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Spenta
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829
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 Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2003 12:47 pm Post subject: Important Lessons for Iran From Poland ... |
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| Quote: | On the Bolshecik Revolution in Russia:
It was a catastrophic disaster from day one! If you compare Russia's GDP per capita in 1913 to that of Canada and you assume that Russia develops at the same rate as Canada in the twentieth century, Russia would today have the economy about half of the United States, which would be about $4 trillion a year. In fact, it is an economy of 260 billion, a trillion at most if you use purchasing power parity. Case closed. Not to mention the millions killed in the Gulag, the artificial famines and the terror, which diminished Russia's population and hence its wealth as well. The 1917 revolution was an utter disaster for Russia. In 1913, Russia was a country that was becoming civilized, with a parliament, a constitution, and promising economic growth. In another 10 to 20 years, Russia would have become a major world power. The trajectory on which the Bolshevik revolution put it lost Russia the twentieth century. Russia will continue to pay the price for the misdevelopment of that period. It will cost a great deal of money, for example, to liquidate cities built in Siberia, which should never have been built. Russia's wealth was spent on suppressing people, both internally and externally. |
Casting Off the Chains of Lies
http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=12&d=13&a=8
December 09, 2003
Iran Institute for Democracy
IIFD
The recent history of Poland is one of many dangers, external threats exerted by insatiable expansionist powers, Germany anLessons From Polans Lesd the Soviet Union, and of bewildering lies that disoriented two generations that lived under Communism. Poland was the first to fight Hitler but, abandoned by its allies, in 1939 the country was divided by Germany and Soviet Russia. With the Red Army's defeat of Nazi Germany, Poland falls under the Communist yoke in the post-war era. In 1980 after the Gdansk agreements Lech Walesa founds Solidarnosc, the first free trade union in the Communist world. After several months of liberty, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, at Soviet behest, imposes martial law and ends the democratic experiment. Reform is possible again only when the Soviet Union itself begins to unravel in late 1980s. Losing their Soviet backing, Polish Communists agreed to the "first semi-free elections" in the region in June 1989. Their defeat leads to the unraveling of the Communist bloc within two years.
Radek Sikorski, Resident Fellow and Executive Director of AEI's New Atlantic Initiative, is a former deputy minister of foreign affairs and former deputy minister of defense of Poland. His research areas include Eastern Europe, NATO, alliance politics, missile defense, Afghanistan, and Angola...Author of 'Full Circle', "An intimate history of Poland told through the personal experience of restoring a house in a village plagued by invasion and disaster", Sikorski was a political refugee in England from 1981 to 1989.
His insightful remarks and experience in the rise of Poland's civil disobedience movement, Solidarnosc, the fall of communism and the transition period that followed, bring into a new light the Iranian people's struggle to free themselves from the "chains of lies and liars".
An interview with Radek Sikorski
By Ramin Parham
Friday October 24th, 2003
AEI, Washington DC
Ramin Parham (RP): 14 years later, how do you see the death of the closed system that ruled your country for nearly half a century?
Radek Sikorski (RS): We have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. If you had asked me 15 years ago whether in 2003 Poland would be a member of the NATO, with a market economy and a democratic governments, and Polish soldiers serving in foreign missions along Americans and others...I would have said that this is too much to hope for!So, overall, this past decade was the best in Poland's history in 300 years. Of course I am not objective on this, because I was a democrat and an anti-communist, so obviously I greeted Communism's fall as liberation. But the thing to remember is that communism was imposed upon Poland from outside. So the struggle for democracy and against communism merged with aspirations for national dignity and liberation.
RP : How did Solidarnosc manage to grow to a 10 million-member strong organization in a dictatorship?
RS : It was because the dictatorship wobbled. People's Poland was a totalitarian dictatorship in the sense that - apart from the Catholic Church - there were no institutions independent of the regime. So, the moment the regime allowed this one organization, a trade union, to exist legally the threshold of fear went down and the people poured into this breach in the wall of the system to try to make it bigger. In any country, only a small percentage of the people are heroes, willing to sacrifice themselves, their careers, and their families for the cause. Most people have those aspirations, but they will only express them if the risk is low. You know, revolutions usually happen when a regime runs out of money to pay its security forces or when it stops believing in itself, when the elite itself loses the will to power, the conviction of its own righteousness.
