The Reemergence Of Civil Society In Eastern Europe And The Soviet Union

Zbigniew Rau

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000305111
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

The turmoil that shook Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and challenged traditional centers of power in the Soviet Union has touched off an intense debate about the forces behind the recent collapse of Soviet-type systems. Civil society, a key concept in the debate, is the focus of this thought-provoking volume, which contrasts the views of Eastern scholars and activists in independent movements against those of Western academics. The authors' various perspectives on the struggle between the people and their governments highlight different facets of civil society, providing new insights into its definition, origin, and function within a nation's public life.

1
Introduction

Zbigniew Rau

Many observers in the West stood back and watched in wonder as the communist regimes of Eastern Europe tumbled in rapid succession. Though the process is less advanced, the present disintegration of the Soviet Union still leaves many scurrying about looking for explanations. Much of this wonder results not from any lack of evidence needed to explain the developments behind the Iron Curtain, but from the skewed perception of mainstream Anglo-American Sovietologists.

For at least two decades, the main theme of the scholarship of Western Sovietologists has been that the Soviet-type system was in many respects similar to the Western one. In order to prove this, they applied to the Soviet-type system social-science categories normally used to describe political relations in the West. In using these explanatory tools, they presented the system created by Lenin and Stalin as an “administered society,” “corporatism,” and, most celebrated of all, “institutional pluralism”—a pluralism in which the competing “interest groups” included, among others, the army, the KGB, and the Academy of Sciences.¹

On the whole, the Soviet-type system was presented as a well-consolidated and extremely stable one, in which the leadership and various sections of society were almost harmoniously involved in macrosocial processes such as modernization and urbanization. Interestingly, this evaluation did not apply only to the contemporary situation in the Soviet Union, but also to the system’s origins in the period under Stalin. It was argued that, through industrialization and collectivization, the Soviet leadership provided channels for “upward mobility,” and that indeed, at the bottom of Soviet society, the provision of these channels was welcomed enthusiastically and soon took the form of a “cultural revolution” from below.²

In taking this approach, scholars viewed the Soviet-type system from its leadership down. Accordingly, it was believed that one could understand the system by understanding its leaders and how they governed at the top. Thus, to anticipate possible changes, it was necessary to study what changes in political constellations were occurring at the top. This perception of the Soviet-type system led to the belief that changes in a communist country were possible only to the extent that the more influential members of the leadership intended and were in a position to implement them. Gradually but inevitably, the perspective of the communist leadership—especially its judgment on the possibility of change—became the perspective and judgment of most Western scholars of the region. This tendency solidified when some communist countries began promoting scholarly exchange between their own officially recognized intellectual establishment and prominent Western Sovietologists.³

It was in this manner that mainstream Western Sovietologists lost their opportunity for gaining understanding of the fundamentals of the system they were exploring. A characteristic and telling example of this phenomenon is the categorical claim of a prominent scholar who insisted that

the most misleading assertion is that the Soviet Communist system has utterly failed to deliver on its basic domestic promises over the years. Lacking any popular achievements, it is suggested, the system has alienated Soviet citizens to the point of indifference or even rebellion; the government therefore has no consensual relationship with the people, surviving largely or only because of its military might and repressive power.

Nothing I have learned in years of studying and visiting the Soviet Union … truly supports that picture.⁴

In reality, contrary to the belief of this scholar, the fundamentals of the Soviet-type system include the fact that within it a minority ruled over and against the will of the majority of the population (with Yugoslavia and Albania as possible exceptions). We can find examples of this throughout the existence of the Soviet-type system: the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly immediately after the Bolshevik revolution left Lenin’s party (which had earlier seized power) with the support of no more than one quarter of the voters—the response of Lenin’s party was to dissolve parliament and seize power once again; Stalin’s forced collectivization met with passive and active resistance from the peasantry (the majority of Soviet society) and was implemented against their will; anti-Soviet sentiments quickly emerged in the Soviet-ruled territories which Germany occupied in the first months following its invasion of the USSR; and East Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles launched both peaceful and armed revolts against their communist rulers in the decades before 1989.

These facts are generally known not only to Sovietologists but to any observer of the region; they clearly indicate that the leaders of the Soviet-type system failed to establish their political legitimacy. This was the case whether they were searching for such legitimacy through the ideological principles of Marxism-Leninism (as in Stalin’s Soviet Union), their alleged economic success (as in Kadar’s Hungary), the nationalist sentiments of their population (as in Ceausescu’s Romania), or geopolitical reality (as in Jaruzelski’s Poland). Since the Soviet-type system was not based upon the consent of the ruled, it managed to maintain itself only by force—whether terror or coercion.

As long as force replaced consent, the rulers and the ruled remained in a basic conflict that lay at the foundation of the system. This conflict was not constantly visible in public life, since the widespread use of coercion usually managed to prevent the overt expression of popular discontent, but its presence suggested the direction of and possibilities for the system’s change. Indeed, the presence of this conflict meant that the future of the system did not depend solely upon the intentions and activities of the rulers—as most Sovietologists assumed—but upon the intentions and activities of both sides of the conflict—that is, the rulers and the ruled. Accordingly, the future of the system depended upon both the willingness and ability of the rulers to use force in order to preserve the status quo, and the determination and capability of the ruled to change it.

The purpose of this volume is to analyze the developments in the former Soviet bloc from the perspective of the ruled. The key explanatory tool in this analysis is the notion of civil society; its conceptual framework is the interaction between civil society and the state. Before discussing this phenomenon as presented in the contributions to this volume, it is necessary to outline the ideal-type civil society and different possible versions of its interaction with the state. Only after this theoretical clarification will it be possible to situate the following essays—which concern the past, present, and future of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union—on analytically common ground.

1.

