The paths to liberation
I was reading The Guardian the other day and came across this comment, with refreshingly unambiguous view of the events in Iraq. It must have been many years since I saw the phrase "puppet regime" in print last time. Actually, today it may be fifteen years, to the day.
Fifteen years ago a train of events was set off that would eventually lead to the collapse of communist regime in Czechland. While on a large scale the demise of communism was surely caused by international events: the American offensive foreign policy, Soviet "perestroika" (in itself brought about by chronic wastefulness of centrally-regulated economy), etc., the actual overthrowing of the regime was accomplished by local forces and local activists.
Ever since these events I was wandering what would happen if Czechoslovakia was liberated by foreign armies. Let's assume that there would be a crisis in Russian leadership in, say, 1979. Brezhnev is dead. The politburo is paralysed by internal struggle for succession and CIA agents from Moscow report that the Red Army would be incapable of prolonged action for six months at least. The hawkish Jimmy Carter (now, that's stretching fiction too far), supported by German and UK leaders (and even farther) orders NATO troops to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, claiming that they come to liberate these ancient Western countries from the communist yoke.
The draft armies of these countries are equipped with old and unreliable weapons and vehicles. The morale is low, nobody is particularly willing to die for communism, and after the first encounters where ageing T-54s and T-55s are flattened by Leopards and Pattons, even the most enthusiastic are losing heart. The desertions are rife, Prague falls after one week, in Poland the anti-communist popular rising in Warsaw, Gdynia and Gdansk liberate large swaths of the country even before the advancing Western armies, Budapest falls after two weeks, because Austria refused to allow NATO armies passage through its territory.
On the borders of Soviet Union the armies stop and uprisings in Baltic republics are brutally put down by the Red Army. New status quo is established.
Now, there are two paths open to the victorious armies, and these vary by the amount of involvement in the post-war process. One would be to go the way Allies went in 1945: write the new constitution for these countries, replace the local administration with bureaucrats from the US army, and de facto run the country for couple of years until the new administration is ready to take over. A parcel of this would be strict anti-communist laws: public display of hammer and sickle or red five-pointed star would be a punishable offence, Communist party would be banned and any party that would make "communism" or "revolution" part of its program would be banned as well.
The other way is a quick pull-out: new parties are hastily cobbled together, free elections are held at the shortest opportunity possible, and then the armies go home. The Communist party is probably still banned, but it soon regroups under a different name. There is an attempt to rid the administration of the most compromised communists, but it is soon found out that without these "valuable specialists" the state machine would come to a halt.
Now the interesting point is what would be the reaction of people to these two scenarios. The second one is actually almost exactly what happened in '89, only without the tanks rolling over Danube. And today, fifteen years after, this is the best thing about the end of communism: we can kid ourselves that it was our own achievement.
The era from '45 to '89 is something the Czechs are not exactly proud of, but also not unreasonably ashamed of. Surely, there is only a handful of people if any who realize that Czechoslovakia was an ally of a Power that had clearly intended to subjugate the whole world to its inhuman ideology, that Czechoslovakia supplied millions of soldiers to this very purpose, and that only its lucky stars and Western resolve prevented the Cold War turning Hot.
For most Czechs, there was no war at all. The crimes of communism, for them, were not political murders, unfair trials, forced labour, and restricted freedom, but long queues, lack of goods, and laughable statesmen.
My prediction is that this feeling would only deepen in my second scenario. If the end of communism was brought on us from outside, but without forcing the country into renouncing it; if the liberating armies set up the free elections, but left the administration – policemen, judges, state bureaucrats – intact, the people would be even more sentimental about communism. They would blame they problems on the new regime – they do anyway – but the new regime would not be their regime.
In the first case, i.e. more long-term involvement, it may be possible that the situation would be better, and the people actually would identify with the new regime more. This is a paradox, because this regime would actually be more "foreign" than in the previous case. It would depend on the ability of the new establishment to distance itself from communist era and discredit it enough in the eyes of the public.
The parallels with Iraq puppet regime are obvious and I will not dwell on them.
Fifteen years ago a train of events was set off that would eventually lead to the collapse of communist regime in Czechland. While on a large scale the demise of communism was surely caused by international events: the American offensive foreign policy, Soviet "perestroika" (in itself brought about by chronic wastefulness of centrally-regulated economy), etc., the actual overthrowing of the regime was accomplished by local forces and local activists.