RP : Solidarnosc became to be known as a prime instance of a civil disobedience movement. In a country where the government's accountability to the governed simply does not exist, how can disobedience be successful in bringing it down?
RS : Yes and no. First of all, in 1978 a Pole was elected as the Pope. The following year he came to Poland and a pilgrimage across the country and millions went to see him, including myself. To me, it was the first public event into which I wasn't coerced. Although, I had always tried to avoid it but, I had previously gone once or twice to May Day parades. Because, you could have been thrown out of school or out of your job, if you did not go. In this case, people went, legally that is to say, to welcome the Pope, who was invited by the regime. For millions, it was the Pope who represented the (legitimate) authority rather than the regime. I suspect that the psychological mechanism was like the coming of Khomeini from exile to Iran. All of a sudden, the people see how great a number they are and how powerless the police are. At the same time, the official television reports were badly manipulated. They showed only a handful of elderly people meeting the Pope. So, people realized to what extent they were being lied to. They felt that the balance of power had shifted between the regime and the people. Another important factor was the strategy of the leadership of the Solidarity Movement, which knew that they could not defeat the regime by force. The communists had all the power and the only thing they were afraid of was the public opinion of the West. So, the Solidarity leadership kept tempers below boiling point so as not to give the regime an excuse to retaliate with force. For example, in August 1980, Solidarity did not call for democracy. All it called for was the release of political prisoners, legalization of trade unions, lifting censorship. It actually did not demand free elections or for Poland to leave the Warsaw Pact because it was assumed that this would anger the Soviets. It was a 'self-limiting revolution'.
RP : How did you manage to have free parliamentary elections with communist apparatchiks still in place?
RS : First, it wasn't entirely free. In 1989, only a third of the seats in the parliament's lower house were up for free elections. The remaining two thirds were kept by the communists. Second, the communists started taking over the economy already in the mid-80s. By that time, the centralized system of controlling the economy had completely broken down and the Communists themselves had lost faith in the system. Also, Poland was the only communist country where people could actually travel to the West. For instance, the United States ran a program of Fulbright Scholarships, both for dissidents and the nomenclatura! So, the nomenclatura people saw by themselves that it was not going to work anymore.
RP : What catalytic role did external factors play in the process?
RS : First of all, had it not been for the Soviet Union, Poland would not have become communist. Then, had reform arrived earlier in the Soviet Union, Poland would have freed herself in 1980 at the latest. So, the major external force was the Soviet army, which was the barrier of what was possible. Other factors from abroad that stimulated change were long term ones, such as broadcast from Radio Free Europe, covering not only international news but what was going on in my own town...
RP : How many hours a day did they broadcast?
RS : 12 to 18 hours a day...we were living in this small flat with only two rooms and thin walls. While my father would fall asleep every night listening to these broadcasts, which were subject to jamming, next door, there I was, still a small boy also listening to this stuff. You know, that's how you become an anti-communist.
There was also support for independent publishing. Polish intellectuals could publish their essays in émigré journals, which were then read in Radio Free Europe or smuggled into Poland. And, as I mentioned, people could travel out of Poland. I'll tell you a story. In the early 1990s, my wife and I traveled to the Soviet Union, to visit a collective farm, a kolkhoz. The woman laborer, showing off gold teeth, asked my wife:" so, now that you have seen both places, tell us, is it better here or in the United States?" Such a question, out of such a gloomy hole as a soviet kolkhoz would have been totally unimaginable in Poland. There, a visiting American would have been asked:" How can I get a visa? Could you get me an invitation?" You see, in Poland we always had the feeling that "we want to be like the people in the West, rather than the Soviet Union".
RP : So the fact that people could travel...
RS : And had relatives abroad. It was calculated that nearly a quarter of Polish families were receiving some form of income from abroad...
RP : Was that money channeled in through western style financial institutions or through unofficial networks?
RS : You could send money through Polish banks. But, not the other way around of course, since the currency was not convertible and the whole communist system was set up to suck in foreign reserves. For example, the number of telephone connections into Poland would be bigger than the number of outbound connections. They would always keep the balance in their favor so as to claim the money. And they had this particular system of 'dollar shops' where you could buy for dollars goods that were not available in normal shops...
RP : Yes, we also have this system in Iran where you don't have particular shops, instead, people who live off the local 'rial' can't afford to buy goods that are priced at their normal market dollar value...