The notion of civil society is far from unambiguous. Indeed, in the history of political thought it belongs to the output of such writers as Hobbes and Locke, Ferguson and Paine, Hegel and Tocqueville, and Marx and Gramsci—each of whom worked with very different philosophical perspectives and theoretical settings.⁵ Therefore, to avoid confusion while discussing the notion of civil society in this section, I will outline its general definition by bringing together its common elements as discussed by these authors. My outline will expose the basic elements that have been ascribed to it in the history of political thought. This does not mean that these writers reduced civil society to these elements or that they elaborated upon them as much as I do. It simply means that most of them agreed upon most of the elements of civil society presented below.

Civil society is a historically evolved form of society that presupposes the existence of a space in which individuals and their associations compete with each other in the pursuit of their values. This space lies between those relationships which result from family commitments and those which involve the individual’s obligations toward the state. Civil society is therefore a space free from both family influence and state power.⁶ The absence of family influence and state power in civil society is expressed in its characteristic features—individualism, the market, and pluralism.⁷

Individualism results from the assumption that individual values are the primary values pursued in civil society. The values of associations are derived from and legitimized by the values of the individuals who belong to them. Moreover, the will of individuals lies at the bottom of civil society’s associations, since it is individuals that set up, modify, transform, or dissolve them. Thus, individualistic civil society is to be contrasted with any type of collectivistic society where collective values are not derived from and legitimized by individual values and where the will of individuals does not lie at the foundation of groups or social institutions.

Civil society is market-oriented, since resources, goods, and services are allocated through a spontaneous process of voluntary transactions between individuals and their associations. However, the market is not limited to strictly economic transactions. Voluntary exchange of political, economic, artistic, and other ideas—exchange which is considered the basis for the development of social life—is also a market process. Market-oriented civil society, then, is to be contrasted with any kind of system in which the exchange of resources, goods, services, and ideas is neither spontaneous nor voluntary but regulated by the state according to principles that oppose or correct those of the market.

Pluralism is a characteristic feature of civil society, since political power, wealth, and social prestige are allocated on a competitive basis to individuals and their associations, who remain relatively autonomous from each other and enjoy their own areas of competence and expertise. Moreover, individuals and their associations bring about a wide spectrum of beliefs, conceptions, and attitudes which coexist freely with each other and are freely promoted by their supporters. Thus, pluralistic civil society may be contrasted with any type of monolithic society where power, wealth, and prestige are allocated by an authority on the basis of one rigid set of values; where people do not differ much from each other in their competence (or where competence is irrelevant); and where individuals share and promote the same beliefs, conceptions, and attitudes.

It is necessary to indicate that individualism, the market, and pluralism are historical phenomena. As such, their presence or absence (and, if present, their strength or weakness) in a specific society is determined by the level of political, economic, and cultural development in that society. If the level of this development is high, these features are strong and, consequently, civil society is also well-developed. Similarly, if this level is low, these features do not exist or are weak and, consequently, civil society does not exist or is poorly developed.

There are at least five spheres of social life that are open to civil society’s activity and where its characteristic features are expressed and applied. These are the economy; communications; politics; education, science, and culture; and religious life.⁸

Civil society’s activity in the economy is visible in the operation of such institutions as banks, corporations, or stock exchanges, which are involved in investment, production, trade, insurance, and so on. In the sphere of communications, civil society is active through a network of media, publishing houses, and opinion-poll institutes, which participate in shaping public opinion. In politics, civil society is expressed through political parties, electoral coalitions, and lobby groups, which attempt to gain or maintain state power and put pressure on those in power from outside the state structure. In education, science, and culture, civil society is expressed by the existence of schools, learned societies, and foundations, which develop intellectual life. In the area of religious life, civil society operates through churches, religious institutions, and groups, shaping the spiritual development of their members.

These spheres of activity remain the domain of civil society if the associations operating within them are free from organizational or financial state control. Accordingly, a central bank or a nationalized company, a state-run television channel, a state-controlled party, a state-run school, or a church that institutionalizes a state religion does not belong in civil society.

The precondition for the existence of civil society is a normative consensus of its members. This consensus concerns the moral and social order that prevails among them. It concerns both the central moral values on which civil society is based and the rules of behavior of its members—who are to promote rather than hinder the enforcement of those rules. It is this normative consensus that ties together the members of civil society and makes them a moral community and a distinct entity that can then act as a whole.

In the interaction between civil society and the state, both constitute distinct entities that have distinct domains outlined by firm boundaries. The character and direction of this interaction depend upon the relationship between the normative systems on which civil society and the state are based and according to which they act. If civil society and the state share the same normative system, their interaction is characterized by harmony and directed toward common ends. If civil society and the state are based upon two distinct normative systems, their interaction is characterized by conflict and directed toward different ends. A civil society and a state that are based upon two distinct normative systems can form one of two possible ideal-type constellations. In the first constellation, the state is based upon a system that enjoys normative superiority over the system upon which civil society is based. In the second constellation, civil society is founded upon a system that enjoys normative superiority over the system upon which the state is founded. In the history of political thought, the first constellation was best elaborated by Hegel and the second by Locke.

2.

In Hegel,⁹ there are three normative orders from which the relations between civil society and the state result—right (Recht), morality (Moralitiit), and ethical life (Sittlichkeit). The order of right is founded upon the principles of conduct of all positive legal systems concerning life, property, and the various liberties of individuals. The order of morality is the system of rules based upon the judgment of the individual’s conscience. The order of ethical life consists of the values and concepts that have historically evolved in social life. In the first order, man is conceived as a bearer of private rights against other individuals and institutions; in the second order, he is a moral agent who is responsible only to his conscience; in the third order, he is a part of the ethical community, a community that constitutes an organic unity.

In Hegel’s view, civil society is “the state of need” that consi...