamics of the military policies of the bureaucratic regimes which could help some to understand the issues more clearly and even to break with some of the illusions they might have on the subject.
Both the struggle for democratic rights, and the fight against militarisation of society (a central theme in the peace movement in the GDR) are very much in evidence in a group like the Association of Estonian Partisans for Peace who are demanding a neutral and denuclearised Baltie. so. They stress that, the USSR might encourage peace movements abroad with great zeal but inside its own borders, the army is glorified across the whole length and breadth of the country' They also denounce the different expressions of militarism in day-to-day life in the Soviet Union (16)
A similar concer can also be found behind the initiative taken recently by a Polish group demanding a limitation on military education in schools. Thirteen Warsaw students have begun a hunger strike in a church in solidarity with Marek Adamkiewicz, who condemned to two and a half years in prison for having refused to take an oath required of all those who are called up, and which involves a pledge of allegiance to the Soviet army. A petition was circulated in several towns demanding his release.
It is interesting to note that the approach of activists in Eastern Europe, in the framework of democratic rights, is beginning to involve opposition to certain forms of national oppression to which so many nationalities are subjected under the bureaucratic regimes. Hungarian peace activists and dissidents for example, see the need to take up the struggle against discrimination against national minorities in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The Polish KOS goes even further, reflecting the fact that this issue is more and more prevalent in the underground press of Solidarnosc. In its address to the West Berlin forum, the KOS put forward the demand for the rights of European minorities oppressed by the USSR saying;
"This is why we address all the participants of the conference, asking them 18 to remember also the silent victims of Yalta - the Lithuanians, the Letonians, the Estonians, the Belorussians, the Ukrainians. Their right to self determination is no less inalienable than ours, and their sufferings and oppression are even greater. This is why, even more than we do, they need solidarity?
• But the national question is also raised in relation to Germany, in the Prague Appeal addressed to the upcoming Amsterdam convention:
'If your aim is the unification of Europe' • we read, then we cannot deny the right of self determination to anyone and this also applies to the Germans. However, as with all other rights this should not be imposed at the expense of other people, or by ignoring their fears. Let us say without equivocation then that no solution will be found by imposing a new revision of European frontiers. In a process of European rapprochement, any frontiers should progressively lose their importance, though even this should not be seen as an opportunity to fall back into nationalism.' (17)
It is important to note that the bureaucratic regimes, true to the policy of Stalin in this regard, always present the division of Germany as the best way to ensure against a rebirth of German expansionism. The concern expressed in the Prague Appeal would only be justified if one failed to pose the perspective of the reunification of Germany in the context of a break with capitalism. There should be no German nationalist danger if the reunification of this country took place, not under the auspices of the bourgeoisie but as the result of an anti-capitalist revolution in the West and an anti-bureaucratic revolution in the Eastern sector.
Peace activists and dissidents within Eastern Europe are well aware of the need to establish contacts and to deepen the debate between them, across any frontiers. It is in this framework that contacts of longstanding have been established oppositions in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and more recently between Czechoslovakia opositionists are also active in this area. As one of them, Milos Haraszti said,
*The issue of peace could gradually become the international strategic focus of all East European oppositions.' It was just such an international axis, which according to this writer, was missing in Solidarose and in Charter 77. (18)
The more that peace activists East and West understand the different circumstances in which both work, over and above the common aspirations of those who work for peace, the more the necessary dialogue between them can advance. In the words of Mikhailo Markovic;
It is true, of course, that people everywhere crave for the same things: peace, a higher quality of life, more liberty, social justice and so on. However, these universal values are threatened and violated to different degrees in different parts of the world. Practical priorities are different and the causes for which people are ready to fight, join movements and take risks are different, although they need not exclude each other and may indeed be quite compatible.' (19) Toward united struggle -East and West
The unity of struggle of the peace movements of Eastern and Western Europe will be decisive in the antiwar struggle worldwide. But it will not be through summit negotiations between governments in Geneva or anywhere else that will allow this to progress, no matter in what spirit such negotiations are supposedly held. The only guarantee against the danger of war, is the mobilisation of the masses against the deployment of nuclear weapons, and against the growth in military budgets; against the militarisation of civil life and against any infringements of civil and trade union liberties. Such a struggle will of course take different forms and different emphases East and West. But at the same time, the international struggle for peace is evidence of the converging interests of people in Eastern and Western Europe who are fighting for the right to self-determination and for the right to determine their own destiny.
Solidarnosc militants in KOS are absolutely right when they say that 'Our implacable struggle against the current regime will make it too costly for Moscow to be able to drag us into the current phase of the arms race.' (20) It is no accident, in fact, that there is not a single Soviet missile stationed in Poland. Through their struggle, and despite its temporary defeat, the Polish people have shown the way forward for all the peoples of Europe. This is the kind of determination which must inspire the peace movement East and West towards a united struggle. 16. Published in French in Alternative No 31, January-February 1985. 17. Published in French in IDEO No 1 April 1985, Paris. 18. Across Frontiers, Berkeley, California, winter-spring 1985. 19. END No 12, October-November, 1984. 20. KOS No 42, 30 October 1984.
International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
BELGIUM