Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990

Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow, Bernd Rother, Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow, Bernd Rother

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781782383864
• eBook ISBN: 9780857453709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Exploring the visions of the end of the Cold War that have been put forth since its inception until its actual ending, this volume brings to the fore the reflections, programmes, and strategies that were intended to call into question the bipolar system and replace it with alternative approaches or concepts. These visions were associated not only with prominent individuals, organized groups and civil societies, but were also connected to specific historical processes or events. They ranged from actual, thoroughly conceived programmes, to more blurred, utopian aspirations — or simply the belief that the Cold War had already, in effect, come to an end. Such visions reveal much about the contexts in which they were developed and shed light on crucial moments and phases of the Cold War.

Section VII

EVOLUTIONARY VISIONS AND
UNEXPECTED RESULTS IN THE 1980S

Chapter 15

ENDING THE COLD WAR,
UNINTENTIONALLY

Gregory F. Domber

It is impossible to write about the end of the Cold War without discussing the democratic revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989. While large-scale geopolitical and economic shifts in the superpower relationship, in East-West relations and within the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc all shaped the events of 1989, local populations and local conditions played the significant role in the course and outcomes of the revolutions. Whether it was coal miners striking in Silesia, citizens reburying a national hero, young workers fleeing to the West or protesters gathering in Wenceslas Square, people mobilized en masse to shape their own futures. As Padraic Kenney has shown, these mass displays were not simply spontaneous happenings but were expressions of organized social mobilization.¹ Moreover, these social movements did not simply materialize in 1989 but were based on political theories and tactics developed over the previous decades. In Barbara Falk's metaphor, 1989 was ‘a peak in a mountain of activity glacial in development and proportion’.² In order to fully appreciate the end of the Cold War it is essential to know how the Eastern Europeans themselves viewed what they were doing.

This chapter is an attempt to summarize and analyse the concepts driving revolutionary events in Poland, particularly as these ideas pertain to envisaging an end to the Cold War. The Polish opposition movement, however, encompassed a wide range of political views, making it difficult to talk about any unified ideology or action programme. In addition, theoretical consistency was not a paramount goal; as one theorist wrote, ‘total consistency is tantamount to fanaticism, while inconsistency is the source of tolerance.’³ For the sake of brevity, this chapter focuses on one strain of Warsaw-area intellectuals who were connected first with the Committee for Workers’ Defence (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR), then the Free Trade Union movement and finally Solidarność. This group, including Leszek Kołakowski, Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik, represented generally left-centrist viewpoints and distinguished themselves for their continual relevance within the opposition and their high standing in society.

While this group's ideas played a central role in Poland's transformation in 1989, in reviewing their writings it becomes clear that ending the global Cold War was not their primary concern. They did not seek to overthrow the international order characterized by the East-West, Soviet-American superpower confrontation. Even a cursory review of underground literature from the 1980s proves that the democratic opposition focused its attention almost exclusively on internal concerns.⁴ When they did discuss geopolitics and superpower affairs, the Cold War was characterized as a set of constraints to be manoeuvred around, not something to be overcome or overthrown. It was a nuisance best left untouched. In an irony of history, the Polish opposition did not strive to undermine the existing international Cold War order, but it nonetheless played a starring role in the events that led to this unintended consequence.

Self-limitation and Self-liberation

For Polish dissidents the defining characteristic of the Cold War world was not superpower relations, arms control or the threat of nuclear annihilation. All of these issues were secondary relative to the fact that Poland fell within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Their national fate had been sealed by the presence of Red Army troops at the end of the Second World War. Poles pointed to Soviet military interventions in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 as evidence that the Soviets were the fundamental force defining the limits of political change in Eastern Europe. As Kołakowski wrote in 1971, ‘As experience has shown, Soviet military predominance will always be employed to crush local attempts at revolution.’⁵ Or as Kuroń added in 1976, the stability of the totalitarian system was ‘guaranteed by the readiness of the Soviet Union, which has been displayed three times already, to re-impose it by force on any nation attempting to free itself’.⁶ For Michnik, ‘The Soviet military and political presence in Poland is the factor that determines the limits of possible [political development].’⁷ Even writing two days after Poles handed the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) an overwhelming electoral defeat on 4 June 1989, Michnik emphasized that ‘Poland's geopolitical situation remains, after all, unchanged.…The fatal shots fired in Tblisi and Beijing show the dangers that we need to avoid.’⁸ Sitting far behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet military power was the starting point for all discussions about political transformation.

With this framework, the opposition drew lessons from history to understand the possibilities for change in Eastern Europe. The Soviet intervention in Hungary in November 1956 had shown that the communist system could not be wholly rejected; therefore, popular revolutionary change was out of the question. The elucidation of the Brezhnev doctrine following the Prague Spring proved that the Soviets would not allow deep reforms emanating from within the party either; thus, reform and revision from above were also impossible.⁹ As Michnik summarized, ‘It seems that the Soviet leaders invariably intervene militarily in their satellite states whenever power slips out of the hands of the local Communist party.’¹⁰ Neither revolution nor revision provided a safe model for change.

