The Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2000, Friday
Europe's last Red tide recedes
By Daniel Schorr
I was born a year before the Russian Revolution, and I think we may be
witnessing the last ebbing of the tide of Communist tyranny that swept over
Eastern Europe.
In 1948, Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia stood up to Stalin and refused to
accept the status of obedient satellite. But Mr. Tito had his own brand of
dictatorial rule.
The rollback of communism could be said to have started in East Germany in
1953, soon after Stalin's death, with demonstrations that were bloodily
suppressed by the Soviet Army. Beaten down, the forces of freedom in the
Soviet empire remained sullenly silent for a few years.
Then came Poznan in 1956, where Polish workers demonstrated for "bread and
freedom," and Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had been a prisoner of Stalin, became
the party chief. In Warsaw during the "Polish October," as they called it,
I could smell the breath of freedom. But Poland would remain under wavering
Soviet control until 1980, when workers led by Lech Walesa completed the
counterrevolution that Poznan had started.
In 1956, Hungary took Poland's cue and rose up against its Communist
rulers. I was in Moscow then, where Nikita Khrushchev and the hard-liners
in his Politboro argued fiercely about whether to go along with changes in
Hungary or send in the tanks. In the end, they sent in the tanks, and
hundreds of Hungarians died waiting for Western help that never came.
The same in Czechoslovakia in 1968, where reformers tried out a more
moderate form of communism called "Socialism with a human face." And soon
the Soviet tanks were there, and the Kremlin leader promulgated the
"Brezhnev doctrine" that no country, once in the Soviet orbit, gets to leave.
But in the 1980s, the Kremlin could no longer enforce its will. And when
East Germany's Erich Honecker asked Soviet troops to support his rule,
Mikhail Gorbachev told him his regime was on its own. And the Berlin Wall
came crashing down.
The Czechs took to the streets, and soon their country was free under
Vaclav Havel.
In Yugoslavia, where Tito had managed to hold disparate nationalities
together, the federation split asunder. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and
Macedonia went off on their own. Then there was not much left but Serbia,
the last holdout against a tide of history.
What started with Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky in Petrograd in 1917 is
coming to an end in Belgrade in 2000.
[Daniel Schorr is a commentator with National Public Radio in the USA, a
liberal "alternative" to commercial radio stations.]
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: www.marxmail.org