RS : But in a supposedly socialist economy the 'dollar shops' were an ideological problem for the regime. You see, socialism was supposed to be superior, yet, you had these shops with nice, western, shiny, desirable goods that people could not buy. You had two realities side by side and it was obvious which one was better.
RP : What role did the Polish Diaspora play, before and after regime change?
RS : After the regime change it was marginal, in the sense that only a few people returned and assumed high office. In fact, there was quite a bit of resentment toward the Diaspora. And that was in fact a mistake. In other countries, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, returning exiles were allowed to make a bigger contribution. When people live apart for so long, many differences arise.
RP : How about the intellectuals...
RS : They were important. First, they had a moderating influence. Plus, many of the intellectuals were former communists. So, they kept contacts with colleagues and foreign embassies and provided a sense of realism. Before Solidarity was founded there were two other crises. First in 1968, when the intellectuals alone tried to challenge the party, ended by bans and forcing people into exile. The second, in 1970, the workers went on strike on their own and they were just put down by the army. Then, quite sensibly, they came together. So, the next time, in 1976, when the workers moved, intellectuals set up 'committees of help to the workers'.
RP : How did the armed forces react to the coming of liberal democracy?
RS : My sense is that as long as the army is paid and equipped, pretty much in any country they obey the orders. Remember, in the 80s in Poland, the head of the army was also the boss of the party, so Poland really was a military dictatorship. It was Jaruzelski who decided he could no longer rule without making a deal with Solidarity. In fact, he blackmailed the party into accepting opening talks with Solidarity and his position in the army was so strong that he could not be challenged.
RP : So you are saying that Jaruzelski actually played the catalyst of change...
RS : Yes, he did. Because he tried the false options and ruled for ten years and it didn't work, and the country was falling apart. But the reason they gave up power, wasn't because of the goodness of their hearts, but because the country became completely ungovernable. There was 800% inflation, no foreign reserves, and the economy was in a free fall. It was actually no longer fun to rule, and no privileges left, and nothing to rule with!
RP : Very briefly, how do Central Europeans judge, retrospectively, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and its consequences both for Russia and the whole region?
RS : It was a catastrophic disaster from day one! If you compare Russia's GDP per capita in 1913 to that of Canada and you assume that Russia develops at the same rate as Canada in the twentieth century, Russia would today have the economy about half of the United States, which would be about $4 trillion a year. In fact, it is an economy of 260 billion, a trillion at most if you use purchasing power parity. Case closed. Not to mention the millions killed in the Gulag, the artificial famines and the terror, which diminished Russia's population and hence its wealth as well. The 1917 revolution was an utter disaster for Russia. In 1913, Russia was a country that was becoming civilized, with a parliament, a constitution, and promising economic growth. In another 10 to 20 years, Russia would have become a major world power. The trajectory on which the Bolshevik revolution put it lost Russia the twentieth century. Russia will continue to pay the price for the misdevelopment of that period. It will cost a great deal of money, for example, to liquidate cities built in Siberia, which should never have been built. Russia's wealth was spent on suppressing people, both internally and externally.
RP : 70 years of lost time...
RS : Actually going back in many spheres. And there is a parallel with Iran. Communism would have collapsed much earlier had it not commanded the mineral wealth of the country. In a country with no natural resources, the government has to draw its income from the productive activities of its people. The act of taxation is an implicit contractual relationship with the citizens. Because nobody likes to be taxed, the rulers become accountable to their people in return.
RP : Communism did not manage to survive as a system. Why did it prove so irreformable? What was systemically wrong with it?
RS : Ultimately, communism was a secular religion, with its own version of history and vision of salvation, its own pantheon of saints, its own dogma and holy texts. You could not reform it, for questioning one dogma questioned the whole edifice. Democracy is ultimately based on the fact that nobody holds the truth, that there is a free market of ideas, that mine is as important as yours and we have to make a deal in order to live side by side. Communism could not allow differences of opinion since this would question its infallibility. The genius of capitalism and democracy is that they can adjust to changing circumstances...
RP : ...a learning system...
RS : Indeed, whereas, communism was largely stuck in its 19th century dogma and philosophy.