To ensure that they did not provoke a Soviet intervention, the opposition needed to understand the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. As one part of their trinity of restrictions, the opposition stated that it was not their goal to ‘subvert’ the PZPR, to strive to remove them from political power or to deny the party's position in society.¹¹ Second, the movement did not question Poland's alliance with the Warsaw Pact or COMECON, because this system ‘ensured that we had peace, secure borders and it is also the driving force behind the development of the economy. Therefore, this alliance and this cooperation are of primary importance to our national existence and security.’¹² This commitment to existing international agreements included an acceptance of Poland's postwar borders.¹³ Third, the opposition understood that the PZPR should be allowed to maintain a monopoly on power ‘in the police…in the military, in foreign policy.’¹⁴ Overall, the Polish opposition maintained a very cautious outlook. As Kuroń explained, ‘No one can be sure when the critical point may come and it is certainly true that it is better to stop much too early than a moment too late.’¹⁵ This predisposition to caution overlapped well with the movement's extended efforts to elucidate the parameters of its own actions. These parameters did not allow the opposition to draft a plan to overturn Communist Party power within Poland, let alone end the Cold War. Instead, their willing acceptance of these parameters set clear limits on Polish actions, earning the movement the label ‘self-limiting’ revolutionaries.¹⁶

Beyond the overwhelming issue of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, the democratic opposition looked at the global characteristics of the superpower confrontation as another limiting factor. First, these dissidents accepted that they could not count on the United States to liberate them. For Poles, Soviet domination was codified ‘with the acquiescence of the countries of the Atlantic Alliance’ in the Yalta agreements.¹⁷ Moreover, the ‘silence that greeted’ the Hungarian revolution was a ‘revealing sign that the Yalta agreements remained in force.’¹⁸ After the Western response to the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Michnik wrote:

I maintain that the Poles do not expect any help from outside. They do not place their faith in Reagan, or in the Pershing missiles–they have no hopes hanging on the outcome of negotiations in Geneva. Although they are happy to receive every gesture of solidarity made by the outside world, they are perfectly aware (and willing to say this to others) that they must, and will, place their faith only in themselves.¹⁹

The Polish opposition knew that they could not count on the outside to set them free.²⁰

Buttressing their focus on ‘faith only in themselves’, the movement viewed improvements in the superpower relationship cynically. As one writer for Tygodnik Mazowsze – Solidarność's main underground publication in the Warsaw area – editorialized in June 1982, ‘In the past few months it has become clear that Poland is one of the trump cards in the superpowers’ game.’²¹ Relations between Poland and the superpowers were not based only on bilateral concerns, but were manipulated by both superpowers to suit their desires. The opposition was additionally cynical about the efficacy of arms control agreements. According to Kuroń, ‘The Soviet Union takes advantage of every arms control agreement.. All Western agreements with the Soviet Union create an obligation for only one side: the West.’²²

After Mikhail Gorbachev's ascension to the general secretariat in 1985, Polish activists remained sceptical about change emanating from external sources, including from Gorbachev's summits with Ronald Reagan. Following the Geneva summit, opposition papers argued that the meeting did little to address the ‘deepest and most chronic’ issues in Poland's crisis and questioned the Soviet and Polish leaders’ sincerity about reform: ‘If the USSR really intends to accomplish a reversal in course (zwrotu), Jaruzelski's outfit is not generally prepared for it.’²³ Regarding the Reykjavik summit, the Poles lamented that ‘Reagan kind of forgot his own principle that rockets are not the origin of tension, but their result.’ They further argued that Reagan's interests in arms control took the focus away from the most important issue in East-West relations: building a peace ‘based on respecting inalienable societal and natural rights.’²⁴ Critiques of the Washington summit combined this viewpoint with Kuroń's ideas about arms control: the INF treaty advantaged the Soviets in missile numbers, and the negotiations did not strengthen consensus on any other issues relevant to Poles.²⁵ Following the Moscow summit, Tygodnik Mazowsze announced that Washington was ‘betting on perestroika’ and that while Reagan had raised human rights concerns, the United States strove to buttress Gorbachev against his internal competitors rather than pressure him to fundamentally change the Soviet system.²⁶ Although the opposition believed that decreased superpower tension could possibly improve Poland's situation, they were not impressed by superpower relations in actuality.

Finally, the Polish opposition consistently downplayed the importance of reform within the Soviet system because they were unconvinced of Gorbachev's sincerity. The editors of Z Dnia na Dzien, a Solidarność-affiliated publication from Wroclaw, wrote that Gorbachev was one of a long line of Soviet reformers reaching back to Khrushchev and Brezhnev, explicitly making the point that reform movements in Moscow were easily reversed and rarely had positive outcomes for Poland.²⁷ In an article about the merits of perestroika, the reforms were not seen as a genuine redirection of Soviet policy but as ‘a [political] manoeuvre, which will be turned against us.’²⁸ In 1987, Michnik labelled Gorbachev the ‘Great Counter-Reformer’, working to save the Soviet system.²⁹ Into 1988, he argued that the general secretary's primary motivation was to increase Soviet power: ‘All the changes taking place from above in the Soviet Union are designed to maintain or modernize its empire. Gorbachev is not a man fighting for freedom. He instead wishes to make the Soviet Union more powerful.. He wants to defend the system by reforming it.’³⁰ As Warsaw intellectual and Solidarność advisor Bronisław Geremek retrospectively explained, democratic activists were reluctant to see Gorbachev as a positive force in Poland because they ‘had the feeling that Gorbachev was weakening our resistance to the Communist regime. His special relationship with Jaruzelski was one of the last supports of this regime. So, we didn't think in terms of Gorbachev trying to create a good environment for transformation.’³¹

Interestingly, the opposition was not completely unconcerned with international forces: their writings include...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• I. Crystallizing the Cold War
• II. Stalin's Death and after: A Missed Opportunity?
• III. Alternative Visions of the 1960s
• IV. A Helsinki Vision?
• V. Visions and Dissent in the 1970s
• VI. Vision or Status Quo in the 1970s
• VII. Evolutionary Visions and Unexpected Results in the 1980s
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index