Ever since these events I was wandering what would happen if Czechoslovakia was liberated by foreign armies. Let's assume that there would be a crisis in Russian leadership in, say, 1979. Brezhnev is dead. The politburo is paralysed by internal struggle for succession and CIA agents from Moscow report that the Red Army would be incapable of prolonged action for six months at least. The hawkish Jimmy Carter (now, that's stretching fiction too far), supported by German and UK leaders (and even farther) orders NATO troops to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, claiming that they come to liberate these ancient Western countries from the communist yoke.
The draft armies of these countries are equipped with old and unreliable weapons and vehicles. The morale is low, nobody is particularly willing to die for communism, and after the first encounters where ageing T-54s and T-55s are flattened by Leopards and Pattons, even the most enthusiastic are losing heart. The desertions are rife, Prague falls after one week, in Poland the anti-communist popular rising in Warsaw, Gdynia and Gdansk liberate large swaths of the country even before the advancing Western armies, Budapest falls after two weeks, because Austria refused to allow NATO armies passage through its territory.
On the borders of Soviet Union the armies stop and uprisings in Baltic republics are brutally put down by the Red Army. New status quo is established.
Now, there are two paths open to the victorious armies, and these vary by the amount of involvement in the post-war process. One would be to go the way Allies went in 1945: write the new constitution for these countries, replace the local administration with bureaucrats from the US army, and de facto run the country for couple of years until the new administration is ready to take over. A parcel of this would be strict anti-communist laws: public display of hammer and sickle or red five-pointed star would be a punishable offence, Communist party would be banned and any party that would make "communism" or "revolution" part of its program would be banned as well.
The other way is a quick pull-out: new parties are hastily cobbled together, free elections are held at the shortest opportunity possible, and then the armies go home. The Communist party is probably still banned, but it soon regroups under a different name. There is an attempt to rid the administration of the most compromised communists, but it is soon found out that without these "valuable specialists" the state machine would come to a halt.
Now the interesting point is what would be the reaction of people to these two scenarios. The second one is actually almost exactly what happened in '89, only without the tanks rolling over Danube. And today, fifteen years after, this is the best thing about the end of communism: we can kid ourselves that it was our own achievement.
The era from '45 to '89 is something the Czechs are not exactly proud of, but also not unreasonably ashamed of. Surely, there is only a handful of people if any who realize that Czechoslovakia was an ally of a Power that had clearly intended to subjugate the whole world to its inhuman ideology, that Czechoslovakia supplied millions of soldiers to this very purpose, and that only its lucky stars and Western resolve prevented the Cold War turning Hot.
For most Czechs, there was no war at all. The crimes of communism, for them, were not political murders, unfair trials, forced labour, and restricted freedom, but long queues, lack of goods, and laughable statesmen.
My prediction is that this feeling would only deepen in my second scenario. If the end of communism was brought on us from outside, but without forcing the country into renouncing it; if the liberating armies set up the free elections, but left the administration – policemen, judges, state bureaucrats – intact, the people would be even more sentimental about communism. They would blame they problems on the new regime – they do anyway – but the new regime would not be their regime.
In the first case, i.e. more long-term involvement, it may be possible that the situation would be better, and the people actually would identify with the new regime more. This is a paradox, because this regime would actually be more "foreign" than in the previous case. It would depend on the ability of the new establishment to distance itself from communist era and discredit it enough in the eyes of the public.
The parallels with Iraq puppet regime are obvious and I will not dwell on them.
posted by //. at
10:13 AM
1 Comments:
My opininon: You obviously have great rethoric talent and political knowledge. One can feel that you know whats really going on e.g. in Iraq and in the European Union. Hell, i know only two or three people that actually see the political and humanistic message in Houellebecqs books. You are one of them BUT despite this all, you somehow hold back your real opinion too much, you only reveal small glances of your real thoughts. And i think that's a waste imo. You could really walk with the giants (trust me), but somehow decide to "hide behind the mountains". I think if you have much more "power" in you than what you show in this blogs. And thus they feel a bit empty. This is constructive crticism in its best form. Don't hold back too much.
One small humorous thing though: In your small fiction/idea about the liberation of Czechoslovakia in 1979 you add the german army that helps Carter with his military plans etc. I was in that army in the late 80s and trust me, they wouldn't have been of MUCH military use back then.
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