RP : What astonished me most in theocratic Iran was the depressing mood of the people. Society as a whole seems to be sinking into a collective anomie, marked by excessive drug consumption and carelessness. How was the mood in Poland in the communist era and how did you manage to lift it back?
RS : Depression was prevalent in Poland in 1980s and hasn't entirely lifted yet. A friend of mine has written a book about depression, in which he described 'political depression'.
RP : ...within individuals...
RS : Yes. When routes of advancement, and hope are gone, people withdraw into private life and sink into depression. In Poland we had 'internal exiles', people who could not or would not travel abroad. About a million people left the country because it was so depressing. Others went to live in a cottage in the woods or in the mountains, and just withdrew from reality. Also, it was the last decade in which we had a positive birth rate. People confined themselves to their family circle. It was psychologically harder on men than on women. Women had to devote all their energies to keeping their families afloat, which in an economy of shortages was very hard, but it gave them a reason to exist. Men, on the other hand, went into total depression with a feeling of powerlessness. People were so exhausted when freedom finally came that nobody cheered.
RP : So you still haven't recovered from that political depression that affected people's mind and psychology?
RS : People who lived as adults under communism are psychologically damaged to this day.
RP : In the period between closed and open systems, where the old is dying and the new being born, how would you describe the critical path to success?
RS : It is difficult to make rules in social sciences. The fact that communism ended without violence in Poland, without public demonstrations, without a moment of catharsis; the fact that it ended through negotiations, through back room deals, through a gradual process...means that there was no cut off date. "The tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of heroes!" I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said this. You need a moment when people can cast off their chains. Of course, it's a tricky business, because violence has ways of producing more violence. So, I don't know the Iranian psychology and parameters so much as to know whether violence can be kept within a certain bounds. But, I think for the long term health of the country, the stooges of the old regime, the bad people should be seen to have lost and the good people should be seen to have won and to have gained something. It is very important for these morality tales to be played. Just as in criminal law, where you don't have to have the feeling that the police catch every criminal in order for you to be a law abiding citizen but you have to have the expectation that they catch most of them, so also in politics we need to feel a certain level of justice by seeing that those who tortured your friends yesterday are today no longer in charge. If the opposite happens, if yesterdays torturers continue to laugh in your face, you get continued anomie.
RP : Concerning the post-soviet era, 'transition' refers to the period that starts beyond communist regimes. What are the pitfalls of 'transition'?
RS : First, it is very important to distribute the property in order to create a middle class, to reward those who previously lost many things, and finally to create a market economy. Most totalitarian regimes concentrate in their hand most of the property as well. In the long run, what you want is a society where many people own something, have a stake in the system. It is property that gives you the confidence and the resources to engage in civic activities, to express your opinion and to oppose what you don't like. In the particular case of oil, if you leave it in the hands of the state, those who control oil will control everything else...
RP : Have you been able to build a healthy middle class in Poland, 14 years after the fall of communism?
RS : There is a middle class. I would not say that it is healthy, but it is much bigger than it used to be. Most of the property that used to belong to the state has been sold off. Many people feel that it was sold off at too low prices and those who bought them were the nomenclatura and western companies. In my opinion, the income should have gone to modernize the infrastructure, roads, information networks...In fact, it went to increase the bureaucracy, to paying pensions, and all kinds of social benefits. As we say in Poland, we've eaten our own tail. It would have been better to give people a bigger stake in the system. If Poland had oil, I would study the Alaskan system in giving people shares of the oil income...
Secondly, what you have to do during the transition period is to tell the truth about what happened. You have to name the oppressor. I would say that you have to put them on trial. It is also very important to give people access to their files that were kept by the secret police. The mistake that was made in Poland by many of the intellectuals was that they said 'let bygones be bygones'. There was no moment of truth. The intellectuals thought that if they know that the system is bad then the people also know. But you really have to undo years and decades of miseducation and propaganda. Just as you had denazification in Germany, you should have decommunization. The people should be reminded that the basic ideas were wrong. The old regime would always tell you that "We had good intentions and it was just the people who failed". No. |
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Spenta
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829
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| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2003 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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Thank-you Ramin Parham and the AEI ... its great to make people like this available for commentary not just for Iranians but also the whole world.
I was sad to hear about the depression problem in Poland, but I agree with him, they needed a cathartic release. They should have tried the Communists and had more of a 'denazification' type process. Important lesson for Iran! |
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